The Lunar Hare
“Does a rabbit inhabit the moon?”
The leader considered. He concluded it might benefit him to cater to those wishing to believe a bunny lives on the moon.
“I cannot say that it doesn’t,” he said.
The crowd applauded.
The leader smiled.
Days later, the leader’s top scientists, pressed for answers about the rabbit living on the moon, all agreed there was no evidence. Both the biologists and astronomers agreed there was no reason to believe in moon rabbits. Instead, they cited the folklores that had historically led to such beliefs and stories. They cited the moon’s environment and it’s incompatibility with any form of mammalian life. They testified that, in their physical explorations of the moon, there were no sightings nor evidence – no tracks nor droppings – from any hare inhabiting the moon.
So the leader brushed his scientists aside in favor of the one in a million willing to say a real scientist must accept that anything is open to possibility. As a true scientist, nothing can be ruled out without incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. This scientist concluded there was no way to proclaim with absolute certainty that a rabbit did not inhabit the moon.
All this put the leader in good standing with those wanting to believe in the existence of lunar hares, a group who previously had neither supported nor denounced the leader.
Some – mostly those neither wishing nor needing to believe in rabbits on the moon – questioned whether the leader was so stupid as to believe in lunar bunnies.
“Surely, you are speaking metaphorically?” they hoped.
“Am I?” he cryptically replied.
Others said the leader simply didn’t care. He’d never cared enough to give the idea any real consideration at all. They argued that the truth or falsity of it meant nothing, so he gave it no thought nor deliberation at all. All he cared about was the acute effect of accepting or rejecting it.
Which begs the question, was the leader’s act of not caring about lunar hares an act of idiocy or one of supreme genius?
Either way, that was the beginning to how much of the modern world got to believing in a real – not mythical nor metaphorical – rabbit living on the moon. Well, that, and a whole lot more unbelievable nonsense that followed.
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