Thursday, October 31, 2002

Rodent Philosophy: Lesson One Given the general state of affairs in the world today, I feel it necessary to provide my readers with a primer in the subtleties of Rodent philosophy and religion. Few rodents still practice the old ways, and more and more are following the poor examples of humans (often, the worst kind of humans). So let's begin at the beginning . Wise Rodent Principle #1: Extreme religious fundamentalism is the only thing scarier than cats. Rodents have, over the years, formed thousands of religious and ideological movements.  In 1973, Smickles the Rat led a group called The New Rodents of the Blessed Nutritionally Balanced Rat Food (NRBNBRF).  These rodents believed that all nutritionally balanced, commercially available rat food was in fact holy, and to be worshipped. Unfortunately, in a fit of religious purity, the NRBNBRF's decided to stop eating their rat food. The group's members were unable to adapt and forage in the wild, having grown completely dependent on a group of human college psychology students for their food.  The withered away to nothing and remain unpronounceable to this day. The main thing the wary rodent needs to remember is that there is only one kind of extreme fundamentalism. Yes, we hear the term associated with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, NRBNBRF's and others, but in reality, fundamentalism is a religion unto itself. Attaching itself to religious institutions frequented by mainstream animals, fundamentalism hides behind the good will created by each religion's more liberal members. Peek below the surface, however, and the similarities are striking: oppression of females, hostility toward creative institutions and art forms, aversion to democracy and social freedoms, distrust of science, literal interpretation of holy texts, idolotry (and the simultaneous condemnation of idolotry), and a stronger-than-usual attraction to visual symbols or badges that represent the "host" religion.  There's also an inexplicable affinity for telethons. Once again an example from the medieval rodent era (1968-1974) provides illustration. Maplehead the Lemming, a priest from the rodentian Church of the Holy Garbage Pile (generally considered a mainstream sect at the time), became dissatisfied with what he perceived to be a "wishy-washy" state of affairs among churchgoing rodents. He lamented that the Nible (rodent holy book) was no longer interpreted properly, and that some misguided rats had stopped belieiving in the sheer holiness of The Garbage Pile. A few were even suggesting that it smelled bad, and ought to be hauled away. Now, I don't support hauling away The Garbage Pile. Nevertheless, I do take issue with the fundamentalist view that varying smelliness of The Garbage Pile can be attributed to the wavering affections of The Great Rodent in the Garbage Pile in the Sky. That's just silly. Maplehead managed to get enough support from within the church to take over its operation worldwide. Rodents were required to live by The Law of the Pile, and ordered their daily lives around the various stages of decay in a typical pile of garbage. Female rodents were considered to only be worthy of Stage 1 (Dairy), which includes all menial tasks, such as cleaning toilets and stealing sunflower seeds from Wal-Mart.  Males reserved the other Stages of Smelly Faith, as they were called, to themselves. These included the following: Stage 2 (Meat): The right to eat absolutely anything in any quantity at any time without having to endure the complaints of one's female relatives. Stage 3 (Opened Jars of Spaghetti Sauce): The obligation to produce as many snotty and evil offspring as possible, regardless of the objections of females. Stage 4 (Dorm Food): The requirement that each male rodent choose a human family to harass and pester and otherwise drive insane by making scratching noises, frequently scampering across the kitchen floor (especially when guests are present), and nibbling large patches of hair from the humans' heads while they are sleeping. Maplehead's power was entirely due to the apathy and indifference of mainstream rodents, many of whom turned their backs on the church during those dark times, leaving the church to Maplehead's "Uber Rodents", the elite group of Maplehead devotees known for swimming in vats of maple syrup. This is a long story, but terribly obscene. I will spare you the details. If the church would have shut down as a result of this bizarre, unnatural extremism, it wouldn't have been a disaster. Sometimes things change, don't work out, and fade away. But the problem with extreme fundamentalists is that they sometimes don't destroy religious institutions--they take them over, wholesale, and re-engineer them to support an extremist agenda. Mainstream rodents, or humans for that matter, remain paralyzed, afraid to criticize their ancestral house of worship, and yet disgusted by what it has become.  In fact, the desire not to criticize at times borders on the ridiculous, and one even sees perfectly liberal rodents standing on matchboxes rabidly defending the very fundamentalists which have destroyed their particular Holy Garbage Pile. A strong faith in the Great Rodent, in my opinion, requires doubt. How can one be absolutely certain of Her existence and still be a truthful observer of the awesome universe in which we find ourselves? The world is big and bewilding, especially to the small and furry. The discoveries of physicists and biologists and geologists serve to reveal a world that vastly outscales us, and one that we can never, by the very nature of our condition, fully comprehend. The certainty of fundamentalism erases doubt and replaces it with a status quo that is rigid and fantastically powerful. For the rodent this can be very compelling. Roy the House Mouse, for instance, living in constant fear of Bubbles the Cat, may turn to faith in The Great Rodent to offer some comfort and meaning to his (likely) brief existence. This alone can be a very positive thing. But when Roy becomes certain that his offerings on the local Garbage Pile will somehow protect him from the cat, in defiance of the laws of physics and the particularly evil nature of all cats named "Bubbles", he has crossed the line. He has denied the set of rules handed to us by nature, or the Great Rodent, depending on your view. Clearly we live in a world where rodents must depend on their wits to survive, and where untimely death can happen in the flick of a cat's tongue. We are expected to use common sense.  Speaking of common sense, someone smack my agent Enough philosophy for today. My agent, Susan the human, has insisted that tomorrow the evil Janet the Snake be given one last chance to redeem herself after eating her typist a couple of weeks ago. As Janet no longer has her own weblog, she will be allowed space on my page. I am of course against this, but Susan the Human is rather bigger than me, and I have no choice.  I take no responsibility for anything that slimy piece of rope has to say. I am happy to report, however, that Lumpy the Mongoose has been asked to be her new typist. That seems to have made her sufficiently nervous. 7:48:21 PM