Disposable Society

Ours is a culture where are lives are made easier by an array of inexpensive, easily obtained, easy to use disposable objects. At lunch we dine from plastic take-out containers, at work we scribble notes with cheap plastic pens, flimsy paper slips encoded with computer chips record our commutes to work, at parties we drink beer from disposable plastic cups. Nothing serves a purpose for long, and when we're through with them we know that there are plenty of similar objects to take their place.

For the young and unattached among us a similar sentiment seems to apply to the people who float in and out of our lives. Flirtations are coyly bantered about, meaningful contacts are established, only to sever without even the slightest bit of hesitation or second-thoughts. The cavalier attitudes we've cultivated towards the objects that make our life more convenient have filtered down to an alarmingly personal level. Fast food has made way for fast friendships--easy to get, quickly consumed, easily forgotten. As our nation's landfills swell with the detritus of discarded every day objects, our karmic landfills are just as cluttered.

The catch however, is that people aren't plastic cups. But for some reason, we've all decided to treat one another with the same cynicism that we do towards the tower of empties that clutter our kitchen counters the morning after a raging kegger. Perhaps some of us get attached a tad too easily, but others among us would doing everyone a favor if they approached matters of the human heart with just a tad more sensitivity.

But maybe I'm just especially sensitive today [redacted: there was actually a death in the family. who feels dumb now?] and having received a not exactly obscene but not exactly nice message on my work voicemail this morning from an untraceable number.