̶S̶e̶x̶ Crisis Sells

 

When I was in high school, and before I was a Christian, I served as president of our school's Environmental Club. I remember doing sting-ops to expose how the contents of recycling bins would get thrown in the regular trash by maintenance workers, and campaigning to save the bison in the Article National Wildlife Refuge. The most concerning thing that kept me up at night, however, was "global warming" (aka, climate change). To say I was anxious about it, as well as our planet's imminent destruction would be accurate. 

I haven't given up all my ecological conscious choices--I still commute to work by bike whenever I can, compost, and take cold showers. But I'm hardly a zealot about it. I consider these relatively common-sense, do-what-you-can approaches to conservationism that should rest with the individual. I also think we could make smarter larger scale architectural choices to incorporate building practices that work with, rather than against, the natural envionment--things like passive solar heating and cooling, geothermal, natural building materials, etc. You can do these things in good conscience as a conservative without becoming a liberal eco-weenie.   

The thing is, I no longer worry about the destruction of the planet, whether or not the "science is settled" with regards to climate change. I attribute some of that to waking up to the fact that climate alarmists have been blowing this horn for over half a century now, and we're still here. I've also grown suspicious of the motives and agenda behind the "science." That isn't to deny that it may or may not be a thing, only that those in charge seem to be taking a cue from Winston Churchill that one should never "let a good crisis go to waste."

The best insight I read on this phenomenon of why the angry left is so angry (and perhaps, so anxious as well) came from a Federalist essay by the same title:

"Then there’s the fact that “Progressives” convince themselves that everything they’re doing is for the greater good, which supersedes the rights of any individual. It’s a case of “the humanitarian with the guillotine“: we’re doing this for the overall good of humanity, so it’s OK to start killing people. Or to be really, really mean to them in the comments field.

There’s the fact that advocacy of big government is by its very nature a quest for power and control, for the ability to use force against others—a cause that naturally attracts the bitter and intolerant.

I hate to say William F. Buckley was right, but I think it’s all about immanentizing the eschaton.

There are three basic views of what this ideal state is: the supernatural, the individual, and the social.

In its original context, for the traditional American Christian, the “eschaton” is supernatural: it is life in heaven. That means it’s something that will happen regardless of the state of this wicked world, and your place in it is dependent on you and your own inner spiritual state, not on other people. Hence the Christian’s confounded complacency. If I’m not on board with his religious vision, well, that sucks for me when the Rapture comes. Because my religious critic is a nice guy, he’ll pray that eventually I see the light and accept Jesus into my heart. But at the end of the day (or of history), it’s no skin off his soul.

For someone like me, who is not religious but an individualist, the ultimate end state I am seeking is in my own life. It’s about my family, my work, my home, my own personal interests. The goal I’m seeking is about things I have a lot of control over, much more than it is about other people. Politics is mostly just something that gets in the way of the real business of life. Our ideal end state is that we can reach the point where we’re able to think about our own lives and not have to care about politics any more.

For the secular leftist, the end state is social and necessarily political. It is all about getting everybody else on board and herding them into his imagined utopia. There are so many “problematic” aspects of life that need to be reengineered, so many vast social systems that need to be overthrown and replaced. But the rest of us are all screwing it up, all the time, through our greed, our denial, our apathy, our refusal to listen to him banging on about his tired socialist ideology.

For the Christian, the ideal end state is safely in the next world and therefore is never in doubt. For the individualist, it’s in his own life, and it’s mostly under his direct control. For the leftist, however, it is all outside his control. It requires other people, a lot of other people, and those SOBs usually refuse to cooperate. Talk about rage-inducing.

If the whole focus of your life is on getting everybody else to agree with you on every detail of your politics and adopt your plans for a perfect society, then you’re setting yourself up to be at war with most of the human race most of the time."

For the secular liberal for whom God is not real, climate change serves as a good stand in for the eschaton or parousia. They have the alarm going off, but they have no peace, no assurance, no comfort because they do not serve a living God, but an agenda which as Tracinski notes above, "it requires a lot of other SOBs who refuse to cooperate."  

(Catholic) Christians, however, do have the assurance of being able to say in the face of imminent destruction "I am saved, I am being saved, and I hope to be saved." This allows a degree of ardent zeal tempered by level-headed pragmatism: we will never get every one of those SOBs on board--so worry about yourself first and help others as you can to know where the bunker is. 

Of course, we can take things too far as Christians as well. There is no shortage of warnings from Our Lady and the saints and seers as to what is in store for us. The state of the Church is in disaray and the powers of Hell seem to be threatening to batter through her gates. 

But when has this not been the case? And what can you really do besides keeping yourself in a state of grace, praying the rosary every day, and trusting in the Lord's promises? Focusing on one's locus of control--despite the schismatic bishops in Germany, or the homosexual seminary pipeline in Latin America, or this or that scandal in the Vatican--keeps one grounded rather than being a Chicken Little. Yes, yes, we know the sky is falling. But we still have to get dinner on the table tonight!

The saying sex sells is an obvious point. But manufacturing and/or highlighteing crisis after crisis--whether ecological, ecclesial, or eschatalogical--to keep people on the edge is a useful way to turn a profit as well. Taylor Marshall has honed in on this years ago by this point, and has found his groove ad nauseum. Crisis magazine and The Remnant have some solid articles, but this is their M.O as well--the destruction of patriarchy, tradition, the Church, etc. We keep waiting for the Church to be hollowed out til she is nothing but a shell of her former self. 

And yet, as many a Communist head-of-state has found, these pesky saints of renewal keep crawling out from the crater of atomic destruction like cockroaches. Forces have been working to stamp out the Church for her entire history, and yet she is still here. Just like the planet, despite all the dire warnings of "population bombs," endangered species, and mass starvation. 

Catholics need to be mindful not to binge on fear-porn too often lest we become like these Chicken Little climate alarmists, but in another sphere. We are people of hope, people of joy, people who do not take refuge in anxiety and fear. If we should fear anything, it is at the level our own souls, as our Lord said,   

"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Mt 10:28)

My dad, though he was not overly-religious, always had a way of calming me down as a kid when I would get worked up about all the seemingly unsolveable problems of the world. He would simply assure me that we would "figure it out" as a human race. "We always do," he would say. My dad had a good bit of faith and trust in science, the markets, and human ingenuity to come out the other side. I don't know if I have that level of trust in those things in particular...but I know my trust in the Lord of all is not misplaced. "Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow....for tomorrow will worry about itself" (Mt 6:34). 

Related: There Is No Fear In Love