How Convenience and Comfort Caused the Downfall of Personal Responsibility
By: Alex Goik
Tags: Environment, Responsibility, The Ascent, Life, Earth

Plastic: The material we know is bad but continue to abuse

It’s the year 2018, and everyone knows that plastic is bad for the environment. The images we see on our screens of overfilling landfills, polluted ecosystems and strangled animals has made this much abundantly clear.

A universally recognised and pressing issue, yet an issue that nonetheless remains unresolved.

If you showed our hunter-gatherer ancestors a plastic bottle, they would surely have lost their minds. A cheaply produced, light weight, malleable, and non-degradable material, plastic plays a critical role within all industries and facets of modern life.

But the utility of plastic is intrinsically tied its inefficacy, and we have allowed it to pervade the very fabric of our existence.

I can say with 100% certainty that you are staring at some plastic right now. It coats the device on which you read this article. It sits on your skin within the clothes that you wear. No doubt, for many of us it was the very first thing that we touched when synthetic latex wrapped hands ushered us into a hospital operating room.

It’s widely recognised that the first step in reducing human output of plastic is to reduce production. This is an effort that we can each greatly contribute to and one that would have little to no negative impact on the way we live our lives.

Take the plastic bag phenomenon. If we each committed to changing our behaviour, to simply keep our own shopping bags in the car, by the door to take along with us, or god forbid — to carry items in our arms — the issue would be resolved in a day.

And yet we not only refuse to do so, but complain bitterly when forced to reflect on the implications of our actions.

The individual has come to rely on macro level processes and systems to dictate behaviour and guide their actions. Thankfully, in many places the gears of policy are finally starting to turn and with painstaking slowness the plastic bag is being phased out around the globe.

But the issue cannot and must not be solely appraised as the responsibility of corporations or governments.

Macro level policy must be buttressed by micro level responsibility.

Personal Responsibility in the 21st Century

The plastic bag phenomenon is reflective of a broader, more contagious, and inherently erroneous way of thinking. One that pervades the collective psyche of human society in the 21st century.

We make things too convenient for people and it destroys their sense of personal responsibility. It encourages unconscious behaviour and steeps people in inflexible modalities of thought.

We sit and wait idle for the next technological invention that takes responsibility away from us, that moves the spotlight elsewhere, that lets us off the hook.

The newly found bacteria that consumes plastic to survive, a machine that captures the continents of waste that now float in the ocean, or the one whose input is our garbage and output new useable products.

The advance of science and the myriad benefits that have resulted since have served to obscure the duty that we owe to ourselves, each other and the planet on which we reside.

Convenience and comfort have caused the down fall of personal responsibility.

It’s a hard truth, one that’s painful to swallow because it forces us to critique our own behaviour and practices.

But it’s better than the lie that most of us subscribe to.

That my actions, that of one person out of seven billion others, make no difference.

But they make all the difference.

The world starts with you.

If everyone recognised this truth and took upon themselves the commitment to uphold a degree of civic responsibility, we as a collective would be more empowered and capable of dealing with problems that affect us all.

Comfort and convenience seduce and sedate. The lure of comfort and an easy way of going about life enabled by technology now arguably causes more problems than it solves.

Our species underwent most of its evolution in the form of hunter-gatherer. As a result, we have coded into our biological hardware an intrinsic need for struggle, dealing with discomfort and overcoming adversity.

We’re good at it too.

The fact that we’ve come as far as we have is testimony to this fact. But we’re now trapped in a cycle of attrition, one of our own making.

Our desire for improvement and progress has led many to ignore our natural inclinations, and push responsibility onto anyone but ourselves.

In an era where information is not only semi-infinite and free but also at our very fingertips, how can we not reflect on and strive to change our actions when we know they do harm?

It’s not because we’re evil people. It’s because we’ve become disillusioned by comfort and convenience and coaxed into believing that personal responsibility is inconsequential.

But it’s not — and we ought to be doing better.

Alex Goik is a Media Analyst. He commonly writes for Mogul News and at Foreign Affairs Navigatorwhere he strives to offer fresh perspectives on foreign affairs, tech and China (coupled with the odd analysis of human nature).

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this text belong solely to the author and not those of their employer.