Recycling and sound philosophy

Something just dawned on me as I was washing the plastic cutlery that I got with my Noodles & Co food.

Now, hold on Judge-mental philosophers. Yes I do live in a pretty liberal place, and, it does really bother me all of the trash that I generate. Which, actually, it’s not very much considering what I notice neighborhoods generate. I generate maybe one kitchen trash bag of trash in my place of living about every two weeks without trying.

I do try to set my boxes and blatant recyclable items aside and put them in the recycling can outside. And, I know, we generate so much stuff that be recycled that never gets recycled simply because we do not have the global power presently to recycle all the stuff that could be recycled.

As well, I understand that even in my very lazy, admittedly not very worried version of recycling and Eco conservation, I probably do more than 3/4 of the globe does. And I would figure that I probably do more in my lame ass version of recycling and conserving then probably 2/3 of the United States.

One may ponder the philosophical questions of “what’s the use“. And then further ponder the usual ethical philosophical answers as like things that have to do with chaos theory, butterfly effect, like, I just do my part, all those kinds of compensations…

Of course, underneath all this implicit guilt tripping there is the Nazi version that basically we hear all the time:

“Human beings are destroying the planet! …

Everyone must get it together now or we’re all gonna die!!”

Ok. When you think about it, this voice goes through every single person‘s head who’s reading this post, I guarantee it. And probably 99% of the people who don’t read it as well.

I’m not talking about what peoples opinions on it are. I’m not talking about the ethics of it either. In fact, I would say that the ethics-as-blame behind it really just serve to perpetuate the problem, due to all the underlying mental health, societal, familial issues that motivate the individual to its modern, capitalistic dimensions.

No, I don’t really care here about what is ethical so far as recycling. I’m not even really concerned that we’re going to destroy ourselves, because, honestly, the vastness of the universe, and the vastness of the involvement of human beings in the universe, precludes that we will destroy ourselves.

Yes and – There’s no argument to be made due to the fact that any argument we would make, either pro or con, ignores the fact of the actuality of the situation, argues itself over the actuality of what it is. Namely, here we are having a conversation about a situation that we had no control over, except to say, that the whole time we felt that we had some control over it until we found out about it. And then our ethical animal minds jump up and have all sorts of weird reactions to it, including categorizing them into what is rational, sensible, detestable, fatalistic, you name it…

Different

It dawned on me though: we’re going about it the wrong way. Rather, the people that promote, down our throats, that we are destroying the planet and so we need to figure out how to conserve the planet better, they are going about implementing a solution the wrong way.

Basically , they’re guilt tripping us. ‘Science’ is being used incorrectly. Science yields information, and not an ethical mandate.

I don’t know about any of you guys, but, when someone guilt trips me, I usually end up doing the exact opposite as they want. At least right in that moment. Maybe I might get around to it at some point, but it’s definitely not in the timeframe that they’re thinking about when they’re guilt tripping me about whatever it is.

I’m not saying I’m right or I’m wrong or justified or not in my behavior and attitude, I’m just pointing out a simple fact of what occurs. But also, that I can guarantee that I’m not alone in this attitude and reaction and ultimate behavior.

So…

I think the better approach is to understand that recycling and conservation isn’t about “we better do this or we’re going to die”. Nor is it even about the world that we’re giving to our children, because those are just guilt trips that don’t work.

The way we should think about it is that what we’re doing is we’re giving the present and future more time to figure out how to handle the inevitable problem.

What is the inevitable problem? You might ask.

The inevitable problem is that there is always a problem.

Just ask K:

What the people are not knowing about, in my context, is that there is always some huge giant problem that humanity needs to solve right now.

This is what we call modern subjectivity.

The state that is modern is the state of problem. It is the avoidance of the truth of what is actually occurring for the sake of the problem that manifests because of an avoidance of what is actually occurring.

Ok. I’ll let you ponder that a little bit.

But I’ll just repeat.

We should think about recycling as someone who’s throwing interference in a chase…

If we look at our behavior as that we are just attempting to give our scientists more time to figure out how to handle the problem that is upon us, the problem that is eminent, the problem that will not go away — that is a different way of approaching than from the guilt trip.

Then people might actually change their attitude because then they’re actually thinking about their kids, rather than being told how to run their lives or how to parent.

Just a thought for all you sound philosophers who like to think that you’re ethical.

👽