Paying the price

To the editor:

Due to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude, however implicit or subconscious, basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my family is immediately all right?’ or ‘What’s in it for me, the taxpayer?’

While some people will justify it as a normal and thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY mindset can debilitate social progress, even when such progress is so desperately needed — notably, trying to moderate man-made global warming and consequent extreme weather events.

Collective human existence is still basically analogous to a cafeteria lineup consisting of diversely societally represented people, all adamantly arguing over which identifiable person should be at the front and, conversely, at the back of the line.

Many of them further fight over to whom among them should go the last piece of quality pie and how much they should have to pay for it — all the while the interstellar spaceship on which they’re all permanently confined, owned and operated by (besides the wealthiest passengers) the fossil fuel industry, is on fire and toxifying at locations not normally investigated.

As a species, we can be so heavily preoccupied with our own individual little worlds, however overwhelming to us, that we will miss the biggest of crucial pictures. And it seems this distinct form of societal penny-wisdom but pound-foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely to stay with us. 

Frank Sterle Jr.