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I Wish I Could Laugh
The recent thread on ecosexuals really disturbed me. I know from the comments that the topic amused many Ricochetti, since, on its face, it is ridiculous that women have intercourse with dirt or snow or trees. Nutjobs are nutjobs, right? Well … no. Not at all. Not even a little. And here’s why:
Ecosexuality is merely the next step in the devolution of society, back to the basic pagan idol worship of the ancient world, back when people sought to live in harmony with nature, finding meaning in worshipping natural forces through rituals that, though they may start with words, sooner or later devolve to promoting baal peor celebration of defecation and animalistic/Dionysian sexual rituals, and then, eventually, end up with human sacrifice. And that is not all, of course. Pagan societies are inherently different from free societies, from Judeo-Christian ideas about morality and private ownership of property and personal and societal growth and change.
Pagan societies see the entire world as cyclical, all things as cycles. Only Judaism and Christianity chart an arc, believe in and are positive actors for the idea of historical progress. A society that worships nature necessarily condemns anything that improves upon nature. And it is thus a society that craves returning to the natural human-as-animal in every sense.
The signs are all around us if we just take a step back and view things with a little historical perspective. Human life only has inherent value to Judaism and Christianity because our holy books tell us that we are made in the image of G-d, that each and every person contains within them a divine spark, unique to people, and in sole contradistinction from the rest of nature. Without the Torah’s illogical and counter-empirical assertion that all human life is valuable, eugenics is a perfectly rational way to order society. What started with abortion leads to euthanasia, and then the ability — nay, the virtue — of culling the herd just as nature does.
You might think that I am being a bit dramatic. Sure, there are pagan nature worshippers out there. But nobody really believes the sun or the earth is a deity, right?
Right?
Before you are quick to conclude that nut jobs really can be safely ignored, remember that even as Greeks made fun of their gods, and were not sure whether they really existed; they still killed and sacrificed people in the names of these deities. Remember that believing in a Star Wars-like “life force” is what drives so many within Asian cultures toward eating or drinking parts of animals so as to obtain their essences, or at least their sexual vigor. To this day, native tribes like Inuit prize still-beating caribou hearts as the ideal spiritual feast and physical delicacy. This is precisely why most native peoples ate parts of their conquered enemies: to absorb their spiritual energies along with their blood or other organs.
And look at the open and massive death festivals, on the rise across cultures around the world, orgiastic celebrations of everything that is dead. More cycles; the cycle of life, even especially death itself. This stuff is not harmless fun.
It is all creeping back. And I wish I could really find it funny. Paganism is dangerous and evil and against everything that Judaism and Christianity have spent millennia fighting against. Left unchecked, it threatens progress and civilization.
Here’s the thing: there is no simple way to fix the world. But I can share what I do personally to fight back against this creeping unholy spiritual revolution, and I mean this in all seriousness:
1: I treat animals like animals. Not people. Thinking that there is a soul in an animal (when in fact any animal is nothing more than whatever spiritual energy we invest in it) makes people crazy. When people care more about pets than humans, the world is in danger. I know people who have mortgaged their homes for a kidney transplant for a 14-year-old cat. It is more than eccentric: this kind of behavior tells us that something is very, very wrong.
2: I deliberately and publicly throw trash in the recycling and vice-versa. Recycling is nothing more than a religious ritual, and I only have One G-d. I buy plastic straws on principle. I avoid all “natural,” “non-GMO,” and “organic” products. I generate as much CO2 as I can (CO2 is plant food, and I am in favor of more life).
2b: In keeping with promoting life, I absolutely adore children, and revere mothers. I am writing this from an airplane seat, sitting next to a five-month-old babe in arms whom I stole from her mother under the pretext that I could make her stop crying. I could, and did: but I really just love kids, and I was glad for the excuse.
3: That Rico-thread on ecosexuality got one thing very right: we must use ridicule as well as logic when we want to defeat stupid ideas. We must laugh at everything that deserves our derision, and we must do it in a way that attracts more laughter and fun. Anyone who cannot take a joke needs to be smothered in them.
4: I treat every new idea, especially things like health scares, natural diets and “new discoveries” with deep suspicion. Society is being swept by popular idiocies, and it is only a matter of time before the villagers with pitchforks start re-enacting classics like the Salem Witch Trials, Edward Scissorhands, and pogroms. “Smear the Queer” is the most popular social game in human history, and all it needs right now is one spin of the bottle. Every new idea is a fad until it passes the test of time. Don’t owl or plank or selfie. Get off my lawn!
Most people do not do something because they think it is the right thing to do: they do it because someone else is doing it. This is because most people are followers, and both crave and need the security of believing that the Right Path resides in the safety of numbers or of authority figures or experts. It is human nature to follow the herd. But seeking holiness requires us to figure out what is right, to understand that we, not our herds, are responsible for our own actions.
It would be a terrible shame to throw away this incredible civilization by letting it be pulled, gripped by humanity’s instinctive need to find meaning in all things, back into pagan earth-worship, back into cyclical conformity with the natural world. Ecosexuality is not just silly – though it is that – it is another step toward child sacrifice and open barbarism.
