I consider myself to be the kind of person who can quite easily imagine myself in someone else’s place. I don’t know if I’m actually any better at it than the average person, but judging by the comment sections on social media and the conversations I’ve had with other people, I really struggle to get angry at strangers like many others do, even for things that anger is an appropriate reaction to.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t condemn their behavior, but that it doesn’t provoke a particularly negative emotional reaction from me. I observe the world from a distance, and when I see someone acting differently, I generally can come up with a charitable story about why they act that way. While it doesn’t usually justify the behavior, it at least helps me imagine why they’re like that and reminds me that if I were in their shoes, I’d likely do the same thing.
This applies to cheating, violence, racism… Name a bad behavior, and I can come up with a story about what a person might be telling themselves to justify it. However, littering is something I simply cannot comprehend. I cannot wrap my mind around what a person is thinking when they’re throwing trash on the ground for someone else to pick up. If it’s something “minor” like a cigarette butt, then okay, I can somewhat understand, but tossing your McDonald’s takeout bag onto the side of the road is completely psychopathic behavior to me. I don’t think even the worst people in the world think of themselves as “bad” because they rationalize their behavior somehow. But if you throw trash into nature, you must know you’re being a massive jerk.
Tl;dr: I want to hear the best justification for littering.
First, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I think you should be just a tad bit MORE judgemental. Making excuses for people’s bad behavior is a bit like good people doing nothing and allowing evil to take over. You’re passively condoning the activity.
Second, the acceptable amount of littering is zero, not a cigarette butt is ok. I dropped my car off to be repaired and walked to work from there. You know what I saw along my walk. Thousands of cigarette butts. You don’t really see them from a car, but you sure see them on foot.
Third, I’m pretty sure this behavior is just trash humans. There are very few, if any, justifiable reasons not to hang on to your trash until you get to a trash can. This is my humble opinion.
When I was a smoker, I’d roll the cherry off my cigarettes and carry the butt until I found a trashcan.
People who throw trash on the ground are some of the most thoughtless and selfish pieces of shit in this world. They think that because other people get away with “bigger” or more noticeable wrongdoing, this little thing that they’re doing isn’t such a big deal. That’s it. “It’s not like I committed a murder, gaw!” Fuck you. You made the world worse for everyone else because you couldn’t be bothered to be inconvenienced a little bit. At least a thief has the motivation of profiting from their crime. You just fucked shit up because there wasn’t anyone there to stop you. Assholes.
I don’t believe in free will or the self. To me, there’s effectively no-one for me to be judgemental of. Wether it be littering, racism or violence, these people didn’t choose to act this way, they just do and couldn’t have done otherwise. If I was them, I’d be doing the exact same thing.
I’m just as non-accepting of their behaviour as everybody else. In my case there’s just little to none negative emotions involved in it. Me getting angry about someone littering, to me, is the same as getting angry at the weather.
And yes, I agree. If I were a smoker I wouldn’t want to throw cigarette butts in the ground either for the same reason you just mentioned. My point was that I have theory of mind for such people. I can imagine how someone could naively imagine there’s no harm to it. This just no longer holds true when we’re talking about trash that’s bigger; I can’t imagine what they could be thinking.
Removed by mod
You misunderstand what he’s saying. It’s a very fundamental biology/physiology/brain chemistry, etc. idea that takes some time to understand, if you should so desire. Technically, in the most absolutely biological sense, there is a valid position that states there is no free will. That the precise pattern of the billions or trillions of synaptic connections in the brain form a distinct recipe for a specific behavior in any given scenario.
That being said, despite that it may be valid in one sense, it is just as invalid from the point of view that it is a very simplistic and also arguably not completely informed view. For the most part, therefore, arguing there’s no such thing as free will really is a vapid position, as it eliminates any and all concept of responsibility, of penalty, of society having a framework within which to coexist, and it also stops any discussion in its tracks. I understand the point of view but I find it useless.
Removed by mod
I dunno how you felt condescended to; whatever demons you have triggering you, I can sympathize, but rest assured that was never my intention. In fact, I worried I was mangling it and not expressing my thoughts clearly.
I hope you sort out whatever made you so livid over what was at worst a poorly articulated explanation of something that is hardly meaningful enough to bother with. As I said, I find it without utility so who really cares.
Hoping you feel better. Oh, for the record, that sentence was condescension :-)
Removed by mod
Your condescension has sent my IED absolutely through the roof
Do I have to break out the crayons for you?
