More Trash in Oklahoma

 

On November 12, 2019, members of a fraternity at Southeastern Oklahoma State University cleaned up garbage that had been thrown along the wooded roadside along a 0.2-mile stretch of Wilson Street down from the biology building where I work.

We did not count the pieces of garbage, but there were six large bags, which means several hundred pieces of garbage, some of it large and some of it dangerous. (At least this year we did not find discarded syringes.) Simple math indicates that the garbage intensity (I think I just made that term up right now) is about 1500 pieces of garbage per mile.

I assumed that this entire amount had built up during the two years since our last garbage pickup, conducted by a sorority. But when I drove down this stretch of street five days later, on November 17, I could see twenty large new pieces of garbage.

From this I conclude that when I see garbage along Oklahoma streets and highways, much of it is newly-deposited, rather than an accumulation from many months.

How can we expect the average Oklahoman to know or care about evolution, global warming, or the environment, if the world outside of their immediate experience—even land that belongs to their community or their neighbors—has no value whatsoever? I am happy to report that there is a significant minority of Oklahomans who do care, but is it any wonder that we are having little if any effect on the community and political life of our state?

 

The preceding appeared in my science blog. For this blog, I must add that rural Oklahoma is considered to be the most intensely Republican and intensely Christian part of America. If Republican Christians completely take over the rulership of our country—something they fully expect God to make happen—you can expect it to have many evil characteristics, not the least of which will be that it will be smothered in garbage. This is just one more way in which Republicans hate altruism.

How to Love Thy Neighbor

There are lots of ways to love thy neighbor, most of which non-religious people affirm as well as religious people. Many of these ways are costly and time-consuming. I cannot afford the time or money to go help people in the latest war-torn site of starvation, disease, and despair—at the moment, I cannot even remember where this is. Yemen? South Sudan?

But there are some very simple ways, also. For example, by not throwing your garbage in the street or, especially, in your neighbor’s yard. I mean, how hard is that to figure out?

You can quickly gauge a community’s sense of spiritual love by counting the number of pieces of garbage in public areas. Oklahoma, where I live and work, is in the middle of the Bible belt and ought to be the place in the world most permeated with the love of God. But this is what I have found, based on actual count:

• Tulsa: My wife and I walked along residential streets and through about a mile of city park land along a creek, total distance of about 1 ½ miles. Total number of garbage items: 1,325 plus or minus about 15. This is 833 pieces of litter per mile.
• Durant: I walked about six blocks (about six tenths of a mile) through my neighborhood, and counted 640 pieces of garbage. Some were in my yard, but I did not put them there; they were things I would not even have bought. This is 1067 pieces of litter per mile.

(The image above is not from Oklahoma.) This garbage was everything from chunks of furniture down to cigarette butts. All of them were visible without having to stop and look closely.

American evangelicals like to consider France to be a spiritually desolate country, because most of its Christians are people the evangelicals will not admit are Christians. But in Paris, which is notoriously dirty, the number would be far less than the approximately 900 pieces of garbage per mile typical of my Oklahoma samples. I was too busy to count while I was there, but I’ll bet it’s around 100. And in Strasbourg, it would be about 20, or even close to zero. The French people, especially outside of Paris, are thoughtful of the environment they share with their neighbors.

Since you were wondering, only one of the pieces of garbage—in a parking lot in Tulsa—was a condom.

Our Shared Environment

I am sure I have written about this idea previously: What we do to the environment of the Earth, locally or globally, is directly involved with how we relate to other people. How can we say we love our human brothers and sisters if we pollute the environment we share with them? Love your neighbor—and it is your neighbor’s Earth.

A particularly amazing example of the disregard that some people have for their neighbors, and their neighbors’ environment, has come to my attention in rural Oklahoma, where I live. When I first heard about it, I could hardly believe it, until it was corroborated by a second person. I still find it hard to believe, but I will pass the story on to you.

