the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Having compared Extinction Rebellion (XR) with the Peoples Front of Judea yesterday, I thought it only fair that I should poke around their website, see what they were about, read their demands, and then to cherry pick the parts I can take the piss out of. Of course, being a White heterosexual male – so therefore privileged – taking the piss is only to be expected of me. Perhaps the fact I’m brain damaged nullifies this. Who knows?

Perhaps the most glaring contradiction is one, that to be fair, XR are not alone in being guilty of. But just because lots of people do something, it doesn’t make it right. So, they find nothing contradictory in stating that, “There is a value in us making changes in our own lives to reflect the changes needed, such as changing our diets, where we go on holiday and so on (however personal responsibility can be overstated and is based, to some extent, in privilege).” Except, of course, the most important change of all, the decision not to reproduce. That is never mentioned. I mean, not anywhere on their website.

As I’ve consistently argued on this blog, the extinction of the entire human race can only be a good thing for the planet, but this view in no way blinds to a self evident fact. Namely, one can do less of this, more of that and start doing the other, but to keep on producing more babies means more consumption. Or am I missing something? If someone can tell me how increasing the global population is in any way good for the planet, well great, tell me.

I don’t see it myself but XR clearly do because, “Our duty is to create a world fit for the next seven generations to live in.”And then what? Seven is a bit too specific, isn’t it? What happens after seven or is that the goal, to be like a doomsday cult, seven generations and then everyone drinks the cyanide Flavor Aid? Is Roger Hallam trying to do a Jim Jones, albeit on an altogether bigger scale. If I was a supporter of XR, I’d want to know. But then again, it wouldn’t affect them, would it, seven generations?

After that, I kind of lost interest, although the achingly painful ‘right-on’-ness didn’t help much. Imagine if a hippy commune in 1970’s West Germany, fell of university drop outs who knit their own lentils, one where everyone has access to an unlimited supply of the drugs available in 2023. Then imbue all the hippies with a sense of self-righteous certainty, a certainty that only a zealot has, a zealot moreover, who is late to the party and who makes up for this by furiously necking everything they can get their hands on. That’s what the XR website makes me think of, some good idea’s, watered down to an almost homeopathic level by their own drug fuelled echo chamber.

Younger readers, rest assured that necking refers to the consumption of alcoholic beverages and not anything to do with inappropriate behaviour one might associate with a hippy commune. Although now alcohol consumption is seen by some problematic, so again, who knows?