Walking Amber, dog in our family, it happens that I bring a litter picker.. Most often the result will be one or two brimful plastic bags. The nicotine addicts faithfully litter up, snuffboxes, used e-cigarettes and many dozen cigarette filters and at lest half a dozen empty cigarette packs.
Orange peels, banana peels, sandwiches and half-eaten buns are indeed litter, but do not harm the environment.
But sausage wrappers do, like milk packets, candy wrappers, toys, pens, drinking cups, receipts, train tickets, cans, bottles, gloves, mittens, caps, buttons, rubber bushings, tarpaulin strips, zip ties, cable ties, shoelaces, glasses, ice cream packets, batteries, hair ties, calculators, popsicle sticks , disposable lighters, tealights, cardboard plates, barbecue bags, egg cartons, lids, screws, nuts, washers, sausage paper, butter packages, chip bags, juice packages, straws, tablet cases, plastic cutlery, disposable gloves, shoe covers, mouth guards, paper handkerchiefs, plastic strips, plastic flowers, flower pots, paper towels , cable scraps, hose stubs, packaging, advertising brochures, styrofoam boards ...
... and other things that don't fit in a plastic bag: exhaust pipes, tire scraps, plastic parts from cars and mopeds, windshield wipers, pizza boxes, other boxes, plastic trays, plastic cans, hubcaps ...
... but also things for which there should be someone responsible, but where the responsibility is far away in time and space: broken road signs, broken road lighting, snow sticks, junk cars, cable drums, pallets, abandoned factory buildings, closed asphalt roads, poisoned industrial lands, ...
... and the same problems on a macro scale, where responsibility is shared by so many that no accountability can be claimed: polluted waterways, depleted soils, air pollution, plastic-filled oceans, trash-filled beaches ...
... rubbish all the way. An exposed lifeline in industrial society, where a value can be exstinguished at an instant. We live in a trash culture.
A candy wrapper, for example. First it is necessary, but as soon as it has released its content, it loses its right to exist and becomes a burden.
Why so much is produced that so quickly loses value? The cost is sky-high, not just moneywise.
It is usually someone's existence that is threatened, homes being excavated, people moved, land razed, air and water poisoned, animals and plants losing their homes.
And around it all spins a costly and resource-consuming circus: mines, raw materials, beneficiation, transport, processing, assembly, packaging, distribution, advertising, planning, business travel, sales, interest points, administration, taxation, informants, news programs, transport, consultants, marketing , advertising, transportation, financial derivatives, stock market news, labour market policy, service, insurance, taxes, discounts, banks, business law, lobbyists, sales, transportation, marketing, market rents, transportation, over and over and somewhere in this a product of some kind which ends up with someone where it exists for a time until it breaks down and ends up where all industrial products have their end station – at the dump.
Industry—waste, rubbish, problems.
Our world is full of products that have been made short-lived, either deliberately or because of the technological system. Fashion is just an expression of growth's desperate search for oxygen transformed to art.
A fully functional phone can suddenly become junk because it can no longer update an important app.
On certain occasions, a mass destruction starts, as when thick-screen TV was replaced by flat-screen TV. Large amounts of waste were generated in a relatively short time. Increased capital concentration as well.
The effects are visible everywhere. Almost every playground has shovels, cars, unicorns, doll,s and other artefacts from the children's world. Abandoned, forgotten.
Some time ago, I picked up my grandson from school. A woman came with a bunch of clothes and put them on a table where there were already trousers, sweaters, jackets, mittens. I had seen that before. It was at the high school where I once worked. The cleaners collected large piles and marveled at the parents who did not come and ask for them. It wasn't always the cheapest clothes.
In a small window of time washing machines, refrigerators, cars, office furniture, toasters and mobile phones do some kind of use, but despite recycling and reuse, they inevitably end up as garbage. A little pointedly, one could say that garbage and problems are the main products of industrial society.
Industrial society must be a faulty construction because it runs counter to the conditions of life on earth. It violates the fabric of life and fails all other living beings with whom we share the earth.
One consolation is that this way of life is doomed. Despite the belief in constant growth, there are simple frameworks that set limits: it is not possible to take in more than there is, and not leave more than there is room for. But most of all nature, our great giver, has no place for takers.
What creates the deadlock is the industrial technological system that creates all the problems while at the same time being the foundation for the security that comes from the fact that lights are on, food is available, the internet works, the bus runs, that there is gas for the car, that the shops are open and the anchors are familiar.
It is a security of the kind that guarantees that the key fits in the door, the sounds heard are the old familiar ones, and other subtle signs of a still functioning everyday's life.
