 
                         20060701.01

                           Garbage

     "Furthermore, your use of "philosophy" to mean any kind
of mental activity is too broad, I think.  The word means, as
you know, "love of wisdom".  How that can cover - Why does
Ned always dump the garbage in the wrong place - for example,
escapes me." (cb on 06-30-06)

     Can't address that issue without more details concerning
the nature of the garbage disposed of, the containers, the
schedule and the mode of collection, definitions of "right
place" and "wrong place", and other yet to be determined
specifics. I can however, at the risk of disclosing family
secrets, provide at least a template of garbage metaphysics;
mindful that, to paraphrase Tolstoy, while the garbage
problems of all perfect families are the same, the garbage
problem of each existing family is uniquely its own.

     As background, I should explain that my philosophical
interest in garbage dates back to my college days, almost
sixty years ago, when, as a newly minted Platonist I argued
about "values" with my roomate and future brother-in-law;
taking the position that there were certain ethical and
esthetic concerns which were of ultimate value; and I
stigmatized the denial of such ultimate value as "garbage
pail" philosophy, i.e.  a pattern of belief which held that
any one concept was as valuable or as worthless as any other.
I have not revisited these concerns for many years; but I
suspect that if I did so now, my conclusions would scarcely
coincide with those of my more idealistic youth.

     At the threshold of any inquiry lies the definition of
"garbage".  It requires to be unambiguously labeled, so as
not to be stumbled over.  Arguably garbage might be limited
to spoiled, unused or otherwise rejected food. A more liberal
description would equate garbage with trash, and include
rejected objects of all sorts, rejected and despised, be it
because they were deemed useless, ugly, obnoxious or
dangerous.  Hence garbagology (why not?) turns out to be an
unmarked, unrecognized backdoor entrance to psychology,
ecology, economics and politics, to ethics and esthetics, if
not indeed to metaphysics.

     Surely the opaque green 33 gallon plastic garbage bag is
the ultimate realization of Kierkegaard's insistent claim
that the outside is not the inside; and nothing is more
emblematic of the Town of Nantucket's contempt for the most
fundamental of civil rights of privacy than its requirement
that all garbage be delivered to the municipal dump in
transparent plastic bags, so that the town fathers may assure
themselves of the appropriateness of the garbage ethos of
each and every one of the island's inhabitants.

     The foregoing does not prove that _all_ thought is
inherently philosophical.  It merely suggests that "why Ned
always dumps the garbage in the wrong place" is a riddle
which may have answers of far-reaching import.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
