Amerika

A writer in Poland contemplates littering, and sees within it the moral violation that it is.

I share this world with each and every one of you. If I don’t care about the world I live in, indirectly I demonstrate my lack of care for you.

I know I take for granted the streets will be kept clean but it’s really not the city government’s responsibility. It’s mine – and yours. It’s up to me to care for the world I live in, to make sure, as far as I can, that I’m not polluting it and to educate my children to treat the whole world as their home.

Quantum Learning

What he hasn’t branched to yet: people don’t care, generally because they are unable to be aware of anything past the next two weeks. It’s literally the limits of their intelligence. Think about it: the IQ average is 100. That means there’s a lot of people under 115, which is where you start to be able to see into the coming months or years. Only people over 120 think about decades, and people over 125 seem concerned with centuries, even.

That means only about 10% of our population is even approximating giving a damn about litter and other sins of omission, apathy or carelessness. And by approximating, I mean “biologically able to consider the possibility.” Many of those will not give a damn further because they’re wracked with that weird kind of modern PTSD that afflicts people who’ve seen first-hand how dysfunctional this society is. That PTSD may hit our Polish writer friend if he looks too deeply into this abyss.

If you want to know why deep ecologists often emphasize strong leadership hierarchies, and limiting disposable products, this is why: the majority of our population, unless there’s someone nearby forcing them not to, will simply throw it on the ground and walk away.