Say Three Hail Gaias to Win Carbon Points

Gaia - The Religious Environmental Movement

Once a school of thought, such as environmentalism, becomes fashionable, the next logical step is for people to impose upon it even more systematic and organisational elements. Very soon the “thought” is far removed from the school and rules and beliefs take over. Who comes up with the rules? Whoever has enough power as the movement congeals into an amorphous mass of people who all believe in, what they think is, a path to enlightenment or meaning of some sort. Beliefs are often open to a little embellishment and a lot of short-hand over time, and the collective faith in the common cause keeps them alive and thriving no matter what their constituent percentage of truth. People accept because they want to belong, to believe, to be part of the club, and they want to be told what to do. This is how schools of thought are slowly transformed into belief systems. Slowly, but surely, the green movement has started down this slippery slope. All the signs exist and all the signature behaviours are rearing their ugly heads. It is only a matter of time before all these human components drive the environmental movement towards its inevitable destiny and it takes its first steps into becoming a religion.

Why am I so sure? Because a lot of the popular following of environmental concerns never troubles itself with such unnecessary luxuries as understanding and factual information. Most of the popular environmental movement is based on hearsay, and if we didn’t live in such a noisy world of information glut, we would probably have had some charismatic environmental messiah appear to seal the deal by now. That’s all that is missing to transform this loose collection of beliefs and mores into a more rigid construct. Every organised religion requires a certain set of behaviours amongst its followers before it can truly be a religion in the traditional organised sense. Remember, I am talking about religion here, not spirituality, or philosophy, or even theology, all of which are very different and less cumbersome beasts. The popular environmental movement has already begun to exhibit some of these proto-religious elements which include:

  1. Blind Faith
  2. Dogma
  3. Ritual
  4. Moral Superiority

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Green is the New Black

Car - The Fashionable Environmental Movement

It is a very sad day indeed, when a legitimate and serious human issue becomes fashionable. It finds itself in the same un-enviable position as those “significant” books that catch the public imagination in a sudden sweeping wave. You begin to see the book everywhere — people carry it with them to work, they display it proudly on their book shelf, and they make sure they are seen flipping through it in all the most public places. Why would this be a sad situation? Because a trendy book is often mistaken for a popular one. The list of “significant” tomes that were bought by millions, read by some, and understood by few is too long to itemize in this article, and unfortunately the story of popular causes is along the same lines. The environmental movement picked up a lot of steam in the hippy culture of the 60’s. Fortunately, as much as that era might be celebrated in myth, back then “green” was still simply a colour and eco-friendliness was a fringe (if vocal) movement, as were the flower children. Over the successive decades, the changing climate patterns, a renewed interest in spirituality, a hectic data-soaked existence, and a romanticisation of the 60’s to some extent, have resulted in a mass growth of the environmental movement. Now a lot of people who can’t really pronounce “environmentally” know that “green” is the new cool thing to be. At long last the environmental movement has the dubious distinction of being a matter of fashion.

Fashions come in many guises and many sizes. The same has been true for the green movement through the last century, and it continues in present times. The environmental issues, and their popular paraphrased versions that most people hold as true, have birthed many schools of social fashion. They all form the mass of thought that makes ecology a socially acceptable topic of discussion today, but they are also quite distinct from one another. The schools of fashionable thought regarding the environmental movement today can be roughly divided into these:

  1. Eco-friendliness is for Losers
  2. Eco-friendliness is for Winners
  3. My Eco-friendliness is Bigger Than Yours

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The Environment Beckons and the September 2007 Report

Samir Bhardwaj dot Com monthly reportThis report is a bit late. I’ve been quite busy pondering the details of the series of environmental articles I’ve been writing (more below), and my regular report date of the 4th slipped me by without my noticing. Better late than never, here are the highlights of the month that was on Samir Bharadwaj dot Com.

More Photography Tips

With the continuing success of my original post of photography tips, it has felt a bit strange even for me to have not written anything further on the topic. In September I got the perfect excuse. There was a blog writing project over at DailyBlogTips.com on the topic of Tips & Tricks. My article on the subject was a lighter take on a listing of tips on how to take clear and steady pictures without a tripod. I think I probably only got one vote in the competition to find the top posts among the bunch, but I am very happy with the article and I do hope it grows into one of the major attractions of this site in the long run.

