It’s easy to see people as just self-serving when it comes down to it. That people are somehow born with an instinct only to protect themselves and to place others, and other things, as secondary concerns.
It’s easy because it’s reductive. Because of course it’s not true. Closer to the truth is that we’ve all got an instinct to protect things – ourselves, our family, our community, our world – but that because of upbringing, situation or experience, people begin to focus the instinct on just one of these elements.
The world isn’t full of selfish people. It’s just that there are a hell of a lot of people who – mostly, basically – are protective, and are just trying to protect the things that mean the most to them. Or, crucially, to protect those things they feel capable of protecting at all.
For a time, I took a plastic bag into work. My way home took me along a stretch of road where bus stops and trudging schoolkids left a constant wash-up of casual rubbish, and as I went I’d pick out the recyclable stuff – cans and plastic bottles mainly – drop it in the bag and put it in my own recycling bins at home.
Sometimes I’d feel better because of it. Sometimes I’d imagine I was getting ‘a look’ from passing motorists or whoever, but I doubt anyone really noticed. Sometimes I’d feel like I’d actually made a difference, like I was protecting something.
Collecting rubbish is a great thing to do. But though I would have liked to imagine I was making a difference, that difference is surely negligible. After all, the next day there’d be another drift of debris to clear up, and not just on my street, or even my city.
I never really asked myself why I was doing it, and if I had I doubt I could have put my finger on the exact reason. With perspective it’s clear I wasn’t collecting this rubbish because I wanted to, or because I really believed it made a difference. It was because I needed to. I needed to feel like I was living up to my principles, to feel that I had principles at all.
I wanted to protect the environment, but what I was doing was protecting myself. If I’d really wanted to make a difference I wouldn’t have taken one bag, I’d have carried a bundle. And I wouldn’t have done it alone, leaning over in the spray from passing cars to pick up a half-dozen cans, I’d have started a group, I’d have got other people involved, I’d have gone to the council.
But I did what many of us do, when faced with the unchartable territory of our own conscience and hopes. I really wanted to make a difference on a wide scale, but I didn’t really believe I could, so I made a difference to myself instead. I protected the thing I believed I could protect.
This blog was an attempt to push beyond those boundaries, and to explore the specifics of how things could be changed. But that’s not to say I didn’t still stray into the same confused territory, making a name for myself in my previous office as a recycling Nazi, a bin-checker, a preachy sod.
A big drive for me is the concept that maybe 30% of us are doing 30% of what we can to live in an environmentally friendly way. To get to 40%, even to 35%, is a terrifically challenging task. But perhaps a similar percentage of people are doing almost nothing – surely it’d be easier to help them jump to 10% or even 20%, and make a more significant difference?
I still think that’s true, and that hope was what gave me the enthusiasm to look into the nuts and bolts of the issue, to see the points where opportunities to reduce waste met our everyday lives. Coffee shops, supermarkets, offices… These are the places where we can all make a difference.
But let’s face it, me and my plastic bag aren’t making that difference. But to admit that opens up a whole line of difficult questions: “So why am I doing it?”, “Why am I doing any of this?”, “Why do I even care?”. And, in the end, the depressing and recursive interrogation – “Why bother doing anything at all?”.
Answering any of these questions is tough on the soul. Just acknowledging that there are questions to be asked can be a challenge, especially since the majority of these questions are asked of you at every turn by people who aren’t driven to gather muddy cans by the side of the road. They are questions that can leave you powerless and confused.
When these questions come from others you can skate glibly over them with pre-prepared statistics and shock stories. But when they come from inside, that’s when the ice can get terribly thin and your arguments can begin to crack.
The ignominy of collecting litter discarded by ‘thoughtless’ people who will only repeat the act is preferable to admitting to yourself that what you’re doing is ultimately pointless. It’s certainly easier than the sweaty hard work of questioning, dissecting and understanding the full scope of the wider issues – green, cultural, social, whatever – that you’re so driven by.
Okay, so that’s what I did. And in now being challenged by these questions – and more – I’m finding it really bloody stressful to try and live responsibly, whatever that might mean. Buying clothes, eating, travelling, working, everything is an ethical conundrum when you really start looking at it.
I stopped picking up rubbish from the street when I realised I was only doing it to protect myself, from myself. I honestly can’t answer the question “Why bother doing anything at all?”, beyond knowing that I just can’t give up feeling there’s something I can do.
I only hope this brain dump helps clear the litter currently clogging up the gears in my head, and gets me asking questions instead of hiding from them.
