We have certain societal norms that are so established, and so accepted, that to run counter to these norms would be almost to shock the conscience. Take the daily human act of excretion. Not an act that runs high on the list of “remembered acts” at the end of the day. It’s a trivial part of our daily routine, in a sense, and one that we happily forget about. Yet there’s almost a fascistic quality to the way we expect everyone to use the “proper” waste disposal system. Toilets and urinals are provided everywhere in homes and offices and it’s expected that all will use just these and no other ways of disposing of our bodily wastes- to take a dump in a bag at work and toss it in the garbage would be to nearly to “shock the conscience.”
The mass of effluvia processed daily by the Boston sewer system is not my responsibility, no significant percentage of it do I produce. My contribution to this mess is negligible. If I chose to bag my waste and toss it into a rubbish bin, probably there would be no real repercussions from it. I shit so infrequently, and in such moderate amounts. It’s such a small part of who we are. Why should we all buy into this system blindly? Why shouldn’t I take midnight shits on the sidewalks and streets of Boston? Because it would be incivil, or gross? Is that the reason?
Perhaps because this is such a tiny part of our lives is why we all accept that it’s for the best to buy into this system. We feel no restrictions on our ego to all follow the same course of action. We don’t feel that, “Since we don’t have a more perfect way to process all waste, I, personally, refuse to partake in the process.” It works reasonably well, and we just don’t care how it gets done, as long as it does. And we’re all willing to pay the price, whatever it is, to keep the system running as it is.
And I think there’s more- there’s a sense that this act is one that has larger ramifications for our society. If we have a filthy society, disease may follow. This is an area where personal ego MUST be subsumed, and a herd instinct MUST take over for disease not to flourish. As egoistic as we are in our society, as hell-bent on personal expression as we are (something I can applaud, by and large), there are contexts wherein we view ourselves not at all as individuals, but as collections of tiny units in a larger society, wherein we must all work together as ants, lest chaos easily prevail.
I’m not saying this is parametrically rational- one can take the occasional piss in an alleyway w/o the sky falling, after all- but I think it’s overall a reasonable view, and the most healthy one. We have established systems to handle the effects we as a society have on our environment, wherein we all subsume our individuality and go along with the rules.
Yet we do this only with some of the systems that we have set up. Take, for example, voting in elections. In first-world democracies my fellow Americans rank among the last in terms of the percentage that take part in the electoral process. Given the state of political campaigns I understand cynicism- cynicism is the appropriate response to attempted manipulation. But I do not understand the economist’s view that voting is irrational from the vantage point of an individual. Perhaps my vote makes no difference. Perhaps no one’s vote makes a difference. But in the choice of whether or not to vote I have no right to view myself as an individual but as one of a collection of tiny units in a larger society, wherein we must all work together as ants, lest chaos easily prevail. A healthy democracy depends on the full participation of it’s electorate, therefore I am not voting to choose a candidate but to keep the system running.
It’s a dirty process. I often dislike most of the candidates and all of their rhetoric. But this is not a place for personal expression.
I feel similarly about writing letters to newspapers and congressmen. My voice is important to me. I do not want to speak aloud and not be heard. And I do NOT want to speak out on a matter I feel passionately about, to the best of my ability to be eloquent, and not only not be heard, but to know beforehand that I will make no difference.
But this is unimportant. The choice of whether or not to use these systems, imperfect though they are is not ours to make. We must use them, or our society will suffer.
{That ends this attempt at the subject matter for now.}
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