Vera Verba

I tend to look at the world of ideas a little differently than most people do. I see the ideas that cause people to take group actions (religions, governments, corporations, racial identities, and the like) as closely related ideological organisms. I view them as the equivalent of multicellular lifeforms in idea space, constantly competing with each other and evolving new strategies for controlling human actions.

That said, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see one of the newest such collective idea-organisms, start to reach for one of the same old handles that nations and religions have long used to control people. Still, I really didn’t see this particular development coming until today, when I read this article entitled “Want to Go ‘Green’? Stay Married”:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3946834&page=1

Apparently a study was done at Michigan State University which came to the (fairly obvious) conclusion that when a couple divorces, and starts living apart, they use more resources than when they are together. They are using resources to light and heat two living areas, they are less likely to be sharing a car, etc. So the conclusion was that married people are greener - more environmentally righteous.

Various religious and political systems have always had an interest in human mating habits. The idea of marriage is nothing more than the sanctioning of sexual behavior by religion and/or nation state. An idea-organism that can connect itself to various biological drives is far more likely to survive and replicate, so such ideologies evolve to exploit all the built-in human fears and desires that they can. Fear, hunger, and sex drive are three of the most powerful biological motivating factors.

So, like I said, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Environmentalism start to reach for the same handles that other collective idea-organisms have used so successfully. In fact, if it can actually make inroads into controlling the sex drive, it will have the whole trifecta. It already has the standard scare stories and dietary controls.

This table is an extended version of one found in the book, “God Wants You Dead.”

Looking at this, Environmentalism seems to be overly weighted towards using fear as a control handle, but maybe this is just because it hasn’t really managed to infiltrate the sex drive yet. Perhaps when this new collective idea-organism figures out how to have its own sort of marriage ceremony, the emphasis on scaring people will relax somewhat. Maybe Environmentalism will end up condoning polyamorous group marriages, as this would create much larger (and therefore more resource sharing) family units. Until then, we can probably expect a continuous parade of new frightening scenarios telling us how technology will destroy the earth, as this is Environmentalisms most effective hook.

Note that I am not saying than any particular such scenario isn’t plausible. It certainly makes a great deal of difference if any particular scare story is true or not, but it does not change the nature of these ideological organisms and the way they try to control us. That is why I am always suspicious when people are trying to scare me into doing what they want me to do - even when their stories sound very plausible, or are backed up by the opinions of a lot of seemingly intelligent people.

It may be that we are indeed all going to die of some sort of ecological disaster if we don’t follow all the directives of the Environmentalist leaders.

But we might also all be killed by terrorists if we don’t grant our national governments greater powers to spy on us and control our lives.

And it could equally well be true that we will all go to Hell if we don’t live our lives the way the priests of some particular religion tell us we should.

It is often hard to tell what is a real threat and what is just so much more B.S.
So hold on to your ability to make your own decisions. Do not surrender your mind to any collective idea-organism, no matter how much it scares you with hypothetical disaster scenarios. You do not need to let other people decide the truth for you. Even if the occasional bad idea has slipped into your head, your core self can still be relied on to determine the truth, as long as you are always willing to question and re-think things from time to time.

Just use the mind you have created for yourself. You have built a mental structure that allows you to evaluate the world. You have assembled the mind that you wanted from the ideas that you found to work best for you. Furthermore, if you have managed to read all the way to the end of this post, then odds are you did a pretty good job constructing that mind.

The rational mind that you have put together, let nothing put asunder.

[For more on how environmentalism acts like a religion see previous post, “Pope Blasts Marx, Misses Gore.”]