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

[xiphias]

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.

Comments

[bluepapercup]

It is also quintessentially, maddeningly, hubristically human. In my opinion, we all have the tendency toward deliberate sin, but elevation (and perhaps enlightenment) come not when we suppress that urge (which just makes us want to sin harder, faster, uglier) but when we acknowledge it, cease with excuses for it, and then leave it behind.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Some fraction of that seems to me like it may connect on to the particular worldview that thinks a) The End Times are imminent b) helping bring about the End Times is a good thing c) the world is supposed to get about as messed up as it can possibly get as part of the road to the End Times therefore d) yay messing up the world as much as possible.

As a generally agnostic-tempered-with-pietas ex-Catholic, I have complex reservations about the concept of sin which this margin is too short to contain, but that particular motivation strikes me as in the range of sufficiently advanced cluelessness to be indistinguishable from malice, and most other motivations I can see there are juts straightforward malice.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

it may connect on to the particular worldview that thinks a) The End Times are imminent ...


… as a former Baptist I had the same thought!

[tavella.livejournal.com]

What always gets me, is you are actually paying money to waste money just to piss people off.

[firecat]

And that's how some people feel about Pride parades. :-(

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes. It seems so childishly petty.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Sure, but I reiterate: it's not that it's petty that is the big thing; it's that it's wicked.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

The difference is that I'm right about what is and is not wicked, and they're wrong.

I'm being a little facetious with that, but not really.

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

I have come to realize that there is a certain view of morality that esteems retributive justice over general outcomes. From this point of view, it is virtuous to exert yourself to punish wrongdoers, even if the action benefits no one at all. Seen in this light, tweaking environmentalists (assuming that one believes that environmentalists are to some degree wrongdoers) is driven by basically the same impulse as staying up late writing refutations because "Someone on the internet is wrong!"

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I think that there may be situations in which arguing on the Internet may be driven by pridefulness, and that it may therefore occasionally be an occasion of wickedness. If you're correcting people because it's useful to get the information out there, or because it's important to counter harmful error, that's one thing. If you're doing it to show off, though (which is what I usually, less now than I used to, but still), it's prideful.

[firecat]

I'm on your side there!

[wolfdancer.livejournal.com]

I so agree with you. Was on a vacation with my sister and extended family. allmost came to blows about recyling and hording, he got black yrash baces to hide the fact that he was not doing it.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

On a different standard, I'm afraid that the gasoline we environmentalists are saving by bicycling or whatever -- IS going to harmful uses: logging, land clearing, etc. Or neutral uses that still cause pollution, such as joy-riding, off-road, power boats, etc.

The less demand for gasoline, the lower its price, which makes those harmful activities cheaper.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

That's a very insightful thought about why people object to them, thank you for that.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It's baffling to me because I can't even see how it's supposed to be fun.

I mean I can think of things that are wasteful and bad for the world but fun, and I can see why people do them. But where's the fun in that?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

The 'fun' is in pissing off people like xiphias: that's literally the point. "Fcuk you, who are you to tell me what I can and can't do. I'll jump off this bridge right now just because you said I can't. I'll light this planet on fire. Don't think I won't."

It's a bit like celebrating your own farts in a crowded room and going, "good, everyone can suffer", equal parts insecure narcissism and closet sadism.