Like many people I find the climate change protesters distinctly unsympathetic. These are people I theoretically have something in common with because I firmly believe that mankind has desecrated the environment and polluted the natural world and that we use our resources wastefully with little thought for the long term. I'm not saying the environment isn't ours to use but we are stewards not owners and should be wise stewards. We haven't been.
But the climate change demonstrators are marked by monumental dogmatism and self-righteousness. They indulge in the usual juvenile behaviour which puts sensible people off. And many of them show an unnatural self-hatred which they mask as compassion or concern for the environment but is actually the wish to bring down their own civilisation which certainly has its faults but which has done more to relieve suffering and increase understanding than any other.
The protestors are being used by forces that seek to damage the West. They go along with these forces because they have a romanticised idea of peaceful traditional societies living in harmony with nature. This fantasy goes back at least as far as Rousseau but you won't find these idyllic societies anywhere. What you will find are societies circumscribed by their own lack of know-how. Given the opportunity they would behave just as Western society has as is proved by the fact that when such societies do get the advantages of Western technology and invention that's just what they do. It's often pointed out that the protestors damn the West but are far more reticent when it comes to places like India and China. The excuse that one must clean up one's own backyard first won't wash. Nor will the strange belief that developing countries have the right to reach the point of Western development. Why if the West is so evil? If this is a global problem, it needs a global solution.
People in an industrial society often have a hankering for a more primitive time when humanity lived close to nature and, supposedly, in harmony with it, but the wish to return to such a time is atavistic. Human beings who have moved on to the self-conscious phase of evolution cannot and should not return to the phase of immersion in nature. This is anti-evolutionary and fundamentally unspiritual taking the word spiritual to mean that which makes a human being into a fully functional son or daughter of God. Consciousness is supposed to follow a path of unfoldment as it grows and expands to include an ever-greater capacity to respond to life. This means growing from an unself-conscious oneness with nature and the environment to the separative state of self-consciousness and then on to oneness with God in which the developed self attains a conscious unity with the transcendent spiritual source of all. In Christian terms, we are not meant to return to the pre-experience condition of the Garden of Eden but to move onwards to the post-experience world of the Heavenly City of the New Jerusalem where each individual has a full and personal relationship with God.
And here's the problem with all this. Where is God? Climate change is not the problem. Capitalism is not the problem. The problem is we have forgotten God. You might think that climate change is the immediate problem but even if the position was as dire as the protestors say (and not at all a consequence of cyclical trends), and even if we took the most extreme measures possible, that would not make a blind bit of difference to what really matters. We would still be the same fallen human beings in need of salvation. I am not saying that those who pollute the environment and wilfully destroy the natural world are blameless. Far from it but the fact is that Satan stands behind both the polluters and the protesters against the pollution. The truth is not to be found in either of them and nor is the remedy for the troubled state of the world. The remedy is only in God but when I say God I mean the real God as he is in himself not some image of him that we have conjured up in our own minds. The old crack that God made man in his own image and ever since man has been returning the compliment is very appropriate.
The climate may be changing due to man-made causes. I don't believe anyone really knows that but it's very possible. This change may lead to problems in the future. We are certainly behaving irresponsibly. But the real battle is between those who see Nature as God's creation to be responded to accordingly and those who see it as either a resource to be exploited without concern or as somehow sacred in its own right and maybe even something better than humanity. These last two, much as it might shock them to know it, are fundamentally two versions of the same atheistic thing and both wrong.
I don't think climate change protesters care for the environment as God's creation which is what it is. What they care for is their group ideology and the comforting feeling of spiritual superiority it gives them.
Added note: People compare the climate change protesters to a religious cult what with their ideas of the virtuous versus the wicked and the need to purge ourselves of sin to be saved from the coming apocalypse. I think this is only half true. They certainly exhibit many of the signs of a fanatical cult and some of the characteristics they display are ones that also express themselves in certain types of maladapted religion but these characteristics are not truly religious in origin. They come from mental imbalance, fear and the wish to divide tribally into us and them. The only god for the protestors would be the earth or their idea of it.
17 comments:
The whole thing is as fake as anything I have seen (at such a scale).
I spent a few minutes Googling who pays for it, which organisation Extinction Emergency was made-from etc; and as usual quickly got back to George Soros (presumably not just him, but that was the Open Society name I recognised among funders and founders).
In other words it's yet another a Top-Down, Global, Big Finance, World Government initiative - dressed-up as a grass roots protest.
