Diatribes 謾罵 : Carelessness

One of the things that really brings out the misanthrope in me is seeing people being careless or indifferent in their actions that either primarily affect other people or society as a whole.

Let me give two examples of what I mean by this. The first is one I encounter daily, and that is littering: trash, bottles on the ground, cigarettes thrown out of car windows, and so on. One of the most egregious instances I've seen was while I was stopped at a traffic light. The driver's side door of one the cars in front of me opened, and a hand reached out to deposit a fountain drink on the pavement of the road, the door closed, and the car drove off as the light changed before I fully registered what the person had just done. How lazy and indifferent to everyone else does a person need to be to decide to treat the middle of a busy road as a trash can?

Recently, to try to combat this, I've taken to picking up litter on the UMass campus. Unfortunately, this has also made me more acutely aware of the problem. On a typical day, walking from the campus center to the department, I'll probably end up picking up a carelessly discarded bottle of water, a sode can, and a Wendy's hamburger wrapper. This is all despite the fact that there are trash cans everywhere on campus. This one really disgusted me:

coffee litter

Right in the middle of the grass and bushes, someone just discarded a half-full cup of coffee. Disgusting.

Here's another, less commonplace example: State fairs, farms take steps to protect pigs from us. Although we didn't get swine flu from pigs, they can potentially get it for us. At state fairs, there were big signs telling people to wash their hands before touching the animals. Well, here's how that went:

SARAH MCCAMMON: As you can probably tell, I'm in the swine section of a big open barn here at the Nebraska State Fair. Now, at stations at various points around the barn, there are signs that say in big red letters, Help Keep Our Animals Healthy. They go on to ask people to please wash their hands, and if they're feeling ill, not to pet or touch the pigs. There's also hand sanitizer dispenser just below that sign. The thing is, I've been here for quite some time - probably 45 minutes or so -and I have not seen anyone wash their hands.

Ms. SUZETTE MYERS: We have hand sanitizer in the car. When we get out, whenever we get in the car so.

MCCAMMON: So on your way out but not on your way in?

Ms. MYERS: Well, we came clean, so, yeah.

Same with the next two families interviewed in the program. People are careless and indifferent toward the pigs, and only wash up afterward. Hm, guess what? H1N1 virus confirmed in Minnesota pig, not just any pig, but a pig displayed at the Minnesota State Fair.

It really kills me when people know that doing something is wrong, but are too lazy to do what's right, and don't care because the negative effects are not felt by them but by others. The idealist in me thinks, just pick up the trash, make things better, and hope that this is just a small percentage of the population and that the rest are more decent, while the misanthrope thinks, screw it. Although even then, I'd still probably pick up the trash, because even if humanity isn't so great and worth thinking about, animals certainly don't deserve to have to deal with our trash and get sickened by it.