Gösta's trashy philosophy of waste

In the village where I live, there is a man who, by most, is referred to as Soptippin (the Dump). Behind his back, that is. For many years, he has been enraged at the neglect of the local authorities. He's been writing articles, formulating petitions, he has turned to the press. The man owns a camping place, and the dump is his neighbour. Even though I have lived in this place practically all my life, I have never seen the dump. Today, I did. We took a languid trip with the car to some places we haven't seen in a good while, and then it came to us, we haven't seen the dump. And there it was. A tiny, disorderly heap of things and shit (oh - literally too... Soptippin was right after all...).

**

The world of the philosopher consists of a neutral assemblage of stuff, ruled by the laws of nature. Humans gradually intervene in the world by learning how to interact with causality. Philosophers try to become clear about the ways in which human actions are part of the world, and there are certain philosophical presumptions about what this 'world' consists in. On the other hand, it is assumed that the actions of human beings are constituted by their being intentional. What does this mean? The actions of humans are directed at a specific desired state of the world. In this picture, every phenomenon in the human world is reduced to use, to things being objects of our desires. Our desires are connected with the world only in so far as they, for their practical realization, are dependent on beliefs about facts in the world. Actions are seen as changes in nature, interventions that alters some states of affairs.

Even in a far less philosophical picture, it seems natural to think about "waste" as the darker side of what defines human activity. We exploit what we can, and the rest of the world, when no longer exploitable, is perceived by us as waste, as garbage, meaningless stuff (or as the fleeting, fragile objects of our disengaged aestethic gaze). Waste is, when we talk about the world and human actions in this vein, a natural result or by-product of human life.

I am inclined to agree with much of this picture. Still, it contains problems, fundamental problems.

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger shows that we must not think about use as a specific attitude towards a world that in itself is beyond our reactions, inclinations and feelings. For Heidegger, use is not external to the world as it presents itself to us, but it is internal to it. A plough is a plough by virtue of the use to which it is put, the understanding of what a plough is depends on a familiarity with how a plough is used (Heidegger is fond of everything rootsey). As a person not acquainted with many agricultural techniques, I will, perhaps, wonder what a machine is used for. There are no things in themselves, independent of our activities in the world. But in the context of Heidegger's (existential/ist) project, it is important to point out that this world of use also tends to break down, and it is in these instances that we become aware of the way we are "thrown into the world". (A stupid example: when my MP3 player crashes, I start to think about why I can't move around without music plugged into my ears) A Heideggerian concept of waste would be the beginning of an important existential realization: our corporeal, finite existence in the world.


From the heideggerian point of view, garbage is a material reminder of meaninglessness and death; things that persist to exist (a broken refrigerator) even though 'dead' to the world of men. Garbage reminds us of the usefulness and familiarity of things, but at the same time it confronts us with temporality: with decay, fragility, change. With an even more pessimistic bend, one could say: "all the fruits of your labor will, eventually, turn into waste". (A philosopher like Hannah Arendt approaches that perspective, following from her notion of 'labour'.)

“Garbage is the formlessness from which form takes flight, the ghost that haunts presence. Garbage is the entrails, the bits or scraps, the mountain of indistinguishable stuff that is in its own way affirmed by a resolute dismissal: it is refuse-d (not accepted, denied, banished). Garbage is the tat, the lowly that has sunk to the depth of a value system . . . the mucky handprint of a being that carries on regardless, a dirty trace, the wreck of beauty, and in the most recognisably banal sense, the excrement of a body.” writes garbage philosopher (sorry, couldn't resist) John Scanlan in his book On Garbage. I agree with Scanlan that garbage, for different reasons, haunts us (esp. materially), but I'm not at all sure if I would call garbage formless.

Garbage is in our way in many senses of the word. In some cases, things are perceived as garbage simply because they are in the wrong place. We want to get rid of it, to dispose of it so that it will end up somewhere else and, if possible, transformed into something useful. Europeans ship their shit to Africa, forgetting that our junk ever existed or at least living as though it didn't. But even though garbage is often the expression of and the object of human self-deception, I would hesitate to say it always is. But think about these examples: A teacher tells his repelled 11 year old students: "In Stockholm during the days of Gustaf Vasa, people threw out their garbage directly on the street." And I'm sure you've heard the complaints of the traveller: "They don't dispose of their garbage the way we do... I can't believe it... All that rubbish on the streets." Littering may cause a fine, a shout ("hey, young man, don't leave those cans of beer here!") or an environmental problem somebody will (hopefully) end up dealing with. These examples tells a lot about us. For a completely different example, that also somehow says something about rubbish, do you recall that scene from American beauty in which the odd boy is showing his clip of the plastic bag tossed around in the wind? What was so striking about that scene was how the attention of the boy turned some litter into a metaphor illuminating the smallness and greatness of life.

A few years ago, I came upon a homepage that I can't stop thinking about. A Russian writer/photographer travelled with a motercycle into the Chernobyl area. She took photographs of the deserted houses, the things left behind. Everything bore witness of the passing of time: for us, but not for the Chernobyl area, which is forever (?) stuck with a flag honoring the 1st of May celebrations of 1986. The time before the catastrophy is encapsulated in the garbage. Despite being deserted and left to rust and moulder, those objects were ingrained with humanity, they bore witness of what life in the Chernobyl area used to be. What I saw in these pictures were not mere garbage in the sense of "meaningless objects" that no longer are of use to us. When looking at the pictures, I thought about destruction, not malfunction or lack of use. In that sense, an understanding of waste exclusively in terms of usefulness will not do. This example shows that there are other dimensions. (When I tried to find the homepage, I find out that some consider her project a sham and the pictures she took were, some claim, fake.)

Garbage is not a reminder of temporality (or death) in some general sense. I have certain qualms with Heideggers being-to-my-death. Let me expand on this. When I was a kid and got presents, my joy was usually mixed with a sort of melancholy. I will not be a kid who enjoys to play with dolls forever. My dolls will become waste as I will become another person. A person for whom dolls have no use. My now-so-fluffy stuffed animal, forgotten by the world, will collect dust. (Perhaps this perspective is also, in some sense, encouraged by the adult world, for whom childhood and its things is a passing phase). But let me take another example. As you can see in the picture below, some perfectly usable chairs have been dropped off at the dump. "People pay good money for chairs like that" A said when she saw them. For the person who got rid of them, the chairs were garbage, but for us, they were neglected furniture. Had we been people of more energy & initiative, we would have saved those chairs from the fate of being rained on and snowed on - the fate of decay. So, in that case, garbage simply was a sign of neglect, of the laziness of people (including ourselves). It is with garbage as with dirt, it is, conceptually, related to specific human activities, reactions and perspectives. For that reasons, dirt and garbage are not really natural objects like stones or trees. "Garbage" signals a form of attention.

Within the scenery of a romantic walk, rottening leaves are not garbage, but if I am about to rake the lawn, that's exactly what these leaves are to me: something to get rid of. By calling something garbage, I make it clear that I care nothing about it. "Her house is filled to the brim with garbage" my father says derisively whenever his sister's interest in antiques is highlighted in conversation. (Note the conceptual transition taking place when "antiques", for a person like my father, is perceived as "unneeded things that are destined to litter in a drawer." which is quite different from other concepts of garbage: "I can't even visualize what this used to be..." or "it used to be a leave, now it is a heap of mud")

This text is inspired by this and this and this.