Unfortunately, even Jeffrey Tucker is sensible to propaganda. This is what he wrote just the day when I published this post. I said in it that your role model often turn out to be far from flawless, and I was vindicated almost immediately. Alas...
@jeffreyatucker
Underneath every ideological system is a doctrinal belief, not always stated overtly, that reduces to an empirical claim that should be subject to falsification.
At some point in the last 30 years, the center left somehow came to the weird view that oil and gas are invasive, unnatural, have to go, and humanity can thrive fine without them, sooner the better. This is so widely accepted in these circles that it is never questioned at all. Believing this is like a membership card in these circles.
It is wrong. And yet it is an accepted belief, and a very dangerous one. With this one mistake, one can destroy the world and wreck the lives of billions, to the ruination of civilization itself.
I implore all left-thinking people of good will to give it up. There is energy enough to power the whole of humanity forever just beneath surface. It is there to serve the cause of human life. It enabled vast expansion of prosperity and flourishing lives. Sorry but wind and solar, charming as they might be for some purposes, just won't cut it.
The left-wing fatwa against oil and gas is flat-out wrong, a false belief. No fables about the melting earth or whatever are going to save it. If you really aspire to contribute to the good of humanity, this doctrine needs to be given up immediately.
Perhaps this misunderstanding is perpetuated by the knowledge of earlier and long-standing Catholic pronouncements that sanctioned enslavement (especially of natives who resisted conversion to Christianity) and what was likely resistance to what was finally adopted as the Church's position at the Valladolid Debate. As you note, people came up with various ways to ignore or work around this edict, long-standing custom would have had a lot of commercial momentum and been a hard habit to break. The world was much bigger then, and I suspect the details of practices employed in faraway places seldom got much attention back in "civilized" Europe. The debate on this was going on long before Valladolid and even the discovery of the New World, involving the black natives of Western Africa and the Arab (i.e., non-Christian) populations of places further north like Morocco.
Two good books I read that spent a lot of time examining the controversies of the time on this subject were "Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem" and "Prince Henry "the Navigator': A Life". In the first book it is noted that Columbus was pretty much just following the customs of the time (and who himself actually had a pretty enlightened attitude about the natives). In the second book , it points out that Prince Henry had to get permission to enslave Africans, and there were some peculiar rules surrounding who he was allowed to enslave. That was back in the early to mid-1400s, so even back then there was a certain amount of controversy about the morality of the practice.
I certainly agree, but that is definitely not what they must be teaching in school these days (to the extent that they are teaching any history at all!).
Role reversing do exist as a propaganda tool. No doubts.
But very often, a policy that's supposed to have a precise goal ends up with the opposite result.
Sometimes this is quite intentional right from the beginning. Sometimes not.
Sometimes it's fully predictable. Sometimes not so.
Examples abound.
The war in Ukraine and the Western economic sanctions that were supposed to ruin Russia and win the war in a matter of weeks come easily to mind.
Prosperity for all thanks to free trade too.
So I'm still waiting to see what the EU's agricultural plan might bring us.
The devil is in the details. Of course, it might not be about *intentionally* starving the whole European population. But I'm afraid it's not about food sovereignty and protecting small scale farming either.
I guess policies are like trees, you can only judge them by their fruits...
Indeed. They are not all-powerful, and sometimes they make mistakes. But the situation of European Agriculture is so bad in terms of soil overexploitation that there is no need to take intentional action to starve people. I think it will happen by itself, and then they will accuse the "Greens" of having planned it. Our perception of reality is a game of mirrors, each one reflecting your beliefs back to you.
Superb article, Ugo! Your points about propaganda shaping popular opinion is timely and accurate. Every news report featuring Loser J. Trump castigating our legal system in the wake of another loss can fairly be seen as an attempt to manufacture and alternative reality. Just another lie win the wake of the Big Lie. Most appalling is how effective it is.
Also really appreciated Jeffrey Tucker's article about Bartolemeo De Las Casas. I first encountered Las Casas in combing through the footnotes of William Prescott's "History of the Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru," an exercise which took me about a year to complete (given my rudimentary Spanish and slow translation.) Even in a foreign language, his prose lept off the page. And even then it occurred to me that Las Casas must have been at severe personal risk in opposing the slavers. As Tucker reminds us, "the human project is always at risk of going backwards in time." Which, as you note, propaganda assists.
