Chapter 3
Global Warming: Mother Earth in Menopause.
Before I begin this chapter I want to get something out of the way. I believe in Global Warming. I even believe that humans have something to do with it. This is not a popular view in some of the circles I travel in, I know, but that needs to be stated before I go on to talk about Environmentalism. This chapter is not an attack of the science. You will not find in these pages a critique of their findings, though I will comment on their techniques (if you don’t know this, many things are modeled on computers). I think that whether you agree or disagree with Environmentalists, what will be valuable here is the philosophy that has latched on to it. There are still scientists who just want to collect data and fit it to curves. It is always philosophers who use the science to promote their ideas, not scientists. With that out of the way, let us proceed.
The Earth has always been studied. Après Post is not unique in this. Scientist have studied everything they could about the Earth. From platetechtonics to sunsets, the reasons the way the Earth and its components function the way they do have always tried to be explained. Weather, the most finicky of systems has always been predominant in mans study. And this is not just true of the Modern man. From the earliest days of civilization weather was of primary importance. Even today the weather controls most of what we do. It even has its own TV channel. This dependence of weather is really how Environmental Science got started. How and when it rained mattered for survival. If there was a way to make it rain more after planting, and less at harvest, all of humanity would benefit. And so people began studying the environment.
Something happened when I was a kid. I remember when everything was thrown out. You put your trash in a waste basket, and it disappeared. And no one seemed to have a problem with this. And then there was a huge marketing campaign, Earth received her own day, and recycling was introduced into schools and communities and homes. I am not saying recycling is bad, or that we should revert back to the old way of doing things. Recycling is probably good. But along with this campaign that was modern in its origins, snuck the Après Post, and the majority of culture still doesn’t know it. Earth receiving its own holiday was the beginnings of paganism. The Earth is now something to be revered and cherished. The Christian notion that God gave man the Earth to tend has been thrown out as archaic and barbaric. Part of this is because of the abuse of that power, but there is hostility to it nonetheless. We are not the gardener anymore. Après Post sees humans at best as a steward, and at worst as a parasite. A steward only maintains what isn’t theirs, and a parasite outright steals. It kills to survive. The Christian idea of ownership is gone.
This reverence for Earth is a new religion. It is complete with priests and followers, some of whom are more devout than the average Christian. But what is truly scary is that we have all been indoctrinated to the religion and follow it without realizing what we are doing. Again, I think recycling is a good thing, but we need to keep it in perspective. We should recycle because the Earth is a wonderful gift from God and as such should be honored. We were given a Divine mandate to keep the garden and subdue the Earth. And just like any other commands from God, we should follow this with fear and trembling. But is that why we recycle? I would say the answer is no, that is not why. Let me give you an example from my own life.
As a pastor, I have very many Christian friends. My wife and I also host a house church at our home twice a week. We have been doing this for years. Part of the house church deal is that different people cook and clean each week. Part of this cleaning is taking out the trash that house church has created. Let me stop here, and make another confession. My house doesn’t recycle. Before you get too mad at me, let me tell you why. Our trash company only gave us one bin for trash (I won’t name them ever for fear they will be blown up). They pick up the bin once a week and empty it. They have never given us recycling containers. Now you may think I should go get them, but then I have to take them to the dump, buy a dump sticker, sort my trash- and I am lazy. We would probably recycle if the company made us, but they don’t, and so being fallen, I take the easy and cheap way out. Whoever cooks and cleans at our house church immediately notices this fact. They ask where the recycling is, and I tell them the same story I just told you, and they have in the past, always accepted it, and thrown out everything. That is until this last year.
This new generation is different. They are all environmentalists. They have grown up knowing nothing else. When I explained to them this past September (2007) about why I don’t recycle, they attacked me. In their eyes I was now unredeemable. I could see my credibility as a spiritual leader falling away from me. It was the greatest offence I could have done. And the reason was that I was killing Mother Earth. Many of these people were new Christians, and I don’t know if they had all their theology down. They were not arguing that recycling was a Biblical mandate. Scripture was not brought into the conversation. They just knew that recycling was a supreme good. They didn’t question this assumption, or why it was so, it just was. What they didn’t see, is that without a Scriptural reason for recycling, they were in fact standing on old pagan truths. The Mother had to be revered and honored. Not to do so would bring her wrath upon us.
