Monday, April 09, 2007

More evidence of environment as religion

The cult of environmental doomsday-ism allows otherwise un-spiritual people to express their otherwise suppressed ascetic desires in a socially acceptable way. For many soft-core green disciples, the fight against environmental catastrophe is more an aspiration than an imperative.

These astute observations come from
this excellent discussion of environmental ideology and the extremes to which its advocacy will extend in self-righteous piety.

In short, the principal argument of any ecomyth appears to be ignore the principle and justify the result. And, in particular, the message has an element of puritanical zeal embedded within it. The planet needs to suffer to cleanse itself of wrong doing. Only those parts that have successfully lifted themselves out of suffering mind you. I'm still not clear how this conceptualization of environmentalism is supposed to alleviate the suffering of those still in poverty -- just exactly does worldwide poverty make anyone's life better? Worse still, ecomyth advocates want to employ anything that is warm and fuzzy to help them promote their ideology: even if the warm and fuzzy animal has to die to make their point. Truly bizarre.