Aversions

That was incredible. They really don’t want to believe in different behaviour. 

Well, at one time you might have expected academics, supposed specialists in the field, to at least entertain the possibility that the differences in littering in residential neighbourhoods could – maybe, just possibly – reflect residents’ attitudes and level of civilisation. That it could – maybe, just possibly – have something to do with whether the residents are respectable, a little bit bourgeois – or conversely, scumbags. 

And yet this obvious variable isn’t mentioned, at all. Indeed, it’s oddly, weirdly, and with contrivance, avoided. 

Lest it unravel the entire premise. 

That was incredible. They really don’t want to believe in different behaviour. 

And so, we’re told, quite sternly, that we must “achieve fairer outcomes in street cleanliness” – despite an admission that rough, litter strewn residential neighbourhoods already receive five times the resources – five times the council spending – of more respectable neighbourhoods. And still the problem persists.

And while achieving these “fairer outcomes,” we mustn’t acknowledge that anyone is actually dropping the litter, and we mustn’t ponder what that behaviour tells us about such people. 

As I said in the original thread, 

A while ago, I made two visits to an unglamorous “social” housing estate, where the amount of litter was striking. On the street, in gardens, in lifts and walkways, pretty much everywhere. Apparently, many residents considered it someone else’s job to pick up trash (including, presumably, their own), even when it was practically on their own doorsteps.

I can’t overstate just how striking it was. And again, this was a residential neighbourhood, not some busy shopping area with umpteen fast-food outlets. 

It was just a nest of scrotes. 

They really don’t want to believe in different behaviour. 

even when it was practically on their own doorsteps.

I remember wondering how someone could literally wade through garbage – much of which, presumably, their own – every time they walked to and from their own front door. As if this were perfectly normal.

And the thing is, while modest, the neighbourhood itself – the physical structures – wouldn’t have been such an utter shithole if better people were living there. 

“It’s quite a thing to live in this Age of Undrawable Conclusions”

I’ve mentioned before a late 80s documentary that I saw some years ago, about the tenants of a run-down and disreputable council estate. One I’ve actually driven past once or twice, and about whose occupants I heard legends as a teenager. The film was, inevitably, made by middle-class leftists (art degrees, boarding school) and was clearly intended as some kind of indictment of 1980s Thatcherism. As if Mrs Thatcher and her policies were somehow the cause of behaviour that predated them.

What struck me at the time – and went entirely unacknowledged by the documentary makers – was the infantilism of many of the tenants – their lack of agency, of initiative. They seemed entirely absorbed by the state, as if it were some all-powerful but utterly negligent parent, and were consequently reduced to a kind of childish passivity.

This mindset was apparent throughout the documentary, yet somehow never remarked upon or challenged, even gently. The residents were clearly being steered towards externalising the causes of their woes, but the mindset on display seemed beyond the scope of any political policy.

One detail that lingers in the memory was that, among the residents, who were able-bodied, there was no expectation whatsoever that even a simple, routine task – replacing the washer in a leaking tap, for instance – might be undertaken by the tenants themselves, or by a friend or family member. Instead, they waited for the council to “send someone.”

For months.

See also: the chirping of smoke detectors.

Again, it was one of those really-obvious-thing-not-being-acknowledged moments. 

it never occurs to her that every house on the block picks up any litter that appears in their yard,

From the original thread: 

Mr Matthews thinks that “deprived” and “marginalised” communities can be elevated, made less dysfunctional, by “the provision of services… such as… street cleaners.” He links to a report fretting about how to “narrow the gap” in litter, how to “achieve fairer outcomes in street cleanliness.” Well, clean streets are a good thing and stepping through garbage can be depressing. But I think he, like the report he links to, is missing an obvious factor. A visit by a council cleaning wagon won’t compensate for a dysfunctional attitude towards littering.

Such that even spending five times more, as is the case, doesn’t make much of a dent in the problem.

But if you walk around leafier, more respectable neighbourhoods, you tend to find much less litter. This isn’t because the council cleaning wagon rolls by whenever someone uses the Big Red Batman Phone – it doesn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on my street. But then the neighbours are highly unlikely to drop litter in the first place – and should anything blow out of someone’s bin, it’s picked up pretty sharpish, either by the resident or one of their neighbours. Once a year we do, though, get a small truck that takes away the fallen leaves that have been dutifully gathered and bagged by local residents.

The primary difference, the obvious variable, is one of attitude, of behaviour. And yet this isn’t mentioned. As if it were inadmissible. 

One of the things we noticed when we visited Japan was, even in Tokyo, the absence of litter… It is even considered rude to walk down the sidewalk while eating. 

They do have a point.

I can’t imagine what, short of a loaded gun, could compel me to walk down the street shovelling a burger into my gob. 

[ Straightens tie, checks hair. ]