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This is the best characterization I've ever read of the Green movement.

I've joked for years about how nature has replaced god for some people, but it was always too vague without the connection to atonement and suffering.




To be more precise, I think green ideology is a secular rehash of Calvinism. It follows the same basic sin-and-redemption narrative.

I've often wondered if the failure of green ideology to take off is Asia is due to the absence of the Judeo-Christian hole for it to plug into.


>I've often wondered if the failure of green ideology to take off is Asia is due to the absence of the Judeo-Christian hole for it to plug into.

My take on this is that most Asian countries are newly industrialised - chances are that a young persons parents or grandparents were once dirt poor. They aren't interested in sacrificing their newly-obtained living standards for an ideology that looks mostly self-serving to any disinterested outside observer. Greenpeace et al trades on guilt, just as the Catholic church does. Asians just want to build exciting cities of the future and become rich. Something the rest of us used to want to do but have now lost the stomach for. It's the classic case of third-generational squandering of wealth, on a very large scale.


Catholicism has a very similar sin-and-atonement-based logic, and I've seen some non-practising catholics turn green.


Perhaps, we ought to replace their Green religion with an inert religion like the Wiccia religion.




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