Environment Series

As part of my count-down to Blog Action Day, 2007 I started writing a series of articles in September on the theme of The Environmental Movement and Why It’s Not Working. At the time of this writing there are still 4 articles to go in the series. I took on a bit of a large challenge here, trying to put out a 9-part series on the environmental movement and its communication shortcomings. I’ve always wanted to add a new category on this blog to cover my general scientific interests, and this seems like a strong way to start on that path.

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Shock Me Twice, Shame On Me

JackOLantern - Hype and Shock Tactics in the Environmental Movement

Marketing is king. That is the world we have created for ourselves over the past few centuries, and that is the world we live in. The persuasion towards commercial activity is bar none the largest source of human communication in known history. Nothing can compare in sheer volume or variety. The great epics, the brilliant literature, the pulp, none of of those forms of recorded communication can compete with the juggernaut that is modern marketing spiel. It is everywhere you look, and everywhere you turn, and there is nowhere to hide. It is little surprise then that when the environmental movement really became a main-stream entity in the last century, it adopted the language which was the most familiar and the most lucrative in the world: marketing. The lessons of the Earth and nature that had in prior times been imbibed into the human psyche through myth and tale, were now reduced to quick and brutal tag lines and pithy slogans. The environmental awareness movement, which should have stood for education, understanding, and community had been distilled into a concentrated phial of pure hype.

Today, the marketing continues. Our world is now even more inundated with commercial messages, not just because there is more to buy and sell, but also because there are so many more interruptive avenues to communicate your message with. In this purchaser’s paradise that we have built for ourselves, we now find that a new counter movement has begun. Those who prefer to keep their heads and think, on occasion, have realised that all this sales talk is distracting and senseless. They use the much brandished power of “choice”, of which the commercial soothsayers are know to sing praises, and choose to ignore most of this commercially instigated communication. Hence we have a large segment of the population that simply ignore the website banners and skip the commercials.

That leaves the environment movement, with its clever marketing and its intelligent branding, to deal with that mass of people who do look at every ad, and do click on every special offer, and do not think much about any issues beyond consumption. The ecological initiative is losing its most important audience, and this is often because of the methods of communication rather than the content of the messages. Some of the communication methods that often alienate discerning people from the environmental movement are:

  1. Hyperbolic Statements
  2. Fear Tactics
  3. Guilt Trips
  4. Sales Pitches

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Most Boring Desktop in the Known Universe

I got tagged! Me! Who has studiously avoided all contact with the civilised world, who has carefully skated around viral link campaigns, and skipped over get-linked-quick schemes. What do I do … what do I do?? I guess the time of reckoning has arrived. Forest Parks was brave enough to tag me with the What’s on your desktop? meme. So, it would seem the game is up, and now I shall have to share with the world the shameful reason why I have been so anti-social and so removed from the buzz of the blogosphere (this is besides writing some of the longest posts, which no one could be bothered to read 😛 ). The fact is:

I have the MOST boring desktop™ in the Known Universe!!!

Most Boring Desktop in the Known Universe

There! The truth is now known and it cannot be taken back. It’s quite a relief really … living all these years in isolation, and hiding in the shadows for fear of ridicule and social persecution have been tiring. Now I can breath the free air and walk amongst the trees and the birds. I can finally live a normal life, get a job, buy a car, eat junk food, and make fun of people with funny accents, because a huge burden has now been lifted from my heart, and I am the happier for it.

I am free.

[TAG STARTS HERE]

My Desktop Free View Instruction:

A. Upon receiving this tag, immediately perform a screen capture of your desktop. It is best that no icons be deleted before the screen capture so as to add to the element of fun.

You can do a screen capture by: [1] Going to your desktop and pressing the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key). [2] Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and do a Paste (CTRL + V). [3] If you wish, you can “edit” the image, before saving it.

For MAC users: Press [ Apple] [ Ctrl ] [ Shift ] and [ 3 ]

B. Post the picture in your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop just below it if you want. You can explain why you preferred such look or why is it full of icons. Things like that.

C. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktop as well.

D. Add your name to this list of Free Viewers with a link pointing directly to your Desktop Free View post to promote it to succeeding participants.

