House of Eratosthenes

Speaking of my list of things that give you away as a clueless idiot (see previous), there is the matter of doing geologically insignificant little things to save the planet. That’d be the well-worn-out Item #3 on said list. Kate reports at Small Dead Animals:

Britain is the home of a surprising number of environmental-activist groups. If you follow the links to the “partners” of British climate-doom website One Hundred Months (“We have 100 months to save our climate“) you’ll start to grasp the extent of it. One organization, Plane Stupid, (“Bringing the aviation industry back down to earth!“) demands a ban on domestic flights and aviation advertising; another protests against renewable (bio) fuels, while another suggests we can get “free energy from air.”

If you spend enough time tooling around these sites it becomes apparent that in many, if not most cases, the activists’ concern for the environment pales in comparison to their level of self-righteousness and self-obsession. This recycling, eco-village-building whiz (gallery here), who describes herself – in the third person – as someone whose “life is organized on a logical basis,” and who “tends to control life, organising systems and people,” is fairly typical of those for whom environmental activism is essentially a tool used to draw attention to their too-too special selves.

When you look at the middle-or-upper class “activists” on display here and here, you have to wonder: if they honestly and truly believed that their actions were being undertaken in the interest of saving the planet – the baby animals, and the third-world poor – from a looming climate apocalypse, would they be acting so amused, and having so much giggly fun? If they were instead protesting, say, an ongoing genocide, would there be so much celebratory, “look-at-me” merrymaking?

I’ve not come across any scientific papers written on this…and I doubt that I’m going to, now that institutionalized science has prostituted itself, and become little more than a label for a bunch of hyped up political agendas. But there are quite a few people walking around, as free as you or I, who seem to be burdened with a phobia about the idea that the times in which we live are…well…not really all that special. In other words, our people may have thousands of years of survival stretched out after the moment the dirt hits our coffin lids, just as they had thousands of years before our umbilical cords were cut. In the chronicling of human existence, 2010 may not be the end, it may not be anywhere near it, it may be as unremarkable as, say, 1521. Or 387. Or 65,982 BC.

We may be living in the belly-button of human existence.

That just fills some people with dread. That would mean the reasons to remember these people after they have passed on, amounts to the balance of the reasons to remember what they did while they were (are) here. They’ve emotionally invested so much in the obvious apocalyptic contrary thought, that they can’t handle this. They don’t want to be remembered for what they did. They want to be remembered as: “He was here when it all went down.” Saw the end credits, as it were. Sang Amen.

That’s silly, of course. Who’d do the remembering?

But the dread is definitely there. Viewing the situation logically, the idea that there’s nothing special about the times in which we live other than the obvious technological advancements — is actually quite likely. Man has been vocally predicting his own extinction…well, pretty much non-stop for hundreds of years. One debacle after another involving the world ending in 2000, and 1996, and 1987, and 1900, and 1700, and 1600, and 1000, and…and…and.

It’s accelerating, lately, because we’re bored. We have more time to worry. We have fewer real problems than the average guy living in 1699.

There is a recognized problem with something called “Survivors Guilt.” This might be related to that. It seems to be grounded in a fear of recognizing, or an inability to recognize, that fate has granted you a full lifetime of opportunity to do what you want to do — and denied it to others just as deserving.

It is, when you think about it, a big heavy thought that entails some real responsibility once you think through all the ramifications of it. Nowhere is it written that we can all handle it.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

[…] Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes. […]
- “Look At Me Saving the Planet” | Washington Rebel | 10/05/2010 @ 07:41
Then again, I would wager that most, if not all of these people do not believe in God, or in life after death. When your perspective is reduced to the four score years you can expect in this existence, then puffing yourself up in the name of some earthly cause is the only way you can satisfy the longing we have to be part of something outside of ourselves.
- chunt31854 | 10/05/2010 @ 07:51
Good lord, they show all the smug scientific energy and inquiry of the Flat Earth Society!
- DirtCrashr | 10/05/2010 @ 09:59
Well spoken, Chunt. My thoughts exactly. When you don’t believe in God, you have to fill that God-shaped hole with something else. Rush Limbaugh once made an astute observation – many do so with a man-made god called The State. In our time, The State is the one, who in the eyes of these people, is seen as best able to guarantee a pristine environment.
- cylarz | 10/06/2010 @ 16:57

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“Look At Me Saving the Planet”Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

“Look At Me Saving the Planet”
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010