Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

"What went so wrong? The answer lies in a change in the nature of progressive politics in California. During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city—as something to be sacked and plundered."

Pure gold.

I would add another factor: since the 1970s, the old progressivism which actually believed in progress has been replaced by things like green ideology. The latter is a form of puritanical suffering-and-atonement religious fundamentalism. I think it's properly classified as a species of religious conservatism, and doesn't even belong on the left.

Note that I'm referring to the quasi-religious ideology... cleaning up the environment and building more renewable energy systems is great. The ideology has nothing to do with that. Greenpeace has as much to do with saving the planet as "Focus on the Family" has to do with helping actual families. Both are just fundamentalist cults using their respective issues for publicity.

"I think it's properly classified as a species of religious conservatism, and doesn't even belong on the left."

No, it like or not it belongs on the 'left.'

The difference between 'left wing' and 'right wing' ideologies isn't the presence of a religious nature, secular or otherwise, nor does it have anything to do with any specific policy. The difference is this: 'right wing' ideologies take for their inspiration an idealized past, 'left wing' ideologies take for their inspiration an imagined future.

I've always seen conservatism as being rooted in the immutability of human nature and social structures (and a related protectionism for existing social structures) and liberalism as being rooted in the idea that improvement in the human condition is possible.

Green ideology is rooted in the idea of absolute limits to human progress and a related idea that attempts to exceed these (often relatively arbitrary) limits are somehow sinful. I consider that more right-wing than left-wing. It says "know your place and stay there" not "try to make something better."

Your understanding is not in keeping with the historical uses of these words. We get the term 'left-wing' from the French Revolution, where in the Revolutionary Assembly, those who gathered on the left side of the Assembly were more radical than those who gathered on the right. During the height of the Terror, the left side killed the right side and the center moved to the left. At their peek, the Jacobins were every bit as dogmatic and psuedo-religious as Greenpeace, (they were in fact explicit about their attempts to create a new religion.) Soviet Bolshevism presents a similar story but I won't get into it.

'Conservativism' is different than 'right wing,' and 'liberalism' is different than 'left wing.'

The standard polisci definition is that (small 'c') 'conservatives' seek slow organic change in society while (small 'l') 'liberals' seek deliberate and intentional change. In addiction we have 'radicals,' who seek total change and an overthrow of the current system, and 'reactionaries' who either want no change, or to reverse the flow. ('Radical conservative,' is an oxymoron') Big 'C' Conservatives and big 'L' Liberals are different still, (and both are different than 'Progressives.')

Greenpeace is radical, left-wing movement. They are such in the same way that both the French Revolution and Bolshevism were radical left-wing movements.

No. Green ideology is rooted in the idea of absolute limits to resource depletion and a related idea that attempts to exceed these limits threaten all life on Earth.

Western notions of "human progress" during the last few centuries or so happen to correlate well with resource depletion. Green ideology presents a challenge to these notions of progress, and tantalizes us with the possibility of alternative notions of progress (e.g., sustainable development, permaculture, green technology, etc.)

If you want to understand green ideology: http://www.prisonplanet.com/caviar-scoffing-co2-belching-pro...

This is the best characterization I've ever read of the Green movement.

I've joked for years about how nature has replaced god for some people, but it was always too vague without the connection to atonement and suffering.

Perhaps, we ought to replace their Green religion with an inert religion like the Wiccia religion.

To be more precise, I think green ideology is a secular rehash of Calvinism. It follows the same basic sin-and-redemption narrative.

I've often wondered if the failure of green ideology to take off is Asia is due to the absence of the Judeo-Christian hole for it to plug into.

Catholicism has a very similar sin-and-atonement-based logic, and I've seen some non-practising catholics turn green.

>I've often wondered if the failure of green ideology to take off is Asia is due to the absence of the Judeo-Christian hole for it to plug into.

My take on this is that most Asian countries are newly industrialised - chances are that a young persons parents or grandparents were once dirt poor. They aren't interested in sacrificing their newly-obtained living standards for an ideology that looks mostly self-serving to any disinterested outside observer. Greenpeace et al trades on guilt, just as the Catholic church does. Asians just want to build exciting cities of the future and become rich. Something the rest of us used to want to do but have now lost the stomach for. It's the classic case of third-generational squandering of wealth, on a very large scale.

