Unfortunately Mr Guido Barbina (who was a respected scholar and a teacher of mine) can't confirm my words since he died in a plane crash years ago, anyway you can find the relevant philosophical discussion in any good academic textbook. So your sarcasm is undeserved and rude.
Edit: by the way, don't twist my words next time. Saying that a school of thought is a scientific fact isn't something that I'd do: I said that environmentalism is a school of thought based on scientific observation. That's quite different from what you have interpreted. Who knows, maybe next time I'll keep my words and sentences shorter as a further aid... newspeak rules, isn't it?
Business or not it's okay to bash a religion because the word religion is not some magical shield which you can hide behind and be able to do anything you want without fear of criticism or popular judgment. If you're religious you're still a person, a citizen and a belief isn't something that you can't help or change, like nationality. It's a choice that you make all the time, every time you think about it.
Personally, I think Scientology is just mental but I'm not sure about the tactics in play by these folk. It's a gamble trying to bring something down by drawing such attention to it.
Edit: as it should be clear reading my post below I misinterpreted your sentence, so I talked about Scientology, not about the Anonymous group. My bad. I'll leave the post below as it is, anyway.
The tactics played by those folks are similar to those played by other folks: they mix science and religion generating pseudoscience.
Before you enter Scientology you are required to take a test. This test is a reduced version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a serious psychological test based on more than 500 simple questions. The shortened - and less reliable - version used by Scientology has about 100 questions, still sufficient to assess the level of gullibility of a simple mind. Moreover NLP tactics are constantly applied just as in motivational courses such as those used by Amway and by pathetic business motivators.
A simple example of such tactics in a business environment, which works with persons with no critical attitude, is using sentences like "there are no problems in business, just opportunities". So, when a server crashes due to hardware failure you have the opportunity to replace it selling a new one, and when someone suffers a data loss because of a lack of a backup there's the expensive opportunity of checking all the lost data by reentering them if possible... but if it's not possible, you're screwed. That's why for me a problem is a problem, no matter if I see an eventual opportunity.
your defending environmentalism quit aggressively there Albieg - I think earlier some people argued that's what made Scientology a cult rather than a religion.
Ok seriously now, I do view the growing 'personal responsibility' placed on individuals as something of a faith thing, there just isn't data or facts to support global warming being the fault of 4x4's etc.
Also if it was really such a serious issue would my government still be expanding Heathrow and building new fossil fuel power stations? Why is it only the individual who is being encouraged to solve co2 emmissions whilst business still expands? Because the government doesn't need to control or taper those industries...
They're just giving us a new faith so keep us busy.
Pretty much what I thought about you, your confusion makes you a good candidate for Scientology. In case you still don't understand, my aggressiveness comes from your undeserved bashing of a serious school of thought you seem to ignore totally, persevering in the error of confusing ideals and implementations. It is, in this case, more of an irritation for your imprecise labelling which is rooted in personal beliefs and not on available evidence.
Mr Barbina wasn't exactly an environmentalist, he was politically far from the post-marxist geographists who are believed to be the initiators of that particular school of thought. He was - nonetheless - a scholar who appreciated precision, and I liked that trait of his personality. You would have been of the few students unable to obtain a good vote from him.
I am not defending - as you may wrongfully think - environmentalism as the pseudo-science or religion you think it is, while it is not. Avoiding a similar confusion should be fairly easy. That's why I won't enter a long debate on the merits and demerits of ecologism and refuse your quasi-religious view: because it is wrong, and easily proven so.
firstly I think you have my intended tone wrong, read the next paragraph down 'seriously now...', so please don't launch an argument against my points based on a light hearted bit using a barrage of long words to masks the lack of substance in your argument which, when read, actually boils down to dissmissing what ive said because your Nazi / post-communist dead pal once held a different view to me.
In my country environmental issues are being used by the government as a form of control propaganda. This has nothing to do with your ability to deploy lexiphonia to construct an argument without fact or basis and purely on the say so of some dead bloke ive never heard of.
There are lots of scientists on both sides of the global warming debate and some of them are alive and informed with the latest studies and importantly on this issue, who commissioned them (remember smoking was safe once...).
As far as I'm conserved I don't believe in needless waste, I just don't yet let environmental concerns encourage me into buying light underpowered cars...
You're completely losing your head. Dubbing a respected scholar you know nothing about as a Nazi shouldn't be allowed in a forum.
I have a slight feeling that you're trying to associate me with Nazism by dubbing me as a pal of a supposed dead Nazi/post-communist professor (once again showing your abysmal ignorance because post-communism and national socialism have no relationship whatsoever, unless you're able to associate Evola with Deleuze). I'm quite proud of the participation of my family to the Resistance, so don't mention such arguments again out of proper context and out of total ignorance, I'm quite sensible about it.
