MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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In a bizarre concatenation of postmodern symptomology we have displayed in this case both the insanity of American litigation coupled with the absurdities of subjectivity of royal entitlement. It seems that everyone sues at the slightest hint of conflict or disrespect. Such action mimics the sensitivity of a two-year old who cries if you so much as cross your eyes. (Now lately, mind you, the kid is likely to plug ya with a Colt .45. But it's a small price to pay for a well maintained militia, eh?)
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So, in a nation predominantly Christian, the once revolutionarily compassionate philosophy of turn the other cheek has devolved in a spasm of reactionary self-interest spawned by a misreading of the civil rights movement's prerogatives. We've become a resentful conglomerate of solipsists where if a handgun isn't immediately available the next best resort is to sue the bastard.
The suit by the Minnesota loggers (Christians by sect, I would think) adds the postmodern twist of one-upping an opponent by calling them holy! Irony of ironies! Oh, clever little Dickens to turn the rationalist sin of religiosity against that secular Great Satan, the U.S. government itself.
Hmm, I says, since we're in a post-modern Wonderland how should the environmentalists respond to this Spy vs. Spy ambush? The pot and the kettle? Dick Nixon had to be involved. So let's follow the money. Yes. $600,000. Do I detect some religious undertones in the, shall we say, collection, tithing, sacrifice of $600,000?
When one throws around litigious „accusations¾ of religiosity, it isn't ecology that first comes to my mind. Love of and pursuit of money certainly has a far bigger congregation than deep ecology. They're not even in the same league. I can't think of anything else on the planet that even comes close to its universalist appeal except maybe sex. Consumerism as the world religion of our times is not only not far-fetched, I'd say you'd have to be a Minnesota logger not to recognize it as such.
"The Religion of the Market" by David R. Loy in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65/2 elucidates the not-so-stunning assessment that the capitalist economic system born of Adam Smith and Malthus, of Descartes and Calvin, of the enlightenment and the Puritan priggishness of American merchants has created the ultimate religion. Its merest icon, say a pair of sneakers or a brand of denim pants, can convert the most tree-hugging, shaman-worshipping pagan cannibal into a full-fledged acolyte of the most powerful god ever imagined. One taste of this lucre-istic wafer and in no time that Nike-ed, Levi-ed pagan has become--the shopper, a worshipper of and sacrificial victim to, fear and trembling, y'all--the Market.
Here are a few statistics from Loy's article just to bring home the point of the ubiquity of the Hermes as Vampire Thief religion we have disingenuously dubbed market capitalism:
"In 1994 the U.S. spent $147 billion for advertising--far more than on higher education. This translated into a barrage of 21,000 television commercials, a million magazine advertising pages, 14 billion mail-order catalogues, 38 billion junk-mail ads, and another billion signs, posters, and billboards. That does not include various related industries affecting consumer taste and spending, such as promotion, public relations, marketing, design, and, most of all, fashion (not only clothes), which amounted to another $100 billion a year.¾
I don't think this frivolous lawsuit will get anywhere, thank the deities. But if we take it seriously, play the game, then the idea of deep ecology as religion should be accepted by the defendants.
What if a judge declared the forests sacred sites?
Surely who among us would be like a Nero and cut down the Sacred Groves of Artemis or copy the bonny Brits and chop up the leprechaun-inhabited forests of Ireland? Were tree-hugging declared a protected religion the federal government, who controls most of the old growth forests, would have to divest them and give them not to loggers who would only defile them, but to the environmentalists who would worship in them! Can you imagine the government okaying the razing of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. for the sake of a few unemployed demolition workers?
My personal environmental stance is that there are some parks where no humans should go. I believe that nature doesn't have to serve humans, even in an aesthetic way, even for our solitude. The wild belongs to Pan, not humans--loggers or environmentalists. Some mountains should never be climbed.
