A medieval whipping post and stocks still remain outside the churchyard of the village where I grew up. My great-grandfather could remember the stump from the ducking stool that once lowered local ‘scolds’ into the pond. I used to sit, bored, in church ignoring the vicar, reading the Book of Common Prayer, fascinated by the service: “A Commination, or denouncing of God’s anger and judgements against sinners,” where, “Such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be more afraid to offend.”
I was reminded of all of this when watching Simon Case limp into the Covid Inquiry the other day. For surely, a public enquiry is our modern day equivalent of the stocks and whipping post, where perceived wrong-doers are publicly humiliated. We delight in the tears of Paula Vennells, show collective disgust at the findings of the infected blood inquiry and tut righteously as Case reveals the Government failed to tell the public about alternatives to lockdown. The Commination service includes the chilling line: “Cursed is he that taketh reward to slay the innocent.” Couldn’t that apply to a great number of public figures?
Yet what the medieval church understood and we have perhaps forgotten is the importance of using the public humiliation of individuals to inspire better behaviour from everyone else. A line in the Commination service reads: “Being admonished of the great indignation of God against sinners, ye may the rather be moved to earnest and true repentance; and may walk more warily in these dangerous days; fleeing from such vices.”
It is of course far too easy to blame Ken Clarke for the infected blood catastrophe, Paula Vennells for the Post Office scandal and Cummings, Gove and Cain for lockdowns. The harsher truth is recognising our own errors and understanding that we are all in some ways responsible for the great vices of our times.
“I haven’t done anything wrong – don’t get me involved,” my husband shouts over his gin and tonic. That’s of course what we all think. But that can’t possibly be true.
I remind him that he went along with those mask mandates, and I once ran a green initiative for a magazine I used to edit, encouraging everyone to sign up to smart meters in order to reduce their energy bills – ye gods! What balderdash. Neither Vennells, Clarke or the lockdown crew could have succeeded without willing accomplices ‘just doing their job’, ignoring obvious errors or going along with mad ideas in order not to make a fuss.
Our humdrum daily actions may not lead us to the stocks and whipping post of a public enquiry, but it is surely worth a pause to contemplate what we are still doing today, in our private or working lives, that allows greater evils to flourish.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.
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“The elimination of poverty and the improvement of living conditions is only made possible through access to energy in all forms and the production of fertilisers for food and plastics for medical equipment”
An excellent piece by Chris Morrison but it is the above sentence which encapsulates all that needs to be said. If everybody in the world had access to affordable energy, particularly electricity, world poverty could be eliminated but as the Davos Deviants (DD’s) keep reminding themselves – poor and hungry people make good workers.
Obviously, given that the DD’s have now made world depopulation their number one priority certain elements of their ‘aim to reduce world poverty’ can be diverted to those life enhancing industries – GM foods and life saving “vaccines.”
“Climate change” as put out by the DD’s and their slave media has a thin hold across this country at least; the grip is much weaker than they achieved with the C1984 and as attempts to restrict personal domestic fuel use are ramped up – ULEZ, 15 minute cities, heat pumps etc – this can only wane.
By God there is a war in front of us.
It is a good essay, and that quote is succinct and prescient, but I’m sceptical if ‘world poverty’ could be eliminated with just cheaper energy? This sounds almost equally as Utopian a dream as the weather-haters who want to stop the weather.
I also question why the power elite would want hungry good workers, but also want to kill them? Mass deaths would be very deflationary and decimate assets prices. Would clearer restaurants, beaches, roads and airports be worth me reducing my net worth 75%? Perhaps if you start with billions, but for most that’s surely an easy No! Humans have historically been partial to the odd sacrifice though.
After decades living in what Trump would call tropical shitholes I don’t see much poverty? Admittedly I don’t go looking for it, but I see plenty of amputees and people living modest traditional lives disinterested in the trappings of the modern world, and I salute them. I also witness endless traffic jams of Mercedes-Benz and Ford trucks, and bottomless hotpot buffets groaning with food. There are extreme cases like Saharan Africa, the Bora Bora mountain ranges, warzones like Yemen or man-made abuses where there are truly humanitarian disasters, but this is our story as humans; we like blood and treasure, and insist on living in precarious lands to honour our ancestors and continue traditions. I think it would be regrettable if that ended, because the Chinese laid more productive roads people could leave on.