The idea that I would not protect the Earth was appalling to them. What they don’t see is that this fascination with, and strict adherence to recycling is a pagan value, or at least the current reasons to recycle are pagan in origin. What has been taught for 20 years now is that the Earth is to be valued above all else. If we don’t value her she will retaliate. The Earth has been anthropomorphized more than anything else in our current culture. She is a living organism. We call the rain forest her lungs. We speak about her wrath. We talk about robbing and raping her. And this is all from the “mainliners”. If we are to talk about environmental anarchists, the view is even bleaker.
The general idea is that if we continue to steal from our Mother, she will crush us. We need to give her homage. The Earth is not ours anymore. She is her own thing. We can’t just take what we want because it already belongs to someone. But Christianity says it was a gift to us. It is pagan culture that has worshiped the Mother goddess, and has always associated her with the Earth. It is no coincidence that Earth’s name is Gaia, or that we still call her mother. She is an ancient god. One full of power and wrath. And this is as true today as it ever has been.
We are told to recycle to reduce trash so that we don’t upset the ecosystem. We need to conserve because Earth has given us her bounty and we are squandering it. This makes her angry. She will stop blessing us unless we change our ways. Unless we reverse course and value her again, the goddess will unleash her vengeance. This is how environmentalists today talk, but I challenge us to listen to how Native Americans who practice their pagan religions also talk. It is hard to tell the two apart. In recycling we are offering our gifts back to the great mother. We are presenting our sacrifice. We have spent time washing our trash to make sure it is acceptable. We have sorted. We have separated. We have taken not just one trash can out, but many. Or we have driven it to the alter ourselves because our trash company didn’t give us multiple bins. We have changed our lifestyle to please the great mother, and hopefully know she will continue to sustain our existence. And this attitude doesn’t end with recycling.
(exapand)
How many people are now paying money to offset their environmental footprint? There are companies designed to do just that. We drive to work, but feel guilty, so we pay someone to plant a tree. Does this sound like a system of sacrifice to anyone else. There are priest who stand between us and the mother. They make offerings in our stead. We have infuriated the mother by driving and wasting her resources, so in return we will give her our money, via the priest’s planting of something, and hope the offering is good in her eyes. If we are real devout, be pay more than we need to. We give of our recourses so she will continue to give of hers. By offering sacrifice we hope to assuage our guilt and her wrath. This is pagan sacrifice.
(expand)
And what about Global Warming? As I already said, I believe the data. We are getting hotter, and it appears that man has something to do with it. But we also need to remember that there is an agenda being pushed. I am not saying we shouldn’t find better sources of energy than fossil fuels, we should. But we also need to remember that humans are not the enemy. If we are to believe some of the propaganda right now, we have doomed the Earth. It well would have been better had we never existed. We have elevated our mother to a higher position than ourselves. She has regained her position as goddess. And we are told that there will be consequences if we don’t change. The way these are phrased though, it seems more like a person’s revenge than a system trying to find equilibrium.
(expand)
Before we discuss any of this, we need to remember that a value system has already been cast when we speak of global warming. We are assuming it is a bad thing. It is immoral to let the Earth warm. We have to stop what we have done. We don’t know that this is true though, it may be better. No one knows, we have never had it happen before. Notice that, again, there are absolutes. Après Post brings its value and truths to the culture. Warming is bad. This is not Post Modern, this is a truth external to our thoughts. This is not to be debated, but rather accepted with blind faith. This is also I would argue, a pagan thought.
Pagan cultures have always operated on the idea of balance. If we push too hard one way, the gods will push back. We need to have yin and yang. Harmony is the highest good. We need earth, air, fire, and water[i]. Very often to day we are told that the Earth is on the brink, it is out of balance, we have moved too far in one direction. This is pagan ideology. There is not this stream of logic in Christianity. Sure, to every thing there is a season, but we don’t need balance per se. There is not a Chi inside us that will get out of whack; we don’t need to realign our chakras. What paganism tries to do is balance all things so that none revolt against us. We need to maintain the earth so it is not offended.
We assume when we talk about global warming that a direction is bad. Getting hotter means we have thrown off the balance. Directionalism is evil. It must be fixed, and if we don’t do it, nature will. To stop her vengeance, we must police ourselves. The pagan world is a see-saw. This is why sacrifice had to be made when things were wanted. The other side of the sales needed to be balanced. We can see this in the tales of magic in our own culture.[ii] There are consequences when people go to far. Scales are always fixed by the universe. Very often we see the tale of a witch hurting someone, only to be hurt herself. To get what she wanted, she had to sacrifice. She pushed, and the god pushed back. Balance was restored. Pagan balance.