I have friends, however, who do go on safari and tell me they assuage their guilt knowing that the money they're shelling out is actually going into preservation efforts. They have come to a necessary compromise between these two religions, capitalism and environmentalism. It is one I must humbly acknowledge as practical. The marketing of nature does save the wild places if we link it to our pleasure. Capitalism can be turned to good use. That's the cold hard cash facts, Jack. And it would be better to pay the poachers not to kill rhinos and elephants and tigers. It would be better to pay the slash-and-burn folks to lead non-destructive excursions into the darkness of the wild. Better to copy the Hunger Site's idea and get corporations to sponsor an environmental Web-site where a click buys a quarter acre of endangered forest. Better to pay loggers to point out where the wee owls nest than to have them turn to cynicism. Blackmail money: it's a touchy business. But what would it really cost?
Let me repeat: $147 billion dollars for advertising.
And what could the government do for its embattled Forestry Service? According to the Sierra Club, „....in April 1999, U.S. Representatives Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and Jim Leach (R- Iowa) introduced the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act, which would eliminate the commercial logging program on federal public lands, promote restoration and help communities that receive logging revenue develop a more diverse and stable economy.¾ It went nowhere.
But couldn't we trade just one B-1 bomber for a lifetime of logger community support? And what does a year of tax write-offs for GM or Microsoft buy? It's a shame.
Take away military and corporate welfare and apply it to these issues and we could probably buy all the timber in Minnesota and the Amazon basin outright and I just know we could make my great granddaddy proud.
In December,1999, the Associated Press (AP) reported that a group of Minnesota loggers has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service and a couple of environmental groups claiming that deep ecology is a religion and that the government is supporting that religion with its banning of logging in protected forests. In yet another odd reading of the first amendment of the US Constitution, the loggers ask that the state separate itself from the religion of preservation. The loggers mean to prove that the federal government's limiting of access to timber is for religious purposes and give the loggers $600,000 in damages for lost business, or divest itself of such sacred land as is its Constitutional duty, and, now this is where it gets weird, then let the loggers cut down the sacred wood.
And we are all entitled. Sometime between Dick Nixon's resignation and the canonization of Voodoo Ronnie we all became minorities, abused children, abductees, the dispossessed, the forgotten, the one percenters, POWs, outcasts, misunderstood little big-eyed puppies lost in a big, bad world. And I am talking everybody. Wealthy white male? O, you poor thing. Patriarchy has saddled you with unwanted power. Let's give you a capital gains exemption. Even out the playing field, assuage your pain. Remember the Ally McBeal episode where someone wanted to sue God? I'm sure there's a non-sitcom lawyer somewhere who'd take the case.
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Event # 199: A MOTHERLESS CHILD
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The nature of the suit speaks to how well environmentalism is doing today. (And why we hope George Dubya Bush doesn't win. Like his daddy, he's Old School money--„Politics is good for the family business, son. The real good money comes after the Presidential gig. Make those connections with those third-world dictators. Get a good price on timber, gold. Barrick Gold, buddy. We're talking real connections. Some cold hard cash. Mission accomplished, eh, son?¾ I'm sorry. I'm from Texas. He hasn't done jack in Texas. His tax reduction plan of two-years ago was so ill-conceived even his own party wouldn't support it. It was dead from the first meeting. I know from an inside source that at that initial meeting the Democrats were stunned -- with delight. His real political accomplishments are nil.)
If the loggers are reduced to this absurdity of a lawsuit, they're goners. This is, excuse the expression, a Hail Mary pass if ever I saw one. Which is a shame. Logging was once a proud and honorable profession. My great grandfather was a logger. I think he rightly would want me to show as much care and compassion for the passing of their lifestyle as I would an endangered species.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) [14 January, 2000] - The League of Conservation voters said Thursday that Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush represented the 'biggest threat' to the environment among the four leading entrants in the 2000 race for the White House. The environmental group's '2000 Presidential Profiles,' released Thursday and posted on its Web site at http://www.lcv.org/presidential/, gave Bush's top Republican challenger, Arizona Sen. John McCain, a mixed review.
© 2000, GENERATOR 21.
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