Asymmetric Religion and Philosophy

A running Asymmetric belief is that individuals have a certain amount of love, hate, moral indignation, piety, work, outrage, leisure, among other things, within their soul and that the trick for people is to aim those emotions at the appropriate targets.

Earth Day is harmful in that it drinks from the same soul pool reserved for God. My son and daughter excitedly came up to me today and asked me to turn the lights off for a minute to "celebrate" ED. This is a meaningless gesture (I assume that you already know that turning the lights off and on uses up more energy than leaving them on) that mimics what people do in a "moment of silence" or any number of other religious rituals. This pseudo-religious gesture is designed, obviously, to tap into our God-given need to worship. Since it's inappropriate, however, to worship the earth, ED, therefore, wastes people's piety. I'd rather my kids pray for a minute.

Going nuts over the environment, as many kids do because of public school catechism (see the results of this study- a third of kids think that the world is going to end by the time they're grown because of environmental degradation. Good work, wackos!)- leads to expensive, dumb policies like everything that comes out of Al Gore's mouth. It also uses up the anxiety that kids should maybe feel for more real threats like the national debt by the time they're grown or, in the case of my oldest son, what I'd do to him if he doesn't clean up the garage this weekend.

On the other hand, we shouldn't let the extremists mess up legitimate concern for the environment. California is a much better place to live since the catalytic converter allowed us to use unleaded gasoline. I'm glad we've cleaned up the water. I like bald eagles. National parks are great.

When I was growing up, the Guirado house probably had the smallest carbon footprint in East Los Angeles. My own super-conservative dad would go around the house turning the lights off. He recycled before it was cool. He hardly bought me anything (he would get my brother stuff). Star Wars toys? Ha! I might as well have asked for Faberge eggs. My brother would break those toys that my dad did buy for me before I ever played with them. Only Tom Daschle liked to drive less: My dad never took us to the movies- I think we went to see Superman II when it came out in the dollar theaters, while Superman IV was playing in the real theaters- and I didn't get any clothes until I was 12, when my dad bought me a hat so that I could look out the window, and...whoa, sorry; using up a little of my resentment reserves.

Anyways, papi didn't do this because he feared Natural retribution; he was just a frugal man. In the same spirit of practicality, my oldest son came home with a box full of energy-saving things- deadly mercury-filled fluorescent light bulbs (much more dangerous than trace levels of arsenic or Alar, and that we wouldn't need if we built more nuclear power plants), water-saving shower heads (California would have much more water if it didn't let its water go into the ocean to protect a dart fish or something).

I helped him set up the experiments, installed stuff. It's good to save energy, not for its own sake, but because its smart. I also like having the choice and would like the freedom to splurge and buy an incandescent bulb every once in a while.

My advice to environmentalists would be to "cool it" if you don't want something like an anti-environmental Martin Luther nailing a 95 thesis to Al Gore's mansion to protest modern indulgences (carbon credits).