Are we responsible? - Part 2

“[God] is the greatest democrat the world knows, for he leaves us “unfettered” to make our own choice between evil and good, he is the greatest tyrant ever known, for he often dashes the cup from our lips and under cover of freewill leaves us a margin so wholly inadequate as to provide only mirth for himself at our expense…”- Mahatma Gandhi

In my last post I came to an abrupt ending about how God is responsible for everything and we couldn’t hold anybody accountable for their actions as they were pawns in a bigger and grander plan. The theory seemed plausible as it appealed to your abstract mind and it also went along with the delusions which we have come to accept, until I mentioned the serial killer and the paedophile. Suddenly, a Pandora’s Box opened, filled with emotions that engulfed the abstract mind refuting to qualify it.

Let’s revisit the issue again. We established the actual absence of freewill as our decisions would be based on our prejudices, genes, upbringing and many other variables, moreover, the options we choose from, is also not controlled by us leading us to believe there is some higher power that has authority over it.

Is that entirely true? If we look closer at each decision, we realise that the decision to choose between right or wrong still lies with us. If we can decide between right and wrong aren’t we then, partially responsible for our actions? I also talked about how each decision inadvertently becomes a factor for a future decision. Zooming out into a more macro view we can conclude that an eco-system then becomes responsible for its own actions.

Recent research has pointed out that religion and its offshoots were evolved as a necessity for the human race to survive because it set the rules for distinguishing right and wrong and also encouraged to work for the common good rather than for the ‘self’. The common good often included the good of the ecology too. Many civilizations have long perished (ecocide) as a punishment for ignoring the common good.

The question of God’s existence still remains unanswered. Everybody has to have delusions to keep them going, the more deluded they are, they more happier they seem to be, but don’t be deluded by our apparent inability to control the future

“Choose to believe never inherit it”

The Business of being Politically Correct

After the scare of the cold war, the fear-mongers of the world found something else- “Global Warming”. It was a perfect cause for the resurgent hippie community and also kept the intellectual community occupied. Pressure groups went all out on this, convinced us that we were really, really bad people and created terms such as carbon footprint to add more guilt to our already depressing lives.

Lets us bear in mind that pressure groups like Greenpeace and Environment Defence Fund are now part of a multi-billion dollar industry. The top officials draw handsome salaries and run these well-oiled organisations to amass huge fortunes as donations. They made it fashionable to donate; they got celebrity darlings to pose for them, they even made it heroic by an ad-campaign that exalted people who went to jail for these causes.

The biggest criticism I have against them was the anti-DDT campaign. The National Academy of Sciences once reported, "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria." During the 60’s an uproar shunning DDT, as it was ending up in our bodies led to litigations against it and eventually was banned  in the US, even though it was ruled that DDT was not a hazard to man. The cause was taken up by the pressure groups and it led to the complete ban of DDT.

Since the ban in 1972, over 50 million people have died from this once nearly vanquished disease and India is particularly notorious in Malaria-related deaths. Instead of the DDT that didn’t harm human beings we now use Prallethrin, which is like the Anton LaVey of being nice.

There are lots of other examples of them effing things up, so given their track record; Is Global Warming a hoax? If it’s true, are the measures done by them productive or counter-productive?

My qualms arise out of the unsubstantiated and skewed reports circulated by activists, they show drastic pictures of ice-caps melting while we know for a fact that some ice-caps are actually growing, surface temperatures have indeed gone up in some places but its not true for all over the world, in fact many cities in the US have grown colder after adjusting the increases due to concrete density (number of buildings) and so on.

Climate is something that we have not even begun to understand properly because of the very fact that there are far too many variables involved, even the best models of climatic prediction should be taken with a pinch of salt.

I cannot say it’s all been bad, companies have made conscious efforts to reduce their impact on the environment. Research for clean fuels and to increase efficiency of existing systems has been funded because of this. It’s just that when we make opinions we should see all sides of an issue rather than blatantly accepting public sentiment.

Fun Fact:  A recent report by the UN revealed that the total livestock produces more greenhouse gases than all the cars in the world. So I am offsetting the greenhouse gases produced by my 3-litre car by eating as much as beef as possible. Wink!