Vera Verba

One of the interesting problems with a new religion like Environmentalism is that it is not yet generally recognized as a religion. This means that some people will not realize that they have to abandon their old religion in order to practice this new one fully.

Every collective idea-organism has its traditions that are practiced to create a sense of group unity and used as signals of belief so that fellow members of the group (and infidels) can be identified. These include everyday behavior such as clothing worn, hair styles, jewelry, make up, language spoken (or at least sub-dialect jargon) - and they also include specific days of celebration that require specific religious observances. While such tokens of belief are mostly harmless (at least they are today in places with a more secular society) they risk being incompatible if you are trying to be a member of more than one religion at the same time.

My most recent thoughts on this matter were inspired by an article today in the Jerusalem post about some Jews who are also trying to be Environmentalists. They have started a campaign to warn other Jews that burning Hanukkah candles produces unnecessary Carbon Dioxide:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195546797524&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign found that every candle that burns completely produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide. If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere.

The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won’t need another miracle,” said Liad Ortar, the campaign’s cofounder, who runs the Arkada environmental consulting firm and the Ynet Web site’s environmental forum.

So you see, a custom honoring the story of a miracle performed by the God Jews believe in can be thought of as contributing to our damnation based on the story of the Hell Environmentalists believe in. Mr. Ortar (quoted above) who makes a living from Environmentalism (so I suppose we could call him one of its holy men), apparently also considers himself to be a Jew. However, he believes that GOD would rather get the short count on his sacraments than be bothered to perform any miracles to save mankind from Chanukah candle generated green house gases.

It is interesting to note that Environmentalism has impacted other religious traditions as well. (So they are not just persecuting the Jews.) The Christmas tree is a common Christian tradition. However killing a tree is probably the least green thing a person can ever do - other than maybe digging up and burning the millions of year old remains of sacred dead tree corpses just to stay warm. (If you were a proper natural sort of animal you’d have fur for that!)

So what is an Environmentalist who wants to remain Christian supposed to do?

A plastic tree was once an acceptable solution for those who didn’t want to kill a tree, but these days plastic is considered evil too. Apparently it doesn’t biodegrade in the ground and this makes it bad - even though rocks that don’t biodegrade in the ground are not bad - including shale which has the same chemicals in it as plastic. And when you think about it, its not surprising that plastic doesn’t biodegrade in the ground considering that it is made from a liquid that is found naturally in the ground. But somehow, the process of pumping a natural liquid out of the ground, removing part of it to make plastic, and then putting that part back into the ground where (by not bio-degrading) it is guaranteed not to hurt anyone or anything, has been deemed sacrilegious by Environmentalists.

So the only environmentally righteous solution is a live tree. (At least until the extension of plant’s rights prohibit tree-napping as a crime) But to bring a live tree into your house, you have to also include a lot of dirt and roots. This reduces the size of the tree that can be used. Much like lighting one less candle, a smaller tree with a lot of dirt attached can be seen as an apt metaphor for the reduction of competing religions that the growth of Environmentalism is causing.

And the majesty of the symbol is indeed reduced. New York City’s celebration of Xmas has only been influenced by Environmentalism to the degree that the tree lights are the more efficient LED rather than incandescent bulbs. However, the small Westchester village I live in (just north of NYC) has gone for the live tree this year. Consequently, our government sanctioned official Christmas tree is actually smaller (unless you include the huge stand full of dirt) than many of the trees in Westchester living rooms.

It is particularly ironic that the Christmas tree symbol being degraded is actually an old pagan religious symbol that Christianity co-opted and that this symbol was based on older versions of nature worship.

If Environmentalism continues to grow in mind share, it will probably have to do something similar in co-opting the symbols of other religions. In fact, the whole Hanukah story of one day worth of oil lasting for eight days could easily be co-opted as a symbol about conserving resources. What other religious symbols could be turned into environmentally conscious messages? I wonder if the Romans ever re-used those crosses for the next batch of criminals? They would certainly have recycled the nails - metal didn’t just grow on trees back then.

Recycling old religious symbols and holidays might seem particularly appropriate for Environmentalism, but it is something every collective idea-organism does as it takes over previous belief systems and/or mutates from one form to another. Is Environmentalism already doing this? Maybe so.

Environmentalism’s big holiday, called “Earth Day” is celebrated on a different day in the United States than in other countries. There is no doubt that many of the organizers of the first such celebration were also Vietnam War protesters which included many people with strong communist leanings. So it might not be just a coincidence that, while the rest of the world celebrates Earth Day on the more appropriate Vernal Equinox, in the United States the official holiday is a month later, and that the very first such Earth Day observance on April 22nd, 1970 marked the 100th birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.

In the United States, we observe Environmentalism’s high holiday on the birthday of a famous mass murderer - a man who was more widely known by his pen name, Vladamir Lenin.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Holy Wars. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.