The best fairy tales are often allegories that warn of what can happen.
An allegory (Latin "veiled language, figurative") is a form of extended metaphor.
So a fairytale often illustrates a moral compass or warning, where a "big bad wolf" might represent an evil force... It should not surprise us then if we see powers of good and evil, live and die as though they were bit players in a fairytale.
We might write a fairytale of our own - So perhaps we might write "As White as Snow" - if we tried to describe the energy industry as being a metaphorical drug dealer in a tale of seven scenes.
- There was the time when energy was a luxury - Early 20th Century and prior
- Then it popped up out of the ground almost wherever you looked - Oil Barons
- Then energy became more obviously scarce - Several waves
- Brands arose - Everyone knows the dealers
- It became so much cheaper - almost everyone got hooked up
- Designer energy became pretty cool - NOW
- Then came withdrawal
If the metaphor fits, then arguably the outcome of the allegory might serve as a taste of things to come... a warning - our new BFF may actually be a wolf in sheep's clothing.
A search through allegorical fairytales about greed and addiction - will warn us that as a society addicted to a substance, that does us little good, the future may be uncomfortable.
