How to Tell an Altruist From an Activist

Picture someone you hate. No, not someone you dislike. Image a human being that is not just the radical opposite of you politically, but hates what you love and loves what you hate, who will harm the things you want to protect and do all this intentionally. Now think of some noble, humanitarian goal you would like to achieve if you had the means to, like for example feeding everyone on the planet one or two nutritionally complete meals a day. Finally, think that you can only achieve that while feeding many, many people like the one whom you just imagined you hate the most. If that does not deter you from seeking to achieve your lofty goal, congratulations, you are a truly principled human being. Most people however are not as consistent in what they declare about themselves and what they really, truly want.

This post is about one group of such people. Environmental activists who are concerned not with something specific, like a marsh or a lake, but declare that their goal is 'saving the planet'. How we might go about doing that and what exactly is the danger and to whom is not the subject of this post. The sole thing to think about here is: what is the psychology behind 'saving the planet' and is it really as good as it sounds? A simple test to put to people who want to save the planet is a modification of the question above. Ask an activist to picture their 'enemy' and then ask them is they would like to save the planet so that their 'enemy' can keep living on it with them and their children. The likely answer is a combination of no and 'this question makes no sense - defeating my enemy is literally saving the planet!'. Well here we get to the problem: if you do not want to save the planet while allowing for the people you hate to keep existing, your goal is not saving the planet: it is saving a specific version of the planet, a version that only you like and that perhaps never even existed in the first place. Environmental activists will often try to define away the question by saying something like: 'capitalism and environmentalism are incompatible, we must fight one to have the other' or: 'the patriarchy is what is poisoning the environment, once it goes, we will have a green future'. You can then modify the question and ask them if they would press a button that would instantly erase both them, environmentally conscious people, and all pollution, leaving a pure, green world but without anyone really caring for it (there would still be 'normal people' however). If they claim that this makes no sense to them you will know for sure that their goal is not protecting the environment, but rather that protecting the environment is only a tool for something other, their true goal is a certain state of the world which they hope to achieve through environmental activism, but that is not actually 'net-zero' or something like that.

What is the purpose of this post? Nothing much, just to present a way of distinguishing between people who are true to the principles that they declare as opposed to merely using a slogan that sounds good to work towards a cause that perhaps is only superficially about the protection of nature. I personally am quite fond of the environment and would be prepared to make sacrifices to protect it, but guess what, not everyone will. The main impetus for writing this was my neighbour, who stubbornly refuses to recycle and just mixes all his trash together. I find that offensive to my aesthetics and just impractical, since that is a literal waste of resources, space and money. We all have a tendency to hate people who are not like us, sometimes we can even reasonably justify it, but holding on to your principles is a way to keep your annoyance with others' stupidity from, well... abandoning your principles to become someone who does not propose anything, but is focused instead on destroying what they do not like. Hope that made some sense.