ON GREEN MINIMALISM - Part One
December 15th 1997
The next issue, Number 20, will appear on January15th 1998.
The basic green position is, I claim, sound. Minimally speaking, that
position is as follows.
The biosphere has great resilience and adapts sufficiently, but slowly, to
'natural' changes imposed upon it. Had this not been the case, these
millions of years, we would not be here to agonise over it.
Gaia, the resilient accommodating 'earth goddess', is a good conceptual
model without, of course, there being any need to think that 'she' is a
demonstrably extant being. The atheist thesis - that we create our gods
rather than their having created us - is a useful notion here. To re-create
Gaia is perhaps the next big thing we ought to do. To be Green is,
notionally, to revere Gaia, to honour her tolerant resilience while
recognising that she is not a pushover. If you feel you must have a
sustaining and disciplining god .... then Gaia has to be the front runner.
Until rather recently, people took this resilience for granted; they were
not Green; the question did not arise because their impact upon the
biosphere was quantitatively slight and qualitatively undemanding.
But recently we have tested the biosphere's resilience far more than our
forebears had cause to test it; they were not consciously Green partly
because, quantitatively, there were few of them and their numbers increased
very slowly (in the 1930's the human population was 2bn and it had taken
millions of years to reach that figure but a few decades later it is over
5bn). Moreover, qualitatively, we are generating pollutants of a kind, and
in quantities, that the resilience of the biosphere is 'not used to coping
with' either chemically or by bio-degradation. These pollutants are
'natural' in the sense that their existence is evidently not contrary to
whatever 'laws of nature' there may be but some of them are far removed,
chemically and biochemically speaking, from the things that 'Gaia' has had
for breakfast since the year dot.
There is therefore prima facie a case for supposing that we ought
consciously to be Green - we ought to add 'care of the biosphere' to our
basic moral values such as truth, kindliness, respect for others etc.
In more detail, we can consider some of the moral, epistemological and
ideological implications of this minimal perception of 'Greenery'.
This perception entails a moral concern for posterity neither greater than,
nor less than, our accepted moral concern for contemporaries. Indeed concern
for our children in their capacity of our contemporaries is connected
seamlessly to our concern for them on their becoming our posterity; they
will not cease to matter merely because they cease to matter to us by reason
of our having died. By extension, the same applies to all of posterity yet
unborn.
As for knowing this or that fact about what is happening to the biosphere,
Green concern does not require any certainty that we are truly on the road
to environmental ruin any more than insuring my house against fire requires
any certainty that it will burn down. If it does burn down then I shall be
either glad that it was insured or sad that it was not. What is certain is
that there is a demonstrable possibility of its being burnt down.
The Green view does not depend upon knowing certainties but upon assessing
probabilities and, here again, the insurance analogy is useful; if I know
that my house is certainly never going to burn down then I would not insure
it against fire; if the insurers knew for certain that it is destined to
burn down then they would not accept any relevant insurance proposal from
me. The deal I strike with the insurers is based upon the fact that the fate
of my house is a matter not of knowable certainty but of assessable
probability.
The point of the preceding paragraph is that we do not have to prove that
Greenery is inevitably needed; it is sufficient to demonstrate that
significant environmental degradation is a possibility. It is up to the
critics of Greenery to prove there is no such risk - and they cannot, I
claim, prove their case.
So, to be Green is progressive in principle; to be Green is to be committed
to the ideal of the future flourishing of human life in a flourishing
biosphere.
Now let us consider, frankly and at the calculated risk of disturbing
people, the pitfalls in the path of those who accept the Green position in
principle - as almost all people now claim to do.
It is not necessarily Green to agree with all, or indeed with any, of the
specifics of policies promoted by this or that organisation. People,
including Green activists, can be wrong about almost anything and are very
rarely right about everything. It is also very unlikely that every policy of
every Green organisation is misguided - but even if this were so then the
basic minimal Green view, as set out above, would still stand. What is to be
noted is that any deviation from valid Green policies would likely be the
result of ideological deviations generally - deviations that bedevil human
thought in other areas of every kind. What are these deviations? Here are
some of them - in brief:
1. Setting up, and falling for, 'protection rackets'. This is not always
criminal - although the term 'protection racket' is suggested by its use in
criminal connections. (Your home is likely to be visited by thieves but if
you pay me a regular sum I, and my friends, will see that you are safe. The
unspoken bit is that your failure to pay for this 'protection' will result
in my friends robbing you). Take power over people by frightening them about
something from which you can offer to protect them. In religion and in
politics the pattern is not necessarily criminal but it is often similar
.... 'you are in danger .... I know how to save you ... but only if you
believe, and act, exactly as I say'.
If you can place a groundless, or exaggerated, fear in people's minds then,
on the strength of that, you can act as the saviour who has to be obeyed.
'Your soul is in danger of an eternity in hell; follow me and you will be
saved'. Again, 'the blacks, the capitalists, the homosexuals, the Jews, Men
In General, the Reds .... or whoever .... are undermining all that is best
in human life. Only my Church, my Party, my ism can be trusted to deal with
this problem. We and only we know The Way'
It's as old as the hills! Scare 'em and Snare' em is the principle of the
protection racket and it works .... time after time in all kinds of ways.
Is it not fair to inquire whether some Green activists may be scaremongers
using the Scare 'em and Snare' em principle? We have to be aware of this
possibility.
