Katie and I filmed an environmental event last night,
documenting the participants' comments to the EPA in support of proposed
legislation that would set limits on greenhouse emissions from coal-powered
power plants and other industrial polluters (currently there are none). People
would say things like, "I can't believe we're still talking about this
after all these years"; "How could there be so many who continue to
deny the hard science that confirms the danger posed by industrial pollution";
and so on. Some condemned the legal bribery known as lobbying, the influence of
big money on our lawmakers, and appeared mystified by the shortsightedness and
irresponsibility of greed and corruption.
It's hard for me to sit silent and listen to this kind of
thing anymore. The well-intentioned speakers last night were consistently
focused on the symptoms without diagnosing the disease: the
one source that spawns greed, violence, environmental destruction, sexism,
racism, etc. If you only treat the superficial symptoms the illness remains
intact. If you shave off a melanoma the underlying cancer remains as deadly as
ever.
The disease, according to Katie and my life's work, is an
insidious form of universal human insanity.
Our definition: insanity: the state of confusing our
subjective opinions with objective fact
For example, all credible science says the objective fact is
that human beings are responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases that is
threatening an environmental catastrophe. This inconvenient truth--for the
polluters--conflicts, conveniently, with their subjective opinion that they
really don't need to go to the additional expense of cleaning up their act. The
cigarette manufacturers once ran ads that supported their subjective opinion,
"The facts on smoking aren't all in yet" while science--devoted to
establishing objective fact--said the opposite. Every mugger's subjective
belief that his act of violence is justified overrides the objective fact that
such behavior is unsupportable in a civilized society.
Take any dysfunctional behavior, from littering to murder to
the crash of the global economy, and see if our definition of insanity does not
apply.
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