MANY of the world’s great doctrines claim that man’s moral duty is to serve others. Environmentalists, on the other hand, might claim that it is to live in harmony with nature. The Greens are perhaps a bit different. They might claim that in order to live in harmony with nature we need to first change society and in particular our attitude to the consumption of the earth’s finite resources. In short Greens might suggest that in order to save the earth, we need to first change our values.
According to my Oxford dictionary values are principles or standards of behaviour – one’s judgement of what is important in life. Some argue that if you take nothing seriously, it means that you have no values. But where do these values come from and what in particular does a Green value?
Some claim the values of the Greens have their origins in Romanticism – in the same way that modern science might claim the Enlightenment.
Romanticism originated in the second half of the 18th Century in Western Europe partly as a revolt against the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific rationalism of nature. The Enlightenment was about reason and the critical questioning of institutions, customs and morals.
If Romanticism was primarily a revolt against reason and rationalism and if the Greens derive their values and beliefs from Romanticism, what value then might the Greens place on science and the scientific method?
Is it simply that the Greens do not hold reason as an absolute, but rather as just one value to be balanced against other universal human values including dignity, tolerance, justice and compassion?
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Earlier articles/blog posts in this series can be found here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/tag/philosophy/
The photograph was taken in the Town of 1770, central Queensland, earlier this month.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Brilliant bit of insinuation Jennifer!
Great doctrines – moral duty to serve others as opposed to the greens who serve nature. Nice, very nice.
Environmentalists are different from Greens. Smart segway there to allow you to drop an insinuation about the values of a Green being different – they are alien to you and me, they are………’un-australian’.
Romanticism – However, I think you could’ve done better than the first paragraph of the Wikipedia definition, don’t you think.
I did like your question about where values come from, that debate could go on for days.
If I held the same ideology as you this piece would make me feel vastly superior because I am a being of reason while the Greens are not and they will stab me in the back for their values of ‘nature’. Its a nice piece of propaganda masquerading as discussion.
Greens
Jeremy C,
You write … “Their values of nature”. What do you mean by this. Can there be such a thing as values of nature?
In the above piece I suggest that the Greens at least claim to value dignity, tolerance, justice and compassion as well as reason.
This is an amazing strawman building exercise Jennifer – he’s ten stories high now! Will you set him on fire and dance around him when he’s finished?
Are you a closet Wiccan?
I am thinking Jennifer that where the Enlightenment grew out of Humanism, Rousseau-en Romanticism was a reaction against Enlightenment Rationalism. In the Green movement it has morphed into something wholly misogynistic and anti-Humanist.
The signs are everywhere, like the human self-extinction project etc, but are masked from the view of the public by the incredibly vacuous and acquiescent MSM.
Values – basically a personal ranking of preference in a catallaxial sense.
One of the idiocies of Greenism is the belief that the environment has a monetary value. Apart from admitting crass ignorance of economics, Greens seem to think that environmental factors can be represented by money amounts.
Quite wrong.
Monetary values are totally restricted to the operation of the market in which individuals buy and sell “things”.
No one sells, let alone buys, environmental thingies. There is no such thing, for example, as social capital, though the intellectually dwarfed here, and we already have two examples above this post, would argue that there might be.
And then we might have “moral” values, and what are these? And like monetary values, might of necessity be referenced to some benchmark.
But the process of valuation is to rank things and events in order of personal preference as all valuations are of a personal nature.
The reason one individual prefers to live a mendicant (a parisitical lifestyle if there ever was one) while another prefers to live in luxury is simply based on personal preference or valuation.
Methinks, therefore, that Jennifer has posted a rather provocative comment here, but whether the usual fools will rise to the occasion remains moot.
The fools are easily recognised by the resort to ad hominems and/or ridicule.
“but whether the usual fools will rise to the occasion remains moot.
The fools are easily recognised by the resort to ad hominems and/or ridicule.”
Thereby himself undertaking some ad homming. But not noticed.
Isn’t it so hard to step outside your own POV.
Luke
Ad hominems are personally directed, otherwise it’s blathering.
Luke = 0
hi, this is well worth the read. it is from the late 1940s, but it is so very pertinent to today-
http://mises.org/etexts/hayekintellectuals.pdf
it is fairly long, so grab a cuppa.
