You’re overthinking this. He doesn’t care because he didn’t see the consequences. He throws in the ice. He cleans and take shot the trash.
A lot of people start thinking real fast when they have to face the consequences of their actions.
Comment on Anon visits a guy's house
ameancow@lemmy.world 3 days agoI have a relative, full grown adult, they threw away a big-gulp cup almost entirely filled with ice into my trash. I do not have industrial trash-bags, I am not a mall, we do not have wheeled bins to collect solid and fluid waste at the end of the day. I have flimsy dollar-store trash can liners, because like most people, I am but a human of limited means.
I grabbed the cup and asked them why they did that. They stared at me without a hint of recognition or understanding. I pressed.
“The cup full of ice, why did you throw it away in the trash? The sink is two feet away.”
Still puzzled. “So? it’s just ice.”
“WHAT IS ICE MADE OF?”
They shrugged. I sighed and let it go.
This story doesn’t end there though. Because it led me to the most depressing epiphany of my adult life, which is that people broadly are not thinking. And I don’t mean it in an edgy “I’m smarter than everyone” way, because I realized I am equally unthinking about a vast number of things, it’s just that most people run on autopilot through their entire day, their entire week, their entire lives. You can be very, very smart and educated, and still not think.
So what is thinking then? It’s conscious narrative exploration of current events in one’s head, using language, using questions, using tools to rapidly explore the world around you as you move through it. I realized that I do that constantly (and that’s also considered being on the spectrum.) It’s why I don’t throw full cups of liquid into other people’s trash bags, but it’s also why I’m miserable and overthink everything and have severe anxiety. No filter, no autopilot.
Our population only “thinks” when they’re struggling, trying to overcome an obstacle, and for most of us, our obstacles are so abstract and hard to quantify that we just ride through our days. Capitalism has fueled an incentive to seek comforts and conveniences, so the vast majority of our day is in pursuit of comfort and conveniences, so we can stop thinking. The reward we seek is also our doom.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 3 days ago
years back, my eldest daughter was the only one in the family with long hair (wife and I keep ours short, at the time the rest of the kids also kept short hair - that’s changed now), and she would just let that go down the drain in the bath, which would eventually clog the drain.
The first couple times, I cleaned it and had gotten one of those strainer things to help keep the hair out. She would always “forget” to use it, even though it was always over the drain (the plug is one of those pop-up ones so you can open and close it without moving the strainer out of the way).
The next time the drain clogged, I handed her a bag and an old pair of pliers and told her to get to cleaning. That strainer has been on the drain ever since.
ameancow@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Isolated incidents of ignorance are common, but I have seen a clear shift on a larger scale. There are a lot of statistics that back up a larger-scale decline in cognitive abilities in Americans in particular.
A lot of people start thinking real fast when they have to face the consequences of their actions.
Our population only “thinks” when they’re struggling, trying to overcome an obstacle,
I’m not talking about my isolated incident, I’m noticing a larger issue, isolated incidents are becoming more common, that’s what I wrote out.
Zink@programming.dev 3 days ago
Very well said!
It’s like everybody wants an easy shortcut to living a good life, and they don’t know the secret, so they just go through life on autopilot letting society tell them what they should be into.
Sometimes remembering to live in the moment and appreciate the simple things will be the best part of my day.
wabasso@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
I have this formative moment from my teenage years where I finished something in the fridge and asked my parents if I should leave the packaging in there. My dad, obviously frustrated with the question, snapped back asking if I saw an accumulation of empty packaging in the fridge.
My kids are starting to do this now. I’m still perplexed why this is the default our brains take.
ameancow@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think I’m more forgiving if it’s literal kids, like teenagers and younger, at least they have the excuse of not having fully formed brains yet and are always distracted anyway, any generation.
My worry is the people I referenced in my anecdotal lament are well into adulthood, and it’s not isolated. I clearly remember a time when things were different. Everyone is acting like distracted teenagers through conversations, business calls, work appointments and using services. When your primary view of the world is through the lens of the broad internet, it can be easy to miss because there is the slimmest barrier of entry to get to a site like “Lemmy” but now most average internet users just scroll the home-screen on their phone or use social media apps that aggregate content. We’re at a 20% functional illiteracy rate for the US and this should be some kind of alarm that goes off and locks the entire country down when seen in at the same time as a 500% increase in reported "air rage incidents."
We’re heading for a zombie apocalypse.
starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I think its just a “this was in there before so it must go back in after im done using it,” since it’s only when it’s fully empty that changes.