Roughly analogous to purchased indulgences, it seems:
When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to “green” type.
According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the “licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour”, otherwise known as “moral balancing” or “compensatory ethics”.
Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the “halo of green consumerism” are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. “Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours,” they write.
Alternatively, “I reject your morality and feel free to substitute my own.”
“The greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.” Who’da thunk that?
Not too surprising. Look at the Kyoto protocol itself…The Europeans grouped themselves together into one big European block for emissions targets because Western Europe’s continuing rise in greenhouse gases is offset by the collapse of the Eastern European economies after the fall of the Soviet Union.
They know full well that If Western Europe was their own block they would not meet the Kyoto Protocol’s requirements because of their rising greenhouse gas emissions. This allowed them to continue with their rising greenhouse gases and simultaneously play the holier than thou card against the United States.
Greenhouse gas targets were just a smokescreen…
Like pigging out with a triple Wendy’s Cheese-burger heavy on the mustard & mayo w. fries & onion-rings while consoling oneself that the extra-large diet-coke off-sets it all…
(well, that’s only first order indulgence–the bad behavior stuff falls into the second-order category)
So what’s 2nd order? Such as stopping by church on the way to the adult bookstore? Or is that 3rd categorically speaking? ;(
How about surfing porn while listening to contemporary Christian Music?
Just trying to determine the limits of the indulgences here.
Our Wendy’s doesn’t have onion rings, RATS!
These green morons have been raised in an era that promotes an “entitlement” mentality. Just because they can’t afford to pay for something doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have it.
They act like the government, taking what they like for their own selfish reasons without regard for those who, you know, actually OWN the things being taken.
This is the revenge of the Hippies – all these 60 somethings were the Hippies – They were shown to be losers in their youth and now they feel like they have been able to revisit their twisted verison of “reality” and inflict it upon the rest of us….Napolitano, Pelosi, Clintons, etc.
I say send them out to a yurt and let them TRY to live a “green” life….pathetic and sad….The SHITE they spew is the real toxic waste.
I was a redneck hippy: I smoked dope, had long hair, listened to rock and roll, and voted Republican. Messed all my flower children girlfriends up
Voting Republican is what really did it. The combination you list is just a bit incongruous.
Happen to run into P.J. O’Rourke at any time during that stage of your life, Byron?
You and he seem to have shared the same philosophy, if not the same circles.
– Max
You, Sir, were what we used to call a HeadNeck. That is, ‘head, and also redneck. Some of them were my favorite people. Some others of them, well, either run and hide when you see them coming, or use lawfully allowable force as soon as they come into extreme random range.
Purchased indulgences ultimately led to a Reformation.
And the Reformation of the greens is going to be a bear.
Why, didn’t you know that those who preach *Green* are such elevated and morally-superior beings that anything they do is automatically the right thing to
Oh. Wait.
They *don’t* do — they just tell *us* to do.
Never mind.
About “going back to the yurt.” I remember about a decade ago I saw a TV special about some idiot greenie babe in Pa who was doing that bit–and dragging her two kids along for the ride in the bargain. She was whole-hog–carrying cooking and bathing water from the stream, cooking over a single large iron pot hung in the fireplace, no electricity, nothing but candle-light, use of out-house, etc. Theu interviewed her still-alive great grand mother who said:”She’s totally nuts! I actually pretty much lived that way as a child and brother, I never want to go back! I’ve got every electrical cooking and labor-saving device in my kitchen and house in existence–not to mention central air& heat. Cable TV, you name it. She’s just playing at it–try living that way forever.” LOL!!!
Wonder if she and her kids are over that giardia infestation from drinking and bathing in organic PA water…
It is that moral superiority thing as BillK said. They really do believe they are better than everyone else because they drive a hybrid and use recycled canvas shopping bags.
Yet when they open their mouths they spew their garbage all over the rest of us – making me need to take a long hot shower to wash off the grime of their stupid ideals. Forcing me to use more oil in my house to heat up that hot shower.
It’s all their fault.
Probably true for those who wear virtuous acts as a badge of honor, creating their own social caste. That seems to be the green thing-and trendy amoung the folks who recycle their grocery bags at Whole Foods and drive away in gas guzzling vehicles. If virtuous acts are done without the expectation of recognition then the statement doesn’t apply.
Martin Luther, paging Martin Luther!