And this is the Après Posts ideal today. The Earth must be balanced. For every tree we cut down, we need to plant another. As we take from mother earth, mother nature, Gaia, we must also give. And the idea is that we have taken too much. That is why we are unbalanced. We have not returned what we have used. We drill for oil and offer nothing in return. Nature will soon rebel against this. Our mother won’t be made a fool of for long. She will repay in kind what we have done. That is, unless we stop now. We need to restore the planet before it restores itself. If we maintain balance, maybe the goddess will be pleased and leave us be.
This is so akin to pagan earth cults it is scary. We have the experts prophetic visions, the environmentalist priestly offerings, and the adherents sacrifices and hopes. If we recycle enough, change our behavior to please her enough, drive less, plant more trees, then maybe we will be blessed. We have only stopped short of killing rams and spilling their blood, or having orgies to induce the gods to mate. Nature has become the most esteemed object of Après Post culture. We have given up trying to control it in the Modern sense- we no longer try to make it rain. But in quite another we are trying to control it all the time. The pagan sacrificial system was about control. It was about getting the gods to do what you wanted them to do. This is how we are now trying to control nature. We are giving her what we think she wants. We are apologizing for our previous sins. We are sacrificing our old culture at her alter to have her not wipe us out. Recycling and renewable energy are all about control and worship.
Balance and cycle are at the forefront of the pagan world view. They noticed seasons and lunar cycles, and saw truth in them. Eclipses and comets were bad omens for this reason. It meant things were out of order. Cycle and balance are also the new ideals of Après Post environmental science, and this is not just evident in attitudes about global warming. We see it in all area of this new study. Look at attitudes about forest fires. For ages man has seen forest fires as the enemy. The burned down civilizations and the resources needed for them. Fighting them was paramount in the Modern Mans mind. That is not the case today. Yes, we still fight them when they are close to houses, but our general outlook on them has changed. We see them as part of a forest’s life cycle. They are necessary. We let them burn to keep the forest healthy. We can’t cut down trees because that is bad, before can destroy whole wildernesses and it is good. It is the way our mother cleanses herself.
Fires are not a threat anymore, but a boon. They allow a forest to maintain itself. It is death and rebirth, the same thing that pagans saw in winter. It is not something to be stopped, but rather honored. As good children, we should look on with reverence and awe. Look how the Earth rejuvenates herself. She is so fantastic. Conquering this with human intervention is a vice. How dare we intervene. She knows better than us. And when houses burn, it is always our fault. We should have had more respect. We need to know our boundaries. It is we who have encroached on her, not visa versa. If we only didn’t live there, or were better about brining balance, mother nature would not have had to be so cruel with us. Fire is seen as her retribution for what we have done.
Environmentalists tell us there will be more fire until we have learned. It is the way nature restores balance. When we built houses in San Diego we upset her, and now we are reaping the consequences. The solution is to move out of her way, not fight the fires. The goddess needs her space. We no longer are the ones to bring order. We are pawns in natures game. It is the great goddess that will cleanse the world in fire and water. We did not bring order, but chaos. When we neglected her and did as we wanted, we invoked her wrath. Humans are the ones blamed for the rise in natural disasters, and the reason is that we unbalanced order. We need to begin revering nature, and when we do this properly, things will be as they should.
This reverence of Nature has infected all areas of Après Post culture. In his sermons, Mark Driscoll is constantly talking about Seattle’s love for dogs. In his town he says there are more dogs than children, and even movements to allow dogs to dine with humans at restaurants as co-equals. [iii] And he recognizes this as pagan. But I don’t think he goes far enough. In all areas of higher culture, there is a renewed and eerie love of animals. It is not just Seattle. There are whole industries devoted to clothing pets, massaging pets, grooming pets. People are worshipping nature. This is pagan. Animals have always been revered in pagan societies. Egyptian gods were half animal, as are most of the Native American deities. Cats, birds, wolves and crocodiles have always seen associated with pagan gods, if not gods themselves.
This all changed in Modernity. Animals during and after the Renaissance were dissected alive.[iv] They were seen as lower creatures. I am not condoning this, although we have benefited from it. Medicine and anatomy had it start in these gruesome experiments. At the same time, not even the dead bodies of humans could be experimented on. Throughout the modern age we performed all our tests on animals, sending monkeys into space well before humans. Cosmetics, vaccines, and medicine were all animal experiments first. And no one complained. Humans were better than their animal counterparts.
