By- A western mammal with a large cortex interfacing with a keyboard made in China
OK, first off something I have blogged about in depth is green consumerism and its pitiful synthesis of environmentalism and materialism, how it is merely a way to prolong corporate domination of our lives in a morally moronic liberal cop-out sort of way. Now the so called "Guardian news" (yeah guarding who?) is trying to say that people who lean towards environmentalism are "mean" on the basis of a misinterpreted study conducted by compartmentalized members of the academic industry (social psychologists). This is part of an ongoing attempt by the people who are not affected by our environmental impact (the rich) to demonize environmentalists (not global warming enthusiasts, or useful idiots but REAL environmentalists). They realize that any black mark on any aspect of the environmental movement is enough to make people disregard it and justify their ongoing lust for resources shipped to China and then sent back to be consumed in America then dejected into the pacific ocean, Its a part of the current ideological subversion taking place right now that I am not going to get into. When they start calling the people who own nothing selfish , that should raise the eyebrows of anyone of sound mind. Particularly when selfishness and being mean is what allowed the Guardian and other private news endeavours to be so successful.
The Guardian selectively provides details of a study (*below) that claims to have found that people who shop green are more likely to steal in a subsequent task they are given, thus the Guardian felt the need to say this means green shoppers are mean, as we will see this wasn't even what was being studied in the research.
I agree with this article (the academic one) in that simply shopping green is hardly sufficient to consider oneself virtuos, they didn't even get into the issue of how green, supposed green products actually are. For example there is nothing that is totally organic anymore, and a toyota prius made to break down in 7 years is hardly going to have any positive impact, much less rationalizing our massive houses with eco-friendly light bulbs. Indeed some people use shopping green like they use church to sin, but that doesn't make them necessarily mean just that they are cognitive misers (imperfect beings at the whim of their conditioned thought processes)... The psychologists who conducted the study claim "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviors". This makes perfect sense but it should also be included that...
The following was not contained in the guardian article:
"What the authors also found, however, was that simply being exposed to green products led to better ethical behaviour than did the act of purchasing green products, a phenomenon known as "priming."
In Mazar and Zhong's case, when people were "exposed" to the green grocery store but did not purchase any items from it, they shared substantially more money with the anonymous recipient."
The truth of the matter is that ones personality isn't what is having an effect (i.e. ones views on environmentalism perse) but the actual process of moral balancing that occurs when we do one good deed, and feel that we have earned the right to do a bad deed afterwards ( a reminder of the Buddhist in all of us), in addition to the subtle psychological sway of cognitive processes like priming. This means that the same principle would apply to conventional shoppers should they be tested at one of their own "moral" activities. The study itself was very thought provoking and investigated moral rationalization more so then something specific to environmentalism or green shoppers, the medias twist on it was BS as usual, but they need to better classify types of greens, and also incorporate other types of moral activities which are considered more "extreme" and how these people may react after doing a good deed.
Sorry for this lame ass academicrap, more cut throat smashery is on route to the comfort of your idiot box 2.0.
Here is a surprisingly less biased article from the National Post
http://www.nationalpost.com/life/footprint/story.html?id=2367474
Afterthoughts...
Is it only virtuous if its adhering to the socially acceptable practice of shopping green? Who said shopping green was virtuous? What about the guys chaining themselves to whaling boats? What would the results for them be if they participated in this study? What about the people who grow their own food? Why not parce out the participants a little better and classify them as green liberals, and green conservatives, green libertarians etc. then look for differences. Many of these people could have shopped green because they are worried about their own health, which is indeed a selfish act (many who lean towards the right eat local organic food because they are worried about overblown anomalies like Morgellans, bump cancer!!!), whereas those on the left may do so because its actually eco-friendly (whether or not its for their own well being is an endless argument really). I mean what does shopping green entail, buying anything that says on it that its green and organic? Is that a prerequisite to being a greener? These are important questions that these researchers (more precisely the media agencies who twist this) will need to elaborate on in the future because there isn't just one type of green shopper, but many. Some do it out of fear, some out of love.
Its fine to critique greensumption as summed up in the video below, but to go to the extent of claiming that people are mentally unbalanced or mean is a blatant misinterpration of the study. I expect nothing less from mainstream media, and am not sure why I logged this or anything for that matter.
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