Greenies

“The Earth has a skin and that skin has diseases, one of its diseases is called man.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

My mother ran a spotless house and I suppose I have inherited a legacy of enmity towards dirt and mess: I like things clean. I grew up in an industrial part of town and I can still remember as a child, my disgust at dirty walls, industrial rubbish, polluted creeks and smelly air. I always thought that the men who allowed this to happen were somehow deficient in manners. I always imagined their homes as being grubby, with piles of dishes and washing lying around. Little did I realize that the men who owned these factories, left them, to go to nice tree lined streets, in areas zoned to prevent industrial activities when the evening came.

I think it was Chesterton who once remarked that every movement starts with some disputed truth and invariably ends in error. The environmental movement is one such movement.

I have much sympathy to the environmental movement. The way that many of our ancestors treated the environment was simply abysmal. They poured pollutants down the rivers which we drank from, poisoned the air we breathed and generally left their trash out of site. Many of the great capitalists in the past would think nothing of cutting down a whole forest, fouling a river or wiping out a species in the ever relentless pursuit of greater profit. Afterwards retiring to great estates that would maintain nature in its most pristine if not sometimes contrived forms. Hence it was right that this total disregard of our common environment should have been opposed. But what started out as a noble cause has morphed into an ignoble philosophy.

What irks me with regard to the environmental movement is its quasi religious overtone. Walking on elevated bridges through forest canopy is meant to inspire the same religious awe that the relics of the saints were meant to arouse: A trip to Amazon, equivalent to a pilgrimage to Mecca. Somehow, any disturbance of the way things are is the equivalent of sin. Indeed it is this undertone; that mans presence is sacrilegious to the environment, that rubs me the wrong man. In Christianity man was cast out of the Garden of Eden when he ate from the tree of knowledge. In the environmental movement, paradise was lost when God created man. I suppose Nietzsche could be considered a proto-Greenie.

I take the biblical view that man was put in the Garden of Eden to tend it, not worship it. This means that we have a responsibility towards it and not veneration. We are free to use the resources of nature, provided we do so with good husbandry; for we are the stewards of this Earth and not its owners.

Starting out.

The Sunday Age is always good for a laugh. The story that got me thinking, dealt with the tribulations of a young couple who were having difficulty purchasing a first home. Our aspirant homeowners were having difficulty finding a affordable property in their first choice suburbs of East Melbourne and Richmond. Now for those of you who don’t know Melbourne, East Melbourne is one of the most affluent and expensive inner city suburbs. Richmond has its dingy bits, but it too has quite a bit of very expensive housing and amongst our inner city types carries a bit of prestige.

Now in days of Yore, a young couple would scrimp and save and move into a modest home in a modest suburb and slowly move up. But not our young couple; they were starting at the top.

What got me down about this article was the way these young people felt that there was some sense of injustice in their not being able to afford luxury immediately. This sentiment is not isolated and seems to be a growing contagion, especially amongst the younger generation. I was bought up old school: if you wanted luxuries you saved up till you had enough to purchase them, not the current generation though: Luxury and prestige are a “right” and their inability to afford them a “problem”.

Likewise, there has been much talk of rapidly rising rents. I have quite a few real estate agents as patients; they’re finding it difficult to fill vacancies in rental properties. However the suburbs that I serve don’t carry high status. The “problem” our “progressive paper” harps on about is the high expense of high status housing: Big deal.

There is plenty of cheap housing if one is prepared to accept compromises; the problem is that most of our trendy, eco-friendly inner city types are not. With champagne tastes and beer budgets, the bastards are complaining about the price of caviar. Excuse me for not being sympathetic.