Remember the crying American Indian?

Tossing ethical behavior out the window
Forward by Kira Brockman Lipe
This is an editorial by my dad published by his local North Carolina newspaper. It holds true for Lakeland and Polk County too. I have been driving behind someone who casually tosses out their fast food waste out the window. I have been to our local parks in Lakeland especially Lake Parker park and where my children play. I have found and picked up cigarette butts, fast food containers and even old socks. Eww! Most of the litter is just feet from an available trash can. In my yard off Kathleen Rd. I find trash daily, including a broken bottles and even a discarded condom! This is disgusting people. I don’t want to live in a pile of trash. Everyone needs to pitch in and put trash where it belongs. If you see someone littering they should be made to feel ashamed. I am not a big environmentalist, but I do believe that we have been given this earth by God and we should take care of our small portion of it.
Chris Brockman
There's been a lot of concern recently about trash along North Carolina roadways. Neither the concern nor the trash is new. I wrote about it on these pages as a newcomer to the Triangle a decade ago.
In the years since, in all the editorials, letters and news stories regarding roadside littering, I can't remember more than an offhand reference or two to the ethical and moral nature of littering.
The lax enforcement of litter laws, and the use of prisoners to pick up trash on a routine basis, suggest that we consider litter and littering relatively harmless. Ethical or moral analysis suggests otherwise. By not treating littering as a serious breach of the social contract, we put our society in line for much worse behavior.
Deliberately throwing trash along the highway, or failing to pick up the trash that blows out from one's carelessly loaded truck or trailer, exhibits ethical and moral problems with serious implications. The first is, literally, a lack of consideration. It's easy to imagine that many of the soda and beer cans and bottles and fast food bags and wrappers along the road were tossed out without a thought, without a care.
Such inconsiderate behavior is a complete abrogation of the responsibility we have as human beings to think about the harm our actions cause to others. This is amoral behavior of the kind that allows the mayhem of identity theft, the injustice of robbery and the ultimate harm of murder. Just don't think about it, and you can do anything to anyone. Our blinking at thoughtless littering creates a breeding ground for all kinds of anti-social behavior.
A litterer who is aware that his or her action is harmful breaks the most basic and most important of moral restraints: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Few of those who toss trash out their car windows, I suspect, or those whose trash blows out of the back of their trucks, would be happy if someone else's trash ended up in their yards. This would be especially true if they had to bear the burden of cleaning it up.
These people are simply immoral; they know what they're doing is harmful and don't care -- so long as they don't have to bear the consequences. Fortunately, in most instances those whose immoral behavior harms others do get caught and end up in jail or prison. Ironically, it is they who may end up picking up others' trash.
Unfortunately, few people are caught or punished for littering itself, because we just don't take littering seriously.
Maybe the worst sort of litterer is the one who recognizes the ugliness of litter on the public landscape and hates having to pay taxes to clean it up, but still empties his car ashtray in public parking lots and leaves appliances along rural roadsides. This person doesn't have even the self-interest that keeps most of us acting in a cooperative way. This is the person who might drive drunk, killing himself or others. It's the tough guy who doesn't care if he gets caught.
Littering is at root an unethical and immoral action. As such it is highly anti-social and a starting point for much worse behavior. The society that accepts it is in trouble.
We need to recognize and deal with littering as the serious problem it is. Its prohibition needs to be part of a moral upbringing, the subject of Sunday sermons and treated as important public policy -- a matter of consideration, responsibility and self-respect.
(Chris Brockman is an English and developmental studies instructor for Vance-Granville Community College.)
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