You have probably at some point touched upon the idea that what you experience as security may be something that slowly but steadily erodes the foundation of what makes you alive at all. Do you feel a nagging feeling somewhere that the security is illusory and only temporary, that something much worse is waiting behind the corner?
I was told this story:
“Working at the same factory for 32 years. Same, same. 7 to 4. Every day, every week. Then life becomes boring. /.../ You go home, wash the dishes, cook, wash the dishes, sit on the couch, go to bed. it is a boring life. Nothing happens. I work in a factory; you can't bear to do anything aprt from that.”1
Modern society is a game plan that entices with a profit for all, but stakes are high, the winners few and the game itself deprives life of its values.
When life is no longer valued, it can be placed in factories where, for the animals, the only thing that counts is what can be extracted from their bodies: meat, milk, eggs and fur. And bodies for research and entertainment.
In everyday speech, you say pork, chicken drumstick, ribs, ham and mean body parts of conscious, thinking and feeling beings, as if they were the same kind of products as rubber ducks and mobile phones.
The white wagtail is tripping on the road, the cat is sunbathing on the windowsill, the neighbour just took out the garbage, the ice cream van is honking, all the familiar things of everyday life, a screwdriver, a pair of shoes, the phone rings.
The earth is a small globe, the living space is only a few miles up, and a few miles below us the earth glows; the oceans are really just moisture on a porcelain ball.
In this thin film around the earth, there is life thanks to beings who do not demand anything in return, but are givers by nature. They are mediators who lead the sun's energy on to all other life forms. Their kingdom is that of the proud plants.
Without plants there is only the sun's heat on rocks, but with the plants a cycle starts, where the air is condensed into solid form and the sunlight is made available to herbivores. Plants channel the sun's heat on to creatures that cannot internalize its energy themselves.
The plants are beings that dominate the earth, their material content is many times greater than all other life combined. They are the prerequisite for all other life. The plants show the law of life, they build up and leave behind. They do not take, but give.
Where do we direct our gratitude? Against mines and oil wells? Electricity producers? The insurance company? Phone and TV? Our democratic system? Writing and farming?
The human ego's morbid fixation on itself manifests in the worship of artifacts, roads, airplanes, hospitals, parliaments, globalization. The human ego's tribute to itself.
Technology and industrial production runs on freely, contrary to the principles of nature, even disconnected from human control.
Growth! Economic growth!
Growth presupposes hunger, a constant demand for more. You already know in advance that even more will not be enough. Everything must go on. More must necessarily become even more.
It is both logical and understandable how society is structured. Who wants to see an investment in large capital-consuming factories go to waste because there is a point when the market is saturated? A saturated market must necessarily be made hungry again.
A place on earth where people live contentedly and simply, equals a pristine market. What kind of invitations did the indigenous people receive when they met pans, knives and mirrors? Wasn't that a sneaky ambush?
Why do high cultures perish sooner or later, while there are indigenous peoples who have lasted thousands of years without enmity with land, plants and animals?
A simple everyday act, which in itself is an act of resistance, is to reduce dependence on the products of the animal industries. There are no green meadows or happy, cute animals behind butchery and dairy products. The image of the farm's cows grazing, chickens cackling around the yard, pigs farting in the mud, cows mooing contentedly is completely false. The cows moan that their babies are stolen because people want to steal the milk. We do not‘get’ something from nature, our nature is to steal.
While some dogs, cats, guinea pigs and rats are cared for with love and care, and receive special food and veterinary care, others are subjected to bestial abuse in the name of science to be euthanized and burned as garbage when they are no longer needed.
Our expansion determines which animals must give up their habitats; every species on Earth is dependent on our activities, our toxins and our waste, even humans themselves. Homo sapiens, the sorcerer, seems to have power over all but himself.
While hopes for the future often are formulated as technical solutions, trees and herbivores stand ready to help us restore the damaged nature. Then we have to release the chains of our fellow beings and show them respect.
We must try to see through unsustainable structures that are so implanted in our consciousness that they control our thoughts, feelings and values without us thinking about it. They make it difficult for us to see any alternative beyond an increasingly mechanized world.
Humans have been able to coexist with their environment for thousands of years without harming it. Considering our mental load, is it possible to find a way back to the base of existence? Or is it simply too many of us?
In the industries it is all about quantities, industrial farming is no exception. Dairy farmers, pig farmers, chicken farmers do not have a chance to establish personal relationships with the animals.
Nevertheless, every single pig, every cow, every single little hen is a personality with its own view of the world and dependence on friends and relatives. If only we could understand the chaos going on inside the creatures forced to experience their entire lives in one of the modern animal farms, we would understand that what is happening to the oceans, soils, rivers and climate is only a reflection of our relationship to life and nature. This is where there is hope: We can seek to re-establish that relationship.