Climate Alarmism is a Cult: Part II
The Flood Myth
Last Week: The Cult of Climate Alarmism
Last week I published Part I of why I believe Climate Alarmism is a cult.
To summarise:
It has manipulative and charismatic leaders who claim special insight (the ‘science’);
Their leaders make predictions that are frequently proven wrong with no consequence;
There is exploitation, where leaders live the ‘high-life’ while the followers have to make sacrifices and adhere to the norms and rules of cult;
It preys on the vulnerable for recruitment, especially the young, who because of many factors are perfect cult members;
It uses compliance tactics like guilt-tripping, shaming, cancelling, along with claiming that apostates are now contributing to the ‘end of the world’;
With the new technology of smartphones, the internet, and social media, followers are isolated from outside viewpoints and influence.
In the chat,
suggested a good addition when defining a cult:Generally it starts around a central doctrine, a body of ‘knowledge’ that forms a central belief system. The belief system starts with a series of claims that cannot be substantiated but are accepted as fact. From this core belief, sympathetic postulates and correlations are made to form the extended body of belief, each reinforcing one another.
Such a ‘reinforcing’ belief structure, that begins with a ‘central doctrine’ and adds ‘sympatric postulates and correlations’, which ‘cannot be substantiated but are accepted as fact’, fit under what Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton would define as Totalism.
Ideological totalism... is an all-or-nothing approach to changing the world, an extreme of moral virtue and absolute truth that seeks to remake human beings and their environment in accordance with a single, rigid vision.
Often, at the heart of a cult’s beliefs is a ‘higher than thou’ morality, exciting the tendency in people to think they are superior. It is normally focussed around a single, all-encompassing ethic. For the Climate Change Cult, its central belief that ‘the world will end by way of warming’, right down to its correlates like ‘nuclear energy is harmful’, are accepted without question. Furthermore, it provides its followers a delicious psychological treat: They are morally superior because they, unlike normal people, are acting to save the world. This is their absolute truth and source of psychological strength. It is one of the central themes of today’s article.
Click here to read my investigation into Totalism and Thought Reform techniques in Communist China:
In addition to the C.C.C being ‘total’ in nature, also in the chat
made the point that the cult is not only harmful to its members (the in-group), but it’s harmful to regular citizens (the out-group). To inflict suffering on others while protected by supposed moral virtue is a powerful behavioural incentive. The implications of ‘green-policies’ on regular citizens will be elaborated on in the conclusion.Jordan Peterson and Mother Nature
One can sit here, watch what the cult’s followers say and do, from the absurdist policies they suggest, to throwing paint on priceless artworks, to stopping traffic on the highway, and dismiss them as ‘insane’. But the degree to which the cult has accumulated followers is extraordinary. Likely this has something to do with factors suggested last week, like the invention of technologies that allowed rapid information flow, to the absence of a healthy religion for young people. Yet as a political psychologist who studies myth, and has as one of his assumptions that the motivating forces behind many mass movements are subconscious, in that they are powered by stories that have been passed down from one culture to the next and reformulated for a present-day context often to serve some evolutionary function, I suspected the same for the Climate Change Cult.
Informed by Mircea Eliade and others, people like Jordan Peterson have in the past conceptualised that the environmental movement romanticises nature as a benevolent force akin to that of the ‘virginal mother’: She birthed for us a pure world which we humans have polluted and destroyed. In this manner, like many religions and cults, we are living in the ‘fall’; humans are the sinners and the corrupted. He has contended that this is only ‘one-half’ of the mythic view of nature; that she can be both nurturing and destructive.
Though Peterson might have admitted this somewhere, it appears to me that the Climate Change Cult does view nature as nurturing and destructive: Why would she command a terrifying flood that may kill of all humanity if they believe her only nurturing? Putting aside reasoned and moderate scientists who, while possibly delusional in another manner, are primary concerned with the technical causes of human warming, I suspect many members without such expertise who faithfully follow their leaders, view rising water levels as Mother Nature taking vengeance upon humanity. It may not be that explicit, but it certainly aligns with hippie and new age beliefs that the environmentalist movement has grown out of.
My view is that the Climate Change Cult is effective in influencing large swaths of the population in part because they have recontextualised for their own means a myth that has been central to many cults and religions since before recorded history: The Flood Myth. Not only is it powerful because of the importance water had over our evolution, especially our cultural evolution as nomadic tribes became agricultural (when many such myths were likely developed into their modern form), but because almost all Flood Myths distinguish between sinners and an elect that is going inherit the new world after the flood.
Sinners, Rebirth, and the Elect
“… it would be risky to explain so widespread a myth by phenomena of which no geological traces have been found. The majority of the flood myths seem in some sense to form part of the cosmic rhythm: The old world, peopled by fallen humanity, is submerged under the waters, and some time later a new world emerges from the aquatic ‘chaos’.”