One way that some rural residents of Oklahoma have of getting rid of their garbage is to put it in the flatbed of a pickup truck and drive around until the wind blows it away. This does not work for heavy objects like beer bottles—those are more efficiently disposed of by throwing them out the window—but it works very well for paper and plastic. There are two reasons for this. First, Oklahoma has a lot of wind. Second, the air pressure is greater down in the pickup bed than in the moving air (moving, that is, relative to the pickup bed) above the pickup bed, virtually guaranteeing that the light garbage will be lifted out and blown away.

People who do this sort of thing might as well have a bumper sticker on the truck proclaiming, “This is what I think of you, you worthless miserable fellow Americans—I will dump my garbage on you.” Of course, they do not want to actually say this, so they pretend that, oh-oh, the wind just happened to lift the garbage out of my truck, oh well. Maybe they are even salving their own consciences by pretending that they are not really dumping their garbage when they do this.

As I said, I would not have believed this story had it not been told to me by two people who do not know one another or live in the same town.

Christians Think the Rest of Us Are Just Places to Pile Their Shit

My next door neighbors seemed to be the nicest Christian people in the world. They just had a baby, their firstborn, and have been cheerfully preparing their house to accommodate the new arrival. Derek Brewer is a realtor, just starting his own business. His wife Whitney was one our our brightest and smartest alumnae from Biological Sciences at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.

I counted myself really lucky to have them as neighbors, especially since we have a shared driveway. They are very quiet, even when they have a lot of visitors. Because I wanted to encourage them to stay, and not move away—nearly anybody who might move in after them would be worse, I figured—I have given them unlimited right to park in the shared driveway, half of which is mine, and I waived my right to park there.

Apparently I was a fool for trusting Christian goodness.

I generate very little garbage. I am proud of treading lightly upon God’s good green Earth. I do not use disposable dishes except when the alternative is very burdensome. And my lovely wife Lee spent many, many hours washing cloth diapers when Anita was young. (One of the pleasures of having an almost-28-year-old daughter is that it has been a long, long time since this was necessary.)

But when I did open my city garbage bin to put a tiny bit of refuse in it tonight, I found that it was almost completely filled by a big plastic garbage bag full of disposable plates and newborn diapers (used, of course). This bag was as much garbage as I generate in two months. I know where it must have come from. In order to put the garbage in my bin, one of them had to open my gate, walk across my back yard, and put it in, then walk back and close the gate. It could not have been a simple misunderstanding. Anyone stupid enough to do this by accident would not have been smart enough to open a gate.

I’m fucking tired of Christians treating everybody else in the world as places to pile their shit, and I mean this literally, or for target practice, or as scapegoats to blame everything on. If only us fucking Democrat bleeding-hearts would get the fuck out of the world, all problems would be solved.

The possibility remains that someone else, maybe a space alien, just happened to have newborn diapers at this very moment when my neighbors do, and put them there. In that event, I will delete this blog entry and replace it with an account of Derek and the space aliens or whatever is appropriate.

It is, in itself, a small thing, since I generate so little garbage. I just wish they had ASKED first. But Christians don’t fucking need to ask before dumping their shit on neighbors, or parking their fucking cars in their neighbors’ yards, or any other fucking thing they want to do. They are the chosen of God and the rest of us are just standing in their way.

Now, if I trespassed in someone’s yard for ANY REASON they would consider it their right and God-given duty to shoot me. I do not have a gun or any plans to get one. But (see the previous blog entry) it appears that there are two groups of people: the people with guns who believe they have a right to do whatever the fuck they want, and those without guns who must just accept whatever the others do. Happy July 6, and God bless America.

Here is the letter I will be leaving for them, to give them a chance to set the record straight in the event that the garbage came from somewhere else:

“Derek and Whitney—In my trash I found a large trash bag full of disposable dishware and used newborn diapers. Would those happen to be yours? Or did you happen to see anyone enter my back yard through the fence and leave a bag of garbage there? They should know I am not the neighborhood dump. If you need extra space for trash please in God’s name ask first. You have my number. Dr. Stan Rice. P.S. If you see anyone doing this, please let them know it is a bad example for Christians. –S.R.”

If anything should change the accuracy of the above information, I will update this essay or simply delete it.