Nobody Here But Us Shrews

This morning’s sticky, waiting for me when I awoke, was big and yellow and said only this: tell them about the shrews

I smiled. Yeah. Good idea. I plodded downstairs to make some coffee, petted our old Jerry Springer Spaniel, Jenny, and hummed, chin to cranium, into her deaf little head, as Carla taught us to do. I walked out onto the deck to feel the morning air, to watch the morning sky, and to hear the morning sounds of the land as it awoke. In the distance, a bulldozer dug and scraped and pushed, and a truck beeped it’s dogged intention to back up, no matter what. Disgusted, I took my coffee back inside and picked up my laptop.

“You liked the shrews thing, eh Todd?”

yeah I did you told that story more than once on your tour I remember you told it at Sallys house in pennsylvania that night I remember because thats where you started using the word shrews and I remember your friends there they really liked that metaphor

I remembered. We’d arrived in State College in the afternoon, and we hung out until one in the morning with half a dozen good souls, the folks who had organized our screening there at the Stone Soup Connective. It was a night of deep conversation and profound sharing, good pizza and a really great locally brewed hefeweizen.

At one point, I shared with them a metaphor my friend Ralph had shared with me not long before we left home. It was from a poem he was working on, in which he compares those humans stuck in the current paradigm of domination and control, and especially those who are leading us into wars for oil and other “resources” in a desperate attempt to remain in control, with the dinosaurs of yore. Those of us who are waking from the nightmare and wanting to live in a new and beneficial way on the Earth he compares to small mammals, scampering underfoot.

“You like the idea of being a shrew, eh Todd?”

and were just hiding out living in the shadows of the dinosaurs biding our time and trying not to get stepped on while the dinosaurs thrash about and roar and stuff were just waiting for them to all die out so that we can then inherit the earth

“That’s the gist of it, I guess. And even though there’s recent evidence to show that our long-held understanding of those early mammals is incomplete, it still works as a metaphor: the forms and institutions and world-views of the culture of civilization are dinosaurs, destined to die out when the comet of oil depletion and climate change and all the rest of it crashes into our collective delusion. Those new ways of thinking and being that move beyond control and domination and destruction, and back into relationship and co-creation, those are the mammals, the little shrews trying to stay out of the way while the dinosaurs die out.”

so what is it about this story that feels good I remember how it made me happy when I heard you tell it why is that

I thought about that for a bit. Why did that story feel good? Good question. I excused myself and went back outside to sit in the sun and think for a bit. The distant bulldozers and dump trucks thrashed about like so many doomed beasts. Caterpillarasaurs, perhaps. I smiled at the thought that, one day, if things play out like it seems they will, these destructive brutes will all be silent.

“For one thing it’s a success story, Todd,” I wrote when I went back in. “The dinosaurs WILL die out. Industrial civilization WILL collapse to some lower degree of scope and complexity. It’s guaranteed, as far as I can see. No telling exactly how it’ll play out, or how long it’ll take. But it WILL happen. And the story of the shrews is a story of how some of us mutants, some who are now taking our first steps into whatever paradigm is to come, will survive through the bottleneck, and even prosper in a new and very different world.”

yeah and we need stories like that Ive been reading the climate change emails in your in-box the ones from raging granny man oh man things are really speeding up its scary I get really scared so its nice I mean it helps to hear a story about making it through all of this its nice to think of those little shrews making it through back into the quiet and the sunshine and all

“As CrystalRadio said on The Oil Drum recently, it’s now the Storyteller’s turn. The present planetary predicament thwarts any attempt our rational mind might make to solve its way through this mess. We are compelled to bump up against our mortality, our fall, our extinction, and, ultimately, our very meaning, our reason, what some would call our spirituality. We’ve lost the control we never really had and find, finally,that we are forced to face into surrender, and humility, and relationship. We’re stumbling around, lost and adrift in that strange fantasy world called “reality”, a place we left as a culture a long time ago. We have no idea how to find our way through this bizarre land. We need a good story, to keep us going, to keep our hearts open and strong.”

dude I just got something thats why people like those jason bourne movies so much you know here he is just this guy all alone with nothing but his personal strength and brains and knowledge and hes got this whole government agency full of technology and assassins and politicians and tons of money after him but hes able to make it through and survive and not get stepped on and beat them at their own game hes like a shrew too and the government is like the dinosaurs and the people love him they love the idea of outsmarting and surviving these huge nasty evil governments and corporations its what they want more than anything the bourne movies are about navigating the collapse

“Good point, my friend. I think you’re right.”

me too

“Another thing about the story is that it’s not about changing the dinosaurs minds. The shrews aren’t out there trying to educate and enlighten the dinosaurs to be more “mammal friendly”. They’re just holding their own, being true to themselves, and they don’t even know, most of them, that the comet is coming.”

