Philosophy of Trash

Ken Taylor
How much of today’s treasure is destined to be tomorrow’s trash?

Debra Satz
Are our growing piles of trash just the price we pay for progress?

Ken Taylor
Or do our trashy habits amount to an ecological terrorism?

Debra Satz
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor.

Debra Satz
And I’m Debra Satz. And we’re here at the studios of KALW in San Francisco.

Ken Taylor
Continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus where Deborah and I both teach philosophy. And today our conversation is about the philosophy of trash.

Debra Satz
So Ken, did you know that the average American produces about four and a half pounds of trash a day? That’s an astounding eight tons of trash a year? Why do we make so much garbage?

Ken Taylor
Well, Debra, I think you have to think of it as the price we pay for progress. I mean, today’s trash was yesterday’s treasure, and today’s treasure will be tomorrow’s trash. And that’s just how civilization works.

Debra Satz
No, it’s not. It’s how capitalism works. That’s not progress. It’s wasteful. It’s an assault on the earth.

Ken Taylor
Oh, come on. You know, you haven’t read your Plato. We desire things. We’re appetitive creatures. It’s human nature to want new things, better things, more efficient things. By the way, I have to say, That’s a lovely new sweater you’re wearing.

Debra Satz
Point taken Ken. But it’s not human nature that led me to buy this sweater. It was clever advertising and marketing. And its products designed to break down or become obsolete every year that makes me keep buying. Do you really think it took them 10 tries to get the iPhone, right. Well,

Ken Taylor
well, that that’s that’s called innovation. And without innovation, we’d be stuck in the stone age.

Debra Satz
Look, I’m not against innovation, but I’m against the vicious cycle of pointless consumption,

Ken Taylor
vicious cycle of pointless consumption. Well, that’s a mouthful, Deborah,

Debra Satz
you know, it might be a mouthful. But the fact is that businesses create new stuff, and they make us want it. And then we buy this stuff, and then they create more stuff. And then we want that too. And then they get rich and the earth gets screwed can all of this unbridled consumption has just got to stop just stop

Ken Taylor
code. Come on. If we stop buying and consuming, well, then economies will stop growing. And then what do we have? We have a world that’s poor grades or be a wretched place? You don’t really want that. Do you?

Debra Satz
Know and I you know, I said unbridled consumption. I’m not saying all consumption is bad, or that all trash is bad.

Ken Taylor
Okay, so then how do we decide? How do we decide between the good trash and the bad dress? Look, you may be perfectly content with things that are old and slow. But I gotta tell you, I want the latest and the fastest. I really do.

Debra Satz
You know, can it’s not just about what you want. We have to think together about our collective impact on the planet. We’ve got a fragile ecosystem.

Ken Taylor
Don’t get me wrong, Deborah, I care about the planet. I care about it. Do I religiously recycle, I compost? Come on.

Debra Satz
Well, it’s great that you do that. And in fact, about a third of America’s trash is recycling. But it’s not enough. Eventually the rest of the world is going to start consuming at the rate we do now. And then the world is going to be buried in trash. No matter what we do with recycling. Well, then

Ken Taylor
we got to make sure that the rest of the world doesn’t start consuming at eye level, don’t we?

Debra Satz
It’s just unbelievable that you said that.

Ken Taylor
That was a joke. Come on, Phil.

Debra Satz
Really funny. Okay, jokes aside, then how do we address both world poverty and our consumption? How do we keep consuming without destroying the planet?

Ken Taylor
Seriously, when I was a kid, I love my older brothers man me down. And my wife and I when we were poor, starving graduate students, we we furnished our apartments with lots of cool use stuff essentially hand me downs. me down.

Debra Satz
Wait a second, you’re the guy who always wants the latest in the fast.

Ken Taylor
I’m willing to hand stuff down. Yeah, but

Debra Satz
other people don’t want your trash and they don’t want your hand me down. Well, but

Ken Taylor
look, look you get it. I’m I’m trying to envision like a paradigm shift here. jebra Like, instead of seeing old stuff as dirty, useless trash we just throw away. Maybe we need to think of it as stuff you know, you use for a while and then you lovingly pass on to somebody else like like me down.

Debra Satz
So if I get you right, what you’re saying is it’s time to trash the very concept of trash as we know. That’s

Ken Taylor
exactly what I’m saying Deborah exactly and to give us a feel for how that might work. We started our roving philosophical reporter Liza veal to Recology San Francisco. And that’s a very special dump, where so called Trash is recycled, composted, taken to the landfill, and sometimes turned into art. She files this report.

