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| Lileks: the joy of regulating other people's lives |
| 2007-12-04 |
| At a recent event a party guest was handing out a 6th grade class assignment her kid brought home: a survey on global warming attitudes. The first question gauged our concern over global warming; I marked “not very concerned,” which drew a wide stare from someone looking over my shoulder. It’s like you’re one of those people they sang about in “Hair”! People who don’t care about war, or social injustice! Somehow “not very concerned” means you’re a global warming denialist, and you would, if you had time and money, drive to the Arctic in a Hummer and push polar bears into the drink. With the windows down. And the heat on. No, it just means that I am not very concerned. I think energy conservation and alternate sources of power are good ideas in their own right, and must be pursued; I just don’t think lower Manhattan will be awash in 2050 unless we cut carbon emissions to a level previously associated with the 15th century, and I’m not going to live in a state of guilty panic over my carbon footprint. If others want to walk around wearing sandy underpants, fretting over what they cannot avoid doing and scolding others for buying produce shipped from Brazil instead of buying local, they’re welcome to it. Everyone needs a purpose in life. Of course, their purpose is often at cross-purposes with your purposes. This article (h/t Insty & Samzidata) is blunt: If the developed world is to implement the 80% cuts in carbon emissions the UN demands as part of the talks beginning in Bali today, the lives of our children will have to be dramatically different from everything we are currently bringing them up to expect. Agreed. And if the developed world is to implement the 95% reduction in human population proposed by the Bilderberger’s Ultra-Secret Herd-Thinning Initiative, our children’s lives will be drastically shorter than they’re being brought up to expect. So we had better take them to Disneyworld now, right? Something to think about when they’re fed into the bloody thrashing blades of the municipal Reduction Centres. Or you could note that reducing the population by 95% is probably not going to happen, any more than the developing countries will reduce their carbon output by 80 percent without mandatory sabot-insertion into every facet of modern industrial life. There follows the usual tut-tutting about other people’s spending choices, which are always easy to mock – and I’ll happily play that game too, because people do waste money on stupid stuff. Not me, though. There’s nothing I buy to enhance my mortal existence that isn’t a good idea whose merits can be proven empirically. Anyway: she wants a low-consumption economy, achieved by general societal consensus. If that’s what a society wishes, fine; go ahead. There’s a precendent for pulling together and doing without: “Hearteningly, we know it can be done - our parents and grandparents managed it in the second world war.” Well, buzzbombs, firestorms, wholesale overnight urban destruction and the threat of a life writhing under the Nazi boot do focus the mind. As it turns out, though, her example of plucky Britons pulling together to defeat the Hun peril was not achieved without a few nudges from their betters: In the early 1940s, a dramatic drop in household consumption was achieved - not by relying on the good intentions of individuals, but by the government orchestrating a massive propaganda exercise combined with a rationing system and a luxury tax. This will be the stuff of 21st-century politics - something that, right now, all the main political parties are much too scared to admit. It’s the rationing system some want, I suspect. It will be the job of the state to decide how many times a week you can eat meat, how many rooms you should have, what sort of vehicle you drive, how many times you may fly, how many toys you can buy your child. Incidentally, she’s also written that reducing consumption is one thing – but it’s more important to not have lots of children. Well, she has three, and does not appear to share a dwelling with their father. For shame. Note: this is not to say people don’t spend too much money on things they don’t need. It’s just not my place to request the state to keep them from doing so. In any case, I suspect that the impulse to bring all these untidy unhelpful examples of flagrant individualism under the steady hand of the Ministry of Rational Allocation has something to do with that fretful busybody insistence that people are simply not living right. If we had Star Trek replicators in every house that would conjure goods and meals out of boundless energy produced by antimatter teased from a three-micron fissure that opened into a universe populated entirely by unicorns who crapped antimatter in such abundance they were happy we used it up, and used their shiny pointy horns to poke more of it through the aperture into our dimension, columnists would bemoan the disconnect between labor and goods, and the soul-corrupting influence of endless ersatz vegetables. You can’t win. Because you shouldn’t. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #4 Unfortunately for the Netters at RUMORMILLNEWS, etc, they and the World have to undergo and survive the pre-2030 events first. ALways bear in mind that HOLY MOTHER/MOTHER MARY, like a good MOther or Parent, punished her children in love - its GABRIEL that welds the EARTH- and UNIVERSE-DESTROYING big Big B-I-G BBBBIIIIGGGG WHIPPING BELT = HEAVENLY SWORD. TEMPORAL > the SECULARIST = ATHEIST explanation is that the Earth wil undergo natural [spece] events; DIVINE/HEAVEN/RELIGIOUS > God will strike FIRSTLY at the sources of evil on Earth, Nations and Places, then ESCALATE HIS WRATH(S) FROM THERE UNTO "THE BIG ONE(S)". PC SECULAR WAFFLE-ISM > "ESCALATION", etc. IS NOT CONSCIENCE OR EXISTENCE OF ANY HIGHER ORDER UNTIL HUMANITY CAN QUANTIFY SAME. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-12-04 19:57 |
| #3 A RUMORMILLNEWS Poster's reported dream, describing DARK [Turbaned] STEPPE RIDERS/HORDE LEADERS OF EURASIA = FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE???, gives possible insight into when REGULATION, etc. is too much. These RIDERS are angry at the unfair dark-covert manipulations and crimes committed agz their ethical Father, espec by his own Clan/Relatives + Govt. UNLIKE THEIR FATHER, whom on rare occasion was benevolent and willing to tolerate a sin or crime in the name of a greater common good, espec not fighting his own relatives-People, THESE DREAM "RIDERS" ARE ALL HATRED, REVENGE, AND AMBITION FOR TOTAL GENOCIDE AND DESTRUCTION, AGZ THEIR KIN, SOCIETY, GOVT. AND ALL HUMANITY IN GENERAL. "NUTHIN' SAYS LOVIN' LIKE GENOCIDIN' AND REVENGIN' AGZ YOUR COUSIN", aka "WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND". Akin to RUSSIA [Kommersant] > Failure to stop or divert Iran from dev nuke weapons now, may in a decade result not only in a NUCLEAR-ARMED RADICAL IRAN = NUCLEAR-ARMED ISLAMISM/ISLAMIST XTREMISM, but a likely REGIONAL NUKE WAR IFF NOT GLOBAL NUKE WAR, as due or induced by Xtremist/Radical Islamist ambition? Also from RUMORMILLNEWS > SHIFTAWARENESS.com > describes another Poster dream or vision of A MOON-COSMIC OBJECT COLLISION, whereupon the MOON OR THE OBJECT THEN CRASHES INTO THE EARTH [Comet Apophis 2030?]. * Character "VINCENT" as TOM CRUISE in "THE COLOR OF MONEY", starring a riccocheting billiard/pool ball. All together now, wid feeling, D *** NG IT, MAVERICK, ITS IN THE WAY THAT YOU USE IT ...! Holmes, Tuttle, and Chiron. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-12-04 19:40 |
| #2 I wonder what would happen if we, as a people just said to the world's Chicken Littles "Oh yeah? Make me." What would be their method of trying to compel us to comply? |
| Posted by: eLarson 2007-12-04 14:41 |
| #1 Ahh... The Master Plan. Brought to you by the All Knowing Self Appointed Elite. Where are the Founding Fathers when we really need 'em? |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2007-12-04 13:52 |