I live in a country where smoking has generally been on the decline for a while now but even still I see thousands of cigarette butts in just about any public place. They litter the sides of the road, bus shelters, alleyways, outside clubs, bars and pubs, public toilets, park benches and just about everywhere else. Its even extending to disposable vapes now as well.
For the most part, where I live doesn’t have that much of other kinds of litter about and is generally clean. And most public bins and all smoking areas have ashtrays and dedicated cigarette bins so it wouldn’t be hard to dispose of them properly like any other piece of rubbish and even then there’s often cigarette butts within sight of the bins and ashtrays.
Why then do people have a completely different approach for cigarettes?
Doing the right thing is a personal attack against people who want to feel okay about doing the wrong thing.
Ah, that old pattern. Damn. I recognize it and see it way too much around. Luckily not much in my inner circles, but spaces I can’t avoid like work for example. It’s starting to eat up on me.
This is one of those weirdly specific pet peeves I have. For the life of me I can not get into the headspace where that is the outcome of the whole chain of logic and intuition that goes into having that stance, and, more importantly, holding to it despite ample chances, throughout tens of years, to change your mind or act differently. At 50, I see you’re still lashing out in this pattern? But why, man, why?
Surely it ought to feel good to see others doing the right thing, so it wouldn’t feel as bad for yourself to do the wrong thing. Assuming you can’t just stop doing it (Many habits are extremely hard to kick, so that’s entirely human and understandable, not faulting anyone for that). But this way, the total amount of good is better when it’s only you doing the wrong thing, so you can just be the margin of error, sort of? Have less of a negative impact overall. Be implicitly slightly better yourself, by this grace of others. Or at least you should end up feeling that way, or something along those lines, right? Or at the very least, feel just nothing, be entirely oblivious to the whole thing. That’d be human and understandable too. It’s a habit. You don’t necessarily think about those. You just do them.
But to lash out for that? Be conscious enough to realize this all, but instead of any other kind of understandable human way, you, of all things, lash out to those doing the different thing. I just can’t figure it out. Why? I suppose it could be a subconscious coping mechanism to shield one’s self from the fact that they are not doing the right thing, but it feels off that it would come out aggressive or you know combative some way. At others, at least. I get that you might feel bad, and “guilty”, sort of, but surely nobody’s mind goes from “I feel guilty” to “it’s your fault I’m feeling guilty”? Ugh.
I find my lack of perspective often very anxiousness-inducing. I can emphatise with such a wide range of lives and beings and situations, but there are so many I simply can’t, often similar to this specific thing. Makes me nervous about me potentially being selfish or stubborn because I can’t see it. This is one of those things. Makes me sweat, almost. Always reminds me of the “are we the baddies?” meme. Am I partially some sort of a sociopath since I just can’t grasp that mindset? What if I don’t even really emphatise with anyone, I just think I do, but what if it feels different for those that really do it? What if I am a psychopath, goddamnit, this really gets me spiraling 🥲
The fact that you’re thinking about others’ perspectives at all is a good sign. Sometimes, when I can’t understand the mindset of someone toxic and I get frustrated, I take a step back and consider what would happen if I did start thinking like them. The fact that it’s difficult to imagine goes to show that I’m wired against certain shitty mindsets. It sounds like you are, too.
In trying to understand others, you’re showing more thought and empathy than a lot of people bother to practice. It’s frustrating and can be confusing at times, but you’re not broken for being unable to view things through the eyes of someone that doesn’t care about doing the right thing.
Drag very often gets called a troll on Lemmy for using different pronouns than most people.
A troll is someone who tries to upset other people. Why would using different pronouns upset others?
Drag will tell you why: because a lot of people have already made up their mind to misgender drag because they don’t respect different pronouns. But in their hearts they do know right from wrong. So they feel guilty. And that’s the bad feeling. They think drag is intentionally trying to make them do the wrong thing and feel guilty.
It’s ridiculous.