Nice characterization! That said, leadership for major change does have to come from somewhere and impetus for change is difficult to achieve.

The thing about cults is that everything social is a social construct requiring shared belief to exist, I think John Searle calls it assent or something like that.

While a healthy society must critique institutions for their failures and problems, I'm not sure if it's defensible to say that Greenpeace has nothing to do with saving the planet and as much as it pains me to admit, Focus on Family may even help families too. Does Greenpeace hurt more than help, or Focus on Family? And if so, what realistic ways to achieve the intended affects. After all, the environment is in danger, and social conservatism isn't going away. The organizations of social conservatives will be conservative whether we like it or not, we just need to keep teaching them not to fcku with everyone who is not.

In effect your hyperbole here is similar to theirs, yours has the characteristics of a mass generalization which simply won't have any affect except on the already despairing, the true believers any of a number of causes which you aren't necessarily thinking of, and of course the trolls or whatever we want to describe non-constructive criticizers as. I'm trying to break out of that particular cult, it's a long road, but similar to what you're getting at I think this type of cynicism is a destructive force, thus my rant ;)

I've thought that before too...

Actually, maybe I'm being a little bit too hard on the greens. The thing is: human beings respond to hygiene problems by creating religions with moralistic prohibitions.

By the 50s, pollution had started to get bad. It's basically a hygiene problem. So we made up a religion. We did the same thing when we figured out that having sex with too many people made it hurt when you pee.

For some reason, we need this. Rational arguments are not good enough. Arguments from basic self-interest are not good enough. Having the air smell like burning tires and having rising cancer rates is not good enough. We can't change group behaviors without cults.

It's unseemly that such a fact-less ad-hominem attack on environmentalists receives such a high score.

To the upvotters, please read Graham's How to Disagree http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Actually, I'd say this comment, with its name calling like "quasi-religious ideology" and "fundemantalist cults", should be classified as DH0 under Graham's hierarchy. Even if you believe that environmentalists are the cause of California's problems you must agree there are just no facts argued here.

Where does this earth saving "religion" come from. It's not like Mother Earth is in trouble. The biological system on earth has lasted for about billion of years and survived several mass extinction events.

As George Carlin said: "the planet is fine! we're fucked..."

"green ideology . . . is a form of puritanical suffering-and-atonement religious fundamentalism."

Wow. Well said.

I thought I was the only one who felt that way.

I want that on a t-shirt.

I recommend Collapse by Jared Diamond and The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, as a treatise over how different societies reacted to resource shortages & environmental damage.

They try to be non-political and are very informative, IMO.

I think that resource constraints and environmental damage are real, but I don't think they're the cause of collapse.

It seems to me that complexity itself is the cause of collapse. The problem with human societies is that there's no mechanism for reducing complexity. Each feature of a complex society has a stakeholder, someone who would lose out if that feature were reduced or abandoned. So societies grow in complexity without bound until the complexity collapses under its own weight.

A similar effect is very familiar to every engineer, especially in software. Systems grow in complexity until they are unmaintainable. Then you have to trash them and start over. Removing complexity is difficult, because there is a "reason" for every piece of complexity you have.

I don't think inventing Mr. Fusion would stop this cycle.

The problem with human societies is that there's no mechanism for reducing complexity. Each feature of a complex society has a stakeholder, someone who would lose out if that feature were reduced or abandoned. So societies grow in complexity without bound until the complexity collapses under its own weight.

A key here is that we don't have an ethic of just buying these people out.

New York City taxicabs operate on a medallion system where there are always a limited number of licenses to operate a cab and the right, once granted, is permanent. If the city could buy out every medallion holder and charge a fee set every year, it could control the number of cabs and gain more revenue in the long run. But it is politically impossible to persuade the public to pay a million dollars each to buy a medallion back that was given away for free. So the insane permanent-medallion system continues.

The same sort of thing happens with local municipal monopoly franchises, subsidies, agricultural supports in unsustainable regions, water rights, and some public employee deals.

Eventually accumulated special privileges can strangle a state.

That's true. We are unable to put effective solutions into place to meet our environmental challenges.

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