Most “greenies,” just like “progressives” are basicly hypocritical tyrants. They want to force some lifestyle on others, while they do as they wish (having deluded themselves into thinking that what they wish is noble). This can be demonstrated empirically, since you can see it everywhere. And there are some interesting equations that attend this empiricism. For example, the amount of sincerity varies as the inverse of the amount of condemnation of others.
IMHO, if you don’t believe in a God of some sort, there simply is no basis for any moral structure on this planet, and all we have is warring tribes, all of whom think they have the proper “morals.”
Jae,
“IMHO, if you don’t believe in a God of some sort, there simply is no basis for any moral structure on this planet, and all we have is warring tribes”
I don’t believe that and I’m a christian. Part of the reason is that there are some ‘gods’ that are perfectly frightful and you wouldn’t want to follow the morals under them e.g. the ‘Baals’ of the OT where human sacrifice was the norm.
grab a cuppa and read this!
Energy Myths and Realities
Keith O. Rattie
Chairman, President and CEO
Questar Corporation
Utah Valley University
April 2, 2009
http://www.questar.com/news/2009_news/UVUSpeech.pdf
Jeremy: Yeah, you have a point. Should have stayed in lurking mode. I guess I’m just thinking that there is no clear path to what is “right” (or even to what “works” in the long run), unless it is understood that there is some higher authority than human institutions, which all are, by nature, corrupt to some degree.
“Most “greenies,” just like “progressives” are basicly hypocritical tyrants. They want to force some lifestyle on others, while they do as they wish”
What a lot of utter venomous crap. Sample size of one TV programme?
As for Gods – well you’ve got lots of them – and that’s most of the problem.
You wouldn’t entertain perhaps a godless early evolutionary predisposition to cooperative and apparently altruistic behaviours?
Have another 10 beers mate.
Dammit, I just hit a wrong key and blew a post. I’ll try to present the general idea:
Luke observes, perhaps innocently:
“You wouldn’t entertain perhaps a godless early evolutionary predisposition to cooperative and apparently altruistic behaviours?”
Well, I am fairly old, and I still have not known ONE of these creatures who turned out to be genuine (maybe you have–if so, I would like to hear the story). I’ve known a lot of folks that espouse that concept, but I certainly would not let my daughter date any of them. I grew up with the hippies and free-love and drugs, and booze and “anything is OK.” Virtually all of those folks had the basic concept you espouse. But where are they now? Either dead or goofy from too much drugs, or wealthy people who stopped walking their talk and who are now preaching that nonsense to others, while they don’t follow it themselves. Or some who went back to the fundamental teachings of the Great Religions.
Watch the ACTIONS (not the TALK) of Al Gore, BHO, Geitner, Princess Pelosi, Barney Frank, etc. etc. Isn’t it interesting that many, if not most, of these people who constantly claim that they are “dedicated to the people” don’t even pay their frigging taxes, and virtually NONE of them give more than a pittance to charities. I know precious few “liberals” who walk their talk. (I don’t know too many “conservatives” that do so, either, but it’s at least a 2:1 ratio.)
BTW, can you point me to an altruistic atheist?
Louis Hissink “There is no such thing, for example, as social capital…”
Louis…are you implying that a government has no right to gain capital through sales of natural resources, and invest that capital? In other words, are you saying it’s wrong for a government to act in a manner similar to that of a corporation?
In Canada, we had at least two government-owned oil companies. One was Petro-Canada and the other was BC Gas. Both were sold by right-wing governments who thought it was wrong for governments to be in business against private companies. With the recent surge in oil and gas prices, those companies could have bailed our counbtry out of debt and paid for universal schemes like medicare and pensions. What’s wrong with the people in a country working as a unit to finance their social schemes?
Gordon,
Capital is simply saved money – it comes from exchanges in the market between producers and consumers. Providing government companies operate in the market with no legal advantage of other companies, sure.
People working as a unit to finance their social schemes I have no objection if it is completely voluntary – but once it’s forced by law, nope – totally opposed to it.
And governments can’t have rights – only individuals can.
The only moral is to the tradition of respecting an individual’s unalienable rights to life. That demands he/she be permitted to act in any way to sustain their life, on the strict proviso that others have the same right.
However, government is essentially the negation of liberty, and therein is the problem, and its solution.
Louis,
An excellent statement ” The only moral is to the tradition of respecting ….. ”
You have to have a sort of government though, to insure “unalienable rights” and that everyone gets the same.
It should however be a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, yet to be implemented correctly by any group of people, especially on International scale!
Haldun Abdullah,
Thanks for the kind comment – actually it’s classic libertarianism of the Murray Rothbard School.
