Something Seriously Wrong

There is something seriously wrong with our mentality, and by "our" I mean at least the people in my apartment, perhaps the people on my street, in my city, province, this country but not, I suspect, the world at large.

Here in Toronto people have been educated, trained, indoctrinated, to be "neat" and to be "ecologically neat", so that the predominant thought is "When you are finished with something, put it out on the kerb on Wednesday", and more recently, "Put it in the appropriate coloured box on Wednesday", so we proudly point to our blue or yellow or grey or green box full of stuff; 'Look at how much I am re-CYCling!"

We are NOT trained to think "Just because I don't have a use for it, someone else might have a use for it".

So yesterday I collected a fan from the garbage. Electric, three-speed, oscillating, ten-inch blade with screen. Plugged it in. Works just fine.

Why is it in the garbage? It can't be because it doesn't work (excuse the double negatives) because it works. Storage space? It's not that big, besides, if you are short of space you toss a lot of stuff, not one item.

My guess is that the previous owner bought a bigger fan, or an air-conditioner, and "since I have no use for this, I'll toss it out".

Bad thinking. Non-thinking. Not so much thoughtless, as robot-like following the dictates of the local council that spends millions of dollars training people to cart stuff to the curb. On Wednesdays.