Comment on Help me understand littering

Professorozone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  When I was a smoker, I’d roll the cherry off my cigarettes and carry the butt until I found a trashcan.

  People who throw trash on the ground are some of the most thoughtless and selfish pieces of shit in this world. They think that because other people get away with “bigger” or more noticeable wrongdoing, this little thing that they’re doing isn’t such a big deal. That’s it. “It’s not like I committed a murder, gaw!” Fuck you. You made the world worse for everyone else because you couldn’t be bothered to be inconvenienced a little bit. At least a thief has the motivation of profiting from their crime. You just fucked shit up because there wasn’t anyone there to stop you. Assholes.

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• Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I don’t believe in free will or the self. There’s effectively no-one for me to be judgemental of. Wether it be littering, racism or violence, these people didn’t choose to act this way, they just do and couldn’t have done otherwise. If I was them, I’d be doing the exact same thing.

  I’m just as non-accepting of their behaviour as everybody else. In my case there’s just little to none negative emotions involved in it. Me getting angry about someone littering, to me, is the same as getting angry at the weather.

  And yes, I agree. If I were a smoker I wouldn’t want to throw cigarette butts in the ground either for the same reason you just mentioned. My point was that I have theory of mind for such people. I can imagine how someone could naively imagine there’s no harm to it. This just no longer holds true when we’re talking about trash that’s bigger; I can’t imagine what they could be thinking.

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  • Angry_Autist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I don’t believe in free will or the self.

    Do you not believe in computers or the internet either?

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    • AndrewZabar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You misunderstand what he’s saying. It’s a very fundamental biology/physiology/brain chemistry, etc. idea that takes some time to understand, if you should so desire. Technically, in the most absolutely biological sense, there is a valid position that states there is no free will. That the precise pattern of the billions or trillions of synaptic connections in the brain form a distinct recipe for a specific behavior in any given scenario.

      That being said, despite it may be valid in one sense, it is just as invalid from the point of view that it is a very simplistic and also arguably not completely informed view. For the most part, therefore, arguing there’s no such thing as free will really is a vapid position, as it eliminates any and all concept of responsibility, of penalty, of society having a framework within which to coexist, and it also stops any discussion in its tracks. I understand the point of view but I find it useless.

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      • Angry_Autist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I have informally studied this subject for years, and minored in developmental psych, and I’m on the spectrum and human cognition is one of my special interests.

        It’s all predicated on a bullshit misinterpreted experiment that has blown out of proportion because ‘publish or die’ is the only law of the land.

        In Libet’s experiments he either was unaware of, or actively chose to ignore the existence of visual saccades when interpreting his results, and no one has had the balls to call him out on it because so many fuckdamn academic careers hinge on this being a tenable field of study, which it isn’t.

        Your condescension has sent my IED absolutely through the roof and I am very thankful for my own continuing freedom that we were not in the same room as I would have had some well thought out and egregiously unkind things to say about your parentage and education.

        The fact that the self exists is self evident, and the fact that I am capable of writing this to you is literal proof. The odds of randomly colliding atoms eventually producing a machine that can lie to itself about being free willed is greater than the number of estimated atoms in the known universe, let alone this tiny speck orbiting a tiny ember dancing in a rather obscure arm of just one of ten trillion galaxies.

        NOTE: I am not saying the ‘self’ is a mystical eternal force that exists beyond our death, I’m just saying that every single scholarly work I have seen trying to disprove the self has been some of the most ridiculous navel gazing I have ever seen and I used to be an alt.philosophy usenet user.

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  • Azzu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I’m pretty much the same way. You gotta remember though that anger is not a negative emotion. An irrational amount of an emotion is a negative emotion.

    An emotion is just a driving force of your behavior. “Angry” is mostly there for us to take action about unacceptable situations. Thus getting angry at the weather doesn’t make sense, since you can’t change it.

    However, someone littering is in a limited way under your control. Like you said in another comment, you can confront them and use your power for them to pick up after themselves. Saying you’re not getting angry/irritated at all is the equivalent of not doing anything about it to most people. And I do think you’re at least getting irritated (which is a low form of anger) at people littering, which is why you do something about it or post this topic.

    It seems to me a bit that you see any kind of anger, including being irritated, as bad, and thus show no sign of it/deny it even though you have it.

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    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It’s obviously a negative feeling in my view. It can be used as motivation for changing things to the better but I can’t see it as anything else as negative. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

      Ofcourse I’m not immune to it myself either but being such a strong emotion it’s nearly impossible to not notice and thus it acts as a kind of mindfulness alarm. When I catch myself getting angry at something I immediately realize how that is in conflict with how I see the world and then the anger basically dissapears. It’s kind of like waking up at the morning and being irritated that it’s raining outside but then at the same moment realizing that I can’t change the weather and I’ll rather just be wet than wet and angry. It’s the so called second arrow.

      Unlike weather I can affect other people however, and I do. No disagreement there. I simply just don’t see the need to feel anger while doing so. It’s done and can’t be undone. They couldn’t have done otherwise so no need to get angry and pretend as if they could have. My intention is to encourage them to not act that way in the future.

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      • Azzu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I guess it depends on how much trouble you have with too much anger. Very often, anger is counterproductive, not only for yourself, but for actually effecting the change in others you desire.

        In that case, it’s often good to “overcorrect” and rather try to feel less anger than appropriate, so that your troubles get reduced.

        However, I still think it’s an overreaction and an appropriate amount of anger at the appropriate things is healthy, as in the end it’s actually a conflict within yourself to have less anger than appropriate - you’re forcing yourself to spend more energy suppressing/letting go of the anger, and then having less energy to effect the change you desire.

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• AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I didn’t think they were accepting cigarette butts but understanding those litterers. Cigarette butts are tiny and disappear after just a couple steps. They’re “no big deal”. Those things rolled have no concept how long they last nor how they add up.

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