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.

  • morphballganon@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Think of litterers like poorly trained dogs taking a shit on your sidewalk. They did it because they had to do it somewhere, and they’re not trained enough to understand that there are right places and wrong places.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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      3 months ago

      do you mean as opposed to grass. Not sure how much dogs are trained to use grass. I mean I do bring them there so maybe they pick up on that and true if for some reason they seem to be starting before the grass I will pull them over but honestly I think they prefer the grass or other earthen areas over concrete. Basically not sure if that behavior is trained so much as instinct but I suppose it could be a bit of both. much training is about reinforcing behavior dogs do to begin with so I guess you could say that about all of it. sorry sorta ruminating this through my head as I type.