Littering the Intellectual Atmosphere

Spring was spreading comfort and pleasure spiced with scents of the last bird-cherry blossoms, the first lilacs and everything in between. The shade was cool, the sun warm. The breeze caressed us as she would her sleeping child. Life wore an irresistible smile.

We picked nettles (Urtica incisa) and made a soup that went into the big picnic thermos. Don’t forget the seed cracker bread and the cheese! After a 15-minute drive to lake Skiren, a 40-minute walk got us to one of our favor picnics places, a natural rock bench with a grass seat and back support right above the 800-meter-long forest-lined lake.

Some people had defiled the place. The remains of a portable grill and litter stained the sanctity of this fleck of paradise.

Compared to the horrors occurring in many places around the world, this littering barely owns significance. It would be a luxury in comparison with what the people of Gaza must endure all the time. They would trade their bombed houses and streets for litter any day. Not to mention how much litter they would tolerate if it would get them medicine, clean water, dependable electricity …

Everything is connected. The litter in the forest is connected to the deprivation in Gaza and other crimes, conflicts and atrocities around the world. The people who walked to “our” picnic place, must have some concept of the beauty of nature. Why would they come there? Why leave the scrap behind?

Are people who don’t care about their own environment going to care about people being deprived and killed on the other side of the world? They don’t understand the ground beneath their feet. How are they going to understand the forces shaping our world? The litter is depressing because it highlights indifference to the community. If the people aren’t aware of the relationship between humans and nature and between the individual and the collective they won’t pass any general knowledge tests and they can’t be counted on to do their part in the struggle for a just world.

Everything is connected. I can feel the connection between criminal banksters too big to fail, and common people too ignorant to respect nature and too me-me-meey to take consideration to the other members of their community.

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“It’s easy to join ideas together,
but difficult to get them to work together.”
Dartwill Aquila

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