Edit: For your information, I decided to report your post.
It seems, going by what Becky wrote about the UK anyway, that the issue of environmentalism has been appropriated entirely into global warming/climate change parlance instead of the wider approach that makes a bit more sense. Simply using less power & water and using those resources more intelligently when you do use them; smarter waste disposal/recycling; ensuring corporate polluters do more to reduce their impact and face serious penalties for deliberate breaches etc, all those things seem to get scant mentions next to people talking about hybrid cars in order to save the world's ice caps - hybrids which use as much energy to make in the first place as a normal car and contain just as many non-reuseable materials. I really think the environmental focus everywhere should start on people's immediate surroundings, starting with their home and what it produces/consumes, and spread outward slowly, as opposed to giving people the dauntingly huge task of saving the planet by driving a goddam Prius. Blaming people who drive cars for wrecking the planet is a simple method for the government/business sector to divert attention away from what they themselves are not doing to reduce their impact. It's also handy in getting people to consume "green" products in enormous numbers.
I'm sort of apathetic about Global Warming (and I've said so before on this forum): whether it's all our fault or merely a stage in a very long climate cycle is irrelevant, we still need to pay attention to what we take from the world as well as the crap we fill it with; we still need to preserve as much of what's left of our wilderness as possible; we need to give a shit about where our kids are going to live. That's environmentalism for me - an approach where you care enough to assess your personal impact on the world and start from there. None of this narrow-focus car-blaming bullshit. Pitting car lovers against car blamers is another corporate/government method of keeping peoples' minds on petty crap (like buying new things such as underpowered ugly hybrid cars) when they themselves could be leading the way with real solutions.
Becky, Albieg, please... Count to 10, take a deep breath, DON'T HIT THAT REPLY BUTTON YET, have a good night's sleep, re-read the posts.
I think the two of you have different definitions of "environmentalism" (scholarly vs. woman-in-the-street, so to speak). If you want to continue the discussion, could you show some more sensibility, and less sensitivity? Don't go on shouting from a distance.
Exactly. Environmentalism isn't a matter of the heart, rather it's a scientifical thought that ties human and ecosystem developments. It's not altruistic in its nature and tries to evaluate possible consequences of human actions, always remembering that such consequences have an impact on man too.
Detractors of environmentalism erroneously refer themselves to a subset of environmentalists which sometimes use dubious methods but in reality there's much more than some form of fanatism, and much more at stake than people usually realise.
I dunno. I can see the parallels between Greenpeace and the 700 club.
Whether or not that makes a tree hugger a religious nut as opposed to being a regular nut-case - I wouldn't know.
But then compare ecowarriors with like jihad types or people that blow up abortion clinics. it's easy to lump them all together. but i think what they have in common is fanaticism
but just cause a bunch of idiots wanna burn up a parking lot full of SUVs (actually doing more harm to the planet then what driving them cars ever would), doesn't mean we should start tossing styrofoam wrappers everywhere.
Or, if you're religious, just because some self righteous holier than thou
hypocrite likes little boys, doesn't mean you should give up your faith.
anyways, back to Scientology... Y'all think Tom Cruise and John Travolta will star in a buddy comedy together?
It could be based on real life. They could play themselves having to travel from the UFO vault in New Mexico to FLAG headquarters in Florida. Only John's plane is broke down and they have to drive - in Tom's car. You could have a whole comedic scene where when they switch drivers, John gets stuck in the seat (due to tom's shorter height). Like have this happen at some gas station in I dunno Amarillo. with townsfolk and Tom thinking he's got some new converts and travolta trying to keep a low profile - while struggling to get in/out of the seat.... I dunno, just a thought.
I dunno Albieg *shrug* you talk about him being a National So ialist and I never heard of the guy so I use the other name for national socialism and you report the post because I brqnded him a Nazi?
I think if you come off the attack long enough you'll see I'm not in the same debate as you because your being so high brow, an old debating trick, with your choice of words its sometimes hard to understand exactly what you are saying and I'm damned if I care enough about environmentalism to get google out - which is kinda the whole point of my argument.
Hankster sums it up very well, cheers.
As for your respected scholar I still never heard of him, what is a respected scholar anyway? Someone who is popular in the playground?
Next time take your time to read Becky. Then read again. And again. And just because you never heard someone this doesn't mean it isn't respected or well known. Use google for that, and don't use it if you don't care about environmentalism, but then please have the good taste to avoid attacking someone for something you don't care about but still you're willing to debate on a forum.
Your words keep making no sense, if you don't understand what I mean you can choose to stay silent. Undermining the credibility of someone won't help you in your cause.
