When we talk about fairy tales, it’s easy to focus on the fantastic elements. In so doing, one can overlook that the story may have been trying to make a point.

As one reads fairy tales, one may notice that they tend to have grim endings. This was to the end of communicating to the children listening that the world was not a pleasant place. Yet, this plays a part in preparing children for the real world. But what’s more, they also prepare children by imparting on them the moral lessons illustrated in these stories.

An example of such a fairy tale was Little Red Riding Hood. It’s evident that this story can be used to illustrate how tragedy can result when one fails to identify a dangerous predator, or fail to give mind as warning signs become apparent.

To succinctly summarize, the story is about a protagonist, a girl identified only by her choice of apparel, who went on a trip to her grandmother’s house. Along the way, she meets a wolf, who asks her where she is going. She told the wolf that she was going to her grandmother’s house. The wolf, wanting to eat the girl and the food that was with her, went to her grandmother’s house, ate her grandmother, then disguised itself as her grandmother for to act upon the girl by deception. The girl noticed that her grandmother (actually the wolf) had unusually large features, but this didn’t seem to concern the girl much until it was too late. The girl paid the price for her lack of discernment, when the wolf took her by surprise and ate her.

There are variations on this story. Some tellers may leave out that the wolf spoke to the girl on the way to her grandmother’s house, perhaps because the teller wished to focus more on the wolf’s deceptiveness. However, this leaves out the girl’s first mistake: sharing information that she didn’t have to with someone she didn’t know. This set her up for the tragedy that followed. Of course, one can ask why the wolf didn’t just attack the girl on the path. It could be that the wolf was diminutive or didn’t think much of its own ability to overcome a young human being, but I think it’s reasonable to believe that the original author’s insistence on the lesson of this part of the story was particularly strong.

Another revision states that, at the end, the girl was rescued by either a hunter or a woodworker. This revision was an obvious attempt to reduce the blow of the otherwise tragic end to the story. However, it also undermines the moral by reducing the connotation of consequences for the kind of mistakes that the girl made. The fact is, in the real world, if someone makes a grave mistake, there isn’t much realistic expectation that someone is going to come to the rescue.

And speaking of revisions, the earliest-known version starred an “attractive, well-bred young lady”, which differs from most modern versions which stars a little girl. However, this change doesn’t have an apparent impact on the story’s moral undertones. Putting aside that a “young lady” is expected to be old enough to know better, and that picturing a little girl as the protagonist is an obvious choice to emphasize her innocence or naïveté.

As mentioned above, the girl’s first mistake was sharing information with a stranger that she didn’t have to. Considering the connected nature of today’s world, this is a very important lesson to impart. The internet today is teeming with people of dubious intent who are out to take what they want, and if someone were to share just enough information to act upon, they’d consider that plenty.

You’ve probably heard stories about people who found that they were burglarized after returning from vacation, after they made the mistake of sharing their vacation plans on social media.

As bad as that was, Little Red Riding Hood’s fatal shortcoming was an inability to tell a trusted individual apart from a dangerous predator, even after all the signs became apparent to her (“what big ears/eyes/hands you have!”).

Sadly, many children today are vulnerable because they haven’t properly learned from their parents the kind of discretion and discernment that could have saved the life of the girl in the story. In many cases, this failure on the part of the parents has come about due to the fact that many parents find it difficult to approach the topic. Of course, difficulty is not an acceptable excuse. Way too many parents are failing their children!

Thankfully, we have stories like Little Red Riding Hood which make such difficult topics easier to approach. Narrative has long been a valuable tool in communicating important moral lessons, and it’s particularly effective when communicating them to children.

The story of Little Red Riding Hood is of particular importance these days, considering that dangerous predators have infiltrated positions of trust, which they then use to groom children. While we have a lot of work to do in an effort to remove these deviants from positions of influence, we must not overlook one of our most important roles, which is to teach children to recognize signs that something is wrong, and to speak up when something seems amiss. This goes a long way in protecting them from the predators who are preying on children today.

If they were wolves, they would have eaten them.

You might have heard of “quiet quitting”, a movement that encourages young people in the workplace to coast by with a minimum of effort, often to the point of accomplishing nothing besides the occasional appearance of working, collecting the pay they feel they’re entitled to for doing little besides heating a chair.

It’s basically another manifestation of class warfare, which has performed yet another sideways shift in their evolutionary ladder.

I’d have imagined that relatively few people would fall for it, as it’s obvious to me that it’s a scheme to trick gullible people into being downsized or outright fired, making the career world less competitive for those intelligent enough to see through the ruse. But as the movement becomes steadily more pronounced, it’s becoming increasingly evident that many are the people who lack the capacity to see the sham for what it is.

I admit that it’s tempting to just keep my insight to myself, as I’m among the many who would stand to benefit from not sharing my workplace with self-centered, entitled morons. But I understand that even among those bright enough to be in my readership there is a chance of making a decision without thinking it completely through. Kind of like the mom who throws old toys away while thinking her son is growing out of them, not being aware that they are a couple decades away from being worth thousands of dollars.

To understand why quiet quitting has become as pronounced as it is, it’s helpful to understand trolling.

A simple-minded interpretation of trolling is that it’s saying something mean online in order to get a reaction. While saying things that are mean is one thing that a person can do to get a reaction, that one simple act doesn’t encompass the whole of trolling, nor is to get a reaction in every case the extent of the motivation of the one doing the trolling.

Basically, trolling involves influencing a person or people into a course of action. The outcome can be as simple as an angry reaction, or as contrived as an elaborate ruse. In many cases, to take humor in the outcome is the primary motivation of the one doing the trolling. But more involved trolling attempts can be campaignesque, involving multiple targets and with multiple trolls acting in cooperation, bearing a resemblance to a psychological operation.

Suppose that someone who is messed-up in the head wants to damage a government building. They could try defacing the building themselves, but there’s a problem with this: there’s way too much potential for negative consequences for the person who would attempt such a thing. If only there were some way to cause some damage, but eliminate the potential consequences against one’s self.

And there is. And this involves convincing someone else to do it. To this end, many influencers band together in subversive communities in an effort to get other people wound up enough that it would be easy to convince them to do what they want.

In terroristic groups such as Antifa, this dynamic permeates their culture. At a protest, when someone wants a Molotov cocktail to be thrown, they just hand one to someone else. The ones handing them out would be the influencers; they try to get other people to throw the Molotov cocktails because they don’t want to be the ones who get in trouble!

If your typical Antifa foot soldier had nerve, they’d hand the Molotov cocktail back and say, “If this is such a great idea, why aren’t you doing it?” Sadly, Antifa goons aren’t known for their strength of character, or their ability to see their cult for the sham it is.

The idea is to get you to do something, so you’ll be the one to face a judge, not the person who manipulated you.

When you understand this dynamic, you’re in a better position to understand the dynamic behind quiet quitting, and see it as a farce that’s designed to trick gullible people into destroying their careers, to the benefit of the influencers who understand the con and are motivated by the simple pleasure of destroying the lives of their victims.

Having said that, I do recognize that every cult has it’s faithful believers, those who actually do believe in what’s preached from the pulpit, and that these faithful believers can sometimes be found in the upper leadership. An example of this is a mod from the subreddit r/antiwork, who exposed himself as a goofball to the thousands of boomers who still watch Fox News:

Having said all this, I doubt that I’ll have thwarted the influencers’ carefully-laid plans in pointing out as much as I have. After all, if someone is so gullible that they’d think quiet quitting is a good idea, they’d probably look at a post this long and think it’s too much reading. It’s not easy to keep stupid people from doing stupid things.