Litter

I got up very early this morning and went for a short run along the seawall -- I thought it was a good opportunity to get some exercise and listen to a podcast before the hustle and bustle of the day began. I was tuned in to Todd Park Mohr's philosophy podcast, but truth be told, I wasn't listening particularly intently. I have the iPod for something to concentrate on while I'm running, but I mostly use the podcasts as jumping off points for my own mind's wandering.

At any rate, I was staring at the ground and noticed some litter there -- a few cigarette butts. At first my reaction was, as it usually is, negative: annoyance that people throw their garbage out wherever they happen to be. Then I thought a little more broadly. Right next to the cigarette butts were some old, dried up, dead leaves. Why am I not annoyed that some tree littered? In fact, I kind of liked the look of the leaves and dead grass there on the ground, so why is one kind of litter appealing and the other annoying?

The leaves are a product of a natural process -- part of what trees do. Like it or not, cigarette butts are too: a natural by-product of something that people do. Why shouldn't I just accept human generated litter the way I accept the litter and waste associated with the rest of the natural world?