In Greek mythology, the gods were anthropomorphic. They were spiteful, vengeful and capricious. People knew that they had to offer sacrifice or earn the wrath of the god they offended.
When Zeus defeated his father Kronos and the other Titans, hurling them off to Tartarus, he established himself as the king of the gods.
But sacrificing to Zeus was insufficient – the other gods had their realms and needed offerings too.
Thanks to Prometheus, mankind enjoyed the best part of the meat that is sacrificed, with the offal and blood reserved for sacrifice to the gods.
The Greeks – and other civilizations with their own gods – knew how important it was to keep the gods happy.
Now, curiously, we have a reversal. It is the god Gaia that predominates, who the Greeks knew as the grandmother of Kronos and the great grandmother of Zeus.
Our sacrifice must be an emissions trading scheme. Failure to make deep cuts in carbon emissions, we are told, will cause Gaia to be upset and woe betide those humans that offend her dignity.
The coming of the age of rationality – the enlightenment and beyond – was supposed to have delivered us from superstition. Yet superstition is omnipresent and seems to have taken hold over recent years. (That is why we need a skeptics society – excuse the advertisement)
And we even have our priests sitting in judgement at the IPCC who tell us how to propitiate Gaia.
All of this based on some obscure computer models – black boxes where the inputs and the manipulation are held in secret.
That is like reading the entrails of sacrificed animals (and, in some societies, humans) where only those who were qualified priests – augurs – could pronounce on the meaning of the entrails. Yes, the climate change models are the entrails, and the augurs are those IPCC scientists who write refereed papers where the referees are other IPCC scientists.
Foolish indeed, but best not buck the trend or you will find yourself under attack for heresy.
The Roman historian Livy wrote in his magnum opus
auspiciis hanc urbem conditam esse, auspiciis bello ac pace domi militiaeque omnia geri, quis est qui ignoret?
This translates as
Who does not know that this city was founded only after taking the divinations, that everything in war and in peace, at home and abroad, was done only after taking the divinations?
At least the Romans were relatively skeptical of their religion – it was a convenience and they followed the rituals correctly, but maintained a healthy skepticism.
Today the gullibility of some people is astounding. In two directions too: first, that climate change is a recent phenomenon caused by mankind (that is, economic development caused climate change). Second, that conceit that mankind can control the climate (that is, we can deliberately take action to significantly change climate change).
This shows up in statements to the effect that 350 ppm of CO2 – Barrier Reef saved; 351 ppm of CO2 – Barrier Reef doomed.
That a sane and rational person could believe such a thing is incredible. And for that person to also think that by changing carbon emissions we change the climate – that is breathtaking in its ignorance.
And all of this foolishness is leading us to neglect the real problems confronting the earth – such as ensuring clean water for people living in poverty; getting rid of malaria etc. These are problems which humans can solve – but only if we get off that bandwagon of thinking we can control the climate. Did not Canute teach us how recognise that there are some things beyond the power of mankind?
I leave the final words to Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
I think this is on the wrong track. The problem with the ETS advocatees is not the cult of spirituality but the cult of rationality.
They seem to beleive that by simply analysing a problem us mere humans can work out the optimal path forward. This level of conceit is at odds with our history.
Read some Oakeshott http://www.conservativeforum.org/EssaysForm.asp?ID=6102
Matt C
3 Mar 10 at 8:17 am
In two directions too: first, that climate change is a recent phenomenon caused by mankind (that is, economic development caused climate change). Second, that conceit that mankind can control the climate (that is, we can deliberately take action to significantly change climate change).
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Oh and you forgot, the idea that evidence that excessive production of gases known to trap heat corellative with an otherwise unexplained rise in global mean temperature is something that should be ignored because it might impact on our stock portfolios.
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God grant me the serenity
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The slogan of the eternal child and infernal slave. If serenity ye be wanting acquiore it thyself. Leave God out of it. He’s tired.
Adrien
3 Mar 10 at 11:14 am
Interesting to see ethical and epistemological considerations on a libertarian economics blog.
