Monday, December 08, 2008
night thoughts (field research)
The conversation I had with my friend H. on Sunday night about how the new practice of paying a "carbon offset" for travel or another kind of [green house gas producing] activity, paying to pollute (in the case of the coal industry), is similar to purchasing, from the Catholic Church, "indulgences" for sins committed instead performing penances — how dissatisfaction with this practice and the corruption generated in the church by this practice was a contributing factor for the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century.
It is the sad hilarity of seeing one of those Greenfleet stickers on a car with the little tag of 'reducing my cars impact on the planet'. Is it possible to un-emit what you have emitted, in the same way that sin can be absolved through a little transaction, a little bit of penance?
I'm not the only one to think this, as a quick search on the World Wide Web will show. But I have been wondering, in the early mornings, how far this metaphor extends — how, in my mind, the line of thought extends to the problem of the economy, debit and credit, having replaced Christian morality, sin and repentance, as the dominant metaphor of our time. The economy has become the poetic structure of the world.
My saddest intuition is, I think, that this shift in our thinking is the result, directly or not, of the Protestant Reformation, and the subsequent secularization of our culture; and the most likely 'revolution' being a turning toward religiosity, and an emphasis on piety, rather than a process of bringing about a change, an alternative to the culture of credit and debit or heaven and hell.
It is the sad hilarity of seeing one of those Greenfleet stickers on a car with the little tag of 'reducing my cars impact on the planet'. Is it possible to un-emit what you have emitted, in the same way that sin can be absolved through a little transaction, a little bit of penance?
I'm not the only one to think this, as a quick search on the World Wide Web will show. But I have been wondering, in the early mornings, how far this metaphor extends — how, in my mind, the line of thought extends to the problem of the economy, debit and credit, having replaced Christian morality, sin and repentance, as the dominant metaphor of our time. The economy has become the poetic structure of the world.
My saddest intuition is, I think, that this shift in our thinking is the result, directly or not, of the Protestant Reformation, and the subsequent secularization of our culture; and the most likely 'revolution' being a turning toward religiosity, and an emphasis on piety, rather than a process of bringing about a change, an alternative to the culture of credit and debit or heaven and hell.
Labels: field research
# posted by amcqu : 12:15 pm
