Editor’s note: This post is the first in a new series authored by Mike Morris. These posts are satirical in nature and designed to provide support and levity to the litter-picker-uppers among us. And if you skipped philosophy class and are not familiar with all of the people or concepts mentioned here, you are not alone!
Ever since the first half-eaten pterodactyl wing was wrapped in a greasy napkin and tossed on the ground outside a sports bar in Mesopotamia nearly 150 million years ago, philosophers have pondered the question, “Why do people litter?” As a service to the Keep Massachusetts Beautiful community of litter-picker-uppers, we are pleased to offer a brief tour of the major schools of thought that have addressed this query.
“I Litter, Therefore I Am”
A year before the French philosopher René Descartes issued his most famous pronouncement (“Cogito, Ergo Sum” – “I Think, Therefore I Am”), he published a pamphlet devoted to a compelling hypothesis: People litter because doing so provides them with irrefutable evidence that they exist. They look down at the gnawed baguette they just dumped on the sidewalk and say, “That baguette is there because I put it there. Mon Dieu, I must be real!”
The fact that “I Litter, Therefore I Am” received very little scholarly attention in 1636 does not diminish its analytical elegance. Shortly before his death Descartes claimed that it was the proposition he was most proud of (“It reminds us that it is in the scattered detritus of civilization that we find our true selves”). Thank you, René.
“I Litter Because I Can”
German philosopher Friedrich (“Fred”) Nietzsche regarded littering as a fundamental expression of the Will to Power that animated all human behavior. In his memoir, he asks, “Who dares to stop me from hurling to the earth a stein filled with foaming Beck’s pilsner? I laugh at your puny attempts to thwart me. Do you think your shaming stares of disapproval will dissuade me from fulfilling my destiny? Hah! I will stuff the remains of this oversized Bavarian pretzel into your open maw and watch you gag.”
Okay, okay, Nietzsche had “issues.” But he may have been on to something here.
“You’re Going Down, Dad”
Sigmund Freud believed littering symbolized a male’s childhood desire to eliminate his father so he could lay claim to his mother. In Civilization and Its Discontents, the founder of Psychoanalysis maintained that “every piece of trash a male deposits on the street represents the father figure he wishes to discard. Show me a man who litters, and I’ll show you a man who despises the one who sired him.”
Concerning women who litter, Freud was adamant: “Women do not litter! Have you ever seen a woman throw trash on the street in Vienna? I think not.”
“I Litter Because I Am Evil”
This view was championed by the 18th-century New England theologian Jonathan Edwards. He saw the influence of Satan behind virtually every human action, so why should littering be any different? As he famously declared in his 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” “when Judgment Day arrives, The Creator will strike a match, igniting every scrap of trash that surrounds us on this forsaken planet, and we will be consumed by a conflagration for which we will only have ourselves to blame.”
“My Litter Is My Gift”
Norman Vincent Peale, the enormously popular Protestant clergyman of the 20th century, saw litter as a sacred present that litterers give to those of us who are motivated to pick up litter. As he wrote in The Power of Positive Thinking, “without the litterer, there would be no opportunity for others to engage in the sanctified work of removing litter. The spiritual lives of both the litterer and the litter retriever would thus be irrevocably impoverished. Litterers are the ultimate altruists, willfully incurring the wrath of society in order to save those who would demonize them. Blessed be the litterers.”
“I. Am. A. Slob.”
In her 2021 masterwork, Spice Cabinet Metaphysics, Martha Stewart proclaimed that “it is common knowledge that virtually all litterers are men. Freud said so. Let’s be honest: most males are oafish brutes. They throw their crap around without a second thought, because that’s just who they are. They have no sense of feng shui. My former husband never picked up his socks or boxer shorts. It all boils down to patriarchy. Everything does.”
So, there you have it. Some deep thoughts to consider the next time you venture out with your trash bag and trash grabber tool. Who knows, you could be the next great philosopher of litter.
Mike Morris is a retired professor of psychology from the University of New Haven who moved to Framingham, MA in 2022. His primary avocations are satirical writing and pursuing street litter with a vengeance. His humor blog, University Life, can be accessed at https://universitylife.michaeladrianmorris.com.
