A Trash Mentality

^{Image Source: Pexels.}

So...

People have been throwing shit away in mass sites for 5000 years.

5000 fuckin years!

In 3000 BC what folks believe to be the very first landfill was developed in Knossos, Crete, when people dug deep holes to hide refuse, which they would then cover with dirt.
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Damn y'all, that is nearly as long as we've had civilization.

Near 500 B.C., the Greek city of Athens devised one of the first-known regulations regarding trash—residents were forbidden from throwing waste in the street. Instead, the law stated garbage must be transported and dumped one mile from the city to maintain its aesthetic and prevent disease.
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Somehow, takes us 2500 years to figure out that trash is a problem.

Fuck humans, what is goin on?!

2023:

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Trash island, AKA The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Holy, what the actual blue billy two timin' fuck!!

Ok, this has had my head in a twist for a while. I've been to the salt flats in Utah many times and this shot reminds me so much of that. Only instead of salt, it's trash as far as you can see.

How did we get here?

Well, the vast majority of this is plastic so you can thank petrochemical companies for the creation of much of it.

Yet...

Clearly if we have been building landfills for 5000 years, there is something awry in the mind of humans.

Let's dig in.

What if I told you that trash is a trick? That the mere idea of waste itself is a construct, fabricated by the laziness of society.

What is trash, or waste?

Dictionary says this for waste:

(of a material, substance, or byproduct) eliminated or discarded as no longer useful or required after the completion of a process.
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And this for trash:

discarded matter; refuse.
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I'm not entirely sure if a definition could be more vague. This could literally be anything that any human anywhere has discarded.

That is nearly an undefinable thing. the only definable characteristic is that a human didn't want it.

So, anything a human doesn't want is a "trash".

It has no shape or form, no specific color or material type even.

It really does not even define to living or not living.

If I throw an entity away, by this definition does it become a "trash"?

What the living fuck even is a "trash"?

What magic trick has been played on humanity to even have such a thing as a "trash".

Ok look, let's get raw...

Trash...

Is not fucking real!

Trash is a concept, not a thing. Nothing binds it to any definition except one of us didn't want it.

A concept born from the laziness of humanity.

What's happened here is actual real world magic.

I'm fairly certain that the spell itself was born more or less naturally. The focus of a human is one of the strongest contributors to anything that human might create. When we are trying to focus on things we often find ourselves putting unnecessary things out of our view so we can focus on only what we're trying to focus on. It stands to reason that we began throwing things away for much the same reason. So that we can focus more clearly.

Yet, it's now been over 5000 years since we started this habit and when we started it it was fairly innocent because much of what we were disposing of was pretty quickly biodegradable. For so much of this 5000 years we've been throwing out fairly natural products.

Not anymore though.

Now humans have this 5000 year plus old habit that is so deeply ingrained into our psyche that no one comes near questioning it. It's like the back of our hand. We just have it there with us. We make these "trash" out of real things and that is where the magic trick is.

Because trash isn't actually real.

"Yes it is dipshit, I can see it right there in the trashcan. Fuck, the name of the can has the word trash in it for gods sake. Trash is definitely real."

Nope.

Sorry.

Trash is not real.

A "trash" is a magic trick and I'll show you how it is done.

The very split second before you make the decision to throw something away, it had a name.

The name might have been paper, metal, plastic.

It could have been motor or straw or napkin...

Yet it had a name.

Then, your decision to throw it away took its name.

And gave it a new one.

That new name, this new unassuming title holds the key to the magic itself.

Can you see it yet?

Ok, here is this object. It's a container made of plastic. It just held something, and on that note it was doing it's job well.

Here comes your decision...

It's right at this moment a container, then...

Poof!

^source

It's a "trash"!

Fuck Magician!

How did you do that? Literally one second ago that was a plastic container. Now, it's clearly a "trash".

Damn you're good. I didn't even see your hands move and boom it was a "trash"!

Ok, nice trick but wait, what is a "trash", and what do I do with it?

Why silly, you throw it away!

Nice, now I know what to do with this "trash" stuff....

It has purpose.

You can see the trick now right? I don't have to spell it out further do I?

First it's something useful.

Then it's trash only on your definition of it being so.

Then you find purpose in this thing called trash, that purpose is throwing away. This purpose cements the idea of trash into your mind. Eventually you are finding more and more of this useful thing called trash whos use is throwing away.

All the while trash never existed, you made this word and titled useful shit with it so you could "throw it away".

Let's be very clear about something...

Nothing in this world, including the shit that comes out of your ass, is this "trash" invention.

The idea of trash is a magical spell that you are under as much as a spell that you have casted.

To undo the spell you have to stop before the next time you cast the spell and look at that item you are about to transform.

Find it's usefulness and you will not magically turn it into a "trash".

Having a "trash" mentality really blows.

Like it really sucks a fat bag of dicks.

When you have a trash mentality you are not only fucking up the environment... you know, that faceless thing all around you that is literally keeping you a-fuckin-live!

No, you're actually doing something else colossally stupid that
I'd like to point out...

You're diminishing your ability to build wealth by creating a financial liability in your life. ^{Liability and Asset being defined as: An asset puts something in your pocket, a liability takes it out.}

Ok, now this guy has lost it. I lose nothing financially by throwing out trash.

Execpt...

ya do.

Every single item that we magically transform into a "trash" is actually a fuckin resource.