Mircea Eliade
Man had grown wicked, corrupted, and God, with his power over creation, sought to cleanse the world with a flood of epic proportions. The most noble and righteous of men, however, would be spared and recruited to start the cosmic project anew.
Such goes the myth of Noah and his Ark. But such goes the flood myth of many cultures and their religions, some more ancient than Christianity.
In the Sumerian version, the Eridu Genesis, the sheer noise and overpopulation of man prevent the chief god, Enlil (the god of earth, wind, and air), from sleeping; he thus generates a great deluge. Fortunately, Enki (or Ea in Akkadian), the god of wisdom, water, and creation, takes pity on humanity, and warns King Ziusudra, a man chosen as above the rest, to prepare an ark for the new world. A similar version is found in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh.
In India, at the end of one of their cosmic cycles, Lord Vishnu warns the pious King Manu of an impending flood that will destroy the world. After he survives in his ark, he performs a sacrifice, from which Ida - a woman - is born, and together they repopulate the Earth. In Greece, Zeus becomes angered at man’s impiety and hubris, and commands a flood to destroy them. Prometheus, who created man, warns his son Deucalion, King of Phthia. When the flood comes, he and his wife, Pyrrha, are the only survivors, and after offering a sacrifice, repopulate the Earth.
I could go on, but similar myths are found in the ancient dynasties of China, the Mesoamerican Civilizations of the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas, Native American Tribes, the Aboriginals of Australia, and so on. In some, as with the Sumerian/Akkadian myths and the Israelites telling of Noah’s Ark, there appears geological and written evidence of a literal catastrophic flood. Yet for many cultures, no traces of such a deluge can be found.
One concept that bound these cultures together was how water and the ocean was interpreted. Whether or not it was anthropomorphised in the form of a great serpent or sea creature (such as a leviathan), the ocean generally stood for unpredictability and chaos; in this way it was feminine (with masculine being order). One can imagine the confusion and horror of an agricultural Bronze Age man at the sudden flooding of his crops and community; without the scientific knowledge of today, a logical reason for this occurring would be that he had angered the Gods - in particular the Mother Goddess or Mother Nature.
The ocean, with its vastness, its ability to utterly destroy everything in its path, full with terrifying sea creatures, would lie waiting for man’s hubris, his sins, his scuttling of the Earth; once commanded by a wrathful God, it would cleanse and purify, providing the necessary fertility for rebirth. And so, while the ocean was at once horrifying and destructive, the epitome of cosmic chaos, it was essential for establishing balance after man had come wayward, ending and kickstarting the cycle of time, and the opportunity for a new order.
Besides the ocean being interpreted as chaos, the flood myths contain three recurring factors whether or not the new world to be created is in this plane or somewhere outside of time: 1) man has sinned and needs to be washed away; 2) after destruction and death there is rebirth; and 3) those who are to repopulate are chosen due to their righteousness and piety - the elect.
Before the Flood
“If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.”
Jonathan Franzen
What really motivated me to investigate the psychology of Climate Alarmism, was admission that the catastrophe was not preventable. In a 2019 New Yorker piece, Jonathan Franzen argues to that try prevent it is folly, such is the collected evidence and ‘agreement’ of climate scientists. From many other climate activists we hear the futility of our position. Here’s Kofi A. Annan (former UN Secretary-General):
"We must face up to an inescapable reality: the challenges of sustainability simply overwhelm the adequacy of our responses. With some honorable exceptions, our responses are too few, too little, and too late."
With the flood coming and the forests already aflame, climate activists seek to place blame as to its causes. More traditional environmentalists may say industrialization, overpopulation. Yet more modern and extreme environmentalists know who are the true sinners: Right-wingers, men, the Republican Party, the MAGA movement - anybody who seeks glory; it is they who built, conquered, and polluted the world, it is they who most fervently oppose the climate narrative.
Jonathan Franzen calls them “evil”.
But in this doom there is not only destruction. There are those who are wise to all the treachery imposed upon the land by such evil men. They are the woke-progressives, the pious activists, the righteous feminists, the effeminate and ‘kind’ men. Mother Nature has gifted them insight to the coming apocalypse via its ‘science’. She has chosen them as above all the rest; they are to repopulate our planet after the chaotic deluge, after the great behemoth named ‘Climate Change’ has been commanded to destroy and to purify.
A new order will be born.
And so, this is how one should interpret Climate Alarmism: It has a Secular Flood Myth; Climate Change is the Chaotic Ocean, the Destructive Side of Mother Nature, the Leviathan under the waters; it was brought about by the hubris and the sins of Western Man; after the destruction of the Fallen Order, there is to be Rebirth; and, those who are to repopulate the Earth - the Elect - are the Woke-progressives and Environmental Activists.
Repopulate the Earth You Say? But These People Hate Kids!
