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Greta and the Omnicause

Entry 2399, on 2025-06-11 at 12:51:47 (Rating 4, News)

Have you ever noticed how people tend to have beliefs which are apparently unrelated, but are also somewhat predictable? For example, if a person believes in shutting down oil drilling to assist with mitigating climate change, they will also believe that Israel is committing genocide, or that Western democracies are controlled by the patriarchy, or that a woman has a right to an abortion at any stage of pregnancy, or that the lower achievement of minority ethnicities is because of white racism.

This phenomenon is often attributed to that type of person (call them far-left, or woke, or activists, or whatever else) being dedicated to the "omnicause". The omnicause is an underlying philosophy that affects the way people see the world and what influences which things they might consider as important. So if I know a person supports Palestine against Israel I can be fairly certain they will also believe Maori (in New Zealand) and black (in the US) underachievement is because thise groups are repressed by the dominant culture, that climate change is an existential threat that we must make considerable sacrifices to tackle, etc.

At this point I must be fair and say that this is not always the case. Some people might take one of these issues very seriously, but be less concerned about the others or even hold views which are the opposite to what I might predict, but that doesn't mean the phenomenon isn't common. And it also works in the opposite sense, in that many people who reject the importance of climate change mitigation might also be likely to be against Palestine in that conflict. In fact, some people might suggest I support a sort of anti-omnicause!

Not surprisingly, I reject this. I don't have extreme views on any of those issues. For example, I think climate change is real, but not an existential threat; I think Israel could do more to prevent civilian casualties, but I don't think they are committing genocide (in the conventional sense of the word); I think there are elements in society which have too much control, but there is no patriarchy as such; I think that abortion should be avoided, but not made illegal in every case; and I think that the primary cause for the underachievement of minority groups is problems within their culture, but there are some systemic societal issues as well.

A well known figure, currently in the news, most obviously affected by this phenomenon is our old friend Greta Thunberg. She became well known through her climate activism, but now has moved on to pro-Palestinian protests. She specialises in hysterical rhetoric and can barely form a coherent sentence on anything with any complexity, but many in the media still seem to love her.

She seems equally dedicated to those two very different causes: climate change and Palestine, but the fact that she has abandoned climate activism, which she claimed would result in the end of life for everyone, to concentrate on a threat to a relatively small number of people in Gaza might tell us something. Maybe she isn't really interested in fixing the most serious problems of our time, but just wants to virtue signal her support for whatever happens to be the latest trendy issue.

So it seems to be difficult to take these people seriously. If they are just choosing issues to become involved with based on an essentially arbitrary set of values, why should we listen? Maybe I source my news from too may "alternative" sources, but it does seem to me that Greta's current crusade has sort of backfired on her a bit. Sure, her boat was boarded by the Israeli military, but they then offered her food and drink and escorted her to safety, away from the war zone she intended on visiting. And her claim that she was delivering food to Gaza was ridiculous. There were no real supplies on board, and I think it is clear to most people that she was involved in a publicity stunt more than a genuine attempt at helping the people there.

But, although she seems to have failed in her attempts at self-aggrandisement on this occasion, she shouldn't worry too much. She just needs to dig into that extensive list of issues covered by the omnicause. No doubt there are other dreadful problems which only she can fix (she's not sometimes referred to as the "Swedish Doom Goblin" for nothing). I'm sure she will find some other trendy issue to move on to, and maybe she will have more luck with that!

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