The Accidental Gentrifist: The Rape of Proserpina

At first, it seems like the religious right’s reconsideration is something of a transcendence over an existential schism. One group places a relatively high value on the temporal, and maintaining a ‘natural’ state of existence, because the natural, organic state is axiomatically the right one, and so human existence should justifiably adapt itself to the nearest it can come to a harmonious homeostasis. That is the summit of responsibility, the moral imperative. The other group places the highest priority on a relationship with a deity. This brutal, mortal life down here is but a trial or a mission, depending on the streak of your faith. Either way, life is an ancillary syncope to the inevitable destination. For those of us who live in medium-sized boroughs marked by a hermetic liberal optimism, the temptation is to perceive a union between two groups disconnected by the respective priorities they place on different planes of perceived existence.

But alas, there is no existential transformation, even if both parties have their doomsdays. Mr. Cizik, who is chiefly responsible for this new evangelical trend, has perhaps picked his battle poorly, but was quite wise in how he chose his plumage. The idea that ‘going green’ can be re-branded into a mainstream moral issue was patently clear when he helped lead the 2005 March for Life in the nation’s capital, carrying a banner that read “Stop Mercury Poisoning… of the Unborn.” Wow. Now it almost seems like an abortion issue. For some strange reason.

Although atheists, agnostics, Wiccan and other non-evangelical environmentalists (who were doing it, you know, before it was cool) would most likely agree that environmentalism is indeed a moral issue, although possibly not for the same set of morals Cizik’s mob maintain. Which means a potentially healed schism could rapidly deteriorate into a contest into who defines green morality. Which is kind of a joke, since for most Americans, environmental responsibility is a consumer-related issue: Do I buy a hybrid? Does my hybrid look ‘hybrid’ enough? Is this coffee actually fair-trade? Is it certified organic? Was this sourced locally? Can I get it in hemp?

But it’s recycling that most interests me, at least as a social practice. Religious ritual has taken many forms in human history: sacrifice, petition, lamentation, self-immolation… but recycling, really, is my favorite. Because it requires the practitioner to have faith they are assisting in the mystical act of turning trash into precious resources, and in doing so, helping to repel cataclysm, in a clean little operation that is beneficial to the whole wide world, while also profiting the local economy.

Sadly though, I’m not a believer. Recycling on my street produces noise pollution, diesel fumes, and leaves trash flying all over the street. Although it does help the local economy: there’s a guy with a plastic trashcan he’s modified into a kind of rickshaw, and every Friday morning at six, he wheels that thing down ten or twenty blocks, picking out any aluminum cans he finds wastefully left in the blue bins. There is your quantifiable benefit.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the recycling craze is that it perpetuates the assumption that it’s perfectly harmless to purchase every aspect of your life individually-wrapped. Beer bottles, empty jugs of laundry detergent, plastic containers that once housed your protein powder. It’s perfectly okay to buy things in recyclable containers, because we can make it new again.

The Penn & Teller Bullshit episode on recycling made a pretty decent argument for the ludicrousness of the practice. Their conclusion is that recycling is not questionably beneficial, it’s actually wasteful, absurd, and in the case of paper, potentially quite a bit more harmful than simple disposal. They also point out that some of the gasses produced by landfill decay can be converted into clean, usable energy.

Wow. Throwing shit away can be better than recycling? Sweet. If only we could expand on this.

Then—hallelujah!—I recently walked into a coffee shop and discovered they’d switched to disposable coffee cups made from corn paper and even corn plastic. I was also informed of flatware made out of potato starch! Not only are these items not made out from petrochemicals, they’re annually renewable—throw ‘em away and they’re ‘gone’ in a year. Now if only I could eat all of my food in them, ensure the corn was both organic and acquired fairly, delivered by electric vehicles charged at a solar stations, and finally disposed of somewhere where they won’t leech into a watershed (and I won’t have to look at them)—and we’re all set.

Even if environmentalism is our new religion, or at least dogma, perhaps recycling was but a temporary ritual. That would seem so, now that we have products that morally reward us for throwing them away. And could it be any more American? Not only is The Holy Church of Throwing Shit Away highly tolerant of waste, it actually embraces the rampant conspicuous consumption that your lifestyle and our economy apparently require. You can shore up your spiritual weak points by spending money—and you don’t even have top do it at church! You can trade it for something tangible this time. Although we should at least make an offering to Persephone, Proserpina, and Eostre, who long ago took dibs on the concept of ‘annually renewable’.

I would never argue that it’s a bad thing to buy a canvas from Whole Foods while willfully ignoring the gallons of diesel it takes to keep that store stocked with goods, including canvas bags—I simply want to suggest that consumer-oriented environmentalism can only result in one basic, unquantifiable good—a sense of satisfaction. You might feel better as a person, it clarifies your daily choices, and you might feel you’ve done your part to help stave off the end of the world.

Just remember that’s why people used to go to church.