How can these people, the ‘elect’, believe they are repopulating the Earth when one of their core beliefs is depopulation? One the points I made last week, and summarised at the top of today’s article, is that one of the defining features of a cult is leaders being allowed to operate outside of the norms and rules followers have to abide. In this way, the ‘true elect’ are the elite globalists rather than on the ground environmentalists, who unfortunately, have to contend with the fact they have the blood of sinners inside them - the men of ages past who polluted the Earth. Thus their repentance is to not have children.
Despite this, some climate activists speaking practically about what to do after displacement of populations when water levels rise, and much science fiction on the topic, I would contend the ‘repopulation scheme’, and the ‘rebirth of the new world’ are more vague metaphorical concepts, built into the subconscious architecture of the myth, than actual realities - just like the concept of the Mother Goddess and her retribution in commanding the flood. They serve a psychological function in that spiritually, outside of time, followers are intrinsically linked to the cosmic reordering of the universe. Herein lies great meaning. Meaning is ever more powerful when it connected to regeneration, rather than only destruction.
Negation of the False Goddess
I wish not to criticise the general concept of renewal as a natural, religious, or psychological phenomenon. Today, many movements on the right are attempting renewal after what they perceive as the fall of our culture. It comes in many forms too, Catholic Theocracy, BAPtist ancestralism, biologicalism, Techno-anarchy accelerationists - you name it, it’s there.
Furthermore, not all environmentalists believe such things, do not believe they are part of some elect, who, instead of you, will inherit the Earth after the coming deluge. Most of them - as with any movement - merely follow along, not understanding the deeper implications. Indeed, I would class myself as some kind of conservationist, a lover of nature; I have a keen sense that the modern world - industrialisation, consumerism, Marxism - all inspirations of egalitarian liberalism - have retarded the human condition and our planet.
But I am not here telling you to give me your share. To forgo a better life for your children - to not even have children! - because of ‘science’; some inspiration divined from the Mother Goddess herself. I only want you to be aware of how climate alarmism functions as a psychological phenomenon: It creates sinners (you), and the elect (them). And what happens to the sinners? They are scolded, ostracized, while the elect receive the plaudits, the status … the ironical access to very resources they so claim as being cause of our fall: Money, dominion, private jets.
Perhaps most pernicious are the policies their leaders are imposing not only on their followers, but, as
mentioned, us, regular citizens. Reportedly, Spain and Portugal are to face massive grid blackouts, something that is to become more and more common as nations become reliant on weather dependent energy sources. However, New Zealand in my view - policies aside - is one of the most bizarre. Even if one accepted all the environmentalist’s claims about climate change, there is nothing a little country like us in the South Pacific can do to alter the trajectory. The very fact we have a Green Party with so much influence over the young is clear evidence of the derangement of our culture: Our children are being indoctrinated by false prophets; told to give them their votes, to give them power, and the most depressing - they are told family formation, the beautiful production of children, is fundamentally evil.Fortunately for the West, the Trump administration appears to have been fighting back. But the war goes deeper than policy: What needs to be done is the negation of the false Goddess; to expose its fraudulent nature in leading us toward a false prophecy. And this is done by using myth.
The moderates and the centrists in their short-sightedness are as usual overlooking the power of myth; how underneath the statements made by activists are subliminal forces that motivate large swaths of the population for good or for ill. The climate alarmists, by contrast, know exactly its power, and have been using it to great effect. The right, only recently, has woken up to myth; it is the new battle we are seeing taking place beneath most people’s conscious awareness in these little digital devices in our hands. Every meme you see, every clipped video, is but one minuscule barb of the symbolic informational war that is repeating every second on the internet.
What myth should win out and what myth will win out are the two questions. At the moment, I am not sure what the answer is to either. I would love to hear your opinion.
Thank you all for reading.
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Chur, and have a good day and night,
The Delinquent Academic
My opinion is that the Western world is foundationally based upon and inseparable from Christianity. The secular dream that people who reject traditional religion will find freedom in atheism, humanism, and scientism is dead or at least terminally dying. The results of such attempts to separate our culture from Christianity have devolved into "Wokeism", a psuedo-religion rip-off of Christianity, and the "Climate Cult", a neopaganism for historical illiterates. Modern society suffers a severe crisis of meaninglessness and anomia that is ushering in a civilization-wide cry for the return of the Strong Gods.
My preference would be an eventual revival of Christianity, putting our culture back in touch with the roots that grew and sustained it, because both of the current alternatives are essentially suicidal. There are a few hints this is already beginning, with progressive churches shrinking in membership as more Orthodox churches grow, but it's too soon to tell if that signals a broader resumption of religion's central significance in our culture or merely a redistribution of those citizens already inclined toward religion. We live in a time where the Left is slowly being forced to reckon with the fact that control of the narrative did not equal control of actual reality and the Right has been slowly forced to grapple with the fact that it cannot afford to allow the Left absolute control of the narrative... Interesting Times indeed.