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 hea