2. Sectarianism: this is an essential feature of ideological protection
rackets. Those who exploit people, on the Scare 'em and Snare' em principle,
always make sure to tell their followers that their church, their party,
their whatever, is in danger from the enemy within as well as from the enemy
without. Any tendency to suggest that the opponents of any allegedly correct
'party line' may, for once, be right .... is often met with hostility among
sectarians. Sectarians are endemically quarrelsome.
Is it not fair to inquire whether some Green activists may be sectarians in
just that sort of way? We have to be aware of this possibility.
3. Puritanism: this is a widespread feature of sectarianism. It rests upon
the logical fallacy that the truth of a proposition entails the truth of its
converse. Thus, merely because it is true that some needful moral
disciplines are not enjoyable, it does not follow that an enjoyable act is
especially likely to be a wrong act.
Is it not fair to inquire whether some Green activists may be puritans
promoting the 'if it doesn't hurt it doesn't work' principle? We have to be
aware of this possibility. Puritans thrive on contrived feelings of guilt;
are there no Green Puritans? We have to be aware of this possibility.
4. Romanticism: this is a very common failing among religious and political
ideologists. It consists in an obsessional attachment to wishful thinking; a
refusal to believe other than what one wishes to believe.
Is it not fair to inquire whether some Green activists may be wishful
thinkers - perhaps assuming that some beloved practice or other is Green
merely because it feels Green? Is it really true that, say, organic farming
produces food that is more nutritious? Is it really so or is it merely that
'organic' is a Green buzzword? We have to be aware of such possibilities.
If we are actually to be Green, rather than merely to feel Green, then
wishful thinking has to go; thoughtful wishing is what is needed.
So much for some time-worn deviations to be avoided if the Greens are not to
be just another bunch of grim, power-hungry, anti-human manipulators.
Greenery needs to be subjected - just like any other view of life - to the
cool fresh air of informed, benign scepticism.
In the next issue of ATHEIST THOUGHT - February 1998 - an attempt will be
made to identify some positive ideological standards that need to be adopted
by Greens if their concerns are not to be futile - or even perhaps
counter-productive.
CORRESPONDENCE RECEIVED
December 13th 1997
From CARL COON
I asked a friend, an Islamicist among other talents, to comment on your AT
18. Her comments follow ......
Islam is indeed far simpler than Christianity, it goes back to the
simplicity of Judaism, and cuts out much Christian accretion in between.
Islam and Judaism are both "simple Semitic religions" with 10 Commandments
or 5 Pillars to be saved (putting aside the Talmud and Midrash, European
inventions).
Christianity started out simple too, looking at Jesus's actual sayings,
subsequently became complex due to the later Europeans, mostly Greeks and
theologians of the Early Church, which resulted in trappings such as
sacraments, saints... This post-Jesus accumulation in Christianity has been
obvious to everyone, hence periodic attempts to get back to the basic,
simple life, the attraction to monastic life, esp. the Franciscans.
The Trinity is (in Catholicism) shrugged off as a "mystery of the faith" and
left at that. Most Muslims suspect the Christians of not being monotheists,
tho Christians would dispute this (!!) And the Catholics also present us
with the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, etc etc.
Islam is so much simpler, plus it allows polygamy, so no wonder that (with
no proselytizing effort) in Africa, Muslim converts have been outnumbering
converts to Christianity 5 to 1 for the last 200 years.
But Islam isn't all that simple, it too has embarrassing imaginative
doctrines which have crept in. Muslims DO accept the virgin birth of Prophet
Jesus. They do believe he raised the dead. They have angels, devils, The
Devil and those intermediate beings between men and angels, the Jinns. All
right in the Koran, so it can't be explained away. The Koran also speaks of
magic and soothsaying and fortune-telling.
So I don't think it makes sense to opt for Islam because it is less
"fantastic," it has all the OT and NT miracles etc. All the post-Koranic
accumulation of practices and interpretations comprise the Hadith, in which
context Islam is as elastic as other religions, so much room to argue
authenticity and intent...
Yes, fundamentalism implies arrogance, claiming any belief to be absolute
and perfect. The Muslims, more than some, are literalists and box themselves
in here. But they don't mind being called arrogant since they admit they
are, because they know they're right!! It's not an intellectual insult to
them. They do not apologize for the fact that apostasy from Islam is a
capital offense (which is what caught Rushdie).
The Koran has three intrinsic characteristics: it is INIMITABLE (therefore
of divine origin), it is ETERNAL (always existed but manifested in 7th
century, and is complete and perfect) and it is ARABIC (the only divine
language suitable for liturgy, the words of Gabriel syllable for syllable,
even including some isolated letters of the alphabet which the Prophet heard
indistinctly but transmitted into the text the best he could).
As for everyone already having been created as a "Muslim," OK no problem if
the word literally means someone who lives as God wants -- indeed there is a
line in the Koran that states that "Abraham was neither a Jew nor a
Christian, he was a Muslim," to be understood as righteous. But the guy on
the radio show shouldn't have claimed that everyone is Muslim, only those
who adhere to a doctrine would qualify even under this broader definition. I
don't think any of us are Muslims...
Quoted by CARL COON (The author of the website Progressive Humanism - see
link below) from personal correspondence.
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