Published in General
I think the notion of stewardship is an important one.
Excellent post. At its core, the eco movement is anti-human.
I am a conservationist. I frequently hug trees. I am blessed to live on a 40-acre arboretum planted by my grandfather. I see what happens when humans do not mix their effort and intelligence with nature, and I am not ashamed to believe that it is better when we do. Ban hunting, and Bambi gets wasting disease from overpopulation. Ban logging and watch your forests burn.
I think it was RAH who asked why a beaver dam, built by beavers to benefit beavers, was a thing of beauty, but a human dam, built to benefit humans, was an abomination?
…but muh salmon!
Unidirectional, yes… but the pagans were noticing something real: There are cycles: Judaism acknowledges this every day, week and month with recurring particular liturgy, and again with the pilgrimage festivals and High Holidays. The direction isn’t so much a straight line as a spiral. In memory of the Creation. Of the Exodus. Christianity followed suit in its way.
The Exodus took us out of Egypt where the deified River gave life; the farmers “watered their fields with their feet,” using the shadoof and similar technology. This was a backbreaking life, and on preparing to enter the Land of Israel, the Jewish people were told that in Egypt they had it easy. The land they were about to enter watered its fields from the rain. The rain was going to depend on their doing what G-d wanted them to do. Not just with their feet, but with their hearts.
There is a spectrum of understanding of G-d the Creator ranging from the “watchmaker” who made the physical universe and its laws and then set it in motion and walked away, to the doctrine of continuous creation (that the universe only exists because it is be newly created by G-d at every moment.)
The first allows for reliable physical laws but makes no room for miracles. The latter allows for miracles, and also for a capricious deity. Islam goes rather far to that side. Inshallah there will be a sunrise tomorrow. Abraham insisting that G-d act according to His own Law? Not so much.
Judaism takes a middle road: Yes, there can be, and were, big miracles in which natural law is set aside, and yes, reading Scripture that way is a correct reading. But just as prophecy was no longer needed once the written Torah was in our hands and the study of the oral Torah was underway, so too with miracles. The Book of Esther exemplifies this: G-d’s name is not mentioned, the events are all too believable palace politics, G-d does not suspend the laws of physics and chemistry.
Miracles? The great Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev stated that the splitting of the Re(e)d Sea was not a miracle, that it was not violation of the natural order: Those waters were of course created from nothing… and when they were created, their existence was conditional: They were, in effect informed “Part when the Jewish People need you to so that they can escape Egypt and go to receive the Torah, or you will never have existed at all.”
@Iwe is right; neopaganism is no joke. We should mock it, though.
I’m not sure it’s all due to the trade war. China is always willing to make money on gwailo stupidity, but the real war is beginning in earnest, Africa, the Caribbean and South America are coming along nicely and the trash was getting to be more trouble than it was worth.
There’s recycling recycling, and there’s fake, ritual recycling that does not actually save anything and creates multiple corrupt boondoggles and featherbedding. And provides more opportunities for children to lecture their parents and play Pavel Morozov.
That’s what China has done to us: The garbage police are going to come for you if you don’t wash your plastic before you recycle it (without wasting any precious water, of course.) Incineration? Nuclear power? no how, no way. (Speaking of Russian interference: Russian and Saudi money and probably Cozy, Fancy, and all the other Bears are heavily involved in fighting fracking, the Keystone Pipeline, and I suspect nuclear power.)
There’s genuine environmentalism, and then there’s spending trillions on bullet trains and carbon offsets habitat protection while millions upon millions of dead trees accumulate unsalvaged to fuel the next firestorm… which will release more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the big pickup trucks Detroit could ever build.
Then let’s ridicule it. Did those two ecosexualists ask for the tree’s consent before sex? If not, they should be arrested for sexual assault and ba-tree . . .
That may well also be the case, but they specifically said they were boycotting US trash because of the tariffs.
The Evil Dead clearly showed that not all tree-nookie need be consensual in either direction.
It’s very conservative to recognize that there are trade-offs for everything — no free lunch.
What if recycling paper consumes more energy than starting from scratch (transportation and processing)? It’s highly probable that’s the case for glass (sand is ubiquitous). The only materials that are efficiently recycled are probably metals (aluminum is particularly costly to mine and process from ore). I’m not saying I know this is the case — this is one (of many) highly complex calculations to make based on difficult-to-obtain measurements. And, no one really knows.
The point is, you may mean well by recycling your newspapers and glass, but there’s a good chance you’re actually consuming more resources than necessary. Good intentions and the road to hell and all that.
If anyone has any doubts about the dangers and ultimate ends of the neopagan movement, I recommend reading Moira Greyland’s The Last Closet.
It is ultimately a story of redemption, but you will need a strong stomach to get that far.
And, I’ll just add, I see no issue with reuse and repurposing. In fact, it engages the creativity of humans to do so. Win win.
Which is not necessarily, or maybe not necessarily all of the truth. They also said they were boycotting it because we didn’t sort it and clean it properly. Which is also not necessarily the truth.
Notice that with the boycott that they’ve triggered the good little boys and girls indoctrinated since nursery school to separate and recycle to get outraged, because their ritual isn’t being consummated by the transubstantiation of trash.