The Greek gods were very human and had human qualities, unlike many other Gods from other ancient civilisations which were generally part animal or weird creatures like the Sphinx. The Greeks had demi-gods, the pro-man Prometheus and humans are seen to disobey or plot against Gods in the Greek myths. These Greek Gods have quite different qualities to those attributed to modern monotheistic God such as omnipotence, perfection, omnipresence, and the like.
It is an interesting and difficult question to consider just how rational and/or egoistic the ancient Greek culture was? I agree with the Objectivist interpretation that the Greek culture was highly rational and was not particularly altruistic but I’m certainly no expert.
Anyway, the achievements of the Greeks who basically discovered philosophy, science, medicine and who excelled artistically were amazing considering the time period. This certainly indicates a move toward rational thinking and away from superstition. I believe they were also highly egoistic compared to other ancient civilizations eg/ In ethics ideas such as eudaimonia were of interest. The god Gaia of course originates from Greek mythology, but the Greeks were far less into sacrifice than say the Aztecs or the Dark ages Christians where the “virtuous” monks whipped and starved themselves.
It was later in Western philosophy that altruism took centre stage in both religious form (eg/ Augustine) or secular form (Kant’s duty-based ethics where the phenomenal self can only identify an action as moral if the action conflicts with one’s desires – any action in line with self interest is at best amoral). These days people fall into the trap of automatically suspecting an act that benefits an individual will probably screw over society at large. eg/ It’s very difficult to portray capitalism as being based on mutual benefit or the trader principle. People are conditioned to think capitalism and profit implies screwing someone over. This dichotomy between self interest and group interest was if my understanding is correct, not common to Greek philosophers ie: Greek philosophers generally didn’t accept that a conflict was inevitable.
Anyway, I agree that the ethics of environmentalist ideology are focused on sacrifice and I’m glad to see a non-Objectivist say so. Environmentalist ideology in its consistent form is highly nihlistic. Human sacrifice to a non-concious inanimate ball of rock (the earth).
This is an important message to communicate because average Jo is confused here but average Jo is probably not a full-blown nihlist. He thinks the ETS is good for humanity because armageddon is nigh. Once he realises the sky isn’t falling and that environmentalists actually care more about some species of grass than about human life, he may reconsider and stop bending over backwards to appease greenies and hippies.
Also Samuel, I noticed you had an interesting post on environmentalist ideology recently: “Emissions trading an insurance policy”. This post was dealing with poor epistemological ideas as opposed to ethics.
Recently I have been interested in trying to get a good understanding of the “precautionary principle”. We have all probably heard people rationalise government regulation by saying things like “If it only saves one life, it’s worth it” (never mind how many lives are negatively affected of course) or “won’t somebody please think of the children!”
I recently read this article on the precautionary principle which I thought was very good. http://www.theobjectivistcenter.com/showcontent.aspx?ct=765&h=53
But if anyone knows of any other good articles from any sources on the precautionary principle I’d appreciate it.
Tim R
3 Mar 10 at 3:18 pm
Tim – thanks I enjoyed reading your comments. Am I non-Objectivist? That is debatable. I have a lot of time for Ayn Rand’s work and recently read the Fountainhead which I think is superior to Atlas Shrugged.
But the Greek gods certainly had interesting characteristics and behaviours.
As for the precautionary principle – the industrial revolution would have been stopped in its tracks if the principle was applied in the 17th century. Yet humanity has enjoyed the greatest increase in living standards since the 1st century AD due to the industrial revolution. The problem with the principle is that it neglects the counterfactual – what would happen in the absence of the action in question.
The precautionary principle is conservatism writ large: preserve the status quo at all cost.
Samuel J
3 Mar 10 at 8:54 pm
Hi Samuel, I simply assumed you were non-Objectivist, it wasn’t based on an analysis of your writing or anything. I have only just started browsing the Catallaxy blog.
The industrial revolution is certainly a great example.
And I think you might be right about the essence of the principle being preservation of the status quo, hopefully I’ll get time to ponder on it at a deeper level in the near future.
Tim R
4 Mar 10 at 4:34 pm