Nothing, nothing, infuriates me more against the modern state than spending $6500 a year on real estate taxes and still be forced to be outdoors at -10C sorting garbage for the state. It is one of the ritual humiliations the state imposes upon us in its worship of Gaia. A state-supported religion, an official faith, complete with doctrine – anthropocentric global warming – and official rituals, mostly in the separation of garbage into various canisters. I see no reason why I should be forced into the practices of someone else’s religion.
It infuriates me precisely because of its futility. Have you ever seen what happens at the garbage dump? The paper may be removed for reprocessing but most of your garbage is bulldozed into the same landfill, indiscriminately.
I would not mind separating stuff that has some economic value, like aluminum cans, from the rest of the junk. In keeping with my principles of sustaining incomes for the working poor, I encourage every scrounger I see to help himself to the special box filled with beer cans and wine bottles, thus sparing me the task of taking the stuff to the local recycling centre, and giving some guy a few bucks for his own drinking habit, God bless him..
But the sorting of stuff into three bins, paper, plastics and metals, and other garbage, is wholly wasted time.
Most of you are acquainted with the rituals of sorting garbage for the several bins: regular garbage, paper, plastics. organics for compost – if you go that far – and of having to figure which garbage is being collected which days.
It is all a plot by the city to reduce services, increase regulation and interference in private lives, while enshrouding itself in the holy smoke of sanctimony.
I hate it. It is without question the most galling nonsense. It is like being sent as a cadet to clean the parade ground with a toothbrush. Here I am outside in minus 10C putting stuff into various boxes, which will be taken to the front of the driveway, taken away (if you are lucky) by snotty garbage removers who drop stuff over the streets, removed to the dump, and mixed indiscriminately when the great bulldozers bury it again.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
