Conscientious conundrum

Time for my periodic reality check. From my conscience to my brain (with love): respect yourself.


I'm also feeling pulled, once again, between the twin forces of awareness and blissful ignorance. Working in retail now forces me to confront it everyday. Product after product comes in a little plastic package- type 4 and therefore not commonly recyclable even if receptacles are available, which they are not- that I have to take off, throw away, forget. Forgetting is the problem. Every little plastic package that I throw away is a personal dilemma and actually kind of physically hurts me. All of the items on shelves that, in all likelihood, will never be bought by anyone, are just a waste.

Now it bugs me when people sit around bemoaning the declining state of society. That's wrong and counterproductive. Every era can be argued as the time when people really lost their morals in some way, and every coming time period is the previous generation's foreseen nightmare. However, I find myself more and more exasperated by the current culmination of just plain ignorance. And by that I don't just mean people who don't realize what is going on, although that is a significant problem, but especially those people who do know who just are too lazy or scared to do anything about it.

I could probably write a manifesto on the subject, but I have to go stock shelves now.