Would you do something great if you knew nobody would ever know? Would you find the cure for cancer and share it without putting your name on it? According to many philosophers (Hegel being the most adamant on this subject) we don’t do anything unless we are going to get recognition for it. We want to see ourselves and the changes we make in the world, and in fact we won’t put much effort in if we don’t expect that anyone will know. Does this sound like you?
Like the Marxist traditional thinking, we find it difficult to work unless we can see the contribution that our work makes in the world. We want to see ourselves reflected in our product or we feel alienated and distanced from ourselves and others. This is where we are now in 2010. Everyone goes to work, not talking to each other in the tube because they feel that not only are others strangers, but they are strange. They are somehow different and our constant focus on being ourselves makes others at once more strange. They can’t be us. It is difficult to see yourself reflected in most modern capitalist work, or in any other element of this Africo-Western blend that is SA. Is that why we don’t do more?
Do you go to work and do an average job because you know at the end of the day the big boss isn’t going to know that it was you who added the flair to the campaign or set that extra stone into the wall to make it just perfect? Under=performance is hugely common. Most people get by with just getting by and it is only a select few that continuously try to push the boundaries. Are you one of them? If not why?
Watch others the next time you see someone giving money to a beggar or a person in need. Their faces generally light up, illuminated from within because they think that they have made a change. Watch them watching the other person and trying to measure the level of the change they have made. They imagine a future change for this person and recognise themselves in this future. A little bit of self-affirmation, for a relatively low price. There are other ways to do this if you can’t bare the guilt when you don’t give, or if you don’t like to give money for fear that the future you’ve created is one that feeds a habit.
Do you recycle? Unlikely. Why? Other than the primary reason most people cite which is that it is too much effort, it is probably more likely because you don’t believe in your heart that it will make a difference. If you did you would do it. You don’t see your little bit of plastic being re-used. So what do you see? When you don’t recycle this is the picture for you to see. See a trench in the ocean. See the fish that live in that trench, their niche in the environment. See a foreign substance — that’s you in the form of plastic. If you look a little closely at the fish you’ll notice that part of their body has become plastic, because its part of their ecosystem, part of their food. It poisons them.
So if you want to do more, to feel yourself recognised in the world today, then recycle. Stop whining about the effort and the difficulty finding the polystyrene recycling place, because if you don’t recycle the only thing you’ll be able to recognise of yourself in the world is destruction.
Marry me Jennifer….
Interesting post – until the recycling part…
Hersberg did a lot of fascinating research in the 1960’s on motivation, money, feel good factors and recognition (google it! Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Herzberg ). He claimed the feel good factor motivates more than money…
Now, to recycling, surely:
Step 1 – Avoid using the trash generating product in the first place?
Just do without, if you consume less, you use less of the scarce commodities AND don’t generate the trash in the first place. This trash has to be recycled at considerable expense.
Step 2 – Use a product with less trash impact?
The cost of packaging in breakfast cereal is more than a dozen times the cost of the flaked mielies that go inside the box. The product has a toy, the cello bag and the box. All of this is packed, 20 to the outer carton, 10 cartons to a pallet. The flake, on the other hand is just 750gm of maze and water. While only 2 (renewable) maze cobs produce the product, a lot of scarce trees are used to package it and there is a lot of opportunity to feel good by recycling all this lovely trash. Even though you recycle to feel good, the impact is much greater than NOT creating the trash in the first place.
Master these first, then recycle.
I find the Amish philosophy “make, mend or do without” is appealing in our consumption driven society.
Do without, buy intelligently, only then recycle.
So true. I often wonder how we are going to get to a critical point or make the quantum leap where municipalities are willing to assist households in recycling instead of dumping all the garbage in a landfill. If we do believe that there is ‘no Planet B’ we should really get down to recycling.
I thought that earning income from working was the motivation for doing it as best one can…am I living in the dark ages?
Funnily enough, re recycling: Ethekwini went to the expense of printing booklets for every household, to tell us all how to recycle to their satisfaction. A programme was started: they dropped off specially printed peach plastic bags and we were to fill them with all our plastic and paper. They were collected on the same day as DSW collected the rubbish, but by a different truck. After all that expense, it has been two weeks since we have had the plastic bags or collection and…not a word. I’m awaiting the next municipal instruction, probably in vain! I would have thought it possible to put a message on our rates/water/electricity accounts, but ‘no’.
Andre, the municipalities are not even picking up the garbage to take to the landfill. Recycling is a quantum leap in thought.
check out the latest reader blog by michael baillie. He’s got it down!
I recently moved to a retirement village. Because there was money in it the village traditionally recycled glass and cardboard and paper. Everything else went to the municipal dump. The village used to recycle tins but stopped because there was not enough money in it.
I am a committed environmentalist so I was pleased to be co-opted into the Recycling Portfolio of the ‘Entertainment and Fund Raising Committee’.
Subsequently I have got the village administration to resurrect the recycling of tins and am working on trying to get a plastics recycling procedure in operation. Unfortunately I have been unable to find a suitable plastics recycling company in Gauteng.
Unfortunately at the village level organic waste still goes to the municipal dump. However as an individual I have started a Wormery in the kitchen of my first floor flat and have already been able to pass the ‘Worm Wee’ on to a gardening friend in a ground floor flat. I am hopeful that in time the village administration will be willing to start composting at village level.