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Why are Environmentalists and PETA so influential?

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We hate what they stand for, of course, but you gotta admit that they are good at persuading the gov't, businesses, and the public to adopt or support their ideas. Sometimes they initiate force on others, but I think the main reason they are so persuasive is because they target people's strongest feelings, mainly fear and empathy/compassion. Objectivists could take this route with their own activism. It wouldn't work to setup the foundation of the country this way, but as we wait for the right fundamental ideas to get accepted we can improve the country on a situational basis.

For example, establishing that higher taxes on oil companies leads to higher prices at the pump, and show a convincing graph. Then try to hit a sensitive chord with the people and say this will lead to poor people not being able to afford to drive to work or a low income mother will have to buy less at the grocery store for her five kids (and show some sympathetic photo of a similar family in an undesirable living condition and with sad expressions on their faces) because she has to pay more at the pump and food prices will increase as well.

This is not to convince them of your fundamentals. It's to preserve or improve the current state of the society. I hate to say it, but I think it's best to not mention principles or fundamentals to the main public these days when trying to convince them on a particular issue. That will only turn them off of what you're saying, since most people just won't change their fundamentals in a short timeframe. I say stick to the facts and aim for a sensitive and strong feeling of theirs.

What do you guys think of that idea?

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What is fundamentally at work is the idea that the earth and the natural world is an intrinsic value meaning that it has value in and of itself regardless (or in spite of) its relationship to man. The ethical implications of that leads to the corrupt inversion of man's relationship to the environment where he(man) must adapt himself to fit its(the environment's) needs. Many people are able to entertain this idea as it is another variant of altruism except that it is even more absurd because the beneficiary of your sacrifice isn't god, the state, the poor, etc. but mud, rocks, puddles, and bugs. The Left picked up these ideas upon realizing that statism cannot achieve industrialization. So instead of renouncing their former ideas and embracing reason and capitalism, they rejected industry and technology. The Christian right must embrace it since 'god' 'designed' the world, and therefore we are responsible for maintaining 'god's' perfect creation.

However the left and right would not have been successful if it weren't for one group. The guiltiest men of all are the scientists who gave the sanction of reason to these ideas. The image that one associates with the scientist is one who is able to weigh facts objectively according to strict rules of the scientific method which is bound completely by logic and reason. Given that the secular left and the religious right are at odds on many issues (most of them issues of concretes rather than fundamental principles), to see them agree has a significant impact in the intellectual marketplace. When the scientists throws the sanction of reason to their ideas, then it becomes no contest. The main reason that scientists support such absurd ideas is that they do not know or understand the importance of objective philosophy, or they have abandoned reason in every aspect of their own lives except for their work and thus buy into such nonsense wholesale.

The biggest part of the solution to eradicating the scourge of environmentalism, is to attack the more fundamental ideas that made it possible. Examine the core tenets. Nature is of higher importance than mankind. That's intrinsicism. Industrialization is a cancer on this planet. That's nihilism. We must all do our part to save the planet. That's collectivism and altruism. It was in the atmosphere of the nihilistic and collectivist 1960's and 70's that environmentalist movement began. Altruism and faith allowed it to survive and flourish.

In order that insane ideas like environmentalism die, we must begin creating a culture built on the opposite of the ideas that environmentalism is based. That means not merely fighting against environmentalism, but rather fighting for reason, for man's right to live for his own happiness, for beauty, for achievement. To win we must fight for Objectivism in the universities and in the arts; then in the media as well as the other major professions; and finally, with politics as the last step in the road to victory.

"Anyone who fights for the future lives in it today." Ayn Rand

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This is not to convince them of your fundamentals. It's to preserve or improve the current state of the society. I hate to say it, but I think it's best to not mention principles or fundamentals to the main public these days when trying to convince them on a particular issue. That will only turn them off of what you're saying, since most people just won't change their fundamentals in a short timeframe. I say stick to the facts and aim for a sensitive and strong feeling of theirs.

I can't say I really see the point of this if you're not going to speak of fundamentals. I mean, you're suggesting that we go for peoples' feelings to convey a philosophy that is based around using your mind. What makes the environmentalists so good at what they do is the fact that they have convinced people that their fundamentals are correct. Saving the environment is moral, untouched land is better than industrialized land, nature has intrinsic value, etc. What you're suggesting is some sort of libertarian type strategy which will never work. You can't change the philosophy of a group of people without talking about the philosophy.

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One of the reasons the green movement is influential is because politicians know that it gives them a justification for more power & control. As Mencken said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary"...

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I think people divide themselves into fundamentally two groups by deciding on their basic orientation to reality. This may be conscious or feeling-based. The two are positive (a sense that life is good, that reality is good, that one is efficacious, etc.) and negative (that life is bad, that reality is bad, that one is weak and ineffectual). Their sense of life and convinced judgment about life is fundamentally one or the other. The enviros do not succeed by appealing with either reason or feelings to the positive group. They succeed by appealing to the negative group. In other words, for the enviros, the approach matters less than having a ready audience of anti-life individuals to appeal to.

As to what our approach ought to be, I see no reason why it ought not incorporate a harmony of a positive sense of life (feeling) and a principled appeal to reason. Whether such appeals will succeed in converting members of the anti-life group is a fundamental decision that each one of them must make individually. It's worth noting that Ayn Rand's work incorporated both sense-of-life and appeals to reason. They are not mutually exclusive.

Edited by Seeker
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