List of those who have participated:
Francine of La Place de Cherie
Chez Francine
Bloggishi
Unchained Melody
LadyJava’s Lounge
Mariuca
Revellian Dot Com|Desktop
iRonnie
Rebecca
Jon
Rolando
Speedcat
Brown Baron
Tish
Mike
Money Online
NoDirectOn
Max
Elena’s Photos
Comedy Plus
MeAndMyDrum
The Random Forest
Samir Bharadwaj

add yours here after doing this tag.

[TAG ENDS HERE]

I pass on the tagedelic coolness to:
Vishal — because nepotism is a good thing.
Jon Anderson — because he owns a cool toaster.
Jimbo — because he paid me.
Julie Anne Bonner — because she can’t possible be too busy for this 😉 .
Rebecca Dean — because I came across her interesting blog yesterday and thought, “Why not?”

Samir

Maybe the Ozone Hole Will Disappear If I Ignore It

Sunbathing - In Denial of the Environmental Issues

Cynicism, disbelief, and ignorance plague the progress of the environmental movement, but surely there are a good number of people who do know and do realise that the impending crisis is real. There have been enough advertising dollars spent on the awareness campaigns, and enough beautiful famous people on red carpets have showed their support for the cause — that’s enough for most to accept as the sign of truth. So how can there be this large and visible imbalance between the awareness level and the level of consistent action in the direction of conservation and eco-friendliness amongst the general population? The simplest conclusion we can come to is that in spite of understanding the issues and recognising the dangers, most people are in denial.

“The first stage is denial,” has become something of a cliché. No one quite remembers what it refers to, or in what context that statement was originally framed. To put things back into perspective, the idea of denial being the “first stage” came from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who described the five stages a person goes through when facing impending death, in her book On Death and Dying. These stages of grief, as they came to be know, were in order: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. While it might be nice and optimistic to think that all is well because we are still in the earliest stage of this process, please remind yourself where this process is meant to lead — a final acceptance of death. I’m not sure that’s very helpful when it comes to the fate of the human race. While we might in some strange way have already skipped a step and jumped into the “bargaining” stage in the environmental movement (that’s for a future article in the series), this state of denial is something to be very worried about.

If we are smart and have any respect for the good old survival instinct that makes us alive rather than a part of scenery, we should be thinking seriously about this mass denial and what can be done about it. Under no circumstances is it in anyone’s interest (except perhaps the Biosphere’s), for the human race to be casually sauntering towards its impending doom. To reverse this disturbing trend we must first endeavour to understand why so many of us are hiding from the truth of the situation. I think you will find that this comes down to combinations and variations of three human complexes:

  1. A Fear of Change
  2. A Sense of Impotence
  3. A Guaranteed Exit Strategy

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Starswarm by Brian Aldiss – book review

10,000 BRAVE NEW WORLDS - Photo - Starswarm by Brian Aldiss - back cover

10,000 BRAVE NEW WORLDS
One million years have passed since ancient man first launched his frail metal crafts into the great darkness named “outer space”. Now distant galactic clusters are home to the myriad descendants of the inhabitants of Earth. Now, each world, light years separate from the others, forms part of an island universe called ‘Starswarm.’ …

Thus begins the blurb on the back cover of Starswarm by Brian Aldiss. It is an old edition of the book which was first printed in January, 1964. Like many others in my collection, I picked it up on the streets of Bombay, off Flora Fountain, in the shadows of the large tropical trees that line the pavement beside the stone walls of Mumbai University. I decided to buy it the moment I laid eyes on the cover and the name of the author, but the cover blurb simply cemented my resolve and set my pulse quickening with that yearning to devour that only a hardened bibliophile will relate to. And so on that sunny afternoon, which is when I end up doing most of my book buying in Bombay, the money was paid, the old book was placed into a cloth shoulder bag along with our other finds for the day, and we caught a bus that would take us homeward.

The other little fact that every other hardened bibliophile reading this will relate to, is that I didn’t quite get around to reading this newly found gem immediately. It was only a few months later, far from Bombay in the chaotic comfort of my room that I finally picked up Starswarm again. Once more I admired the beautiful typography on the cover, I let the cover blurb wash over me, and I was hooked anew.

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