An article in TCW last week mused on why the ‘gullible millions’ can’t see through the climate hoax. With the massive power of the media standing shoulder to shoulder on this, we hear and see the relentless, seemingly-casual references to the unarguable existence of ‘climate change’ slipped into almost every radio and television programme, using the power of endless repetition to make any questioning of the narrative seem either wilfully stupid, or worse, driven by malevolence. But there’s another pre-condition which helps to explain this mass gullibility.
For about half a century, there has been a gradual replacement in the belief in the essential role that facts and logic play in driving the events we see in the world, replaced by a new quasi-religion, that of ‘positive thinking’. Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1995) introduced his advice on techniques for happiness and success with his 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking, which he followed up with several more titles on the same theme including You Can If You Think You Can. In Why Some Positive Thinkers Get Powerful Results, Dr Peale tells of the need to turn self-doubt into ‘unshakeable confidence’ and optimistic dreams into reality.
But there are two big difference between Norman Peale’s personal philosophy and that of today’s green movement. First is Peale’s his strong belief in a Christian God, and throughout the second half of the last century he bemoaned the post-war drift away from a devoutly Christian society. A belief in God is by no means a pre-condition for today’s advocates of his basic message, the green movement, but regardless the ‘unshakeable confidence’ has been retained as a core value. The problem with this ‘unshakeable confidence’ is that it admits no possibility that what is being desired and dreamt of is literally impossible.
The other departure is that the Peale books confine themselves to personal achievements, things which are within the reader’s power to control directly. It is a huge and unrealistic leap to extend this concept into a form of mass-consciousness capable of influencing planet-wide events. When that happens, it becomes an infantile belief in fantasy, probably starting even earlier in popular culture with Somewhere Over The Rainbow (where skies are blue and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true) and climaxing with All You Need Is Love (1967) and Imagine (1971). That last song was the inspiration for Liverpool Speke to redefine itself as the world’s first openly-declared atheist airport (slogan: Above us, only sky).
The basic notion is that for good things to happen all you need is to want them sufficiently and therefore when things don’t turn out, it means you simply didn’t want them powerfully enough. Or maybe you listened to naysayers, you know, the grown-up people who want to know the facts before they join in the chorus. This is how what is essentially a childish and naive philosophy can be so cruel and vindictive towards anyone who questions it.
So, despite all the facts, logic and common sense, all we need in order to make Net Zero a success in its self-appointed task of turning the world into a green paradise is ‘to want it enough’. And to be sufficiently resolute in silencing all those evil, negative people who have the temerity to question it.
Brian Meredith
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