You understand condescension, and yet you still do it yourself.
There’s no justification, it’s part of a broken culture.
As a Czech citizen living in a city, I see it happening all around me. By far not for everyone, but for a lot of people treating trash properly is considered a fool’s errand, virtual signalling, try-hard, you name it. This toxicity is unfortunately too common in the culture, and lot of people (including me) are just afraid or tired of being seen as a try-hard. It’s especially “awkward” to clean up.
Obvious littering is one thing but I recon most of the trash floating around is due to “practical littering”, where people, if trash cans are full, will just “neatly” place their beloved trash next to the can, kiss it goodbye and walk around as if wind does not exist. I’m probably too cynical but sometimes I imagine the same people going judgemental when they see trash caught up in bushes.
As for cigarette butts, that’s just dumb. I don’t think I’ve seen someone toss something like a plastic bottle or a bag on the ground, just like that, more than 5 times in my life, but with cigarette butts I see them all the time – most often just before they jump on a tram or a bus. (I’m strongly against violence and bullying, but rationality aside, to be honest, there’s a part of me that is wishing they had to pick it up and chew it.)
(Goddamn, about 2 weeks ago, someone must have left some balls of yarn outside, next to a trashcan, on straight street. I was walking to grocery shop and some kind of thread was unrolled along the pavement for, i kid you not, like 150m. It was bizarre. Could have been some serious TikTok/YTShorts material if someone wanted to make a “goody PSA”.)
I think it’s basically people just thinking “I want to get rid of this” and just drop/throw trash. Then if forced to think about it they’ll just rationalise it with “It’ll degrade over time” or “It’s not that big of a deal” or “I’m creating jobs for cleaners”
I confronted someone for littering and with a completely sincere face they said they’re creating jobs for the people cleaning the streets 💫 so does that mean murderers are creating jobs for homicide detectives?
I wonder if it would help to think back to the first time you littered? When I was 5 or 6, I remember eating a candy and not wanting the wrapper any more. It had to be someone else who saw what I did and pointed out that it isn’t good if we all did this, because then the playground would be all full of trash and we couldn’t play there. I was like, “Oh, I get it.” But if someone hadn’t explained it to me, I think the behavior could have innocently continued for quite some time. I grew up in a very rural place (northern Canada).
Cigarette butts really anger me. It’s a sign of entitlement that I hate. The person knows it’s smelly and disgusting, so they get it as far away from their person or car without a second thought.
I can be judgemental about it because I smoked for over 20 years. I kept a ziplock bag on me (kind of like you would for dog poop when walking your dog) and would keep em in there until I could find a trash can. The ashtray in my car was also used instead of throwing them out the window.
Now that I’ve quit the habit, I notice it even more. It’s awful. My father and mother in law throw their butts on our lawn literally every time they come over, even though they are fully aware that we don’t smoke. When I put a coffee can on the front porch and let them know that’s where they should throw them, they looked at ME like I was the rude one.
Judge em hard. Cigarette smokers have very little space for other people in their world.
Equal parts laziness, self-centeredness, indifference, and a lack of object permanence. Once they don’t see it anymore it ceases to exist, and since littering is faster once it ceases existing for them, it’s somebody else’s problem.
tl;dr I really don’t get it either.
I really don’t understand how people can do it. I moved to a developing nation in the Caribbean. Everyone’s livelihood is connected to nature here. Reefs, especially. Yet every local I have met will casually toss their garbage. I went to a festival on the beach and most of the locals were burying their trash in the sand just enough to keep it from blowing away in the moment. Some don’t even bother with that pretense. There were trash cans in easy strolling distance, every 50 feet.
The roads and waterways are stuffed with garbage here. I live on a canal that connects to the sea, and have watched tour guides and fishing expeditions tossing plastic bottles, polystyrene food containers and plastic bags overboard daily for two years. These are the same people protesting dredging their flats and cayes near the reef, but inexplicably and deliberately ignorant of their own impact.
Also interesting to observe is the speed at which the nation transitioned from class and aluminum drink containers to plastics. Mt first visit here was just three years ago, and most drinks were in bottles that were clearly recycled. Laser etch marks, rubbing from other bottles, etc. Now its all plastic. There’s a national ban on single use plastics, but it isn’t enforced, and it all ends up in the water and in the ground.
When I first witnessed the ghastly indifference of everyone here regarding proper disposal of garbage, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like watching a bunch of five year-old kids, the way they shamelessly toss their trash to the wind.