Take the idea of human rights, one of the most moronic ideas extant – It’s a classic collective nonsense term because collectivists don’t recognise any individual rights – only group rights. So in order to make someone appear “inhuman” they come up with this nonsense term “human rights”.
Yet while I tend to agree with Rothbard, I also tend to support Mises’ view that we do need a minimal government to protect individual rights, but clearly this situation does not exst at all, and yes we then do both agree on this.
We have voted on a referendum about Daylight saving in Western Australia today, and it is the 4th referendum on this issue. I voted NO, because I live by the solar rhythym – I get up when it’s light and go to bed when it’s dark – so my biological activity is from 4AM to 8PM each day. Tends to make one a little unsociable, too, but at 62 years of age, I am in rude health, probably because I don’t stress my body by ignoring its Circadian rhythym.
But why some politicians want to force us to get up an hour earlier during summer remains a mystery. The principal proponent of daylight saving here is Matt Birney, a conservative (???) politician.
But we will see what the results are tonight.
Haldun,
In addition I actually get up 1 hour later during daylight saving – and same for the other end of the day. Makes me even more unsociable :-). The principle really is that if some want to get up an hour earlier during summer, let them, but don’t presume to require the rest of us hoi polloi to follow suit.
Louis,
I am so happy to get to know about your sleeping habits. My wife used to think I am the only one that has it.
Now I conforted her by pointing out that there is at least one more person at the other end of the world that does the same. At 70 I am also happy about it.
I quess we are natural Greens that contribute to energy savings.
I also follow a similar sleep habit Louis as I’m 64 next month. I usually nod off around 9pm and wake with the Kookas.
” …what in particular does a Green value?” – Jennifer Marohasy
As has been mentioned before there are as many opinions among the Greens as there are ass***h****s;)
( Excuse me my language;)!
There are the Greenpeace people against the Sea Shepherd people.
There are the environmentalists against the animal activists.
There are the birdpeople against the windpower people , etc ….
Maybe it is not a war between Greens against the industry people???
I learned in school that the domestic wars were the wars that were most cruel and bloody…
Ann,
Intra-specific competition is most severe when the niche points of biota are closest within the ecologic niche space. Thats why it is wise not to get very crowded!
I meant to mention – wonderful chairs jennifer.
Haldun and Janama,
🙂 Welcome to the school of the wise which we have from experience, but which the young know nothing.
However, from belief, they seem to know all.
Louis,
Its a pity that Socrates’s academy which tought “how to think” and “what sort of questions to think about” was later restricted by Plato to the “privaledged few” and later chanelled by Aristotle towards oportunisim.
It is becoming more and more dificult to convince the younger generations to the advantages of developing an analytical mind. No body seems to have the time. Its so much easyer to memorize than to deduce from raw data.
Louis “Capital is simply saved money – it comes from exchanges in the market between producers and consumers. Providing government companies operate in the market with no legal advantage of other companies, sure”.
I can understand your POV, and I know there are socialists who specialize in taking advantage. There is a new breed today, however, like Bob Williams, a former socialist politician in my location. He is a millionaire who owns property in prime locations in Vancouver. Bob has been able to make a very comfortable living without screwing others.
I don’t see the difference between the public acting as a group to bring about economic change, even if it means interfering in capitalist convention. I would not want to see idealists interfere, as they did in Sweden and the UK, to raise income taxes to a point where people had to move to another country. By the same token, I think the private crowd has to live by the same standards they expect from others. If there are to be no free luches, that applies to them equally, so they can pay their fair share of taxes and not expect to be bailed out by the taxpayer at large.
I draw the line at monopolies and services/utilities that affect everyone. I think land prices should be regulated as well as the price of oil and other energy. There’s plenty of room for capitalists to play in other commodities without holding people to ransom with commodities that affect their basic ability to survive. There’s no reason for real estate to be under the control of profit mongers and governments bent on raising taxes based on the cost of land, which they help determine.
I wouldn’t have thought that “reason” was a value. One shouldn’t hold reason as absolute as one wold with values otherwise one is anti-reason since reason rests at least in part on doubt and abolutism doesn’t sit well with doubt.
” … I guess I’m just thinking that there is no clear path to what is “right” (or even to what “works” in the long run), unless it is understood that there is some higher authority than human institutions, which all are, by nature, corrupt to some degree.”
Since religion is a human institution your point is illogical.