(1) Training the Political Consumer — On the Roots of Germany's "Green"-Craze

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This is my (more or less free) English translation of my German post Überlegungen zur Abrichtung des politischen Konsumenten ...

Faith versus Facts

Evidence is mounting that exclusive emphasis of the role of CO2 in driving the climate is untenable.

Increasingly research suggests that other factors are important, some of which being far more significant than CO2, and that there is no reason to panic.

Frequently summoned to dramatise the need for action, the precautionary principle actually supports the opposite conclusion, namely to stay away from giant projects (decarbonisation) inspired by the one-sided and simplistic hypothesis that the earth's climate is governed by a sole determinant.

Taking the precautionary principle seriously is to see that there are no good grounds supporting a coercive decarbonisation scheme to entirely rebuild the economy and society.

However, conclusions to this effect are largely ignored, especially in Germany. or else, their zealously demonised when (threatening to / they) reach the public.

With alarming effectiveness the population is kept ignorant, misinformed and trained to act as veritable parrots of Green propaganda, while scientists are intimidated and brought into line with the government's "politically correct" positions.

"Gleichschaltung" — Subjection under a Uniform Regime of Ideas and Action 

"Gleichschaltung" is the result of the systematic enactment of the (scientifically much too simple but politically usefully simple) CO2-story by

(1) the common front of all parties in this matter,

(2) the state and his institutions (e. g. indoctrination of adolescents in government run schools), as well as

(3) means of manipulating and gagging pivotal parts of the economy, whereby the power industry and other branches are brought into line with government policy by the force of the law and massive interventions in corporate balance sheets via subsidies that entrepreneurs can not refuse without getting into trouble economically, and

(4) a political class increasingly insulated from democratic control (grand coalitions, closing of ranks among the political parties, no effective opposition in Parliament, circumvention of democratic control with the aid of an anonymous and unaccountable EU-bureaucracy), and

(5) a complaint media.

All in all, a project to effect Gleichschaltung that makes one feel very uneasy in the face of Germany's past.

All the more, as the polity used to be open and socially minded with intelligent and educated citizens enjoying all the means to keep them informed and up-to-date — until politics and the state turned against this state of advanced progress.

Cultural Traditions — Auxiliary Tools for Political Training

Certain keywords from our vocabulary's chapter on "environment and environmental protection" have been occupying a special cultural status in Germany for more than 100 years.

For that reason it has been possible for some of these terms which the average citizen deeply internalises during the course of normal socialisation to implant dispositions of conceit (like the hatred of Jews) in their users.

These socially trained reflexes which are constantly reinforced in conversations and through media consumption every day shape the convictions that help us assure our social belonging.

These triggers of conceit override our willingness to perceive matters in an unprejudiced way, let alone get to the bottom of them with an unbiased mind.

Thus, it suffices to merely utter terms like "nuclear power" or "coal" and at once a consensus between the communicating springs into life telling them that what they are talking about is a wicked and ominous subject-matter.

Analogously, nothing more is required than to label products and projects as being "ecological", "bio" or "friendly to the environment" and they will meet at once with indiscriminate acceptance.

Transforming Genuine Concern for Nature into Bigoted Orthodoxy

When semantic conditioning takes over, we unlearn or fail to experience what it means to deal with real and concrete problems in the interaction between humans and nature.

We no longer confront ourselves with the intricacy of challenges arising from live contact with nature.

We fail to appreciate that the devil is in the detail.

We lose our good sense that ideal and one-size-fits-all solutions peddled by politicians are rarely effective in real life, and that, to the contrary, they are apt to do considerable damage.

We lose our flair for the need of a give and take in coming up with feasible solutions and forget that catastrophes are far more likely to turn up in the figments of political rhetoric than in real life.

We fail to remember that the best stewards are those who are intimately acquainted with the real complexity of challenges in dealing with nature, and those who have a non-trivial stake in the matter, facing real losses when things go awry — politicians are not likely to be part of that lot.

Instead we all feel called upon to judge issues that we are not acquainted with by competent familiarity and immediate personal involvement, but know of only from clichés, mantra-like patter and general convictions, whose vagueness is well masked by the endless reiteration of the same old rhetorical templates that are in everybody's mouth day in and day out.

Our commitment to nature becomes a stale prayer, we parrot recitations handed down to us from the high priests of the church of political correctness, who know full well how to manipulate us.

Our commitment is not rooted in the personal confrontation with clearly specified, concrete problems and objectives whose tricky nature we are intimately acquainted with.

We realise our detachment from reality only when it reaches out to us in our private lives with their real concerns, like when a windmill-powered plant goes up outside the window of our living room tossing shred storks into our garden, and depriving us of sleep and health. That's when private concern becomes real in our relationship with nature.

This is when we finally realise just how nonsensical it is to view the protection of nature as an end in itself, as is customary nowadays in Germany (see President von Weizsäcker's speech in this video, time mark 02:27). Suddenly you are able to grasp what is really going on, learning the hard way — what is dearest to you being at stake. You understand that nature can only be meaningfully defined with respect to human needs. That includes ethical considerations — meaning, a good relationship with nature is a relationship that respects and serves human needs. Nature is not a moral absolute towering over morally inferior man, unlike Green mythology insinuates. See also my Economics, Ecology, and Equilibrium — The Temptations of Ideology.

Sanctification Instead of True Concern for Nature

In turning commitment to nature into a religion, we are crowding out judgement derived from being in touch with nature by adherence to a vicarious and mechanical faith whose litany abridges and disfigures the true interrelationships prevailing in man's encounters with nature.

Sanctification is accompanied by ritualisation which makes us appear "pious and agreeable to God" by the standards of the new religion — see my The Rise of a New Religion from the Ashes of Two Veteranly Creeds —, but it uncouples us from the reality of interaction between man and nature.

Continued here.