(expand)
But Post Modernity questioned this assumption. Man was reduced to only an animal with the capacity to make tools. Why should other creatures suffer? The Judeo-Christian truths were cast aside, and along with them the belief that humans were special. Animal rights advocates (a contradiction in Modern term) fought to ban animal testing. We were lowered to the position of ape. But this didn’t go far enough. Like everything else, Après Post picks up where Post Modernism left us. Post Modernity shattered the truth that we are higher than animals, and Après Post filled the vacuum of hierarchy. Something has to reign supreme, and Après Post fills this void in the top tier with the very things that were below us. Animals now reign supreme. And this must be the case where nature is worshipped.
We feed animals human food. We give them human medicine. There are even animal psychiatrics and animal anti-depressants. We need to keep our gods happy. Even science must bow down and worship the creature. The other night I was watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe was on[v]. They were in the Arctic studying a Greenland Shark. The object was to get one alive, tag it, and release it, but in the struggle to bring it to the surface, it suffered injuries that were fatal. The animal had to be killed. They had to apologize for this brutal “murder” at least 4 times throughout the show. They explained that they didn’t want to kill it. The entirely of the episode they justified the massacre. But it is only a shark. It is not even endangered. There are plenty. But this was seen, even by the scientists, as a sin. This is not a Modern Perspective. Only when nature and animals have been elevated over humans do we need to apologize for killing them. It is not our right to hunt and study anymore, but privilege, and we need ot recognize it as such. This is akin to our ancestors offering back part of the animal or another offering after a hunt. The spirit of the animal needs to be appeased.
Pets used to be a tool for us. They hunted the mice, or kept the wolves away from our flock. They didn’t live in our house. If they got sick, we shot them. They were below us. Not so anymore. There are now day cares for dogs so they are not lonely, gourmet food, trendy outfits. We buy things with our money and offer them to our pets. This is animalism, a form of pagan worship. Look at India for some perspective. Rats, snakes and cows are revered. They are adorned with beads. They can not be killed. In the temple of the rat, humans who can barely feed themselves, offer the best food in their house to these rodents. And this is far closer to our Après Post culture than we openly admit. Cows are sacred and can not be harmed in India. We laugh since they are food for us, but I dare you to kill a dog and cook it. The very thought huts our Après Post sensibilities, but in most of the world, dogs are food. We would be arrested and labeled a monster if we were to hurt a dog today. This is paganism.
(expand)
I am not saying torture of animals is ok. But if you buy a dog and want to eat it, I say go ahead. It is your right as a human to eat any animal you want. Vegetarianism and Veganism are the height of this pagan animalism. The belief that it is wrong to kill animals is foreign to almost all cultures. If Modern Man were vegetarian, he would have died. Animals have always been food. Veganism is even more extreme. Not using any product made by animals is absurd. It appeals to the animals rights. Only in pagan cultures do animals have rights. Modern Man gave rights only to humans. They were the pinnacle of creation. They were the height. Paganism sees all nature a valuable and worthy of protection.
The outcry against animal testing, an Après Post value, can also be seen through this animalistic paganism. It is almost worse to animal test that to not recycle. All products tell us they are not tested on animals. Movies make sure we know no animals were harmed in the making of the film. But shouldn’t a rat get cancer rather than a human? The answer is only yes if we hold man as God’s special creation. If all nature is sacred and we disturb it, then we are evil. The value of nature has almost taken over in present day America. Après Post’s usurpation of the Judeo- Christian philosophy of creation is almost complete.
(expand)
Even the rise of new, “humane” or no kill traps for pests is a pagan nature worship. Mice and rats are pests. They are not to be ought and set free in a field. They bring death and disease. But today we think they have just as much right to live as you or I. People think that is we who invaded their territory, and so we should show compassion. God gave Man the Earth though, not vermin. Again, I point to Hindu Temples where rats are free to eat of the human priest’s food. Things thought dirty and pests by Modernity have been elevated to the position of rightful owners and co-inheritors of the world. Humans are now seen as the intruders, and intruders are always bad. It is we who invade and disrupt. It is we who hurt the planet. It is we who are the menace.
