Mostly Rubbish.

[Mindful]

The ersatz religion of Environmentalism has ‘recycling’ as one of its central dogmas, and no amount of facts and stats can dissuade a votary from his or her dedicated worship. This belief system is a mansion with many rooms out of which few exits lead. It is also an ideology, and the ideologically driven fail to understand the deeply ironic turn of events when the virtue drug leads to long-term ignominy. For unforeseen consequences are history’s way of laughing—an ironic and inevitable cackling at our solemnly held beliefs; and this is surely true even of those of us who try to wrest some kind of sanity from the cascade of information to which we are subjected.

Changing the world ‘for the better’ is a central tenet of the faith, too. But as someone has blasphemously pointed out, Marxists and their softer new-age ilk have been blundering along trying to change the world; the point, however, is to understand it.

Mostly Rubbish

 

[Mindful]

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Many municipalities in Europe and the United States pride themselves on their recycling programs. Interested parties might reconsider the value of such efforts. Think of the costs in time and money associated with the effort of separating out household waste, collecting it, using labor-intensive sorting systems, sending the sorted material to the businesses that then produce something that is of value to consumers. But the majority of householders have been bludgeoned into believing that they are helping to ‘save the planet’ or some such rubbish.

Who is behind this push to regulate the lives of consumers? In general, it comes from left-leaning irrationalists; that is, people who like the idea of controlling others. Many also reap rewards in salary, status and self esteem. Pile onto that media wackos, politicians, bureaucrats, local busybodies and waste-handling corporations, and you get an almost unassailable program of fakery.

We should make no mistake; there are many here among us who like to control others. In The Captive Mind, Czeslaw Milosz argues convincingly how the twentieth century mind is vulnerable “to seduction by socio-political doctrines and its readiness to accept totalitarian terror for the sake of a hypothetical future.” His immediate target was the imposition and maintenance of communism in post-World War II Poland; although Milosz notes that “the book transcends limitations of place and of moment.” Perhaps “totalitarian terror” is too strong a word for the imposition of stupidity and make-work schemes by subtle and sometimes openly intimidating state power. Yes, this is low-level oppression, but as with so many of the environmentalist dogmas, we are all subject to their injunctions.

 

[Mindful]

Of course, if you enjoy wasting time doing stupid things, how about just taking up recreational drug use? Alternatively, you could try helping Wile E. Coyote catch The Road Runner in a never-ending round of senseless (but ingenious) schemes. The animated versions are at least amusing and a testament to the failure to let facts get in the way of a senseless belief system. And yes, we know how these stories end—because we have seen them so many times before.

 

[Mousterian]

I'm right there with you, Mindful, on the recreational drugs bit.
And the Recycling Dream is pretty much a waste of resources.
What we really need to do is start shooting SUV drivers, and anyone with a dishwasher that doesn't double as a bed-warmer.

 

[Mindful]

I watched a documentary on German TV once. Germany, the high priest of recycling. All the laborious separations had been dumped together on a ship, and sent off to a rubbish dump in the Philippines.

 

[Mousterian]

The obvious answer is to just stop using so much shit. But we're all suckers to the advertising industry, and we are the problem. The world could tootle along nicely, with about 1 billion people living in the obscene luxury that we all aspire to, but 7 billion? Soon to be 10 billion, we need a couple more planets to raise the resources to give them all a 54" TV.