The Bubble of Indifference

So, here we go again. Another almighty chapter finished, another (slightly less almighty) under way. I probably should have written more but I’ve taken on a few extra responsibilities recently and had to work harder in others, at the expense of writing which, to be honest at least in the case of essays and blogs, is no bad thing. It just so happens that the first big wodge of Chapter 8 is, in part, attacking the self-referential nature of the “environmental movement” (it has to be in quotes as there’s nothing really moving about it that I can see). This encompasses a few things, but one key aspect is the way people hang onto everything that other, apparently more worthy, people write and say to the extent that they don’t have an original thought of the their own, and spend so much time congratulating the Gurus, that they don’t do anything themselves.

Rather like blogging (something I try to keep thankfully minimal), the world the mainstream environmentalists occupy is a bubble of words and ideas that have little relevance to the real world, and have even less chance of changing it. I would take one person outside of my circle of friends and fellow mind-travellers saying, “You know what, I really agree with you!” over a dozen of the aforementioned, if it was a case of working out if what I did, said or wrote had the potential to make a difference. Of course, it is lovely to have the approval of your peers, but the problem is: they are your peers. Of course they are going to agree with you otherwise you wouldn’t be connected to them. This is endemic in the mainstream environmental “community” (for want of a better word), to the extent that no NGO or advocacy group I have ever contacted has any desire to look beyond the civilized paradigm and into a world of other possibilities.

Time to pop the bubble.