Liza Veale
At the San Francisco dump. Our waste is sorted into hills. Some bulky, some more granular, some wet, some fermenting. There’s also an artist studio here, filled with treasures cold from the household drop off outside.

Beth Krebs
I seem to be really attracted to the colorful things. I feel like I’m a little bit of a magpie like in that big pile.

Liza Veale
Beth Krebs is one of the seasons artists and residents, the materials she salvagers will be worked into an exhibition over four months. Her side of the studio is bright and pretty. A dump is the last thing it brings to mind.

Beth Krebs
I’ve been collecting a lot of different fluorescent construction, gnash.

Liza Veale
There’s patterned linoleum, a swim noodle, a tower of shiny plastic trays,

Beth Krebs
pile of cake boxes that are just so pretty, I don’t know what to do with them.

Liza Veale
She doesn’t know what she’ll make with any of it yet. Right now, she just feels lucky to get to spare them from what would have been their fate, just to

Beth Krebs
see day after day. That just the volume of stuff coming in is like I think we’re pretty kept from that. Like we put our stuff on the side of the road and it goes away.

Liza Veale
In San Francisco, there’s actually only less than 10 things that can’t be recycled or composted. toothpaste tubes, medical gloves, ceramics, soiled diapers, just a few others. And yet, because people don’t perfectly follow the rules, there’s a football sized trash dump at Recology destined for the landfill.

Beth Krebs
It’s sobering I think.

Liza Veale
The artists don’t scavenge among the landfill pile. That hill is as alive as we are teeming with microscopic organisms that thrive on zero oxygen, breaking down our waste and exhaling methane back into the air we breathe, leaching out a garbage espresso that can seep in contaminate our water. We try to rid ourselves of our trash, but it’s here.

Rodney Ewing
It’s fascinating. It’s you know, it’s almost like being an archeological dig of, you know, some species that it’s long gone, but we’re still right here.

Liza Veale
On the other side of the artist’s studio is Rodney Ewing, his palette is much more somber. He’s focused in on the remnants of the changing city construction materials from demolished homes

Rodney Ewing
with the last that’s right here. The sheet rock cabinetry, pieces of the wand,

Liza Veale
these materials got him thinking about what’s happening in his neighborhood.

Rodney Ewing
There’s a lot of displacement. There’s a lot of gentrification going on. There’s a lot of houses being torn down, and also the area where I work. Every block seems to be a construction zone.

Liza Veale
You’ve come to think of trash on a bigger scale in terms of what the city minds and digests and expels from its neighborhoods.

Rodney Ewing
By collecting all these materials, I really should be honoring the spirit of the materials and a spirit of like the housing and where they were torn from and and in some ways, trying to preserve them as with some kind of way.

Liza Veale
Ewing is still working out his vision but whatever it is, it will give a second life to the materials laid waste here. The art produced in past residencies has been shown in galleries around the city. Some of it has even been turned into music. One former Recology artists Nathaniel Suki, created instruments from the materials he scavenged during his residency. Then he composed a piece of music that’s since been performed in a bunch of places, including by the San Francisco Youth Symphony. You’re listening to it now. And that’s how one City’s trash becomes a symphonies treasure. For Philosophy Talk, I’m like

Ken Taylor
Liza, thanks for that really cool dive into a really cool dump. I’m Ken Taylor with me as my Stanford colleague Deborah SATs and today we’re thinking about what we can learn from our trash. We’re

Debra Satz
joined by Elizabeth Spellman, professor of philosophy at Smith College. She’s the author of trash talks, revelations in the rubbish, Vicki, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Elizabeth Spellman
Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay?

Ken Taylor
Yeah, we can hear you fine. And it’s it’s great to have you. So Vicki. It took me a while to see when we were contemplating this show. That trash could be a really interesting topic for philosophers. I assume it didn’t take you very long. But how did you first get interested in in the topic of garbage?

Elizabeth Spellman
Well, I am very aware of the kinds of issues you’re talking about though. As you know, my book really doesn’t touch on them very directly. I got interested in part through some connections have already made my earlier work on repair, left me exceedingly aware of how much the kind of atrophying of our capacities to, to repair the failure of corporations to make things that can be repaired easily so that you may have to buy new things, that that contributed a lot to all the waste, which anyone with their eyes open or their noses working, if their eyes don’t work very well know that we we make a whole lot of waste and garbage and so forth. So that made me open to that. But I’d also been teaching a course for some time on desire, especially in the context of consumer society, which ties in with some of your earlier comments there. Spent a lot of time on Plato and can I have to say right away I have to, Plato certainly was worried about the appetitive part of the soul, the the desiring part, well, all parts of this will have but these repetitive desires, which are insatiable, meaning lots of different things, and but he never was concerned about trash or waste, or anything else, at least in the senses. We are, however, he he provides us with a extremely interesting analysis of the depth of dissatisfaction in which we live. And, of course, from a Buddhist perspective to one of the big problems that we have as people who are subject to craving, and the ignorance that typically goes with craving about the impermanence of the objects of our craving news that we’re in a state of dissatisfaction. So I thought, wow, this is this Hello.

Debra Satz
Yeah. Let me just break in for a second on. So you’ve been talking about desire. But let’s just back up for a second. And just can you say something about what exactly is trash? I mean, it’s clearly not what philosophers call a natural kind. That’s something that’s carved into the DNA of the world. So what is it that makes something garbage? Is it just that we

Elizabeth Spellman
are not are not necessarily synonymous? By the way, in fact, we get a reminder of that when someone says in the household would you please take put that garbage in the trash? And junk we’ve got there’s a big lexicon sometimes they’re synonymous, sometimes they aren’t. But what makes something mark something I think is trash is the the attitude we take towards it, the actions that we take towards it. And of course, it can be a person as well as an object. And precisely because it’s in a sense, not part of the DNA of the world around us. That’s why something that is someone’s trash can become someone’s treasure, or as can reminded as to it can go the other way. And we see in second hand, the life of secondhand and thirdhand objects and so forth, that kind of coming and going of going in and out of being considered trash or rubbish, or something like that. But I got very interested in that way. And I couldn’t help but notice how much of our everyday language is just chock full with references to to junk or trash or so forth. So for example, I’m hoping you guys and your wonderful listeners won’t. Early on, or by the end of the hour, think what a waste of time, right? Yeah, well, we’ll use that. Right. Very, very common. It’s a reminder of how much the kind of trash lexicon is part of our lives. Philosophers as we know, loved say that other philosophers work is rubbish. And if they can say it with a British accent, it’s really gonna hurt.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about trash with Vicki Spellman from Smith College.

Debra Satz
What does our trash say about us? The German philosopher Ludovic for Bach said, we are what we eat, should he have said we are what we throw away

Ken Taylor
our bodies, ourselves and our trash when Philosophy Talk continues.

Now you don’t have to be a grouch who lives in a garbage can to think that there’s more to trash than meets the eye. I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Debra Satz
except your intelligence. I’m Deborah SATs, and we’re thinking about trash. Our guest is Vicki Spellman from Smith College, and she’s the author of trash talks. revelations in the rubbish

Ken Taylor
So Vicki you, I think of your book as in this unique genre. I call it the hermeneutics of garbage that is the interpretation hermeneutics is a fancy word meaning something like interpretation of garbage. So what can we learn about ourselves from interpreting our garbage? What’s the most prominent or striking thing you think we can learn from interpreting our garbage?

Elizabeth Spellman
Well, one of the things we’re familiar with, is going through the trash to get the dirt on people. Well, you stand in line in a supermarket, and you read, you know the the trashy literature there at the checkout. And you notice that such and such a celebrity’s trash has been gone through and all this stuff has been revealed. And it turns out that this happens all the time. And in fact, there have been cases of that have gone to the Supreme Court of the United States, a famous one that happened in Southern California to start with, by the way, cops wondering if somebody was a drilling, dealing drugs and going through their garbage and then being able to get a warm, so forth. That’s pretty interesting that we think that people’s trash is deeply revelatory of them, perhaps especially of things that they wish weren’t known, though that’s not necessarily the case. So do

Debra Satz
you think that are we trying to reveal ourselves in our trash, like, do people throw things away to show that they have a lot to throw away,

Elizabeth Spellman
they might do that. Or they might rather than wanting people to go through their trash, they might, as the members of the leisure class that Thorstein Veblen wrote so wonderfully about in the theory of the leisure class, he’s the guy who brought us the concept of conspicuous consumption, they don’t want to raise their social status may want you to know not what’s in their trash, but they’re capable of being wasteful. They can buy much more than they need, they can have much bigger houses and much bigger cars than they need, they can have lots of people around them. So that is certainly something where we want to show Vicki, I

Ken Taylor
get the concept of conspicuous consumption, I want to buy a big house, not just to live on in it, but but so that people can see that I have a big house so that they can say, well, he’s a really high status guy. Right?

Elizabeth Spellman
Are you President of the United State? Yeah. You

Ken Taylor
also suggesting, though, that I want it as a symbol of my status, I want conspicuous disposal of like lots of stuff like, like I’m a propagate, I’m not quite sure what the connection between conspicuous consumption and conspicuous trashing is,

Elizabeth Spellman
here we go. Here’s, here’s a wonderful example of the different of different senses of waste. Because on the one hand, there’s waste, which we think of as more or less synonymous with trash, sometimes it does add weight to throw it in the waste can throw it in the trash can. Other times, though, it’s the sense that I have enough that I can wasted, but I’m not going to waste it. I’m not going to, I’m not going to throw out my house, I want you to see that. I don’t I’m not living in conditions of scarcity that I can afford. And you can’t to have much more than I need, even though someone might well say, Hey, that’s a waste of space, do you really need a closet that big?

Debra Satz
Right. So I mean, one of the things that seems to happen is because there’s conspicuous consumption, because we’re always thinking relatively about how much we consume with respect to other people and wanting to show we’re on top that just generates a lot of waste, because I got to keep getting bigger and better, like Ken wanted newer, shiny or better things. And if I’m going to get newer, better things, then something’s got to happen to the old things, and they mostly wind up in the dump.

Elizabeth Spellman
Well, going back to the notion of dissatisfaction, one of the things I began to see, and I fits, it fits in with some of your earlier comments. I think Deborah, at the top of the hour, that dissatisfaction as much as Plato and Buddha were worried about it, it in fact, is the calling of consumers right now in hyper consumer societies like the United States, we are expected to be dissatisfied not immediately. But you’ve had that iPhone and you liked it for a while, but it’s your job. It’s a kind of emotional labor, as consumers that we do to to develop dissatisfaction and disdain and disgust and say, I gotta get a new one.

Ken Taylor
So I take your point, I think that’s a very well taken point. But that sounds like both you and Deborah are suggesting that are very mode of production, our capitalist mode of production, because here’s how I think the good capitalists work, they don’t think of satisfying antecedently existing desires that we know that we have, they they do that they do that but they also like anchor our desires to the products that they create to give us new focus desires that we didn’t have before I didn’t want an iPhone until Steve Jobs says I’m gonna put that in your hands and you’re gonna play with it and you’re gonna want it and then they make me want more and they weigh me want more and they make me want more. But people say that creates wealth. I mean, that’s the secret to wealth creation, or you endeavor saying we should just stop with wealth creation.

Elizabeth Spellman
By the Steve Jobs at one point even said, I’m going to tell you what you want. I mean, he came out and said that I believe, well, for whom there is a restoration economy that has to do with, you know, fixing things, we, you know, it’s not the same as recycling and so forth. But if we’re so damn smart, being the products of Intelligent Design, not of wasteful evolution, why can’t we come up with other ways of not only of creating wealth, but of sharing wealth when people talk vaguely about creating wealth? For whom? Yeah,

Debra Satz
so Vicki that you there are two issues that I want to separate out, there’s the fact that wealth, and our consumption has bad effects on the planet? And then there’s, is it bad for us? Which is could be totally independent. So when you talk about the Buddha and desire, you’re really talking about? Is it a good human life to spend your life in consumption? that’s independent of its ecological effects? So are you saying both? Is it bad for the planet? Is it bad for us? Or is it one or the other? Or how should I think about this?

Elizabeth Spellman
Okay, well, at this point, it certainly seems to be pretty bad for the planet. But not only bad for the planet, but bad for hundreds of 1000s probably millions of people around the planet where all our E waste is dumped, or our garbage ends up and so forth. But whether it’s good or bad, for us, that’s for us to continue to think about and look at in very specific situations. We know that one of the things that Plato worried a lot about, and I think it’s worth the consideration that a person who is in thrall to her appetitive desires is kind of being you know, we become the Cologne, as you were mentioning, almost these words earlier on, we become an asset, our desires become the colonial outpost of people who want us to want things. And the, you know, the question, is it sometimes maybe that’s okay, other times, maybe it’s, it’s not? Are we willing, you know, kind of workers for an economy that counts on us to want one one, almost no matter the the end point, I agree, they’re two different questions, and they have to be looked at differently.

Ken Taylor
So Vicki, I think, I think you and Deborah are into something important. But I do want to stress, I think you would both agree with it. It’s not just like the desires are there and given and unlike insisting to be satisfied, I mean, that’s one thing we do have a lot of fundamental desires that are they’re given, and we must satisfy because, you know, it’s part of the human but I think late capitalist economy has gotten expert, extraordinarily expert at creating desire. And the question is, should unbridled desire creation? And

Debra Satz
and if not, why, I mean, there’s something great, I think, as Ken was explaining, there’s something great about having more desires, creating more desires and people. It you know, if we hold a way, the question of its effects on the planet, in some ways, the creation of many, many desires is the creation of more complex human beings, more capabilities, richer lives. So

Elizabeth Spellman
I, these are the questions that animate the course that often on now for four or five years, I’ve taught about desire. The certainly we’re and our students are super aware of the extent to which various, you know, sources, agencies, individuals, institutions, want them to want all kinds of things, not just goods, but want them to want a certain way of life, etc, etc. And one of the questions philosophers of many stripes have asked as to what extent are one’s desires, one’s own? There’s not an easy answer to that. Maybe it’s okay if they’re not owned, but that’s one of the questions I know students also often have. And one might want to reflect on that and the meaning of there not being mine. So Vicki,

Ken Taylor
we got a bunch of callers here. I’d love to have them join this conversation and William from Belvedere is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. Well, yeah. What’s your comment or question?

Speaker 1
Yes, thank you very much. I think I finally get to talk like a philosopher, although I’ve never even played one on TV. Okay. The question that I would raise, it’s been portrayed as victimizers and victims, the people that the corporations create the items and they convince them to convince the public to buy them even if they’re not very necessary items. But I would suggest that those people at the corporations are not just victimized as they are themselves victims. Because the reason that they want those jobs is because they indeed have the same kinds of tastes for access, that they are convincing other people to have when they convince other people to buy their product. Right.

Ken Taylor
Well, wait, that’s, that’s an interesting thought. I mean, you’re in a way you’re saying, I think and I’ll tell this to Deborah and to and to Vicki, but in a way, William saying, We’re all in this together, right? This the economy of desire creation, demand, creation, desire, satisfaction, it, but I still go back to Deborah’s point. It has enriched human lives.

Debra Satz
Yeah, I would also, I think that was an interesting observation, William, I would draw one distinction, which is I think that corporations are much more constrained than consumers are. So corporations need to keep selling products to be more efficient out compete, you know, the competitors, if they don’t, out compete, they’ll go under, but you and I don’t have to buy all the things that we buy, we choose to buy them. And you know, of course, there’s a question, is there anything wrong with our choosing to buy them? And you know, the obvious answer is yes. When it imposes a third party cost on somebody else, which is it destroys the environment, then there’s a further question, is it bad for us to be consuming? So what do you think, Vicki?

Elizabeth Spellman
Thank you, William, for the recall. And you guys for your comments, of course, um, I think that is certainly my students are highly aware of, once again, of the the power of corporations and their adulterous advertisers over at the same time. They I think, and certainly out in the literature, there’s a lot about this to think of consumers simply as victims or for that matter, as those people who work for who worked for met, you know, manufacturers and so forth, as victims may be overstating it. Because we are aware, there are more and more ways of becoming aware, and students are aware of that. And I remember I think it was an essay by Susan Bordeaux not long ago, where she talked about all this in this influence on young women to look a certain way buy certain products, so you can look a certain way and her students, Susan reported looked up, I think it was an article by saying we know all that. So sometimes, one can know this. And in that sense, not be a victim, and still think, given the options made, why

Debra Satz
not? Yeah,

Elizabeth Spellman
what I want to do. But you know, there’s it one point in my book, I talk a little bit of remind philosophers and theologians of St. Anselm, who defined God as the beam then which nothing better, better could be conceived. And I think the advertising world constantly on the one hand, presents objects as those things then which nothing better possibly could be conceived or exist until the next one comes along. And the one of the dangers I think, for us as consumers is that we may think, and I’m becoming a better person, I’m becoming a richer person. Well, maybe so maybe not. I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I think we constantly have to be assessing that. And then asking what kind of tools might we developed for assessing that and thank God or whoever, that that’s one of the things that philosophers among others might be pretty good at.

Debra Satz
So we’ve got a, we’ve got a comment from Howard in San Francisco. Howard observes that part of the big problem is packaging. That we waste so much in unnecessary packaging, and he wonders what can we do to reduce? It’s not? I mean, we add to the waist by our wrapping and bows and key, unneeded cards. And what do we do about

Ken Taylor
packaging is not just a utilitarian thing, packaging has to look cool. I mean, that’s what you see, you see the packaging. So it’s all part of this capitalist production, right? If it’s not in a pretty package, you’re not gonna want it so

Elizabeth Spellman
right. And moreover, this happens with a lot of food waste, that that fruits and vegetables are given certain shapes so that they can pack as many as possible into the smallest possible container. Or so I think one of the things we have to think about is the, you know, the existence of and we’re living in an age in which more and more people who don’t want regulations seemed to be getting louder and louder voices, where there be some kind of regulation over a packaging.

Debra Satz
So So one thing that’s turned out to be helpful, I think is if you introduce a fee for using a package, so in San Francisco, you know, in the Bay Area, but also in Ireland, they started charging people for using plastic bags, and the number of plastic bags went way down. You know, maybe the we ought to be imposing costs on people who throw out more than they need to.

Elizabeth Spellman
Yes, and the aesthetics in all this certainly in food waste in so many other kinds of ways to is I think Ken was getting at is very crucial and people can be I think students, very young people can become aware very quickly of the Wiles, the lures that are being brought them and more and more young people I think, you know, even in early grades are being exposed to what happens with all this stuff. And they sometimes complain to the parents

Ken Taylor
figure you sound like you’re investing a lot of hope in the young, I’m not quite sure I share that hope. But I’ll remind our listeners, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we thinking about trash with Vicky Spellman, author of trash talks, revelations in the rubbish, what should

Debra Satz
we do about all the trash that we’re creating? Does a zero trash lifestyle make sense? And even if it makes sense, can we achieve it in our consumerist, capitalist society,

Ken Taylor
what to do about the trash when Philosophy Talk continues?

We’re picking up the trash and putting it under a philosophical lens. I’m Ken Taylor, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Debra Satz
except your intelligence. I’m Deborah SATs. And our guest is Vicki Spellman from Smith College, the author of trash talks, revelations in the rubbish, I’d like to start, we have a comment from Joanne in San Francisco, actually a set of comments, Joanne notes that we often confuse the accumulation of trash and stuff with pleasure. And pleasure, really, you know, trade having stuff isn’t the same as being happy. And she also points out that with the holidays around the corner, people should consider re gifting stuff that they can’t, they don’t need or can’t use rather than trashing it.

Ken Taylor
So what do you think of those thoughts? Vicki,

Elizabeth Spellman
that sounds very good to me. And there also are alternative ways of rapping. But my older sister many years ago, just you know, some other friends didn’t matter who but would take pillowcases and, you know, wrap things in there and maybe tie a little string around it. And then you you know, put the stuff in and then start over again. I do want to since we’re talking about advertising, I want there to be some truth in advertising here. As I think you guys know, because you know, my book, I do not write about the the huge problems we’re facing with trash. Lots of other people do they do it very well. That’s one of the reasons I chose not to do about it. My interest in trash takes another route. I don’t though, for a minute, say that somehow what we’re talking about isn’t important. So you have not the expert to turn to on it.

Ken Taylor
I know, I know. But I do want to know, but you’re a philosopher and you’re thoughtful person, then you can help us reimagine the world. So I want to invite you if you’re willing to help us reimagine a world and how we might get to a world where there’s less trash you have any thoughts about that? How do we get to a world in which there’s less trash? Do you have any thoughts?

Elizabeth Spellman
Yes, I think a lot about and this is where that cartoon thing that Annie Leonard did that is used in lots of ways people have lots of questions about it called The Story of Stuff. I’m sure you many people know about that where she lays out what it takes. First of all, to you know, you do to the Earth in order to get the materials that you need to make things what what the manufacturing process involves, what the distribution process involves, and then go into the stores and then throwing them away and so forth. So I think if we think about the, the path that was was created for the things that we have, and where it’s going next, maybe we would be a lot more careful about what we did. And one other thing too, I think is very important. I’m sorry, just want to add one quick thing. Think about who is taking care of this trash. Sanitation workers around the world are often very much in peril. They’re treated like trash, rather than an S word and so forth. So think a lot about not just where it’s going, but who’s dealing with it. So dangerous work.

Debra Satz
So I think that’s a good point and an important point, but I want to pick up now, Ken side of the argument, which is, you know, for a lot of people in the world getting more stuff is critical to their well being a lots of people don’t have enough. And so when we start to think about trash, we also need to think about the distribution of trash, you know, there’s going to be waste, no matter what I wear, were creatures that, you know, create waste, but how its distributed, and how much carrying capacity the Earth has for this, these are really critical questions.

