ENVIRONMENTAL RELIGION

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism.  Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists.  Why do I say it is a religion?  Well, just look at the beliefs.  If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st Century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.  

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity wit5h nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all.  We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability.  Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment.  Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the righht beliefs imbibe....  

There is no Eden.  There never was.  What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past?  Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five?  When one woman in six died in childbirth?  When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago.  When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke.  Was it when millions starved to death?  Is that when it was Eden?

No. 1 in Anthony riches "Empire" series

Empire, Wounds of Honor

A good look at the auxiliary forces set up by the Romans and used to guard Hadrian's Wall.  The Auxiliaries were looked down upon by the Legions but probably wrongly so.  Perhaps it was simply because the Auxiliaries were formed of local men.  In any case they had roman officers at the top (similar to our having white officers at the top of our negro battalions in the second world war) and so we get the whiff of Roman Emperor's meddlinjg in the daily activities of the men on the fornt lines.  

One thing I noted was that the author used terms of rank for officers in  the units that I had never heard of before.  The first was Captain, which, so far as I know, was not used until the mid 1500's or so. Second was the term "Chosen Man."  Again not a term I thought to be used before the Napoleonicv wars.  But then I am not a great historian, just an avid reader of the Roman era. 

A good book, well written, smoothly eliding from point to point and keeping the reader interested.