I admit, I skipped the first post about this because it seemed an example of a “Someone somewhere is doing something stupid” complaint, which can be made at any time in any society. But, even without clicking on that post (and alerting Google/Facebook that I am “interested” in such things), I saw ecosexuals highlighted in another article, off Ricochet. That makes me wonder if this might be the successor to crossdressing as the next unlikely fad.
You are right, iWe. This is why I refer to all Leftists as hippies. Willful fantasy is their foundation. Kumbaya and jackboots and a dance around the maypole.
The waste haulers out here made people stop trying to separate because invariably people wouldn’t do it correctly, and would often have contaminates or actual hazards mixed it (stretchy plastic films, for instance, which damage the plastic shredders). It’s cheaper for them to have teams of sorters at the unloading point.
It’s only consensual if the tree willingly spreads its limbs . . .
I am not promoting pollution for its own sake.
Liberals have fed us a line on recycling: it does not pay. Recycling is rarely actually even done. In my city – and many others – there is a “model” recycling plant where they bring schoolchildren – and then 90%+ or more of all the things designated for recycling are just tossed into the landfill.
They used to do studies on this, then stopped when all the results aligned that recycling is bad all around. Now it is promoted without any logic at all, just guilt-trips about saving the earth.
Recycling your garbage is just a daily ritual service to Gaia.
Beat me to it. Recycling wood products of any kind is a huge negative for the environment and for society. Especially any paper product that has been printed, as ink removal is especially nasty.
I recycle glass and metals. And only when it is easy.
I don’t agree with you about the trash and believe in being good stewards of the planet, and trying to rid the food and environment of cancer-causing and other health issue chemicals, but that’s just me and far from your real topic. You are 100% on target regarding the dive into paganism and the rejection of Judaeo-Christian beliefs and values. You don’t have to look far to see the vulgarity in every segment of society. The morphing of so many “genders” is the worst. It’s appalling what has become “acceptable” in everyday culture. It makes me deeply sad because I know its offensive to God – and I am with you – I will stand up for these principles because it is what I believe separates civil society from complete anarchy and filth – and if we care about our fellow human beings, we are obligated to help them out of the slums, literally and figuratively – thank you for your post.
If all the world thought this way how would we learn we could eat Tide pods?
Side Note: A lot of this has to do with the fact that people don’t recycle. They’ll throw stuff in bins, but they’ll throw the wrong items to completely and utterly stupid items (like dirty diapers). Some of this may be protest, but I wouldn’t put it past some to just not do it right either even with good intentions. The recycling companies can’t pick out all the trash, and companies in China who get our recycling are tired of dealing with it too.
Interesting study on the trade-offs of cloth and disposable diapers. It turned out to be pretty much a wash (pun intended). In a nutshell, cloth and disposables have similar global warming impact, though for different reasons. The manufacturing of disposable diapers has a larger carbon footprint, but the electricity used to wash reusable diapers cancels out most of the difference.
BTW, The global warming reference was made, I believe, to bring the issue to the attention of the eco lovers so they would actually read consider the trade-offs. There are other considerations at work regarding this issue and even with those, it’s still a wash.
I will note as cloth diaper users that the cost-benefit leans heavily to cloth.
Me, too. Lumber is a crop. To be planted, harvested, and used. There was more stewardship of the earth with tree farms in the Northwest and other major areas of planned growth than ever has been by the Fed Gov’t and its appointed minions (EPA, etc), and the eco-nuts prodding them on. Just look at the damage (fires, firestorms) that have resulted by them.
Wow, I saw the article but didn’t read it. I saw the pic of the girls licking a tree and just assumed that was symbolic, not that they really get sexual with trees etc. (Sort of like when people who ooo-ed and ahhh-ed about Mario Cuomo were called “Cuomo-sexuals” ).
I was with you until the part about treating animals like animals. Arguing about whether they have souls is like arguing about angels on heads of pins. Animals have the ability to love us. Even some of the biblical requirements about slaughtering animals seem to have in mind a desire not to unnecessarily hurt them. Then there’s 2 Samuel 12:1-7 where David is outraged when Nathan tells him about a man who killed a man’s pet lamb, (who ate the man’s food and was “like a daughter to him”) and ate it. The ability to see animals as pets and love them doesn’t really exist as much in non-western cultures and certainly didn’t in pagan cultures.
Unless you include labor…
Well, I don’t get paid for the rest of my parenting, so I don’t.
Treating them like animals does not mean abusing them. The biblical injunctions still hold. Beasts of burden get a day of rest and all that. It simply means we do not put animals on a par with humans made in God’s image and likeness.
Same with the environment. Of course we’re to be stewards. It’s just that so much of environmentalism is paganism dressed up with “science.” And piss poor science most of the time.
Ha! I’m guessing you don’t do the laundry. Or maybe you use a diaper service and still save money? I could see that.
I spray off the diapers. I’d say I do the wash about half the time for the diapers (my lovely wife Amanda has a system that works and I still haven’t memorized it). In my defense, I do quite a bit around the house. So there. Thbpt.