Not only is it a resource, it's a resource that you have in fact paid for. When you use this trick and transform that item into a "trash" you are effectively throwing out money and wealth.

Let me show you.

Let's say the "trash" is that useless packaging always overdone on today's products.

Pick a type, metal, plastic, cardboard, Styrofoam, whatever.

Before you perform your magic trick this item is clearly a useful resource. someone just used it to protect the new product you bought would be your first clue.

Not just that though...

The company that made that plastic, cardboard or whatever earns billions of dollars a year making that packaging you are about to transform into this "trash". The company that sells the product paid a company to put that packaging onto your "product". They not only paid to have it packaged but also paid premium to the manufacturer of the packaging. Everyone got fucking paid and you are the one who paid them all.

When you get that useless packaging... you bought it. You paid your hard earned cash for it. It was most certainly included into your final buying price. You definitely bought it. If you think you didn't buy it then how did all those hands before you in the making and packaging of those packaging products make any money?

You cannot find a type of packaging today that we would deemed "trash" after opening your "product" that is not actually a multi billion dollar industry itself. The thing you are about to throw away is making another human billions of fucking dollars.

It literally does not matter what it is made out of, it was made out of a valuable resource. A resource that someone else is making billions off of. Hell it was brand fuckin new when you threw that shit away!

So you just threw away a brand new, already refined resource that another person is making literally billions of dollars from. Incidentally it's also a resource that you have already paid to own.

Starting to see the hole in the boat?

Are humans really this stupid?

Yep.

It's not just that the "trash" takes up space, ruins ecosystems, kills things, creates disease...

You are stuck in a cycle of buying something... Then the spell over you makes you cast a spell on parts of that somethings transforming those parts into a "trash" then you throw it the fuck away.

Man, if only I owned a plastic plant that made virgin and recycled plastic stuff...

I could sell you packaging, you ultimately pay for it cause the manufactures in the line before you get paid for it. You are the only one paying for it. ^{Kicker is you didn't even ask for it. Like when all American restaurants put fucking mayonnaise on all sandwiches on the menu without mentioning it on the menu. Personally I would really like to know it's on there, that is what a fucking list of what's on the damn thing is supposed to be after all.}

So I sell you the packaging for premium. You, under a spell making you believe a brand new resource is somehow useless, cast a spell on it....

Transforming it into a "trash", then like a fuckin zombie...

You throw it away.

If I want to now, I can come behind you and pick up that resource I've already made billions on, that zombified you has thrown out, making it no longer your possession and free for the taking...

Re form it and fucking sell it right back to your zombified trash spell casting ass.

Making billions more off of you're inability to see its use. This inability coming of course from the fucking spell you're under when you needlessly cast "trash" spells on everything in site.

Thus lowering your net worth and essentially burning your money over and over and over again.

Perpetuating the gap between rich and poor as well as making not just "the rich richer"...

you've made the very same rich, richer... that sold you something you didn't want to begin with!!

What a fucking mess.

You've been made a fool.

These companies are fucking mocking you for throwing away such wealth so they can just capture it again. Meanwhile you're sitting there wondering how to build wealth. Wondering why you don't have the shit you need.

When people say "reduce, reuse, recycle" it's not just a catchy phrase to rouse attention.

It goes in that fucking order.

First, reduce what you use. Consolidate it, we're not talking going minimalist here.

Second, reuse things that can be reused directly.

Third, recycle.

Recycling was never meant to be the answer... it was only the final stop on the path. You were supposed to have already reduced and reused.

When I was growing up, for my family, reuse was just how we rolled.

My parents did not buy a single bowl for us kids. Every single one was a plastic bowl that originally came filled with margarine. Nearly all cups we owned were old jelly jars.

Dad rarely bought shop rags. Mostly they were made from old t-shirts.

We restraighten nails from old pallets or old jobs for reuse on new projects.

We kept those nails and other fasteners in the shop in old tin cans and jars of various kinds.

We kept milk jugs for water or other things. We had a massive pile of those dad would cut up for various projects.

We would cut cords off off appliances that died and keep old motors for parts.

We tore down old houses so we could harvest already used building materials. This wasn't "upcycling" this wasn't "reclaimed"... It was just fuckin smart to take advantage of what people would deem "trash".

This was long before the trend of "save the environment". My dad could care less about the environment. It was not even on his radar. We did this because you don't fix what ain't broke.

A bowl used for margarine can be for cereal.

A jar for jelly can hold nearly anything smaller than it.

A tin can is fucking metal, need I say more?

I want to make a cartoon of a man standing dumfounded in a trash pile bitching about how the rich get richer, meanwhile the other slide shows a rich guy making packaging materials and the cycle all the way out to the end consumer then that idiot just throwing it all away still standing on the pile confused.

^{Actually, someone create this for me so I can use it.}

Ok, I'm done ranting and i feel like I made a good point.

Humanity has been made a fool.

They have caught a disease called "The Trash Mentality"

Symptoms include:

Continually engaging in the act of "throwing away".
Casting magic spells to transform already refined resources into things they call "trash".
Using more brand new useful resources to bind these new "trash" abominations together for easy movement from one pile to another.

If you or anyone you know is showing any of the above symptoms they are likely human.

More so they may have been infected with one of our oldest diseases...

The Trash Mentality.

A Trash Mentality
by Michael David
Co-founder of #thealliance and loyal since before the egg.