Hankstar sums it up pretty well, but I suspect that when he was talking about environmentalism being reduced to climate change in UK he was a bit misleading. My opinion, of course, Hankstar. I understand your reasons, anyway.
well its kinda hard to avoid a debate Albieg, when you throw out arguments I raised by talking about something else. Its not as if I challenged your original point of view with an unrelated article.
As for your friend I'm sure he was a very nice chap, whatever political wing he turns out to have been on.
My argument is perfectly related to your claim that environmentalism is some sort of new religion and this is a forum, not a private conversation. Get used to it.
Edit: about Mr Barbina, he wasn't exactly a chap of mine. I had strong disagreements with his political opinions (which were far from being inspired from National Socialist beliefs, although he was a right wing man) and I didn't like some of his methods for the evaluation of students. I happened to be the only student who voluntarily exited from the examination room without a vote. I wasn't prepared the first time I took the human geography exam, so I started saying something bestial. He interrupted me abruptly, intimidating me.
From then on I totally screwed up, then I closed myself in mutism. I glanced at his assistant, she was showing the little book which contained the votes of my other exams at the University to Mr Barbina. They were remarkably high and Mr Barbina didn't want to send me out. He said: "Say something, talk about what you want". He wanted me to get out with a vote that was consistent with the other ones and he was willing to give it to me even if I didn't deserve it. I stood up and said "I'll come back for the next examination session. There's no dignity in obtaining a vote this way", and I walked away.
I did the exam a few months later and it went well, perfectly in line with my other votes, and I didn't have to steal it. But at the end it doesn't matter what I thought about some of his personal methods and political positions, I respected his knowledge.
we have a proverb here I think everyone would agree applies "it takes two to Tango.".
You'd do well to heed your own words too Or we can debate whatever view your friend had, provided you accept the possibility that he might have been wrong, otherwise its not a debate its a matter of faith...
so what did this Mr Barbossa guy believe about environmentalism?
I accept the possibility of Mr Barbina being wrong and the possibility of me being wrong. Debates and observations are the essence of knowledge and, as Dante said in a verse I quote and like very much, "Consider the seed from which ye sprang: you were not made to live like unto brutes, but for pursuit of virtue and knowledge".
Environmentalism is a rather new philosophical current, being born in the seventies: the kind of environmentalism we're used to now is rather opportunistic and distant from the deep environmentalism that was concerned with animal rights (which I won't debate here, it would be rather long).
Mr Barbina had no explicit position about it, he only noted he distanced himself from the post-marxist geographists who were - still in the nineties - preponderant in the community, avoiding to take a precise stance on environmentalism. It should be noted that scholars distance themselves from personal positions whenever they are able to if they value their work as something more than an opinion.
We're now used to the climate change debate which is a very little subset of what environmentalism - deep or shallow - is about. His assistants believed that mankind can have an influence on microclimates and not on the macroclimate, and I recognise this is a debatable issue with no certain scientific outcome. But then again, the discussion about climate change has come under the spotlight only recently, and only recently significant data about the possibility of a deep human impact have become available, although worries for the excessive population of Earth (and its consequences) date back to the sixties, and theories about human impact date back to the 19th century.
Politically Mr Barbina was for conservativism, thus distancing himself from radical deep environmentalist positions which retain a spiritual content, which is still not enough to define deep environmentalism as a religion. It should be noted that at a practical level shallow environmentalism is the winning philosophy these days since the major concern of environmentalists isn't about animal rights, but rather on presenting dangers for the conditions of the ecosystem and its consequences on human life. The untimely death of Mr Barbina has prevented him to be more explicit about issues which weren't so popular back in the nineties.
I'm sorry if I refer to concepts you may not be familiar with, I hope you realise that I have to be synthetic about it because if I wasn't I would end up writing a hundred pages in a topic that is more concerned with Scientology and with religion, so my rationale for being synthetic is just to refute a personal belief of yours to which you are perfectly entitled, as I am entitled to consider misleading tying environmentalism to a religion in a Scientology debate.
what's a post-Marxist and why are someone welly wearers one of them?
Science is in some fields very much a faith. It was once believed the world was flat, one science says the universe was made by the big bang. Though supports this with a very week theory about dark matter and time going backwards.
A lot of theories are based upon non-absolutes that, for the lack of a better understanding we treat as absolute. For instance we know what gravity is and how it works, but we don't know why it works. We know it effects time, but nobody has figured out why. Although it could be a side effect of movement, as this also effects time.
Quantum physics even argues that the universe only exists when observed, and we can't figure that out either. Like before the number zero or the American Indians having no concept of possession, some things in science we take on faith without necessarily knowing the theories we base our assumptions on are correct, or weather in 50 years time our whole view on any given theory mayl be radically different.