Are there even too many people? I don’t know but I don’t think so. Would it matter if a few million died? Of course not. Should we seek millions dying? You first. Is the weather changing? Yes, seemingly for our benefit. Should we be worried about CO2? Lol…I’d like someone who believes the weather should never change to suggest how much natural variation we could expect since the industrial revolution? 1C? 0.5C? 1.5C%? Or is it 0C, any change due to mans use of fossil fuels? (No).
It’s fascinating and beguiling how such utter fever dreams can proliferate isn’t it. The Green Grift, like all the others, will undoubtedly have some cynical core of architects, with a confluence of complimentary agendas creating the initial inertia, (like Al Gore) but it will attract far more innocent adherents for the cash and agitprop narrative headlines, especially grifters and socialists, compassionate narcissists, and those more “kind” and “caring”, so females and the young. The latter being the two largest demographics of social media users.
Its a wonderful story if you only read the headlines: Save the earth! I mean, who doesn’t want to do that? And there are very real problems with human pollution of oceans, waterways, land and endocrine-system ravaging plastics. Sadly these are conflated with the CO2 nonsense, for an easy to swallow serving to jingoistic headline readers who crave justice, who want to fight for something, anything.
All the lands have been explored, all the seas conquered, as Schoellhammer says, what is there left to do for the upper middle classes and affluent compassionate-narcissist bourgeoisie? If you’re aspirational, you can signal your virtuousness by parroting the same rubbish. And if you’re one of the cynical architects, its all manna from heaven.
Speaking of Al Gore, this rant at Davos shows either he’s glitching or Rodney Dangerfield is back on form
https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1615831417254211584
Poverty has reduced concomitant with the use of fossil fuels and the results of the industrial revolution. In every continent the effects of adverse weather have been ameliorated by the availablity of energy and shelter.
The green blob seems to want us back in the Stone Age, but they’ll have a fight on their hands..
Indeed.
As the recent viral speech by the better-at-talks-than-gags Russki repeated, you won’t convince the poor to stay poor.
Although he also said UK produces 2% of global emissions? Maybe he just wanted to ingratiate himself with the kids by making us sound worse than we are.
Spot on.
Michael Schellenberg’s book ‘Apocalypse Never’ will convince you that access to energy is the key to ending world poverty.
I have not got quite to the bottom of the depopulation agenda but it is real and it is happening.
Is climate activism really just about the boredom of the bourgeousie? It may well be, it certainly plays a part in terms of the average middle class schmuck who has been conditioned to be ashamed of having a reasonably decent life – the very thing the so-called social justice warriors fought for decades to achieve, to now only berate and vilify the very end goal they at one time fought for. People with no moral compass anymore, be it family, community or church provided, are happy to let the telly, their phone or alexa tell them what ‘morals’ to follow – anything so as not to have to think for themselves.
In any event, looking at the prime movers and shakers of the ‘green movement’, I’d say what it really boils down to is simply the same old same old – money, spondoolicks, dosh, the readies, wonga. It’s really all about the grift. The fact that for some people it allows them to polish up their image and that some may even believe it makes them good people (talking green and raking in the moola apparently absolves them of all prior and current sins) is just a happy coincidence.
The actions of the front-line activists is simple a means of paying obeisance to their masters.
In many cases, boredom is probably a reason for embracing irrational nonsense, or at least selectively muting scepticism – the flipside of boredom being the thrill of casting oneself as Cassandra in a tale of impending doom.
But class guilt is likely to be heavily in play too, especially amongst the affluent but left leaning urban set, who feel a need to offer sacrifice in return for what they see as their privileged station, if only sacrifice borne by other people.
Then there’s old fashioned snobbery, usually tied in with the above. A very old fashioned need to keep the unsightly, unwashed little people in their box, disguised by a veneer of faux compassion.
Not to forget, as you point out, the financial incentives for a small section of society who inhabit the grey zone between politics, academia and private industry. These can effectively profit symbiotically with politicians and their dependents, laundering public funds in plain view through an ever expanding blob of worthy causes, protected from scrutiny by the chattering classes’ fear of being seen to be on the ‘wrong side of history’, along with the complicity of a media now more dependent on sponsorship than selling their product.
