Skim the posts in Pale Green Vortex and a fair whack will reveal themselves as being demonstrably 'green', 'environmental' or 'ecological'. Why, then, do I baulk at so much that is presented under these terms; indeed, consider some 'green people' to be among the most dangerous of humans? The topic has already been broached (eg in 'Coming Out' in October 2010, and 'Manna From a Hot Heaven' in June), but for further amplification I shall now bring to my aid a few personal sources of inspiration.
First off, I am not alone in feeling at odds with some of these 'green folk'. In the 'Gaia-Sophia' section of the Metahistory website, John Lash issues this disclaimer: 'The Gaian orientation of this site does not imply that the earth needs to be saved from the human species by an elite programme of social engineering, eugenics, and depopulation...... Site author John Lash does not approve the theory of human-made global warming..... In the Gnostic perspective of this site, Sophia, the embodied wisdom of the earth, is the saviour of humanity, not vice-versa. The earth will take care of herself no matter where divine paternalism and the global psychosis lead the human species.'
For further elucidation, I returned to the first ever episode I listened to of Shamanic Freedom Radio. It's in the archives for October 2009: Christina Oakley-Harrington talks at the October Gallery in London about the three 'sub-communities' she distinguishes under the broad banner of 'environmental'. She refers to the 'psychedelic/consciousness community', the pagan folk, and the 'practical/ecology movement'. She states that, despite superficially having much in common, these three groupings seem not quite at ease with each other. As a practising wicca priestess, Christina identifies firmly with the second of these, and describes through a series of amusing anecdotes how she is unable to explain her beliefs and practices to her chamomile-drinking, organic veg-growing, fervently-recycling mother, who clearly fits into the 'practical ecology' mould. For the record, the spirit of Pale Green Vortex finds great affinity with some of the 'psychedelic/consciousness' people; feels reasonably at home with the pagan folk; but is increasingly at odds with the third bunch.
The history and perversion of the 'practical environmental movement' is related by Peter Taylor on Red Ice Radio, 13/2/10. He talks about how environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the RSPB (bird protection, for any who are unsure) took up climate change as a great danger, and have resolutely refused to reconsider the dodgy evidence for this purported peril; how Greenpeace 'jumped into bed' with UN committee IPCC, despite UN committees always having been 'the bad guys'; how, over time, environmental organisations have got bigger and wealthier, therefore recruiting people with good organisational skills rather than necessarily a real love for the environment; and how they nowadays demonstrate classic corporate behaviour, being primarily interested in performance targets over and above other concerns eg the true environmental impact of large-scale windfarms.
Thus, the mass environmental movement has embedded itself successfully into the cultural and political mainstream. It has become part of the dominator culture. This is nowhere clearer than in its specific support for multinational energy corporations pushing windfarms onto beleaguered local communities, and its general espousing of global socialist-totalitarian agendas as 'solutions' to perceived environmental problems. The erosion of personal, local and national freedoms seems to mean nothing in relation to the greater good of 'fighting the enemy'. Recent happenings through the aegis of the UN at Cancun are one recent example, in the name of 'saving the planet' and 'fighting global warming'. This is all hogwash that many environmental groups are actively colluding with. The real aim appears to be the creation of a creeping global authoritarian governance over a planetary species of guilt-ridden, low carbon, sheeple. In a telling aside, and in the same vein, in her talk Ms Oakley-Harrington mentions the 'practical/environmental movement' seeing as 'the Other' 'the hideous rest' (that's you and me, by the way). Enough said.
To return to 'Metahistory'. In the section entitled 'Planetary Vision Perverted', John Lash writes 'To claim that humanity can or must save the planet is the delusional arrogance of people suffering from the global psychosis, including New Age visionaries who support that claim.' This is indeed the hubris that infects the environmental movement. In reality 'we', the human species, are wonderful but tiny in relation to the total grandeur of the Earth, and greater splendour still of the Sun and the wider universe. To contemplate this prospect is far more discomforting, and just a wee bit scary, compared to the hubristic philosophies of our environmental groups. The solution? Or should we say the corrective? According to Metahistory, it consists of 'egoless and rapturous bonding with the earth, irrespective of human purposes.....this saves us, and nothing else.' More prosaically, but on the same lines, Christina Oakley-Harrington says the pagans would exhort the practical environmentalists to talk to the sea, not just sort the rubbish.
On Pale Green Vortex, real environmentalism is direct, sensate (and occasionally supra-sensate). It involves an immediate experience of contact, communication, connectedness, and non-difference with the world surrounding the subject; it will embrace whatever means are required to help effect such a change, and bring humans back to their true relationship with all else. It implies a radical alteration in consciousness, with an intimation of all-pervading sacredness (which is not the same as saying that everything is sacred). This is certainly not brought about by staring at cherry-picked statistics on a computer screen all day, or by saving the planet through destroying its beautiful contoured surfaces with mega-industrial windfarms. Jim Morrison's famous words, once an inspiration to environmental action, can now be used to protest against the actions of so-called environmentalists hell-bent on destroying the beauty of the Earth all around us: 'What have they done to the Earth/What have they done to our fair sister?/Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her/stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn/tied her with fences and dragged her down.' Thanks, Jim.