As for 'Greta' (bearing in mind, we know nothing about her except what the mass media chooses to tell us - and we know they *always* lie about such matters) - the best way to think of her is as a star Crisis Actor - as with this parody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N97-2GOgwBE
I do feel sorry for Greta who is presumably being used. She's not much more than a child and obviously has her issues as they say. But she's clearly sincere. The trouble is she's so convinced of her own rectitude and unable to see beyond her tunnel vision which makes it hard to be totally sympathetic. As for the funding, I'm not surprised.
The thing is the protestors are right in some ways. There's not much doubt that we're trashing the planet but their solution is no solution at all. Real meaningful change would only come from a return to God and I don't mean some non-judgmental pantheistic spiritual oversoul but the God who is the God of love and truth, justice and mercy equally.
A very accurate analysis, William.
Fundamentally this is about a thinly veiled hatred of human beings that can only arise once any divine origins have been dispensed with. Only then can the concept of humans as a "vermin species" take root. Naturally, the protesters themselves are excluded from this classification on account of their moral virtue that is so evident from the placards they carry.
My especial concern is with the younger protesters - nothing lives in them that might be called British values of old. If asked what ought to be done with the "climate change deniers" - I truly fear their answer. Imprisonment, even the death penalty would doubtless be the response of some.
The older protesters clearly have just given up on their own discernment - they have taken to heart the instruction - trust the "experts". In the days of priest-kings and initiates that was probably good advice, but in these times it is the fast track to the greatest error and ignorance.
@Bruce - thanks for that link!
@W and M - I saw a secualr analysis of the phenomenon as a death cult. That seems accurate - although (of course) to a Christian death is not an enemy, but the only route to eternal Heavenly life. Yet it *is* a death cult in the secular sense of a desire not just for one's own extinction, but for the extinction of most of humankind.
This is an example of profound demonic value-inversion; and planting this in the souls of young people (and the jaded motivations of the older ones) is what this is all about.
Yet, as I said, the whole things is an obvious fake (as obvious as such things ever are - there is always a veil of excuse for evil). So those who embrace the movement are doing so deliberately. That there are *so many* such people is a measure of our times.
Careful now, or Greta will be angry wil you!
I have to disagree with some things you've said here.
The concept of 'growth' - as an end in itself rather than providing everybody with what they need has to end, and in so far as capitalism is taken as the constant movement towards constant growth, then this really is a problem (not 'capital', trade etc., themselves). This does include population growth. It's part of the problem in the west - when they gave up or lost their empires, the same model was retained, but inverted - constant increasing production for the constantly increasing consumption of an constantly increasing population. But the increases were all trained inwardly - inward migration from former colonies. The same forces that had utter disregard for the cultural sovereignty of the formerly colonised countries were still in charge, and had the same disregard for cultures and people of Britain, France, etc. in turn. I presume at some point soon the movement will belch back outwards again and there will be a new, non-traditional (ie, without a token cultural identity) imperialism that will target whatever remnants of integrity (culture and tradition, spiritual and otherwise) remain by this stage in the far-flung places of the earth.
I think you're right in stating that a large part of the impetus behind the 'extinction' protests are malign and 'top-down' - but these interests are merely using them to control and 'entertain' those involved; a new spin on 'bread and circuses' - if it came to really applying the measures needed, or if the protesters showed any sign of coming up with and implementing 'bottom-up' changes (which would undermine their sources of power), these 'interests' would very quickly change tack (I think signs can already be seen that this is happening).
Look at how the original and worthwhile ecological movements in Europe were hijacked by the groups calling themselves liberal from the '60s on - many of the chief figures tried to channel the momentum of the organisations they had parasite into legalising paedophilia (Germany, France...).
We certainly and incontrovertibly do need to move towards a largely 'de-technologied' lifestyle - this does not mean totally abandoning all technologies and their use, but using wisdom in their application, & moderation and continence in their use. Some things we need to more or less abandon - some of what you have written about cars elsewhere here applies many time over to air travel. We need to get rid of the expectation and desires to get wherever we want, as quick as we want, or to get what we want, on the merest whim. The transformation of travel, 'holidaying', etc (ie, the relatively recent phenomenon of transporting across to whatever city you've just seen appear on your computer monitor several times a year), and transform it into something more approaching pilgrimage - a considered decision to travel thoughtfully, slowly and with deliberation to a place to which you feel called. It may only happen a small number of times in any one person's life. What we have now are throngs of mindless individuals on conveyors travelling to places without reason, searching for distraction, destroying the places the travel to, helping turn them into side-show shells of the living natural environments or living cities they were.
The same transformation needs to occur to our acquisitiveness. A richness, not a poverty, ensues from this reduction.
By it's very nature, this transformation will undo the current 'economic model', and all the better for it.
A spiritual - and I mean a real one, not a spell cast to tingle the mind in some way - centre is needed for this, I hope here we're in agreement - God-centred.
Because the extinctions are happening - I live in the same part of the world more or less, a rural area not far from large towns and cities, and the bird, insect and plant life is vanishing - I can see it happening. Where there was profusion up to a couple of decades ago, there is now waste. The air is different. John Ruskin saw this (almost before anyone else) during the mid 19th c.
I agree that this transformation has to apply earth-wide - to China, India, etc., as well as here (Europe and America - though I'm not sure why the pairing of the two is de rigeur). Because it is an evil that has taken hold - don't fall into the trap of fearing the loss of 'the west's' hegemony to the east (or anywhere else - we need to control - non artificially or under duress - our population growth across the earth; this realisation is being ignored because a fear of being 'outnumbered' by the huge growth in the populations of the east and south - but see above for the real reasons for west-orientated migration, & the east and south do indeed need to act with conscious, pre-coital deliberation with regards to their populations) in such a manner as to forget that both are under the same threat from the same quarters - the divisions between good and evil cut across - not between - us.
But I agree with everything you say! When I say capitalism is not the problem what I mean is that if you got rid of capitalism and replaced it with some other materialistic system, as would inevitably happen, nothing much would have really changed. When I say such things are not the problem I mean they are not the fundamental problem. They arise out of the fundamental problem which is the denial of God. I try to live as unwasteful a life as possible and have done for over 40 years but on its own that's not much. There are atheists who do the same.
Of course this endless demand for economic growth cannot continue. It will just eat everything else up, ravage the earth for its bounty and leave a heap of cinders and ashes, chew up the life of the planet and spit out death . The motive behind this is greed but I think many of the anti-capitalist growth people are motivated by hatred and that's not healthy either. Maybe they are examples of two extremes being just reflections of each other. At the same time the basic idea behind growth is right but it should be spiritual not material.
'The motive behind this is greed but I think many of the anti-capitalist growth people are motivated by hatred and that's not healthy either'
...Sometimes, yes. I think this comes from being caught up in an emotional enthusiasm that clouds when clear sight is what's needed. (A bit like what I did when I posted without paying close enough attention to what you had actually written!) The volatility turns destructive.
I think there are a lot of enemies against the growing recognition that something needs to be done on the ecological (which is Nature + Man, not sans) issue. Your point that there are a some problems within these movements, too, is prescient and important, but there is a lot of good and potential good here, too.
For instance, an awakening realisation that sees the harm the earth is undergoing, and has a willingness to give up all it has for this earth, has, I think, some germ of a self-sacrificial, redemptive quality. The negative aspect and error that can come from this is as you identify seeing man and civilisation as evil. But is there not, also, some echo of a return to God by those who have lost Him ? Not to confuse nature and God, but when we see something of worth in Nature, of value for it's own sake, and would be willing to forgo our own apparent well-being for its well-being, have we not recognised a Good outside ourselves, from which we are sprung, does this not have something of the discovery of God 'in the wilderness' ? Isn't there some inkling here, tentatively, of a transcendent Good to which we would surrender our own well-being and gratification so that it could endure, like mother-love ?
Once we admit a transcendent Good, we have begun to hear God. Not in, as in God = Nature, but in, or rather through, the sacrifice of non-self-interested love.
The protests have, I think, slipped too far from the joyful carnivalesque to the grotesque(does this not suggest that the diabolic has panicked at the appearance of a potential awakening in these movements and sough to possess their impetus?), but I don't think every heart of the participants is similarly corrupted.
In short, though there is nothing on earth that has not taken an admixture of error and corruption, I think here there is as much reason to be hopeful - cautiously - about these movements as otherwise. Maybe more so.
I do sympathise with what you're saying but disagree. Here's why.
Firstly we've seen all this before. Every time we say it's got potential and it may turn into something better but it never does. The motivation is always too tainted by corruption. There is always more hate than love involved in these public demonstrations and the people who demonstrate are those who get a virtuous kick from demonstrating. This has always been the case.
What they all need to do is go away and work on themselves and see how they have the same egotistic agenda as those they condemn. It just manifests differently. They need to understand as well that they are in fact using force to get what they want. They are not using physical violence but they are using a kind of spiritual violence.
So I believe that the extinction rebellion movement has not just been captured by the diabolical but was actually instigated by the diabolical which always, don't forget, sets up controlled opposition to itself.
True, but there is the 'official', trademarked protest group on one hand, and something deeper moving through a lot of ordinary people, young and old, on the other. This certainly is not diabolic in origin - it is an extremely ancient and recurring love, I see this familiar goodness and genuine concern arising in people I know. I entirely distrust the official extinction rebellion group about which you may be right.
