Deep Thought: When Rabbits Attack
Created | Updated 4 Days Ago
Deep Thought: When Rabbits Attack
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The reason there is a rabbit going hunting with a snail on this page is because I wanted you to think for just a second about the killer rabbits and military snails in medieval manuscripts. Once you get over snickering about how you remember the 'killer rabbit' scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (yes, they were inspired by a carving on Notre Dame de Paris), you might fall down a rabbit-hole (see, I can do that, too) learning about how many manuscripts from the high middle ages were adorned with marginalia of rabbits Doing Things to People. Not-Nice Things, like decapitations.
I'm a fan of those little doodles, myself, although I was always more interested in the text of medieval manuscripts than the pictures. If you look through the drawings, though, you'll notice that monks in scriptoria were rather creative. Also, that their imaginations rivaled those of the comics and graphic-novel artists of our day. But the rabbits bother some people; way more than the snails, I think. The snails are obviously fanciful – nobody these days has any particular ideas about snails. Rabbits, on the other hand, are thought of today as cute and cuddly. How come medieval comic-book artists drew them as scary?
One of those Reply Guys on Youtube had ideas about this. In one of those usual droning-on videos where they talk for about three times as long as it takes to answer their hook question, the 'expert' espoused a theory in reference to the Smithfield Decretals, which you can look up if you're athirst for medieval knowledge. This particular expert informed us solemnly that the reason for all the killer bunnies was that medieval humans hadn't conquered nature yet, the way we obviously have. So they were secretly afraid of it. That came out in killer bunny pictures.
This, people, is what's wrong with our so-called scholarship. We really need to stop projecting like that.
For one thing, obviously, humanity hasn't 'conquered nature.' And if humanity doesn't stop mucking about, the goddess Geia is going to show us just how much our interference isn't appreciated. But that has nothing to do with the killer rabbit conundrum, anyway.
The fact is, we have no way of knowing what medieval artists were thinking. Because we weren't there, and they didn't tell us because they used their parchment for other things than artists' statements. If we could fly back to a 13th-century scriptorium and stand in the shadows, breathing their air, looking out their windows into their kitchen gardens, smelling the cooking, tasting the bread and beer. . . why, then we might have a clue why the idea of armed rabbits struck so many monks as so funny all at the same time. But since we can't (so far), we don't.
The same thing is true of ancient Egypt, or Sumeria, or the Aztecs, or whoever left those big heads on Easter Island: you had to have been there. This is equally true of the introduction of phrases like 'okay' or '23 skidoo' to our English-language vocabulary. Some things are just. . . well, memes.
So why do we make up explanations? Because deep down, we really, really want everyone to be on the same page. One reason for that, I venture to suggest, is that we believe that together we can bend reality to our will – but that disagreement will doom us. Could that be what is behind the world's opposition to diversity?
No matter how many times you try to demonstrate to everyone that the absolutely best, most wonderful inventions, innovations, and insights come about when we don't all think alike, people will still insist that it's better to toe the line. This week, I've been watching as a bunch of incompetent and ill-intentioned clowns try to make everybody play their game, their way, and threaten to throw everyone that's different off the bus. This is all going to end in tears, we know that, but nobody's exactly sure what's going to happen next. It's wearisome. Which might be why I'm looking at killer bunnies in sheer exhaustion.
On the other hand, if we could train some of these rabbits as assassins. . . one attacked a US president once, after all. . .
Coming back to the medieval bunnies for a moment: the one thing we can say about the violent bunnies and snails is that they represent a topsy-turvy world. Which, if I were to venture a guess, has more to do with the cartoonists' imaginations than some nebulous fear of nature, which they spent a lot more time in than your average Youtuber. But I wouldn't claim to know for sure. After all, I wasn't there.
