A good rule of thumb for Earth Day 2023
Unsubscribe from the email lists trying to pitch Earth Day to you
One day, once upon a time, some guy with a story that can be spun perfectly to make you cry if the right producer gets a hold of it the right way, approached a bureaucratic meeting of the UN and demanded to be heard. And that day at that meeting in San Francisco, as the story goes he convinced those bureaucrats. He probably said something like this “The world doesn’t need more World Heritage Sites! The whole world is a World Heritage Site!” but truthfully the right producer will make it sound a lot better.
You really might cry.
And the bureaucrats from uptight Brussels and Addis Ababa lost their minds. And they threw papers up in the air (a shot that will be staged by the right producer) and you could see the sweat dripping down their brows past the horn-rimmed glasses. There will be a shot of one particularly angry bureaucrat in a powder blue polyester suit with the sweat showing through.
Cut to a voice of love:
“It was the summer of love in San Francisco, man. The summer of love.” (The right producer will get the right shot of the right wiry-framed, nasally-intoned, still-stoned hippie saying that).
Earth Day came into being because some guy in San Francisco gave a talk at a UNESCO meeting in 1969 proposing they idea. Then all kinds of groups latched on.
There is virtue.
And there is virtue signaling.
Anyone behaving virtuous doesn’t have to tell you a single word about his virtuous behavior.
He just does it.
He just does the behavior and doesn’t even consider you as he does it.
And some are repelled by it, while most are attracted by it.
Anyone who sends you anything getting you to act because “Earth Day,” is probably virtue signaling.
May I offer you an alternative activity?
Delete them.
Unsubscribe from any list that tries to convince you how virtuous they are today “because Earth Day.”
Just hit unsubscribe.
Let their marketing team sit day three days from now for a two hour meeting asking themselves why you unsubscribed to that particular email.
Why?
Because it was phony.
It was performative.
It was virtue-signaling lies in a time when actual virtue is needed.
If they send you email with Earth Day in it today, there’s a pretty good chance they aren’t worth your time — not now, not ever.
And don’t get me started on what it says about where they stood on mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and how they probably even had their legislative relations department see about leading the way on calling publicly for punishment for those who would not accept the shot and would not force jab their households. That’s who’s probably sending you Earth Day stuff today.
At the very least, if you choose to keep subscribed for informational purposes, you might have fun sending a sentence or two about what fake, performative nonsense they are putting out into the world by sending such a ridiculous email.
I don’t know about where Earth Day started. I wasn’t there. But I know what Earth Day is today. Toxic virtue signaling. The man I know who will plant the most trees today, will not be telling anyone he did it for Earth Day. He did it because he loves trees. He loves fruit. He loves nuts. He love natural fragrances of blooming flowers. He loves gardens. He loves having his hands in the ground. He planted trees yesterday and he will do it again on Monday. It’s what he does six or seven days of the week. He loves trees. Does he love the Earth? I guess. But you won’t get him anywhere near this virtue signaling nonsense.
Leave him alone to live his life with his trees.
And not only is it virtue signaling nonsense, it’s virtue signaling nonsense that wants to manipulate you into buying into some sappy agenda.
Go plant a tree today, but do it because you want to. Do it because you like the tree. Don’t do it because some ninny in a marketing department went to a conference on how to say the right words to get you to comply with some agenda that will win her points with her graduate school dissertation advisor and her boss when they hear about it on Instagram.
Eschew virtue signaling.
Choose virtue.
Allan Stevo
excellent advice, I either rip them a new, one or unsubscribe. Michael Sussman lays out the origins in Eco-Tyranny https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S126C1472838