Your second paragraph - again, not all have succumbed to the egotistic agenda.
- remember, we're seeing filtered (both media dis/approbation, but also our own perceptions) phenomena. There is always more going on.
'It just manifests differently' - yes, when the motivation is different, the things you've criticised are absent. But again, we're not talking about a homogenous group - even allowing the 'extinction...' group to be wholly corrupt, there is a different 'movement', or cleaner current, here too.
But of course not everything about it is bad. That's true of all things that are corrupt which word means something good gone bad. Evil can only work by taking good and marring it. I am talking specifically about the current protests and where they come from.
First of all, I agree with you about the atavistic urge to become re-absorbed in spirit, reverse engineering spiritual evolution. This took time for me to realise, because I used to be a naturalist heathen and I am still in a sense. Being sensitive to nature as a kid I enjoyed the non-verbal company and sincerety of animals better than humans.
Pagan names are often directly taken from nature and mythology, reflecting that humans once were absorbed spirits and man was still in the making. Christian names are Personal - to my knowledge they carry no naturalistic connotations.
I think that Christ is what makes possible for us neither to fall back into being heathens nor force ourselves deeper into stretching the boundaries of matter through humanism. Climate protesters are political exhibitionists who pose for the environment with their back against nature. They do not put nature before humanity and social questions, as the deep ecologists do.
The symbolic attacks on meat eaters in my estimation reflects an ultra-modern antipathy toward nature itself in favor of sterile human environments where no one has to get in touch with nature anymore. Vegan diet is advisable for digestive cleansing and meditation but it is not a universal climate remedy. Even if the entire human species exists on rice and vegetables, our need for shared resources will drown out any reductions in consumption. So the problem of food is still quantitative rather than qualitative.
By pushing veganism they also manage to put up a false dichotomy between animals as 'alive' and plants as 'dead', cementing materialist philosophy. In reality life (consciousness) is a continuum from plants to organisms. Nature is the exterior of our soul but there is no disconnect.
This way they are able to put humans outside of the ecological fabric as well as avoid God, so that they may become self-righteous exploiters of the climate and control the environment. By pretending that humans effect the enormous forces of climate change, perhaps they secretly feel they are able to play God as well as draw a human curtain against the unknown and thereby gain a bloated sense of control?
'There is always more hate than love involved in these public demonstrations and the people who demonstrate are those who get a virtuous kick from demonstrating.'
Even in the 'current protests', I'm certain you'll find a mix. Take away the obvious exhibitionists and aggressors on whom the cameras focus. At least some of the many others were drawn to the events sincerely.
And I'll still attest that there is a bit of subterfuge going on here.
Remember this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_undercover_policing_relationships_scandal ?
It was found in more than one of these cases that agents were not only investigating possible illegal activities associated with environmental groups, but were on occasion the actual instigators of violent behaviour at some otherwise peaceful events. You might remember the footage that emerged of one female officer screaming and whooping insanely, alone in doing so among a group of sedate and reasonable-seeming protestors at a event a few years ago.
I wouldn't feel confident that something similar isn't happening in an even more organised fashion at the recent protests. A whole nucleus transplanted into a movement (or group of movements) already with some misguided tendencies or susceptibility to them, to steer the whole character and direction in a certain way. And undo any potential they may have had towards good and into self-aggrandising posing, violent hysterics or worse.
I don't disagree that any of the tendencies you've pointed out exist, just with the way they've been - more than once - applied indiscriminately.
The danger of the ordinary person that you describe is their absolute certainty that there is a climate emergency. They favour rapid change even though the technological next step is far from clear. This makes them dangerous. They are in effect begging for us to be further taxed and ever more tightly controlled without even a viable forward plan.
I can understand your desire to separate the "ordinary person" from the "protest groups", but in practice they are running with the herd. If as you say, some hold more nuanced positions and doubtless that is true - it still counts for nothing. They lend their tacit support simply by attending. They have been counted amongst the numbers.
Their godlessness has created a vacuum and this gripping earthly drama has been created for them, a passion play enacted in their hearts and minds. This is not going away anytime soon - the rollercoaster has only just started.
https://medium.com/@plaosmos/extinction-rebellion-isnt-about-the-climate-42a0a73d9d49
It's specifically targeting western civilization and seeking its destruction
Hi, - a late addition to the comments.
In support of the criticism of Extinction Rebellion - I read your (whitestone) link, and the group are worse than I realised.
In support of my own contention, have a read of some of the responses at the bottom of the link you gave.
Post a Comment