For me the Luddites are ultimately just as misguided as the technologists. Recalling one's Tolkien, the Elves' greatest desire (which is perfectly understandable) is that things stay the same - but that is the very way that Sauron ensnares them. The Elvish refuges in Middle-earth - to wit the Grey Havens, Rivendell and Lothlórien - are protected by the Three Rings, but the Three Rings themselves depend for their power on the power of the One Ring. So there may very well be modern "environmentalists" (including the modern, Cameronite "crunchy conservative" Tory Party) who think they're on the side of the Shire, but really they're just doing the will of Mordor.
Of course the real purpose of environmentalism (and all the so-called politically correct lifestyle movements - from vegetarianism to "sexual health", etc.), as a friend writes from America, is to transfer moral paradigms to purely trivial issues. To my mind this is "scapegoating" in its clearest form. In the same way as politicians are keen to plant trees in public so that they can get on with destroying the English countryside so condemnation of "bogus asylum seekers" allows for unprecedented legal immigration, and blood-curdling punishments for "paedophiles" allow for classroom sex-ed that is ever more grotesque and abusive. Standard innoculation theory!
But recycling unfortunately is not just morally indifferent. It's positively vicious, in that it's wasteful and deceitful. And it's not just a case of removing personal conduct from the moral sphere. It's a case of replacing real virtues with completely imaginary ones.
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