This has the knock-on effect of greenlighting corruption and normalising gangsterism in all areas of politics, business and society. Societal order is maintained by the illusion that if we break the rules or disobey the law, the state has the resources to punish us and tip the balance back towards fairness. The reality is the state can barely deal with the minority who are already willing to challenge this illusion. If it is shattered, a free-for-all ensues until society breaks down through bankruptcy or dysfunction, and a drastically authoritarian system can be imposed. It could be we’re seeing the mid-stages of this process.
“Class guilt”. Absolutely. Fortunately, I don’t seem to suffer from that. I guess I am just a horrible person. Quite happy with that.
A crisis of meaning because they’re becoming more irrelevant by the day I’d say.
It’s hard to argue otherwise when pretty much all proposals they’re championing will remove most the ladders for anyone else to succeed, and by extension the innovation and invention to ensure our evolution. Is that not the ultimate act of betrayal of those they’ve used and stood on to get where they are, especially if they’re now suddenly deciding, not only can you not have what they’ve got, but you can’t utilise the same system that provided the status they’re now enjoying and dictating from on-high?
So now they produce excuses to justify withholding further resources whilst they’ll continually receive more from their already embedded success. Success from a system that gave us the invention and solutions which improved our lives, so how is taking that system away going to produce anything but suffering, any innovation if at all, because of a gap between rich and poor even wider?
The FREE market gave us the breakthroughs and our evolution and survival. Why change it even if for some other purpose? Quite the risk if you ask me even with the best of intentions.
All the wealth, invention and innovation have predominantly been created by the (tax-paying) middle class, those they’ll destroy if the rules are to radically change – the system that gave us the invention they now enjoy and utilise – invention they’re now to use against whence it came. They seem to think they’ve all they need!
My views entirely.
If “you’ll own nothing and be happy” materialises then humanity effectively reaches a dead end. If their is no reward for innovation and new ideas then what is the point?
Right, thank you huxley. No reward because no competition, instead receiving a piece of the pie – small or large won’t matter, you won’t be able to increase it. Bottom of the rung (not a ladder but rope in reality) you’ll own nothing and be.. incredibly frustrated. Their ‘reset’ isn’t a reset at all but an indefinite pause of the status quo.
Speaking of John Kerry and delusions of grandeur, just this week he’s been very humbly opining to the great unworked in Davos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ZaDxNUrAQ
The guy is insane. Insane on the right side, his side, but unequivocally insane.
Just because they are bored? Too frivolous. It’s deeper than that.
Modern man has cone to assume it has outgrown religion and discarded it. All it has done is create an existential vacuum that is being filled by climate religion, woke religion and others.
Saw a clip of Al Gore at Davos. He has completely lost it ranting away about imminent Armageddon. Perhaps the money isn’t rolling in fast enough, so time to ramp up the fear a notch.
Climate activism isn’t about the planet – it’s about pure evil. Do you really thing anyone who goes to Davos care about people?
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‘…he concludes that this isn’t about the planet, but rather the boredom of the bourgeoisie, “and they don’t care who has to pay to alleviate it”.’
The key to understanding the afflicted climate activist is the expression on his face if his pet bogey is undermined for a moment.
It is otiose to try to persuade our climate activist that his fears are unfounded. The best you can do by that approach is to unbalance, and therefore terrify, him for a moment, after which he will hate you. He must externalize his pent-up malice, or it turns from below on him.
If you want to defuse the climate alarm you must give its zealots some other reason to believe mankind is wicked and that he must totally change his way of life.
Remember the global cooling scare of the early 80s, the imminent new ice age? Can’t we get that going again?
I think this is more a case of sufficiently educated people getting enthralled by their own fear of what they don’t understand.
The weather is certainly dangerous, that’s why the most powerful pagan gods of mankind were associated with particularly spectacular weather events, eg, lightning. It’s also an endless topic of human conversation. We care very much about the weather, even when we’re living in cities and are fairly isolated from it. And that’s because we are – at the core of our souls – afraid of it: The weather cannot be predicted with any accuracy. And neither can we influence it. But it could devastate our homes and kill us on the next day, no matter how carefully our shelters were constructed. This is more true in the USA were the weather is generally a lot more wild than in Europe and city-flattening storms occur with some regularity.
