An Overview of Lemmingism

I’ve given this a lot of thought. Well, at least a couple of days’ worth of it… or maybe more like an hour or so. Well, okay – about 15 minutes, because that’s all that is really required to address the issue of the Lemmings and their addiction to Lemmingism.

Lemmings, as most of you know, are pack animals that migrate in herds, or so the mythos goes. They’re so dumb that if someone tells them to jump off a cliff, they’d run right up to the edge and take the plunge. We’ve already seen Lemmings gather in large groups to do things that have an air of Da Stoopid to the more rational among us. For instance, running onto a busy highway in the dark while wearing dark clothing and holding up a lit-up cell phone is one memorable episode. Another is building a human dam at a major university at one gate to block the flow of cross-campus traffic.

There are other incidents as well, almost too numerous to mention.

Mind you, these are not the small, furry rodents who became legends for doing dumb things because Disney cameramen chased them off a cliff. (Yes, they did. Bad boys!) These are physically adult humans who act like small, furry, stupid, legendary rodents.

One of the co-characteristics shared by wild lemmings, those cute little Arctic tundra rodents, and urban-dwelling Lemmings, those nasty, loud-mouthed, dumbass types, is that they both suffer population explosions on a recurring basis. With the wild ones, it’s frequently a seasonal thing related to food, females and fighting, as they are well-known for their warning displays and aggressive behavior towards predators, including humans. With urban-dwelling Lemmings, the population growth takes longer to generate, as much as eight years until the demographic per urban area has become densely-packed and visible during the daytime, as well as at night.

Both species tend to be vegetarian by nature, the wild tundra lemmings consisting almost entirely on roots, seeds and grasses, while the urban-dwelling Lemmings tend to graze several hours per day on lettuces, sprouted roots, quinoa and other seeds, and tofu. Not a lot of difference there, if you get my drift.

Indeed, even the thought processes of the wild lemmings and the urban Lemmings seem to be similar. The urban Lemmings do have some seminal concept of the real world, but it is distorted by their population density and herd choices.

For example, you and I will generally agree that 2 + 2 = 4. Urban Lemmings will argue to the death with you that 2+2 = 5, and will go to great lengths to explain how they reach that conclusion, while completely missing one important point: 2+2 can also equal 6. On the other hand, wild lemmings, when confronted with such a simple mathematical concept as “2+2 equals something”, will blink and show you very quickly that 2+2 = 6 to 10, depending on weather and food resources, hence their regular and very real population explosions.

Therein lies the difference between wild lemmings and urban-dwelling Lemmings. The wild lemming as a genus has a very direct, real-world, real-time approach to life. The urban-dwelling Lemmings, as a population group and species, are bound by the Tenets of Lemmingism to ignore the real-world, find safe spaces to hide from the Daylight of Truth, and to swallow without question whatever baloney they are fed, no matter how rancid, infested and stale it is, or how much it clashes with the Reality that they utterly abhor and deny.

The wild tundra-dwelling lemmings, as a genus of up to thirty species, are well able to take care of themselves. They can adapt quickly and easily to changes in their environment, and survive undisturbed by those changes. They can find food, shelter and companionship without trouble.

The urban-dwelling Lemmings are a different problem. Taking into consideration that The Times, they are a-changin’, and are forecast to be changin’ drastically for the next 85 to 90 years, (well beyond the lifetimes of most urban Lemmings), it is not an inhuman or politically incorrect thing to propose that their species be allowed to become extinct. This means do not feed them, do not house them, do not clothe them and have them spayed and neutered at a low-cost vet clinic.

After all, if the wild tundra lemming can be, and is, a self-sufficient little furball that does quite well on its own, we can attempt to instill that quality in the urban-dwelling Lemmings by giving them a push in the right direction. We can acknowledge their herd instinct and their need for a safe space. A reservation of unused land, perhaps some place near a decommissioned nuclear reactor in the Pacific Northwest, would do nicely. I know, I know: there’s that whole thing about radiation and food, but after all, 18 months after Hiroshima was flattened by a 10KT nuke, people were growing radishes and eating them. Something good might come out of this; a reality check, perhaps, after a decade or two, might manifest itself.

Just an idea I thought I’d throw out there.

Category: Politics