humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Apr 1, 11:57 am, David Buchner wrote:
> So, are they actually trying to re-enact the last paragraphs of Atlas
> Shrugged?
[snip]

Sigh. It gets harder and harder to haul out the soapbox.

Building illumination uses about 4 percent of electrical demand.
Turning off some fraction of that will then reduce demand by
that fraction of 4 percent. Clearly, saving energy has nothing
to do with the motives of the organisers of this exercise.
(Nor such crapulence as outlawing the Edison lightbulb.)

I happened to be at a science fiction convention during the
supposed lights-out gesture. And, indeed, the masquerade
contest happened to line up with the time the lights were
supposed to go out. I kept waiting for them to turn off the
house lights in the auditorium, but they never did. Hmm...

The purpose of a system is what it does.

What this little lights-out thing did was to mark off a group
of people who "care more" about "the environment." Not
that they actually care enough to become well informed,
nor to actually do something that will make some kind of
difference. Nor even to advocate things that could make a
useful difference.

Nope.

What they've done is to mark off a crop of joiners. (Or in
the case of SF fans, a group of anti-joiners who do stuff
simply because it does mark them as outsiders of the
usual culture.)

How many of you here remember alar? And how excited
the "greens" got over that. It turned out not to even matter
that alar was safe, that you could not tell the health effects
of alar treated apples from non-treated. What was important
was how many joiners were identified, and how the enviro
movement solidified the fact that it *was* a movement.

Get everybody moving in the same direction. Does not matter
what direction, nor what it is they are moving towards or
away from. So long as everybody is going the same way.
Then get out in front of them and wave the baton. That makes
you a "leader." This is the nature of the enviro movement.
Socks