Wobbling towards a new faith

Believing in the old experts is a fool's errand

This is a story of how I lost my faith in the ‘official narrative’. No, not that one. I mean the Big Story, the one in which humanity is causing a ‘Climate Crisis’ that we must stop at all costs. And that we can.

It’s a rather long tale, taking place over more than a decade but I will boil it down to essentials. The upshot of which is that I was fooled, and don’t wish to be fooled again. I’m writing about this because I know I’m in good company here. I would bet that most people inclined to think about the world we inhabit have undergone a similar evolution. And like me, they are learning how to live with deep uncertainty. But it’s not comfortable. I for one yearn for the days when I believed our officials and protestors were acting in good faith. Yes, I am afraid that it’s about faith, what and whom you believe in. Even if you happen to be a science geek; that too is a kind of faith. Science is good for some things, but it can’t answer the big, ethical and moral issues of our time. We are forced to look elsewhere for answers. And I did really look.

This tale of woe began way back in the early part of this god-forsaken century when there seemed to be a more than usual number of extreme fires, floods, droughts and heat waves. And just like today, the media staunchly defended what was the ‘official narrative’ back then: this has nothing to do with the Climate, or something called ‘Global Warming’ at all; nothing to see here folks, just move along.

I knew better, of course, because I was deep into research for a ‘climate change novel’ (perhaps one of the worst novels ever written) and the more I dug into the available data, the more I became convinced that we had a serious problem and that the elites were ignoring it on purpose. At that time, circa 2008, less than half of the US population ‘believed’ in Global Warming or Climate Change and the phrase“The Climate Emergency’ had yet to be coined. I got into prolonged and useless arguments with friends who were resigned to listen to my rants. And when I remind them today that see, I was right, they just shrug. Still, the new ‘official narrative’ says I was right all along. I got depressed for the right reasons. We are living in a self induced climate crisis. We must do everything to stop it. So now we have Net Zero, Just Stop Oil, 15 minute cities, and stagflation. And a global elite that has decided that nothing but total global control will fit the bill. They are coming to ‘save’ us. Fantastic. I should be over the moon. I had sided with the angels on this one.

Except for one thing: I no longer believe the new ‘official narrative’ regarding the climate. It is so blatantly political not to mention nutty that all truth has been drained out of it. Again, I am in good company: serious intellectuals like Paul Kingsnorth lost their faith in the so called environmental movement and then began searching for something else to believe in. He became a Catholic, but not the finger wagging kind. He has interesting things to say in his Substack, The Abbey of Misrule and even takes part in Unherd discussion forums. In the latest one he asks a difficult question: What is there left to conserve? Does the West have anything left in the cultural tank after decades of demolishing everything we once believed in and upon which the entire western enterprise is based?Can we actually survive without some kind of faith?

Not to forget Jordan Peterson, who has long since figured out that something was amiss with the messaging on ‘Climate Change’. He too has taken up the cause of Christianity, though he is kind of recycling it for modern ears. And try watching the coppers in Good Olde England roughly arresting a man who charged into a Just Stop Oil march holding up good citizens from getting to work. It demonstrates (haha) just how corrupted our public institutions have become. And that is not even mentioning that the German economy, the powerhouse of the EU, is falling into recession because the Greens, their ruling party, shut down all affordable sources of power. And let’s not try to figure out who blew up the Nordstream pipeline—well, that too is a signal that maybe our trusted elites are not getting this right. Again. I could go on in this vein but most of my readers know the score.

My moment of truth actually came on a personal level, and it came from a source that left me dumbstruck. Like so much of what happens when you are suddenly confronted with the fact that the world you thought you inhabited was a lie, this was as personal as it gets.

You see, four years ago, I had a visitor whom I had known since she was in diapers. The daughter of upper middle class friends who ended up living permanently in Europe and sending their daughter to the very best of private schools because dad was an administrator there. She was bright, musically gifted, and independent from an early age. I had last seen her when she was twelve; when she visited us here she was about to turn nineteen. Right away, I noticed that she dressed very deliberately in an androgynous style and let it be known that she wasn’t sure if she was gay or not. Okay. Gayness doesn’t frighten me. She had published a nice little CD consisting of her own songs. I listened and it was pretty good. But something was amiss. Whenever she was around, my body went into a kind of spasm and my neck muscles got very tight. It was as if my subconscious knew something I didn’t. The Aha moment came when we went on a couple of extended walks, one of the beach and the other in front of our local Parliament buildings. On these walks she revealed who she had become and what she believed in.

Her ‘belief system’ went like this: white people are colonial oppressors and must repent, we are all racist, we are ruining our planet, there are too many people, and gender is a choice. And I have the right and duty to physically wreck places where people with whom I disagree are gathered to listen to a speaker.

How did this highly intelligent, educated offspring of upper-middle-class, well meaning parents turn out like this? Not that they were happy about it, mind you. But when I cautioned her against joining militant groups bent on destruction, she complained to her father who then became protective and vilified me. And that was the end of a long friendship.

The old feminists always maintained that the personal was political. For once, I agree with them though it is painful. But buying into the competing narratives no longer works, nor does ‘believing’ in any one of them. I am left stranded on a rather uncomfortable rocky shore of disbelief. I am not alone there. It is in fact very crowded. And I think our only hope is to actually talk to each other about how uncomfortable it is and how to stop getting our minds fckd by far away entities who bear us ill will. Keep it local. And personal. And forget that for now, we are bereft. It does look like the West is about to hit bottom. Paradoxically, that might ground us. Maybe we will discover a faith that is not tainted by history, something that will allow us to engage with our better angels, and to engage with each other in good faith. Something that we can serve without becoming screaming radicals. Or hating those whose version is different from ours. Something that is beyond us, greater than us, some transcendent vision that will enable us to begin again. Something that is not of the Devil, but of a new version of the Lord. Or the old one. Take your pick. The important thing is to choose. As that old guy with the guitar, Bob Dylan sang, you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody