"ours is a culture and immensely rich time in the bin as it is in the treasury." - Ray Bradbury
one of the main criticisms of our hard work, hard store, rinse, repeat, and die as consumer capitalism are the so-called "externalities" that the product system, and largely ignores. For example, if I sell you a second hand car, then everything is hunky dory seen in purely financial terms. I made a few rupees to spend on Pilsner and prophylactic, then you have yourself a great run around to take her husband feng shui classes.
However, beyond our small business are the so-called externalities. There is the pollution added to the atmosphere, the additional spent fuel (up to 50 percent of what is simply wasted on sitting in traffic jams in Jakarta hand, according to official statistics), not counting the cost the health of the blood pressure of the driver through the roof in the psychological purgatory average Jakartan jam. Basically, we still barely recognizes economic system surely is the saying that the Earth is not an infinite resource nor infinitely large trash. (And by the way, if anyone is interested offers and serious only please for the car, not tire kickers.)
Now, if we look at the Indonesian capital in the context of these questions, then we could surely forgiven imagine that people here are competing with each other to produce as many "externalities" above the purely financial value of their transactions as humanly possible.
Whether clog rivers with waste, packaging shopping deep in an impenetrable cocoon of plastic bags, said bags to burn roadside in the morning, afternoon and evening, transforming and the city into a vast carcinogenic shisha, smoking still throwing cigarette butts in dry forests tinder dry (what could go wrong?), endangering species by the charge of the ark, driving bus so old they would give a Volkswagen tester emissions nightmares, all the way to producing a mist so thick blanket that even NASA satellites have drawn a blank.
If there is a national stereotype here that I have no qualms at all about the building, there is this general ignorance of the environment, and it gives me no great pleasure to say that, of course, I have to breathe the same air as well.
I suggest the introduction of new green lessons in the national education program and challenge the force laissez-faire , "out of sight, out of mind 'attitude waste and the environment. Even just knock an hour off the hi class flag and genuflection to God indoctrination sessions once a week to receive said general would be a start. Alas, however, green politics are often characterized as political watermelon by authoritarian type, which there are many here. And watermelon, I mean green outside and red inside, and the red flag will not fly high in this country.
My travels around Indonesia, however, have blessed me with an abundance of natural resources, punctuated by mounds of rubbish exasperating. Let's have a quick meander across the archipelago. Hiking around well known peaks such as Gunung Gede, Lawu like me and showed beautiful mountains which are usually clean as a whistle, to the point where you can even refill water bottles from the fresh stream flowing au Gede above (something I definitely do not recommend doing more downstream).
Remember, small areas of waste stomped around where campers set up their tents are obviously very frustrating. Outside Java, however, I enjoyed cycling trips in the sparsely populated areas of northern Sulawesi, Sumba, Sumbawa, Aceh and the like and have reveled in endless ribbons of clean, pristine sand roads.
Closer to home, Pulau Seribu (Thousand Islands) can also be surprisingly nice, but I found that was increasingly to always sail further down the chain and the capital to enjoy a good swim unencumbered by a repulsive flotsam packets of noodles and detergents, as well as terminal moraines garbage that ugly beaches. Indeed, a study of the area turned up 34,000 pieces of litter in 11 categories of 23 islands. The most common items were blocks of polystyrene, plastic bags (inevitably) and, for some reason, jetties shoes.
There are undoubtedly a significant psychological component to the waste problem.
Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion did an interesting series of experiments. It would put flyers under windshield wipers of cars at random in parking lots and then wait, spy return drivers to see if they tossed flyers on the ground.
The results showed that environmental indices have been a strong factor here. If the environment was already full of garbage, then they littered. If there was no litter, they were much less likely to litter. Interestingly, if there was one piece of trash on the floor and people were least likely to litter, as one envelope has drawn attention to the problem.
So if this study is to believe, then we must first clean the place before attitudes can change. Of course, for maximum effect, it would leave a single piece of litter, although I suppose it could be Jakarta itself, which, in terms of infrastructure, urban planning and overall livability like nothing as a giant pack liberally smeared thrown Indomie oil and engine cat feces.
Ultimately, perhaps the person who best expressed the problem that urban Indonesia faces was the late Oscar Wilde. Once, during his famous tour of the United States, Wilde asked why he thought America was recently torn apart by civil war, was a violent society. His answer was simple. "I think it's because your wallpaper is ugly" Now at first glance this may seem a more casual aphorisms of Oscar, but perhaps there is a message more serious here for those who, like Oscar, believe that an appreciation of beauty as refracted through the life, culture and nature, is one of our most noble vocations.
If you walk along a pristine stretch of the Indonesian coast, then you will see nothing but natural beauty. However, if you live in an environment full of ugly artificial plastic waste, clouds of smog hydrocarbons and monolithic expanses of filthy concrete, then you might end up ugly thoughts about yourself and indeed on the whole human race.
and so it is that you end up crapping in your own nest. And, as far as the capital of this country just is concerned, rarely was a shit nest.
Such an aesthetic view of life, as evidenced by Oscar, forces us to consider the world beyond the dyed-in-the-wool tenets of parliamentary politics, nationalism and religion. And indeed, Jakarta, which can sometimes seem so vibrant (and not only in after 22:00 when we have a cold beer in his hand), may, in others, causing an almost insurmountable feeling of defeatism. Chin, chaps, there is still beauty there.