‘It Is Not Really About Science’

Parents Innoculate Yourself Intellectually First....

Many a times one has to make what seems to be the impossible effort of intellectually fighting that which seems so inconsequential and small in stature. But it is not this negative that one is fighting against but the protection and therefore the fighting for one's values. Such, then, is what is at stake in this posting.

The Story about Stuff, a 20 minute video by former Greeenpeace activist Annie Leonard, was recently brought to readers' attention with a cover page Monday morning story in New York Times by environment reporter Leslie Kaufman.

LB at 3-ring-binder (HT Gus Van Horn ) alerted parents to the content of the video in an excellent post:

If you have little kids in government school, or progressive private schools, perhaps you'll want to watch this 20 minute long video, Story of Stuff, on YouTube so you can prepare yourself for the onslaught of self-hatred and victimization your kids will come home feeling after they watch as part of their “education”..

She ended her post with:

My child’s education is not a social experiment for the apologists of modern technology. No one’s should be. Be on the lookout: the comprachicos are alive and may very well inhabit a grade school near you..

To which I say Amen!

The Rational Capitalist blogging about the same video wrote:

This film is purely evil in every sense of the word. It is predicated on a willful evasion of the most basic facts of reality and perhaps, more disturbingly, appears designed to appeal to young children who do not have the power to conceptually grasp the material presented, i.e., it is purposefully designed to scare children into adopting the environmentalist religion's anti-human, anti-freedom, anti-technology credo.

And further in the same post he writes:

A proper discussion of the ideas presented in this film would include advanced concepts and theories in the physical sciences, basic philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, finance, law, and history. To assume such a discussion is appropriate for young children presumes that the material can be inculcated at a pre-conceptual level, i.e., by emotion, which is exactly the purpose of the propaganda.

This above point hints at a very important point in the education of a child: the hierarchical nature of knowledge (which I hope to write about in future posts).
As I commented, it was hard for me to survive more than two minutes of the video. The video is available in several short clips for those like me, who would otherwise get massive bouts of indigestion and nausea! (thanks L.B. for ).

Howtheworldworks has created an excellent four-part series pointing numerous of the factual errors in the video. (If you were planning to invest your time, you may actually be better off just watching this four-part series instead of watching Story of Stuff, since the author of Howtheworldworks incorporates the entire original in his rebuttal - you thus get both sides in one viewing! )

Story of Stuff, Critique Part 1 of 4


Story of Stuff, Critique Part 2 of 4


Story of Stuff, Critique Part 3 of 4


Story of Stuff, Critique Part 4 of 4



Stay tuned for tommorrow's posting on a leading scientist separating the politics from the actual science in the so-called "climate change" movement.