Through reading the book I was recently reading and mentioned in a previous post, I’ve also started to come across other authors/people who see themselves as ‘recovering environmentalists.’

What that appears to mean is that they’ve seen the cracks in the environmentalist movement and seen that the flaws in it are too big to continue on that road.

A lot of the flaws they point out, I have long felt uneasy about myself.

For example, there is a tendency to talk about technology as something that can become our saviour.

The idea is that we can use technology for positive purposes, we can make more ‘environmentally friendly’ technology etc.

‘recovering environmentalists’ see this as a kind of like another religion.

Instead of believing in heaven or some superior being saving us from ourselves, believing that technology can save us instead.

The idea that technology can save us has always created mixed feelings for me.

On the one hand I really, really, emotionally, want to believe it to be true.

But on the other hand, a less emotionally driven part of me can see the massive flaw in the idea.

How exactly do people expect we can utilise technology in a sustainable way when the very things that create those technologies are part of the problem? Not to mention the energy that is then needed to keep that technology up and running.

The world is a closed-off system. We can only utilise what the world has within it.

We end up ‘utilising’ more than our fair share.

Environmentalists often also suffer from the human, nature separation delusion.

We as humans can save the planet, somehow. According to them.

The language used helps the illusion of separation from nature.
As pointed out on a site I found the other day, the very fact we have the word ‘nature’ shows the delusion that nature is something separate from us.  Scroll to II THE SEVERED HAND

The sentence “lets get back to nature” is the epitome of that delusion.

It’s pretty clear why emotionally I would want to side with the environmentalists and believe that technology could save us.

How could it not be wrought with emotion?

As I’ve pointed out previously I’m alive from that technology.

But as someone else in a comment section of a youtube video pointed out so is most of the western world now.

But I can’t help feel I rely on it more. Surgery, powerchairs…

Some ‘recovering environmentalists’ have the ability to live a life that shows their recognition of what modern technology is doing.

And some say that is the only way to go because even though not many people are currently following their trend, there will be a catalyst that is coming and we will see a massive change.

Maybe I’ll be long dead before that moment.

But I can’t help feeling like it’s just another thing that will inevitably leave me behind.

Because while we can’t possibly remain sustainable using technology the way we do, and future depictions in science fiction of further advanced gizmos and gadgets or how we save ourselves by utilising resources on other planets are science fiction and probably always will be…. Where does that leave people like me?

This is one of those unanswered question.

Because the answer is dark and no one wants to acknowledge it.