On garbage and other smelly stuff

Every time I've been to a garbage dump outside of the United States it has been a memorable experience. It always blows my mind that people live on the garbage dump, and work there and actually pick through the trash. And what really gets me is that nobody does anything. I mean there are enough resources in the world that nobody should have to pick through other people's garbage for a living. The only thing I can guess is that people don't realize it's going on. So I'm going to show whoever cares what it looks like. I can't wait until they figure out how to send smells over the internet. Because there isn't any way to explain what it smells like. I suggest though that you wait until your kitchen garbage can is pretty full...then stick it out in the sun for a few days. Then cut eyeholes in the bag and wear it around for a day(don't take the garbage out first). Then you can understand how it smells.

The biggest business on the dump is scrap metal. Other recyclable materials are also gathered and sold. Who do you sell scrap metal if you work on the dump? Well there's always the mob. Of course if you don't sell it to the mob--well what can you do--scrap metal doesn't taste very good. You can guess who gets most of the profit.

They built the school to keep kids off the dump. Unfortunately it doesn't always work that way.

One thing that gets me is the birds. Birds are ok far away. But up close they're dirty and gross. especially when they live by eating trash. And especially when they are vultures.

All sorts of waste gets deposited here. Including agricultural waste and pesticides, and hospital waste with needles and blood and all manner of things. It is not a safe place to grow up.

Thinking of Boethius again

He really was a pretty smart guy...


By every measure known to man, this is the best time in history to be alive, and this is the best place to live. Try to argue that it isn't (why does "it's not sound diffrent from "it isn't"?) and you will quickly discover its truth. We are richer, more educated, live longer and healthier lives, have more free time and less work, than any generation in history.

And yet the proper name for our time may very well be "The Age of the Psyhotherapist". We are, in addition to being the best-off generation in history, the most depressed generaion in history. Why?

I think that the two are inextricably linked. For most of human history, substinence has been the rule. Outside of a few individuals, greed has traditionally been a pretty distant sin. It's hard to aquire material wealth when all you have is what you make with your hands. When something is completely out of reach we tend to forget about it. But as our society has produced unparalleled wealth, we have aquired the habit. This is not a fundamental change in human nature, but rather a shift in emphasis. Through practice, our greed muscles have been strengthened to such a degree that they dominate our lives to the point that we can't imagine living without them.

It is importan to point out however, that we don't notice it. It is not, in most cases, an active pursuit. It is a passive process thaat has grown with each generation. I am more tied to material posessions and less likely to wait for what I want than my parents are..

So where does Boethius come in? He arugued rather convincingly that the source of human unhappiness is the pursuit of same in fortunes gifts. In other words, the reason we are unhappy is that we have pursued happiness in all the wrong places. As we have moved from substinence to extravagance we have seen this shift as a goal in and of itself. This increases our anxiety level, because even if we don't admit it, we all know that what fortune has given fortune has taken away. This leads to the rash of hyperanxiety and depression that has swept out culture.

Perhaps we have all become the rich young ruler to whom the idea of surrendering his wealth was such a foriegn concept that he walked away from the Kingdom of God.

Or maybe not, maybe all this material wealth really has made our lives better and depression is just a sign of civilizational decay.

Boethius said

"Anxiety is a necessary condition of human happiness since happiness is never completely acheived and never permenantly kept."

What he meant was that in order to be truly happy you must not be dependant on the whim of Fortune--the vision that appeared to him.

Its truth can be seen around us. I've had a number of conversations lately about the consumer culture we live in. If you hang around a church long enough you will hear it condemned. But technology has made our lives safer, longer and more comfortable. We actually have free time.

So is our consumerism wrong, or right? Is the evil in technology itself? Or does our unease come from equating happiness to material wealth?

Somewhere in the shift from sustinence to extravagance our definition of the good life changed. What is it now?