"Rolling Coal" and the "My Hummer is Burning the Fuel Your Prius Is Saving" bumper sticker

There's this thing where people put smokestacks on their vehicles to deliberately burn diesel fuel into thick black smoke. It's called "rolling coal", and some people have said that they do it to tweak environmentalists. There's also this bumper sticker I've seen on a Hummer which says "My Hummer is Burning the Fuel Your Prius is Saving", which is also there to tweak environmentalists.

So, what bothers me about this?

I'm a Yankee. Not in the baseball team sense (G-d forbid!), but in the New Englander sense. And we New Englanders have this thing called "thrift".

Let me digress for a moment and go over how I use the terms "ethics" and "morals". Most dictionaries treat "ethics" and "morals" as exact synonyms, but I think those dictionaries are wrong. To me, "ethics" is about codes of rules of right and wrong behavior; "morals" is about a gut-level sense of right and wrong -- a "I know it when I see it" thing. "Ethics" is related to philosophy, and, for that matter, codes of honor (that word "code" again); "morals" are related to concepts of sin.

"Thrift" is a moral issue more than an ethical one. Wastefulness is sinful. As this is a moral issue, it's not always clear what is and is not thrift, and one person may consider a particular action differently than another might, but there are general concepts.

First, "comfortable" isn't necessarily wasteful and sinful, but "luxurious" is. A person might enjoy a bit of luxury on their vacation, but its very sinfulness is what makes it attractive, and every person will have occasions of sin in their life; the thing is to not WALLOW in it, or make it the MAIN thing in your life.

Still, a person who buys a luxury car because they spend hours and hours driving, and the better seat design keeps them from pain -- that person is not necessarily being wasteful. Buying one to impress the neighbors, however -- THAT is sinful. It's wasteful, and prideful, and generally tacky.

Little "luxuries" aren't a bad thing. Thrift isn't about deprivation or suffering. Nobody's going to look down on you for buying a better brand of toilet paper, for instance. Lis and I buy organic milk and eggs from the farm, because they're delicious, even if they're twice the price of supermarket milk and eggs: that's a "luxury" in a sense, but not wasteful.

I take questionable actions, too. I've started buying the pre-cut carrot and celery sticks, which IS wasteful. I SHOULD be buying the whole bunches of carrots and whole things of celery, washing them, cutting them up myself, putting the peels and tops and stuff into a pot of water, and boiling them into vegetable stock to make soups with. THAT would be the THRIFTY thing to do, and buying the pre-cut convenience things is wasteful and sinful.

However -- there have been cases where I've just not gotten around to doing that, and the food has spoiled. And NOTHING is more wasteful and wicked than throwing away food. So, because buying the convenience foods keeps me from the LARGER sin of letting food spoil, it can be justified.

But it's not something I'm proud of.

Which brings me to "rolling coal" and driving a Hummer to burn more fuel.

Those are sinful in the worst ways. People who are doing that are DELIBERATELY being wasteful, which is DELIBERATE sin. And then they're doing so PUBLICLY, and taking PRIDE in their sin.

Taking pride in a sin. Think about that. What could be worse than that? Going out of one's way to commit a sin purely for the sake of committing a sin -- not because you gain any benefit from it. Purely because you CAN sin. And then, rather than being ashamed of your sin, you take PRIDE in it, you BOAST about it.

It's so wicked, so wrong, so sinful, and so evil that it's completely baffling.