And science has been pointed to for justification of this philosophy. Biology has shown man to be no different from other animals. It has taken man of his pedestal and placed him firmly at the base of the animal kingdom. Environmentalist show how all creatures are needed for the survival of ecosystems, and then set about to prove how Man’s fishing and hunting has violated the balance. We are not allowed to kill mountain lions, even when they are a threat to us, because our mother needs them. They are more valuable than we. It is the animals who are the order and also maintain it. We are seen as intruders. The previous environment is more important than the people who want to change it. And in a pagan society this is true. It is only by appeasing nature that we can guard against it. We don’t violate the sacred because it will come back and kill us. The cycle and balance must be maintained. The mother goddess is something to be worshiped. Nature something to be revered, not subdued. The Judeo-Christian ethic of filling the Earth and creating society is sacrosanct to paganism. The gods are the ones who create, and we need to obey them.
I want to give one more example of Après Post pagan value of the environment, but at first it is not going to seem it. The current demonizing of cigarette smoking has its origins in paganism. I know it doesn’t seem to fit anything I have said so far, but bear with me. Again, I feel I need to buffer this section by stating I am not pro-smoking. I realize that it is bad for you. I used to smoke, and know its addictive properties. I think there are valid Christian reasons to not smoke, we are God’s Temple, we shouldn’t be controlled by anything but God and his Holy Spirit, we need to not gratify the desires of the flesh, but these are not societies reasons for not smoking.
At the same time, Christianity has always placed a value on the individual. Modern Society, based in Judeo-Christian values, also held the individual over the group. This value was so high the Declaration of Independence, one of the pinnacles of Modern Political Thought, gave the individual the right to throw off society and government if they infringed upon his basic rights. Paganism values the group though, above the individual. And this is the root of non-smoking campaigns. They are not aimed at helping people cope with addiction, or give them a better life. Thy are aimed at giving the groups environment a cleaner feel. Smoking is seen as pollution.
If this were not the case we would not have so many bans on smoking in public. The idea that cigarettes can impact an entire parks air is absurd. However, in an age where environment is worshipped in all other aspects of culture, can we really be surprised by this? I am sure second hand smoke hurts, but outside? Is there not already all the chemicals from cigarettes in the air from a myriad of sources. But smoking is a visual sign of pollution. The smoker is putting his or her pleasure above the environment of the group. This is akin to the disgust at my not recycling. I have put my private desires to be lazy over and above that of mother earth and the group. And remember, if we don’t honor the great goddess, she will punish us. Her punishment will not be just on me though. My pollution effects the entirety of humanity. When she lets loose her vengeance, it will be all of us who suffer. The group must come first. I have to be coerced into recycling or not smoking so that everyone isn’t hurt.
Smoking does fit into the earth cult’s logic. We need to cleanse and purify all so that we all are saved. People must lay down and do as the group sees best to make sure the mother is not aroused to enact her vengeance. When laws are enacted to stop smoking, it is not for the individual. It is for the group and the environment. This trumps all, since it is our god.
Pagan cultures have always been divided into too schools, earth cult and sky cult. These two were typically at war. Some pagans worshipped animals, and some the stars. Both thought the other wrong, or praying to an inferior power. It is interesting to note that Après Post fuses both of them together. Earth cult may seem to have more power at the present, but it is firmly rooted in sky cult creation. They need each other to stand. Cosmology alone can not spread pagan ideals, and environmentalism alone has no cosmic beginning. Together though, they define a new (old) way of seeing this world. Après Post world view combines all paganism together, from astrology, to mother earth cult, to animalism, to form a coherent world view the likes of which will change our country forever. Firmly grounded in science, it touts it new truth around as unquestionable. It holds a new morality that the west has not seen for thousands of years. Nature is held in the highest honor, and humanity cast down as the greatest threat. Balance and cycle are now the norm. From Universes that birth other Universes eternally, to the death and rebirth of forests, circles and cycles now define our culture. The sharp line of Judeo-Christian creation, validated by Modern Science has been replaced. Time is not linear anymore. Progress not desired. Change is bad. The highest ideal is balance. And this is just the beginning.
Over the next few chapters we will leave science behind. It has played it part in this new world view, but it only the base. It is the justification, but the morality is found elsewhere. We will be examining pop culture and politics to find out not only what Après Posts holds as its ideals, but also how it is effectively communicating them to the masses. Film is the new medium for this culture. We will be looking mostly at it in its various forms. Written word had become a thing of the past for effective communication of culture. TV, movies, and the internet are where the current Après Post philosophers reside. And so we will continue to study Après Post culture through what it transmits itself best through. As we look at film we will see clear picture arising of the pagan values that Après Post holds so dear. We will now look at Television in all its glowing glory.
No comments:
Post a Comment