A CALL TO ACTION!
The Psychology of Environmentalism?
Because of the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” there has been a lot of talk about so called global warming or more correctly, anthropomorphic global warming, recently. There are a lot of true believers regarding this issue. What is curious to me is that the vast majority of these people have not a clue as to what they are talking about. They lack the scientific training and objectivity to make such assessments. What I find fascinating the religious zeal which effects these people. What is it about the human psyche which makes us so ready to believe that mankind is evil? You see that is what it all boils down too, a literal hatred of humanity and our desires for comfort and security. Most of these activists would like to see a drastic reduction in the human population. This aspect of their religion was started in the seventies by the book “The Population Bomb.” By now this book has been thoroughly discredited. The author predicted mass starvations and other calamitous events would occur, decades ago. One of the curious things about human nature seems to be we defend thought patterns (which have been established by bogus information) for years to come after their establishment.
As a survival mechanism, humans as children make up “stories” about their world, which explain their and others role in life. Unfortunately, they lack the maturity and intellectual sophistication to write these stories very well. They contain all kinds of mythology and magical thinking which is very difficult for the creator/user to later decipher. We all look at life through a series of lenses, which were shaped by previous experiences. How flexible ones mind is to later examine these stories plays a critical role in ones later adjustment to reality. Another crucial factor in these stories developments is the sanity of home life during their formation. If one grows up in a dysfunctional unit all kinds of strange and unworkable myths are created. These are always fueled by anger and resentment. Therefore I submit that much of the hostility in society we experience today is routed in the destruction of the family unit. If one grows up in a very threatening world the end result will almost certainly be fear and mistrust of others. If religion was used as a punishment or to control the thinking and behavior of a child often that child will have tremendous hostility to religion and the society that they grew up in. I meet people like this all of the time. They are emotionally stuck in their early adolescent or teen years, viewing the current world through childlike prisms.
One sure sign of this is when you begin to discuss any given issue, a highly charged emotional argument; about all kinds of unrelated items will occur. It becomes impossible to have any rational discussion because of a hidden dialogue is occurring (to which both parties are unaware).
For those of you interested in a factual discussion about the issue of global warming I highly recommend the site www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ for a very well written and informative article. You might not be able to fully understand what is being said (this issue if incredibly complex) but will at least be able to read, well reasoned counter arguments to the true believers and their smoke screens. In a related article, there is a discussion about how the California Attorney General in attempting to silence critics of global warming by law suit. This site is very informative and I cannot recommend it too highly.
Peace |