Therefor science by diffinition is a faith, regardless of weather we are talking about environmentalism or gravity.
hey and after its all over do you know whats going to happen, the Americans will make a movie from it staring tom cruse woooooooo
but to make this more fun, think of if you put a cat in a box and put a poison's gas into the box and leave it for a while is the car dead? without looking in the box is the cat dead?
On the contrary, it is by definition the opposite of faith. However, many so called scientists include faith in their work and leave the scientific approch while continuing to claim their scientist status!
I could write a book, - but a post will have to do, hopefully contributing to a dam good thread (im(h)o).
My thoughts - Cults - religions whatever is plain and simple brainwashing.
We are simply a pack animal and some of us are responding to an instinct, thats all most of us do.
And a pack animal has a single leader who is the one and only leader and is more powerful than the rest.
Substitute pack leader for god and some mental conditioning and there you go
If you are born into an already religious society then your thinking may just be a little influenced as you grow up.
I remember going to church as a kid, every sunday - smartly dressed, rain or shine we were there, and I loved beltin out "onward christian soldiers", made me feel really good.
But for me you know, God really blew it when yet again, when I was even 11 years old for chrisake, - I did not get a bicycle for Christmas.
Can you imagine how this effected my beliefs? - the amount of praying I did for that bike, and I really would have been a good boy too .
But the thing was that now I no longer had a god to worry about (and it took a while to get used to), my mind was now fully open to anything, good bad or ugly, and I find what I think is the truth from as much info as I can collect.
Global warming, well call me a crank here bookmark this post for as long as the electricity's on.
I'm 54 have watched things changed massively in my life, when I was a kid the world was a big place, and it took three days to arrange a short expensive telephone call to someone around the world - that big.
Now here I am talking to many all over the world at the same time - who'd have believed it eh?
But you lnow we are also the most stupid of species - we all know that surely?
I look at the way our natural environment is changing whilst most of us ignor it and get on with our own shit.
I'm no longer listening to what anyone else is saying now, I just looking at the evidence of what is actually happening, and in forty years we gone from
Global warming ............eh?
to
Global warming is now happening at a much faster rate than previously predicted.
I don't know but it scares me if I look at the changes, and the rate of acceleration in the changes in all things around the world, I honestly believe that we have well past the point of no return, and we are all dead men walking, I reckon 25 years tops, but law and order such as it is, will break down long before then.
It does not matter what you I, India or China do, this thing essentially started as we became industrialised as a species, its took a hundred years to get moving at the pace that it is, - it aint gonna stop soon is it?, no matter what we do.
Don't want to sound defeatist or miserable, but thats how I feel, with a free mind and a lot of unbiased studying of the subject.
You only have to spare the time to look, if your god will let you.
No, whats popularly refered to as "science" is the sum of all current theories. What you have to keep in mind is, that the meaning of the word theory is radically different in a science context than in normal conversation; although im sure you know that or at least havent brought up that silly argument yet.
Anyway, for an idea to become a scientific theory it has to adhere to a certain set of standards the most important one is that there must be a way to test that theory, a way to prove that its correct. If the idea is either inherently impossible to prove/test or not yet at the point where it´s developed into something testable it´s refered to as an hypothesis.
It follows from that argument that you don´t have to take science on faith but could always, and are in fact encouraged to, put those theories through a rigorous test to se if they are correct.
Lastly i can´t really think of any major theory that has been proven wrong at some point in time; there´s plenty of examples where the theroy turned out to be inaccurate in some cases and had to be expanded or replaced by something more complicated, but most of the time the older theory will still be more than good enough to use for a whole bunch of applications or at least some quick approximations.
That is actually completely flawed as a statement. Science is a method, a way of thought. No faith is involved. Knowledge is involved, but that is challenged and can be changed at any time. The minute there is faith then it ceases to be science. Everything in science, including the very etymology of the world, is about being deviant and detaching one's self from blind belief.
The big bang theory is just that - a theory. The notion of a flat earth has nothing to do with science, it mostly comes from the generalizations found in religious doctrines, and if you dig around a bit you'll find that the whole concept of people believing the earth was flat even up to Medieval times is vastly exaggerated. By around 300BC the circumference of the Earth had been calculated and before that it was pretty much generally accepted that it was impossible for it to be flat - at some period apparently there existed several theories in the philosophical schools of ancient Greece with various models of the shape of our planet and celestial bodies in general.
EDIT:
Woah - anyone else going to comment on that bit of her post...?
Or we can debate whatever view your friend had, provided you accept the possibility that he might have been wrong, otherwise its not a debate its a matter of faith...
.