are we really this morally unaware?

Ok so this ight seem trivial to some but for me it was a complete WTF moment.

Let me explain, where im from we get our bins collected every week or so, today it was the blue bin which takes paper,cardboard and tins basically.

we put ours out last night and the lid wasnt shut properly as it was full, it may have been open an inch or two at most.

They did not collect the rubbish from this bin and left a not saying they couldnt collect it because the " lid was up " and that it was " too heavy " , now i can assure you that it weighed no where near as heavy as the other bins become as they fill with waste.

My question is what drives a person to ignore simple little moral acts like this and play by the rules. What possible harm could have been caused by the guy who said to himself " i have to stick to procedure ", by thinking morally and just doing it for the sake of another human being, regardless of who that person is, what theve done or where theve been. It should have been a simple choice to do the right thing instead of the " Right " thing! Thoughts are welcome guys

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. -Nietzsche

reply to post by Free4Ever2
I am not familiar with the way things work over there, but it may be that the worker that left the note is a member of a labor union that has rules (such as, lid up- no dumpy) that he could actually get in trouble for breaking, as goofy as that seems.

reply to post by butcherguy


but really at that moment in time who could have possibly known of his decision? if anything hes breaking the rules of decency and moral connection!

im not getting at the guy who was collecting, im getting at the system which has brought us to be morally unaware of each other, the whole of history has led us here so it makes me wonder where in said history did we go wrong? at which point did it turn from then to now?

Sheeple with no conscious conceptual understanding of discretion!!!!

This is a perfect example of what is wrong with our society. No one wants to actually "work", they want to collect a paycheck. If there is any inconvenience to them, they will not do it, yet they expect to paid.

reply to post by Free4Ever2


It's all about relativity.

To you it is just one bin slightly overfull.

To them, your's is just one among THOUSANDS of bins serviced weekly.

Sure maybe they'll let a few slide, but by the 842nd bin that day they begin to worry there'll not be room enough in this truck to finish the route, that the trash will begin to spill out onto the street as they drive, that just one more even slightly over heavy bin will cause them muscle injury, if every household insists on overfilling their bins.

They wonder why people can't just do the moral thing and follow directions so their job isn't more difficult than necessary. But people don't so they've lost patience. Thus you get a reminder note.

So what of it.
How about the kind moral act of not making their job more difficult than it has to be?

Originally posted by Balkan
There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. -Nietzsche

So if I become dictator of this world I can kill and rape whoever I please and be moral because I wrote in into textbooks?

reply to post by 547000
I don't believe in moral absolutism, so there's your answer.

We regularly clashed with the trash collectors in the city I just moved from. Cans have to be a certain size, with lids, and under a certain weight, etc. Well after they empty the trash cans they just toss the cans and lids into the yard. On a windy day the lids go bye-bye and the next week they flag me for not having a lid. And since it's city ran we had no choice in trash collectors! Now though we live outside of city limits and can choose our trash collector, which is great.