Then, there’s the vast area of human industry and technology which – to the overwhelming majority of people – is just as oblivious as the weather. These usually employ huge structures where powerful and scary forces like fire and lightning and dangerous substances like acids are being employed to seemingly mysterious purposes. To the average, technically illiterate humanities-educated person, this must seem like very dangerous magic and hence, also something to fear on a cellular level. But as opposed to the weather, it’s humans that are doing it and it can be controlled. That is, stopped.
Combine both and you get the climate hysteric who demands that civilization must be ended before it upsets the weather which will then kill us all.
The use of fossil fuels has empowered us and made a very dangerous world liveable. The benefits of using fossil fuels far outweighs the risks of using them. Ofcourse we are told the opposite is true for political purposes. But the evidence is clear. Without fossil fuels we would still be in the Middle Ages and our life expectancy would be back to half of what it is now. You see billions coming out of poverty in the developing world, not by using wind and solar, but by using fossil fuels. But still one billion have no electricity, and people in the wealthy west cannot comprehend what a miserable existence this is. By telling poor people not to use coal oil and gas what we are really telling them is that they cannot have electricity and that they must continue to live a Stonage existence.
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The population of the world is supposedly at 8 billion now. There is this idea that comes from the UN and their IPCC which is a political body that seeks to convey the idea that we are warming the planet with our industrial activities, and that this could be dangerous. The wealthy western countries are to STOP using the fossil fuels that gave them the prosperity they now enjoy, that includes a doubling of life expectancy, freedom from back breaking labour, and no longer dying from preventable disease. Because the west can afford to dabble in fanciful technologies like wind and sun it has been decided at UN level and by the elite sitting eating caviar now at Davos carving up the world’s wealth and resources that we should do that and get rid of the very fuels that gave us the standard of living we now have. To get away with that you need a very plausible excuse, or at least an excuse that ordinary people will mostly accept. That excuse is “Climate Change”. Endless pronouncements from bureaucrats at huge conferences that spell out what continuing use of fossil fuels will do, with virtually no empirical evidence to back any of it up, and then a bought and paid for mainstream media with it’s never ending “climate emergency” propaganda that speaks of “the climate crisis” as if it were something we can see in front of us like a pillar box, when infact it is entirely the product of modelling that bears no relation to what the real world is doing. There is nothing unusual about current climate or temperature, but every storm and flood from everywhere in the world ends up on our TV screens to convince you of the impending climate catastrophe. ————-The whole world wants the same standard of living as us in the wealthy west, and they can only have that by using the same fuels. One billion people do not even have electricity and they won’t be getting it from wind. —–But there is only so much coal oil and gas in the ground, and that is what this issue is about. It is NOT about the climate.
Agreed. The UN/WEF is carrying out a “levelling down” agenda. They have, for decades, transferred shed-loads of money to the semi-industrial and pre-industrial world and all they’ve ended up with is a population boom.
Now they’ve embarked “levelling-down” to create a “more equal” world. We must be dragged down to the same level as the failed states.
Another excellent piece by Chris Morrison. My quote from the article is what is said by the Progressive Democrat Congresswoman, Ocasio-Cortez, because it was just the answer from a young female meteorologist I was having dinner with recently. She was shocked by my strong anti Net Zero thinking when I quoted her a series of contradicting facts against Net Zero policies and she turned to my wife and said” Why is it that climate deniers like your husband always deal in facts and figures, I do not understand figures”.
It is about emotion and feelings now for the settled science crusaders and we will have a helluva job because of their cognitive dissonance to get them to understand the folly of their thinking with the true facts and figures. Of course this ideological blindness is not solely connected with Net Zero policies, it is throughout society in the way we are governed and the immorality of transgender abuse and the debacle of Covid management.
Have you seen this video on YouTube of John Kerry speaking at the WEF a few days ago?
(35) John Kerry At World Economic Forum: “Extraordinary” For “Select Group” To Discuss Green Mandates – YouTube
Let the ‘Green/Net Zero’ advocates create their utopian ‘Green/Net Zero’ paradise first among themselves and if it’s so great then the rest of us will follow willingly.
But until the ‘Green’ utopia is created let the rest of us go on using fossil fuels, without coercion to move away from fossil fuels.
‘Net Zero/Green’ activism is about religious ideology, a secular religion.
It gives many people a purpose in life, a social club and a feeling of moral superiority.
There is a need for a religion, purpose in life, so when traditional religions (e.g. Christianity) are in decline, this secular religion fills the void.