Elizabeth Spellman
Agreed, absolutely critical, and again, how much the Earth can carry. But there are one of the conferences I went to some years ago called waste in the social context, some movies came along with that, that conference in Alberta, and the images that a few documentary movie makers had made of people in parts of China, parts of South America, and so forth on who shores all the damn e waste that we in the rest of the people in the world create gets dumped on their shores, because the regulations aren’t followed, they pour through that, in order to find materials that they can sell in order to make a living so that at one at the same time with this kind of activity, which is very widespread, not only is the the water supply and the ground, so forth, being poisoned, but so are the people who are without any kind of, you know, protective equipment and everything going through it, because that is the way at that point that they can make their life now that’s not as bad as say the sanitation workers in New York, who are Robin Nagel has written about so well, who will be picking up those bags that you know, we’re on the streets of New York, and people will walk by and their dogs will pee on the bags while the the trash people are taking care of it. So

Ken Taylor
yeah, Vicki and Deborah, and I want to I want to shift topics just briefly want to follow up on something that was implicit in Deborah’s remarks. But I want to, I want to, I want to suggest that we’re in a kind of existential crisis, and just a local in the, in the following sense. I think, every look at all these sweeping epochs of humankind and how the production has managed the difference between, you know, agriculture, and the hunter gathering, and then this post industrial world in which we extract all this energy from from the earth through fossil fuels and all and and that enables us to produce all this stuff, okay? We’re in that age, we are, we are used to like a much, much, much, much higher standard of living than humans have ever enjoyed in the past, but in the West, parts of the world in much of a world even but and and and people that Deborah saw, refer to looking at us say, I want that too. And what are we to say? Well, you can’t have that. I said that in that opening was only half joking. But because it’s true that if the whole world started consuming at all rate, we’d be in a heck of a trouble, right? We can’t do it. Okay, so what do we do? I don’t know what the end I actually do not know what the answer is? How can we given human aspirations for consumption and production and the carrying capacity of the earth? And those who have been locked out who want in? How do we manage this? I have no idea how we manage this Do either of you. I think we’re in a deep existential crisis. I think Western civilization is not sustainable on the earth. But I don’t know what comes next. Help me imagine what comes next.

Elizabeth Spellman
Sorry, but it’s not the right time to make a joke. But the what comes next is we become trash. That is we extinguish ourselves, our species is not guaranteed to last forever anyway. But that, you know, that is the real worry. But more seriously, I think, what we might do to an glorifying de glorify the things that we have. And you know, there are there are a lot of studies about it comparative studies of people’s quality of life and the criteria that they use in different cultures and so forth to judge their quality of life. Health is always up there. Certainly having access to various kinds of goods are there and sometimes go back to something that came up earlier to Deborah you in particular talking about and Ken is picked up, say having a cell phone in India, where so many people still are defecating in public, a woman defecating in public is often you know, she goes off somewhere. And she’s really in it. possible danger when she does that not only is it a pain in the neck to do that with a sari on, but you might be more subject than usual to, you know, Prowlers and predators and so forth and being able to have some kind of means of communication that might make a difference in saving your life. Yeah, sure. So,

Debra Satz
so that that’s a good example for getting it, I think the, what I’ll call the dialectic here, which is that on the one hand, you know, we we need a concept of enough, like, what’s enough. On the other hand, there’s something problematic about the concept of enough because it’s by constantly surpassing what’s enough that the human race has progressed, if we were just satisfied with enough we’d be back in, you know, hunter gatherer society, living lives that are poor, and you know, short, and, and we’re not and that’s a good thing. But on the other hand, without a concept of enough, we will, you know, possibly destroy the planet,

Ken Taylor
you got one last closing thought for us. And as I’m picking that very sound,

Elizabeth Spellman
only go to book two of the Republic, the conversation between Socrates Gaul, Khan and Adam mantis. And the point you were making about enough is precisely what Cochran says to Socrates after he describes what he takes to be the Healthy City. And Cochran says, well, that’s it’s enough, but enough isn’t I mean, he doesn’t use those words. But enough is not enough. We aren’t we that’s a city for pigs, not pigs in the sense of eating garbage, but they’re not having the kind of sensitivity we have the sensibility we have to what, what pleasures are and so forth. So that’s another way I think we can we can have conversations with each other with our students and so forth about I mean, I think maybe you ought to have a whole session on enough. Well, you know, we can’t have enough session.

Ken Taylor
Well, this isn’t a nearly enough time, but we’re out of it for right now. And on that note, on that inspiring note, I’m gonna thank you for joining us.