Unfortunately, even Jeffrey Tucker is sensible to propaganda. This is what he wrote just the day when I published this post. I said in it that your role model often turn out to be far from flawless, and I was vindicated almost immediately. Alas...
@jeffreyatucker
Underneath every ideological system is a doctrinal belief, not always stated overtly, that reduces to an empirical claim that should be subject to falsification.
At some point in the last 30 years, the center left somehow came to the weird view that oil and gas are invasive, unnatural, have to go, and humanity can thrive fine without them, sooner the better. This is so widely accepted in these circles that it is never questioned at all. Believing this is like a membership card in these circles.
It is wrong. And yet it is an accepted belief, and a very dangerous one. With this one mistake, one can destroy the world and wreck the lives of billions, to the ruination of civilization itself.
I implore all left-thinking people of good will to give it up. There is energy enough to power the whole of humanity forever just beneath surface. It is there to serve the cause of human life. It enabled vast expansion of prosperity and flourishing lives. Sorry but wind and solar, charming as they might be for some purposes, just won't cut it.
The left-wing fatwa against oil and gas is flat-out wrong, a false belief. No fables about the melting earth or whatever are going to save it. If you really aspire to contribute to the good of humanity, this doctrine needs to be given up immediately.
Perhaps this misunderstanding is perpetuated by the knowledge of earlier and long-standing Catholic pronouncements that sanctioned enslavement (especially of natives who resisted conversion to Christianity) and what was likely resistance to what was finally adopted as the Church's position at the Valladolid Debate. As you note, people came up with various ways to ignore or work around this edict, long-standing custom would have had a lot of commercial momentum and been a hard habit to break. The world was much bigger then, and I suspect the details of practices employed in faraway places seldom got much attention back in "civilized" Europe. The debate on this was going on long before Valladolid and even the discovery of the New World, involving the black natives of Western Africa and the Arab (i.e., non-Christian) populations of places further north like Morocco.
Two good books I read that spent a lot of time examining the controversies of the time on this subject were "Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem" and "Prince Henry "the Navigator': A Life". In the first book it is noted that Columbus was pretty much just following the customs of the time (and who himself actually had a pretty enlightened attitude about the natives). In the second book , it points out that Prince Henry had to get permission to enslave Africans, and there were some peculiar rules surrounding who he was allowed to enslave. That was back in the early to mid-1400s, so even back then there was a certain amount of controversy about the morality of the practice.
Let's say that the Church is guilty of many things, but, overall, it was always a factor of moderation. Not very effective, unfortunately.
I certainly agree, but that is definitely not what they must be teaching in school these days (to the extent that they are teaching any history at all!).
Propaganda arrives in schools, too!
Role reversing do exist as a propaganda tool. No doubts.
But very often, a policy that's supposed to have a precise goal ends up with the opposite result.
Sometimes this is quite intentional right from the beginning. Sometimes not.
Sometimes it's fully predictable. Sometimes not so.
Examples abound.
The war in Ukraine and the Western economic sanctions that were supposed to ruin Russia and win the war in a matter of weeks come easily to mind.
Prosperity for all thanks to free trade too.
So I'm still waiting to see what the EU's agricultural plan might bring us.
The devil is in the details. Of course, it might not be about *intentionally* starving the whole European population. But I'm afraid it's not about food sovereignty and protecting small scale farming either.
I guess policies are like trees, you can only judge them by their fruits...
Indeed. They are not all-powerful, and sometimes they make mistakes. But the situation of European Agriculture is so bad in terms of soil overexploitation that there is no need to take intentional action to starve people. I think it will happen by itself, and then they will accuse the "Greens" of having planned it. Our perception of reality is a game of mirrors, each one reflecting your beliefs back to you.
Superb article, Ugo! Your points about propaganda shaping popular opinion is timely and accurate. Every news report featuring Loser J. Trump castigating our legal system in the wake of another loss can fairly be seen as an attempt to manufacture and alternative reality. Just another lie win the wake of the Big Lie. Most appalling is how effective it is.
Also really appreciated Jeffrey Tucker's article about Bartolemeo De Las Casas. I first encountered Las Casas in combing through the footnotes of William Prescott's "History of the Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru," an exercise which took me about a year to complete (given my rudimentary Spanish and slow translation.) Even in a foreign language, his prose lept off the page. And even then it occurred to me that Las Casas must have been at severe personal risk in opposing the slavers. As Tucker reminds us, "the human project is always at risk of going backwards in time." Which, as you note, propaganda assists.