First off, I am not alone in feeling at odds with some of these 'green folk'. In the 'Gaia-Sophia' section of the Metahistory website, John Lash issues this disclaimer: 'The Gaian orientation of this site does not imply that the earth needs to be saved from the human species by an elite programme of social engineering, eugenics, and depopulation...... Site author John Lash does not approve the theory of human-made global warming..... In the Gnostic perspective of this site, Sophia, the embodied wisdom of the earth, is the saviour of humanity, not vice-versa. The earth will take care of herself no matter where divine paternalism and the global psychosis lead the human species.'
For further elucidation, I returned to the first ever episode I listened to of Shamanic Freedom Radio. It's in the archives for October 2009: Christina Oakley-Harrington talks at the October Gallery in London about the three 'sub-communities' she distinguishes under the broad banner of 'environmental'. She refers to the 'psychedelic/consciousness community', the pagan folk, and the 'practical/ecology movement'. She states that, despite superficially having much in common, these three groupings seem not quite at ease with each other. As a practising wicca priestess, Christina identifies firmly with the second of these, and describes through a series of amusing anecdotes how she is unable to explain her beliefs and practices to her chamomile-drinking, organic veg-growing, fervently-recycling mother, who clearly fits into the 'practical ecology' mould. For the record, the spirit of Pale Green Vortex finds great affinity with some of the 'psychedelic/consciousness' people; feels reasonably at home with the pagan folk; but is increasingly at odds with the third bunch.
The history and perversion of the 'practical environmental movement' is related by Peter Taylor on Red Ice Radio, 13/2/10. He talks about how environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the RSPB (bird protection, for any who are unsure) took up climate change as a great danger, and have resolutely refused to reconsider the dodgy evidence for this purported peril; how Greenpeace 'jumped into bed' with UN committee IPCC, despite UN committees always having been 'the bad guys'; how, over time, environmental organisations have got bigger and wealthier, therefore recruiting people with good organisational skills rather than necessarily a real love for the environment; and how they nowadays demonstrate classic corporate behaviour, being primarily interested in performance targets over and above other concerns eg the true environmental impact of large-scale windfarms.
Thus, the mass environmental movement has embedded itself successfully into the cultural and political mainstream. It has become part of the dominator culture. This is nowhere clearer than in its specific support for multinational energy corporations pushing windfarms onto beleaguered local communities, and its general espousing of global socialist-totalitarian agendas as 'solutions' to perceived environmental problems. The erosion of personal, local and national freedoms seems to mean nothing in relation to the greater good of 'fighting the enemy'. Recent happenings through the aegis of the UN at Cancun are one recent example, in the name of 'saving the planet' and 'fighting global warming'. This is all hogwash that many environmental groups are actively colluding with. The real aim appears to be the creation of a creeping global authoritarian governance over a planetary species of guilt-ridden, low carbon, sheeple. In a telling aside, and in the same vein, in her talk Ms Oakley-Harrington mentions the 'practical/environmental movement' seeing as 'the Other' 'the hideous rest' (that's you and me, by the way). Enough said.
To return to 'Metahistory'. In the section entitled 'Planetary Vision Perverted', John Lash writes 'To claim that humanity can or must save the planet is the delusional arrogance of people suffering from the global psychosis, including New Age visionaries who support that claim.' This is indeed the hubris that infects the environmental movement. In reality 'we', the human species, are wonderful but tiny in relation to the total grandeur of the Earth, and greater splendour still of the Sun and the wider universe. To contemplate this prospect is far more discomforting, and just a wee bit scary, compared to the hubristic philosophies of our environmental groups. The solution? Or should we say the corrective? According to Metahistory, it consists of 'egoless and rapturous bonding with the earth, irrespective of human purposes.....this saves us, and nothing else.' More prosaically, but on the same lines, Christina Oakley-Harrington says the pagans would exhort the practical environmentalists to talk to the sea, not just sort the rubbish.
On Pale Green Vortex, real environmentalism is direct, sensate (and occasionally supra-sensate). It involves an immediate experience of contact, communication, connectedness, and non-difference with the world surrounding the subject; it will embrace whatever means are required to help effect such a change, and bring humans back to their true relationship with all else. It implies a radical alteration in consciousness, with an intimation of all-pervading sacredness (which is not the same as saying that everything is sacred). This is certainly not brought about by staring at cherry-picked statistics on a computer screen all day, or by saving the planet through destroying its beautiful contoured surfaces with mega-industrial windfarms. Jim Morrison's famous words, once an inspiration to environmental action, can now be used to protest against the actions of so-called environmentalists hell-bent on destroying the beauty of the Earth all around us: 'What have they done to the Earth/What have they done to our fair sister?/Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her/stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn/tied her with fences and dragged her down.' Thanks, Jim.
