Too Rich to See the Errors

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One of the paradoxical triumphs of capitalism is its ability to make people so rich as to become insensitive to errors. In this way, a system more zweckrational / rational than any previous form of human society affords space for massive irrationality.

What deserves more investigation is the Gleichschaltung of public opinion in Germany - with virtually no opposition over decades in a range of issues that are intrinsically of a rationally decidable nature, amenable to factual inspection and scientific investigation. Possibly related to it: the disappearance of traditional political strands such a conservatism and liberalism in favour of regresive leftism under the aegis of green anti-capitalism and green pseudo environmentalism.

Why has that exercise been so incredibly successful—the long march through the institutions ("der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen") by which the German totalitarian left of the 1960s promised to conquer Germany? 

Energiewende ("energy turn", perhaps to be interprted as analogous to a phrase such as the "linguistic turn" in philosophy, a reorientation toward a new paradigm) denotes German efforts to operate the national system of energy provision on the basis of so-called renewable energy sources.

It is rather dangerous—indeed an occasion for quick and radical ostracism—in Germany to point to cultural continuities that involve the Third Reich, as German Vergangenheitbewältigung ("dealing with the Nazi past") is largely an exercise in condemning (with full enlightened hindsight) rather than comprehending (the complusions and seductions of) the shameful past; deviation from the crude schemes of Vergangenheitsbewältigung is liable to be submerged in emotional revulsion—often in the form of rash accusations to be equating rather than comparing (certain aspects of) present conditions and the Nazi past.

The exceptional emotive force of certain green topics is one such continuity: Take the 1920s and 1930s meme of "Volk ohne Raum" ("a people denied its natural space ( =  unencumbered nature)"). The idea that nature as we require it for our survival is being threatened, continues to be a dominant theme in the German mind. 

I remember, in the early 1960s, long before anyone would have considered something like the green party to be thinkable, how in school, via the media, as well as by my parents I was sternly instructed as to the sorry state of nature and man's sinful proclivity to destroy the environment. 

Industry was referred to as the chief culprit, and the term that would settle any discussion was "Chemie" (meaning "chemistry", but also "the chemical industry")—a magical expression in Germany, utter it and anyone knows without further explanation, let alone proof, that a calamitous sin against nature is involved.