Elizabeth Spellman
Oh, my great pleasure. Thanks very much. And it’s Elizabeth V. My mom was Elizabeth. My middle name is Victoria. I’ve always gone by Vicki, but I sometimes go as garbage girl. So

Ken Taylor
yeah, okay. I guess it’s been Vicki Spellman, Professor of Philosophy from Smith College, author of trash dogs, revelations in the rubbish. So Deborah, you got some closing thought, or

Debra Satz
I’m gonna recycle my sweater. That’s one of my thoughts. You know, I think that there is a dilemma, which is that it’s the production of stuff which produces waste is part of what moves to the world and has made tremendous inroads on poverty raise the standard of living. But on the other hand, it has huge costs that are not, you know, taken account of and we need a system designed that takes account of the costs we’re imposing on the planet. So

Ken Taylor
I totally agree with you, when when there weren’t that many of us and we weren’t this good at producing excess, as it were, then it didn’t have this, this downside, but we’ve gotten really good at this. And there were so many of us. And our MS trick that we did that we have it kind of run out. It’s kind of run its course. So but this conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto is Coda toe Ergo Blago, I think, therefore, I blog, and you can become a partner in our community by registering at our website, Philosophy Talk dot o RG. And if

Debra Satz
you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it your question to us at comments at philosophy talked about org and we might feature it on our blog. And now it’s time for a high speed dumpster dive with Ian Scholes, The 62nd philosopher.

Ian Shoales
He unchosen civilization meets volcanoes, fires, floods, wars, it’s trash off and become something else, and artifact evidence treasure. The relatives go through the rubble after the disaster, friends, scavengers, and finally the archaeologists and lo in 1000 years, our museums are full of their jugs and crappy little toys grandpa made from an acorn and dirt. Now we’re 3 million American on the open market. We love the Greeks and Romans and the pre Napoleon French luck, but we are split some of us like the look of old marble and gold but are creeped out by the antiquity. And the fact that these things were once owned by somebody else. This statue is used yuck. But these people are okay with plaster replica statues, mold and copious amounts of spray paint. It’s the Las Vegas Donald Trump Disneyland approach to historicity, weathered distressed antique to perfection by lifestyle bloggers. Of course today epochs come and go on a daily basis some things linger on A cultural radar like baseball cards and Barbies, but others soon outstay their welcome like Pogs Garbage Pail Kids and cap guns. There’s the overflowing dustbin of history right over their kids. And even that’s a tourist attraction. And sometimes trash remains trash but little strangely specific treasures to softstyle graphologist AJ Westerman went through Bob Dylan’s trash for insights into his catalogue. was Bob eating a happy meal today he recorded blowing in the wind Well, no because the happy meal was invented in 1979, long after folk music hit the dustbin. So these are the kinds of historical McNuggets to collectors, fans, consumers and county fair goers go all out for it is amazing the amount of trash we produce, big balls of garbage come up the ocean seagulls get caught in six pack plastic. We’re running out of room to dump our daily output. We even had to invent big smashes to switch cars down to the size of tables. We have bonfires deep toxic pits, exacerbated by the fact that things go south a lot quicker than they used to. transistor radios were the bee’s knees in the 1950s. In the historical scheme of things that’s not even yesterday yet. Black and white televisions color to VCRs stationary bikes, rotary phones, reel to reel recorders, cassette players, phone booths, analog football stadiums, family values, all gone. The dustheap grows but there’s still an amazing amount of stuff we hang on to and an astonishing stuff we take home that other people throw away sheet music, dolls, maybe furniture, Disney crap that sellers from five years ago, I am quite fond of estate sales and antique malls on the prowl for Toy Soldiers and books and sets. Old men’s magazines with a sweaty guy in the cover rescuing a scantily clad woman from Puranas or Nazis. I like ephemera programs for high school musicals from 1956 guides to roadside attractions, trade magazines, brochures flyers, self published a cult novel 20 books featuring movie stars in the 40s also bad art Mexican wrestling action figures Christian comic books even took home a foot high plastic monkey which guards my landline even as I speak. I have a lot of stuff Strangely, I do have scrapbooks. I spend more time looking at photographs that picked up from secondhand bins, black and white to old men smiling with dogs young couples embarrassed by cake, a young man by an airplane two girls and a pickup eventually I’ll have to move this stuff to a facility during the ongoing boom in self storage unit will contain a rich history of a culture the fascinating interest of a man with a tad too much disposable income and the creepy fascination with other people’s stuff when I die all of it can be yours but you don’t want it oh well throw it away then. Or put it up on Storage Wars that show still on just keep my eye out for a DVD used of course I gotta go.

John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
The conversation continues on our website Philosophy Talk dot o RG where you too, can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m John Perry. And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening and thank you for thinking, well, you my friend has crossed a line that divides man and bumped. You are now above.