Our Garbage

As consumers, we have a certain understanding about garbage. We know we create it when we consume, and we know we dispose of it, as society dictates. After opening a package of food, we consume the food, throw away the package, and our bodies later dispose of the remnants of the food itself. Through this process, very little of that, which we consume, is actually destroyed, or more to the point used. While the green movement works to keep you aware of the life of your garbage after you dispose of it, for most consumers, the act of disposal represents a physical discorporation of our garbage. Rationally, we understand this to be untrue. We know that when we throw away a bag of trash, it doesn't just go away. It remains, in dumps, or it's destroyed and parts of it are recycled. The end result is a process of accumulated trash, and the process of reusable trash.

Are ideas the same? We know that we use ideas, much like we use food. For instance, if you see a loved on in distress. The process of helping them involves collecting information, either through talking to your loved one or thinking back on things they've faced in their lives recently. After collecting a little information, you may test the things you found against your understanding of your loved one, discarding pieces of information, you determine unneeded. The process becomes, collecting various ideas, consuming those ideas you need, and disposing of ideas you don't need. Later, you may choose to incorporation other ideas, such as your understanding of psychology or perhaps your understanding of medical issues, your loved one may face. The information and ideas you collect, which become significant, becomes the substance you consume, and all other information becomes the disposed information. The disposed ideas may seem to discorporate, similar to the way disposed trash seemingly ceases to exist, but we know that old ideas don't really go away. Once you notice that your loved one is distressed, and formulate a thought about her health, the idea doesn't go away once you find out that her health is fine. The act of considering a loved one's health becomes another source of concern. While it may not influence the way you choose to help your loved one, regarding the specific distress they feel at the time, the idea can be remembered later and considered regarding other, future concerns. So, similar to the way large piles of garbage can accumulate, old ideas remain as part of your thoughts and concept of the world. As such, you may even recall these "disposed" ideas later, when faced with another concern. For instance, the next time your loved one seems distressed, you may recall your previous health concerns immediately, and consider them before looking for additional information.

What about other ideas? Each of us is an individual, but we are also a collection of ideas. We possess the political, social and world views of each of our parents, most of our teachers and the friends who've influenced our lives. We possess ideas, given to us through the media, movies, books, music and culture. As a thinking creature, we learn to sort through these ideas, giving some more faith and credence than others, but ideas, once thought, remain. I like to think back to a friend of mine, who, on a double date with myself, once looked longingly into his date's eyes and recanted, "I am the direct descendent of Davy Crockett." I remember laughing at the time, but in that moment an idea was created for me. The idea was that he'd say anything to sleep with a girl. Even without spending much time thinking about that evening, the idea that he'd lie to a girl to seduce her remained as part of my perception of him. The idea was reinforced later when he, age 17, told another girl that he'd flown F-14 Tomcats for the military.

This makes me wonder about other ideas, especially ideas, which are more dangerous. Our American culture has a long history of dangerous ideas, the inferiority of one race to another, the inferiority of one gender to another, the inferiority of one religion to another, the inferiority of one lifestyle to another. As a culture, we like to pretend, like we do with our garbage, that those ideas, which were the foundation of oppression in our past, discorporate and vanish from our minds, once we move beyond them. We like to pretend this is true, but we already know that ideas, once thought, can never be unthought. Of course, we have options. We can, like many southern states have begun doing, pretend those ideas don't exist. We remove them from history books, teach our kids that the civil war was about state's rights and economic disagreements. We remove the parts of history, where women fought for equal rights, and just let our kids think that women were always equal, that slavery never happened or that our founding fathers were actually super heroes. Of course, this seams like the same problem with our land fills, pretending they're not there and just adding new garbage to the tops, when we need. The other side of this argument is that we could dive in to these old ideas, live amongst them and dwell in the filth. Of course, we wouldn't be any more likely to do this than we would to move into the landfills and build our homes. The last solution would be to listen to the green movement ideals, which tell us to recycle our trash. I suppose this would mean diving into the bad idea landfills with both hands, and instead of hiding from the filth in our history, confront it and use it to benefit people tomorrow. Don't hide from the bad ideas of our past, explain them, teach them and recycle them into wisdom for the next generation. Take the reality of gender oppression, and turn it into a lesson for how underappreciated Americans can stand up and demand liberty. Take the painful reality of slavery and turn it into a lesson for how they can appreciate a foreign culture, instead of destroy it, or at least a lesson on how to respect humanity. History books are filled with dark chapters, but between those sections of shame, there are stories of heroism and confrontation, where society learned to change its perspective and grow. When you remove the pieces of our history, which are inconvenient or embarrassing, you also remove the lessons society learned.