Im not sure I get what youre saying

“OK. Let me think.” I thought. “I don’t have a thing against changing minds, Todd. Not a thing. I work in that realm myself. I’m an example of a changed mind. But I’ve grown less and less convinced that “changing minds” is going to be the magical answer so many have been searching for. I don’t think we have time enough to change minds in a way that will make a real difference, and I’m not sure that minds can change in the fundamental ways they need to change while embedded in this current cultural system and lifestyle. Some of us, those able to break free of the Matrix enough to actually get somewhat free of it, can take small steps, and even a few giant leaps, down that path right now. Mutants, I’ve called them before. Mutants with a change of mind and heart.”

but you dont think people can change as a whole just a few can is that right

“Minds WILL change as this all plays out, Todd. They will change because the world itself is changing. There will be a new paradigm. People living on this planet a few hundred years from now, if there are any, will not think as we do. But it may be that Max Planck was right, and that new paradigms really take hold only as those living in the old paradigm die out.”

so back to the shrews thing then its like the story feels good to us because it tells us that we dont have to like go around and try to change the minds of all of these dinosaurs the governments and the corruption and the corporations and the schools and the religions all these huge entrenched groups that weve been trying to fix for like centuries now and it never works it just gets worse and worse we dont have to put our energy into that into fixing them into making better dinosaurs I mean I watch freedom to fascism I watch money as debt and the 11th hour and I think to myself theres no way theres no way to fix this its too big too powerful too corrupt and its rotten to the core and its all just gotta come down just like the dinosaurs and and its like dude its like theres no way theres no way and and and I feel like Im rambling now Im just gonna shut up

I laughed. I’ll listen to Todd ramble any day. I remember what he used to be like. Another changed mind…

“The forces of the universe took out the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous, Todd. Just as they are going to take out the dinosaurs of Empire. Ultimately, the laws of thermodynamics and atmospheric chemistry and ecology and population dynamics and basic physics will have their say. Those forces will shape the future, far more than most of us have allowed ourselves to consider. Those life forms that align with these forces, and take them into account, may be able to survive in this very different world. But those life forms that attempt to control and dominate these forces, to thwart them, to oppose them, will soon find, I think, that this strategy has little survival value. It’s not about control, even the control of trying to change minds. It’s about relationship, and alignment, about being attuned and connected to the world in such a way that you know to get out of the way before the dinosaur’s foot comes down.”

so isnt there a danger here

“Yes there is.”

like in the story the shrews just waited around until the dinosaurs died and then they inherited the earth and all that but dude do we have time to just stand around and wait for them to die I mean arent the dinosaurs so big now that when they die theyll take everything out with them

“If I didn’t know better, Todd, I’d think you were me!” I sat back and laughed. Todd popped a sticky with the word “ha” on it, then copied it over and over onto my desktop.

I selected a sticky and started typing. “All metaphors break down eventually, and so does this one. As you point out, things are different now from 65 million years ago, at the K-T Extinction Event. That theorized ancient comet took out many kinds of life forms, but a good percentage made it through. Now, today, it looks as though conditions could easily spiral out of control, resulting in something much closer to the End-Permian Extinction, where far fewer life forms survived. It’s like every now and then somebody hits the planetary reset button. This time, we may get reset back to beetles and bacteria and blue-green algae, rather than to shrews.”

“And here’s where else it breaks down: this time, to some extent, the dinosaurs ARE the comet. It’s Empire itself that’s crashing into the planet. The dinosaurs of today are going down in a mass murder-suicide pact. It’s the shootout at the K-T Corral, the Jonestown Extreme Climate KoolAid Invitational, the Columbine Extinction Event. If an addict has to hit bottom, this is the Mother of All Hitting Bottoms. So we have to stop and ask ourselves: how do we help civilization hit bottom before it destroys everyone and everything around it?”

yeah how do we

“The dinosaurs are dying, Todd. Maybe there’s some way for the shrews to help them die with more dignity, and less destruction.”

you got any ideas

“Not really. I just know that the question needs to be asked, and pondered deeply. It may be, when the comet hits, that there will be ways to help it bring an end to the dinosaurs, while allowing a few shrews, and some good portion of the community of life, to make it through. Maybe there’s a way to align with the forces of the universe, in relationship with Life itself. I can’t see what that is, exactly. But I can see the possibility. And so I can begin to be ready for it.”

are you going to share that poem ralph wrote

“Yeah. Let’s let Ralph have the last word.”

cool

The Language of Dinosaurs

Ralph Earle

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appeared.
- Walt Whitman

The new story cannot be expressed
in the language of dinosaurs because that language
only expresses dinosaur things.
Certain individuals, God love them, believe a war
is going on. They believe in raising armies
of the poor and sending them at great cost
to fortify the crumbling hills
above the Hormuz Strait.

The dinosaurs believe this is dinosaur nature,
to be greedy, to burn oil, to sell oil,
and believe there are two sides, the other side
as greedy as they are, but not as smart.
Or they are greedy for God’s reward
in paradise, and believe the other side
is greedy as they are, but not as righteous.

They have built vast agencies
to administer their world’s collapse,
and institutes to understand it
with intelligence the size of walnuts.

Meanwhile, beneath their notice
mammals marvel at the way
everything relies on everything.
They weave a story in which
oil doesn’t matter. People bundle up
in the cold and strip down in the warmth.
Now, doesn’t that make sense?

This story doesn’t answer anything. This is just life.
If millions die of disease, the dinosaurs
will build glistening hospitals,
taking their share even of the cost of mercy

while the mammals, living and dying
will tread the Waters of Providence,
the way it was in the days before philosophy.
Warm-blooded, they change and grow,
their new stories emerge from the earth.

(Copyright Ralph Earle, 2007. All rights reserved.)