Saturday 23 November 2019

The metaphysical evil of modern environmentalism

Modern environmentalism is anti-human, its underlying assumption is that if it wasn't for the activities of man - then there would be no environmental problem.

This applies pretty much across the board, and goes back even to the early (1970s) environmentalism (or 'ecology' as it was called then) - when the emphasis was medievalism/ de-industrialisation, anti-consumption, self-sufficiency, voluntary simplicity. In general, Man was intrinsically a problem and therefore ought to tread-lightly (as possible, with as few feet as possible) on the earth.

More recently, with the Global-Warming-climate-change-emergency-revolution mob; this has become a kind of self-hatred combined with that generalised loathing of people that surfaces among even the most mainstream of environmentalists - such as Sir David Attenborough.

I mean that barely suppressed desire to clean the planet of all people - starting-with, but ultimately not-confined-to, climate-change deniers... 

This assumption of Men versus The Environment is even accepted by the opponents of mainstream Green activists - but they simply take the opposite stance that Man is more important than the environment. 


But the lesson of the philosophical understandings of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield is that Man co-creates the environment. The environment has no independent existence separate from Men's conceptualising of it. As Steiner summarised in Philosophy of Freedom, we know nothing of percepts without concepts, there is no objectivity without common concepts.

As Barfield said, in the Saving the Appearances (1957) - that which is unrepresented in unknown. The most we could know or say without Man is that there is something-else, but what that something might be?... Well, it would not be 'the environment' as we know it.

Without Man thinking, there would be no environment. If Men were destroyed, the environment would also be destroyed.

Therefore, mainstream environmentalism is incoherent - and always has been. Its motivational chronic anti-Man animus is revealed for the evil it is.


2 comments:

Faculty X said...

It's long overdue for all these nonsense speaking fake eco-priests to be forced to have some consistency in their views - what about mass immigration's impact on the environment?

When are Western environmentalists going to start targeting the vast and growing numbers of Africans, Asians, and peoples from India?

Immigration should obviously be banned if environmentalists weren't merely doing a childish morality play within only Western society.

Bruce Charlton said...

FX - Yes, all that is true; but there is a very deep and ultimate sense in which Man's status as co-creator changes the basis of all such debates.