Bibliography: Inayat. Twenty Jataka Tales. Story: The End of the World
Notes: This was another one of those stories that I was drawn to initially because of the name. What a hook! As with the story earlier this week, it was one that had a pretty thinly veiled moral, but again was one that I could wholeheartedly get behind! Too often in our society we see people running with the lemmings. Most recently, I have been having some frustration with the whole lemming phenomenon in regards to vaccinations. I have been volunteering a lot recently at vaccination clinics trying to help get people vaccinated and get us back to some semblance of normal! Although everyone there is obviously getting vaccinated, I have been hearing a lot of stories about their friends and relatives who are too scared to come in because they either have the traditional fears of vaccinations (that they cause autism, etc) or that they have bought into the recent "vaccinations have a chip in them" fear.
These fears sounds very similar to the ones from the little rabbit in the story. They are born out of legitimate concerns (for the rabbit that is fear of the world ending, for people not getting their vaccines this might be concerns about the good will and protection of the government and privatized healthcare system), but what is being said has no basis whatsoever (for reference, the man who published the falsified paper saying that vaccines cause autism is now in prison for writing that paper). And yet, those fears spread like wildfire.
One thing that I liked about this story was that the lion did not belittle of laugh at the little rabbit after finding out that the sounds was just a fruit falling. I think this is a really important to genuinely listen to people's concerns and then to try to address them in a way that will make people feel comfortable.
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