In a post written earlier this month, after a conversation about global warming with an intelligent and well-educated friend, I remarked on the similarity between secular environmentalism and religion:
I was struck once again by the clarity with which global-warmism reveals itself as a secular repurposing of the religious impulse — a deep and universal human yearning that, in the corroded cultural aftermath of the Enlightenment’s skeptical acid-bath, has lost a transcendent God as its referent, and now wants very badly something else to plug into.
The mythos, from Genesis to Redemption, has been transplanted almost entirely without alteration:
In the beginning, there was only God.
From God arose Man.
Before his Fall, Man lived simply, and in perfect harmony with God. It was a Paradise on Earth.
Then a disaster happened. Man acquired a new kind of Knowledge: knowledge that he did not need, but that conferred upon him enormous temptation. In his unwisdom, and against God’s wishes, Man succumbed. His new Knowledge gave him great power, but at a terrible cost: he had turned his back on God, and his Paradise was lost. In his exile, he would wield his ill-gained power in prideful suffering and woe.
But then came a Messenger, offering the possibility of Redemption: if Man were to renounce his awful Knowledge, and learn once again to surrender himself to the love of God, he would be forgiven, and could find his way back to Paradise. It would not be easy — it would require that he make terrible sacrifices, atone for his many sins, and give up his worldly comforts and much that he had come to love — but if his faith was strong, his Salvation could become a reality, and he could once again live in Paradise, in sweet communion with God.
In order to move from the old religion to the new one, we need only substitute “Nature” for “God” in the passages above. That the two conceptions are almost perfectly isomorphic, and that both are manifestations of the same underlying impulse, should be plainly evident. But perhaps one must be a heretic oneself to notice it.
Today we have a leaked memo from the EPA, written shortly after the change of administration in 2009. Here’s a revealing excerpt. [Note: The abbreviation ‘EJ’ means ‘environmental justice’. Apparently this tendentious expression, and the pious valor it surely inspires, are common enough within the EPA as to require no explanation.]
For many, environmental protection is about the caribou, polar bears, and sea otters. While our work certainly impacts all of these creatures, it obviously does not reflect our day-to-day work. It is important for us to change this perception, particularly among those who are critically impacted by EJ issues ”” but are otherwise ”˜unchurched.’ (By unchurched, I mean they are not affiliated with a group or effort that would self-identify as EJ or environmentalist.)
‘Unchurched’. The thing speaks for itself.
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Praise be.
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/01/26/mayor-thanks-sharpton-for-climate-change-work-during-blizzard-report/
I will probably develop this comment into a longer article and put it on my page. I am not original in proposing that the Cathedral is now the new “Fundies”.
I was reading this essay by Scott Alexander called The Right Is the New Left.
He means “left” as in the counter culture, the “avant guarde”, the “cool”, that sort of thing that the thorn in the side of authority. He states that “before”, like say, 1970, being leftish was cool. Your teacher Miss Grundy was not, so you liked what she didn’t. But now, all the new Miss Grundys are all feminist liberals. And the thing that pisses off and shocks the Miss Grundys is the New Right. I had read a similar comment somewhere like Return of Kings or the Roosh forum where it said “the manosphere is the new counter culture.”
Scott has an anecdote about overhearing two doctors conversing. The daughter of one had received a full scholarship to a large university in the south. This is a snippet:
Doctor 1: There’s that. But the other problem is that the South is full of those people.
Doctor 2: So? Colleges are like their own world. Your daughter probably won’t even encounter many of them.
Doctor 1: I know. But I keep worrying that just by being there, she’ll make friends with them, and then end up bringing one home as a boyfriend.
“Those people” is Scott’s replacement, not the original term used by the doctor involved. The doctor involved said a much less polite word.
She said “fundies”.
The essence of Progressives is they conceive themselves so much more “right”, so much more “scientific”, not like those “Fundies”.
And as this post says, there is so much “religion”, so much “belief” in the Progressive frame of mind.
And the New Right is chopping away at the underlying basis of that belief structure.
And the key tenet that is being chopped away is that Humans are some distinct species, removed from nature, that the “soul” is removed and separate from the “body”, that it is malleable, constructable, a product of the society and of the culture.
Society and the Culture can “create” a new sort of person, a perfectable sort of being.
So as Jayman said in a Tweet “Blank slate -> conservative nuture/nature -> Liberal nurture/nature -> Reality”
And the New Fundies are being left without the “scientific justification” for their “Fundamentalism”, their own false myth of “Creationism”.
And they will suffer the new intellectual conflict of “Creationism vs Evolution” in a manner they never foresaw.
Yes, I remember reading that post of Scott Alexander’s — it’s very interesting, provocative, and psychologically insightful. (That said, I think it leans too hard on psychology, and discounts far too much the actual problems that NRx has identified. But then again, I would say that…)
Mr. Alexander is a smart guy, and is probably neoreaction’s most intelligent and useful critic. I recommend his essay to you all, Readers; you can find it here.
JK, is that not surreal? Think of what’s packed up in that story you linked; think of how a mind that could believe and utter these things must be furnished and configured.
There are days when I feel as if it’s all some sort of insane theater-piece, a “Marat/Sade” in the real world.
Indeed.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/n-a-a-c-p-bombing-in-colorado-springs-looks-sketchy/
“Gaia” is the new god. Her apostles are the Environmental Community, Environmental Lawyers. Her Evangelists are Al Gore and others who jet around the world proclaiming the supremacy of the new god and encouraging obedience to Nature and its whims as presented to us by the Evangelists. Gaia’s sacraments are anti- capitalism, wealth redistribution, and gradual loss of private property.
A global group of “minders” will be needed to reinforce Environmentalism.
I think you are absolutely onto something. The term “unchurched” is used in some churches to refer to Americans who grew up in households that did not identify with any religion (they are also called “nones” because they check “none” on questions about religion).
The reason Christianity is failing– and failing now– in my opinion is that one can’t have two religions. Every Christian denomination I’m aware of actively preaches Progressivism. I was recently at an Episcopal function when I met a tattooed, lesbian priest who’s atheist so-called “wife” was urging her to advocate for the abolition of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Progressivism has all the characteristics of a virus, as it hijacks people and human organizations and forces them to work in the interests of Progressivism instead of their own interests. Consider the Church’s fixation with homosexuals and transsexuals. I believe Christ calls us to treat such people with compassion. But that does not mean that we should promote that “lifestyle.” Simple institutional survival would dictate that the church focus on people who are going to reproduce, and yet the church isn’t doing this. The Christian church is in decline while Islam continues to grow everywhere.
And like many religions there is a lack of epistemic certainty. A certain amount of leap of faith.
“Hottest year ever recorded” Look you dumbshits, when your data set is say…. a couple million years, then I will be impressed.
Yep.
I made somewhat similar observations a while back.