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

 

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Continued from here.

Ecology Turned Upside Down

Germany's Energiewende (energy turn towards so-called renewable sources of energy) is being advertised as ecologically exemplary. 

In truth, the Energiewende is a shocking case demonstrating how constant showering and regurgitation of conditioning cues from a religious litany enable groups who pretend to be environmentally concerned — Greens, eco-profiteers, special interests close to them, and mainstream political parties who know how to take advantage of "the opium of the people" —  to actually destroy nature systematically, while at the same time appearing like moral stars in the eyes of the public — a sad characteristic of an age when faith in a Christian God is being replaced by a pantheistic creed, the "Green" religion.

Learning from the Past?

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that prejudices so deeply rooted in a culture will be discarded any time soon.

Hence, it is to be expected that people will be taken in by a new series of "ecological" fairy tales — like the condemnation of diesel that is already looming at the horizon.

The day will come when today's zealots are going to claim that they have never been in favour of the global warming mania and Germany's new Wunderwaffe (miracle weapon), the Energiewende, if ever they shall be held accountable.

We have not yet seen any Vergangenheitsbewältigung ("learning from the past") with respect to the egregious pseudo-ecological lies — global cooling, acid rain, forest decline, see saurer Regen/Waldsterben, ozone depletion, anti-nuclear disinformation etc. — by which the Greens have managed to become the culturally prominent group that drives politics and the Zeitgeist in Germany. 

Political Consumption versus Personal Concern

In referring to deeply held convictions in the above paragraphs, I did not mean the kind of hard-won belief that gradually emerges when someone personally grapples very intensely with an issue close to his heart and immediate live concerns.

Rather what I write about is the kind of conviction that is instilled in a person by way of a training imposed on her from without. Every "normal" citizens undergoes this training. The depth of the resultant conviction is due to the intensity and tightness of the front of indoctrination that engulfs the citizen. It does not derive from  personal commitment of one's own choice or concern that in other ways is specific to an individual's life and intentions.

This is perhaps easier to appreciate when one realises that most people perceive global warming and similar issues from the vantage point of the political consumer, not as individuals with an immediate and genuine personal stake in the matter that keeps them worried and alert as it could make a serious difference to their life.

Picture this: by giving him a ring, you are suddenly in a position to assure your utterly distressed neighbour vacationing abroad that he had been misinformed about his house having burnt down and that in actual fact the fire brigade had been able to fend off the flames before they could reach his premises.

It's pretty unlikely that you will be scolded as a malicious crank by your neighbour for delivering the relieving message.

But this is exactly what happens when you tell the political consumer the happy message that global warming is no problem.

The fact of the matter is, there is not really much at stake for the enraged guy that berates you on being told that global warming is nothing to panic about.

What irritates him is that you call into question something that threatens his identity as far as it is dependent on a sense of social belonging. Also, he may enjoy collateral benefits from the conviction that you have been questioning — such as welcome occasions to blow off steam or to feel like a "good person". See also my post Why Facts Do Not Convince People.

Should anyone ever shatter your world by suddenly claiming that your house does not legally belong to you,  you are going to move heaven and earth to make sure the daunting hypotheses is falsified.

The hypothesis according to which we are facing an imminent climate catastrophe can be fact-checked even by laymen without inordinate effort  — and the evidence is overwhelming that no such catastrophic effects are to be feared. However, few people can be bothered to take their time to investigate the issues, because they do not have a genuine stake in the matter. They are free-riding on cheap talk as an exercise in defining their social status within their peer groups, an effort rather akin to making sure you wear the right clothes by the taste of the day. (Imagine — called in to report your department's results, you turn up at your company's board meeting in a clown's dress holding up a banner that reads "Fuck Capitalism and Shit Companies like Ours!"

Strike Against a Free Society

It is worrisome that in a free society — which we still have in many respects — it is possible to bring about Gleichschaltung of such proportions, i. e. getting the majority of the population to affiliate themselves with a dogmatic set of views and condone their defence with totalitarian means (restricting free speech, gagging science, returning to a command economy etc).

Most alarming to me is that it is possible to train an intelligent people to become dumbed down (with regard to certain rather important issues), to abandon any interest in the need for critical assessment and ongoing debate and to become thoroughly bigoted at the end of the day.

However, this is inevitable when science is turned into the maid of politics as it was during the part of the Middle Ages when Galileo Galilei lived.

Bereft of openmindedness and lively discussions, politics itself is bound to get dumbed down.

Yet politics is capable of summoning enormous means of power. In this way, politics is able to extend its narrowmindedness until it permeates everything, casting the shadow of its conceit and ignorance over an entire society.

Three Guarantors of Freedom Damaged

By contrast, a free society is based on free competition, as I have shown here (in German) and here (in English),

(1) in science, 
(2) in the economy, and
(3) in politics.

Each of these sectors which are pivotal to a free society have been damaged or even suspended during the Merkel-era in Germany.

We have become a country, where scientists are afraid to publish their research results because they are not politically correct.

We have become a country where firms are forced by gagging laws and massive subsidy-bribes to pursue a path of economic irrationality inflicting long-term damage on the economy.

When the best way to make profits for a CEO intent on feathering his own nest before retiring in five years is to accept subsidies for projects that are unviable without such support, then, of course, there is a strong temptation to yield to the offer that at the time is considered politically responsible, even though it isn't, thereby collecting profits that are as fat as they are artificial and unviable.

We have become a country where the political class has been able, by the closing of ranks, to considerably weaken the prime good of democracy — opposition and dissent — and to devolve important decisions — past the people — to anonymous and unaccountable executive organs of the EU.

A Lone Voice

I shall never forget the bewildered reaction by a scientist from the University of Cambridge (UK), when I explained to him prior to my delivering a lecture at a private university in Prague, why I was firmly opposed to climate alarmism and the Energiewende.

He confessed to me being perfectly baffled. I was the first German he ever encountered taking an oppositional attitude on the issues. He almost sounded as if he had thought it impossible for a German to ever subscribe to such a critical point of view. The Germans he knew are likely to be part of the country's intellectual élite. So much for Gleichschaltung.


See also here (German and English, despite the title suggesting an exclusively English post) and here.