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Zeitgeist: Custodians of the Garden
First those solar power roof tiles, now the idea that the best way to work around the disconnect between polluter and effect is to make the act of polluting a sin, my zeitgeist-fu is strong right now. The Vatican have announced a new list of deadly sins, which are mostly modern glosses on the old naughtiness, and environmental pollution is right in there. The more I think of it, the more I think it's sheer bloody genius.
It gets good visceral wrath-of-God afterlife fear into people who otherwise might not give a flying damn. People are funny like that. And those same people are going to believe that Katrina was God spanking their filthy sinful asses if they've been stenching up the place. They're *is* a connection, but it's too disconnected and statistical for most people.
Government plans and UN initiatives last for years or decades. The problem we're facing is epic in scale, brain-hurtingly vast, and messed up with double-signals like the UK Government's green-lighting of a new coal power station (ffs!). The Catholic Church knows persistence. It doesn't have water down policy to fight elections or buy support. And it doesn't have to make the tough choices, just dispense rules and sympathy. New coal? "No, it is a sin. Find another way, my child."
Because the environmental issue is, at heart, a human moral issue - and that's what these guys do.
It gets good visceral wrath-of-God afterlife fear into people who otherwise might not give a flying damn. People are funny like that. And those same people are going to believe that Katrina was God spanking their filthy sinful asses if they've been stenching up the place. They're *is* a connection, but it's too disconnected and statistical for most people.
Government plans and UN initiatives last for years or decades. The problem we're facing is epic in scale, brain-hurtingly vast, and messed up with double-signals like the UK Government's green-lighting of a new coal power station (ffs!). The Catholic Church knows persistence. It doesn't have water down policy to fight elections or buy support. And it doesn't have to make the tough choices, just dispense rules and sympathy. New coal? "No, it is a sin. Find another way, my child."
Because the environmental issue is, at heart, a human moral issue - and that's what these guys do.
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"Violation of fundamental rights of human nature."
How are they going to make that work alongside accumulating excessive wealth? Oh, and hatred of homosexuality?
I don't hold out as much hope as Munky. I don't care how committed the faithful are: IME they tend to ignore the things that they don't like. If people really paid attention to the importance of deadly sins, do you think we'd have a rising obesity epidemic?
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The idea of a Hummer leaving the delicious stench of doughnuts as it trundled greenly by is enticingly ironic.
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There's a massive difference between denying climate change (an objective, external process that we can affect but would nevertheless exist without us) based on an individual campaigner's energy consumption habits and pointing out the hypocrisy of an organisation that purports to be the embodiment of God's law failing to abide by that law (unless you wish to argue that God is a verifiable external fact and is powerless to make sure His church is sin-free despite that very church [which must perforce be an emodiment of His law if God's what they say He is] saying He's omnipotent). The circular nature of the theological argumentation over something that is as relativistic and culturally defined as human morals is a whole dog's turd of a mess without coming along and saying that we can't expect the church to abide by its own rules.
God's no more than a jumped up desert wight with a stonking PR campaign. If it's perfectly reasonable to laugh uproariously at a political party proclaiming one thing while a significant proprotion of its members run around doing the exact opposite, then it's fine to point at the Church and snigger.
Oranges. Stockings. Conservative family values. Are you saying that's not funny?
I wouldn't be laughing so much if it were not for the utter preposterousness of the concept of "sin" in the first place.
Just remind me: next time I have to go to enforce a licence, I can now say that if they don't comply they're not only going to be reported to a man in a wig, they're going to Hell.
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I'm only interested in this in that it has the potential to change the behaviour of lots of people. I don't care who they fuck or how silly their ideas are. I'm interested in the potency of the meme which has nothing to do with its truth.
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Sure, the Catholic fraternity of Europe will take notice, as will the Catholic population of the US. If they're practising.
Everyone else in the world?
Not so sure.
Anyway. I was only responding because you said it was silly to say the Catholic Church is hypocritical. This is politics. The more hypocrisy becomes known about the church, the less influence it will have. I mean, look how bad the Anglicans have it over their stance to homosexual priests.
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Science clearly doesn't hit people in the gut.
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The biggest player in this war is still financial. Always has been.
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As far as the RCC having the ability to effect millions, I agree with Andy. The people in North Am, South Am, Africa and Euro will begin to follow more green living if the voice of their God on earth says to. Do I think my father will start recycling? Unlikely until the laws of his state force him to. Will the religious right adopt global climate change now as part of their platform? It is worthy of some thought and not so much snickering.
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This is what I do. Day in. Day out. I've seen what pressures work and which don't.
Frankly, believing that the church will produce a tipping effect is about as inside-the-box as you can get. Sorry, but I think it's just wishful thinking. People are inherently selfish. That's why the church is a hypocritical organisation: because it's human, and therefore selfish.
This is politics. When food prices start increasing then you will get a population level of discontent. That's when voters start to make waves. Will the Church have that effect? We live in a secular society over here. Do you think that religion will outweigh the desire for capitalist progress in the US? Has it ever?
And we're talking the Catholic church here. Just the Catholic church. The Southern Baptists have now weighed in with the suggestion that yeah, maybe we ought to do something, but it's only the Catholics who had decided that polluting the environment means you'll burn in hell.
If this were a brand new species of meme? Fine. But it ain't. It's got to fight it out with the one that goes Mankind has dominion, and that one has been around for a very long time. How many of the Christian right will get on board if they believe that Jesus is a-comin' to get them any day now and there's no point worrying about carbon footprints when God's almighty hobnail is about to smear the unbelievers into the dust while they all rise up on fluffy white clouds of Rapture?
Great fervour is produced when religions try to change. Thousands of years of dogma and tradition don't bend over and give up easily.
Religion has never been able to counter the mass desire for trade and wealth. It's written all over history. Excuse the cynicism, but I just don't see it.
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Meh.
It's fucked anyway. Maybe I just want people to feel the right amount of guilt for fucking it over.