Cars and Transport Articles
posted on 22 January 2012
Most of the time the dirt, debris and mess along untidy streets are neither harmful nor dangerous. You see the road sweepers come along and clean it up, and when it's gone, it's hard to imagine it was ever there at all. After all, this is the twenty-first century and unless one is in some pretty peculiar parts of the world, there isn’t going to be raw sewage, carcasses of animals or humans, or weaponry lying in the gutters. The real problem with untidy, messy, dirty streets is that it tells anyone with open eyes travelling along those streets, “We really don’t care. In fact we don’t give a damn. We don’t give a damn about ourselves, one another, or you. It is not hospitable here, and it may well be a hostile environment.” Once that message is writ large in the language of trash, uncared for property, untended natural debris and other junk, there is a spiral downward: Every passerby is apt to think, “Well if you don’t care, why on earth should any of the rest of us care?” Without caring, there is nothing left to smile about, and despair and dejection, even fear and anger, replace human dignity and joy. Trash and mess are not helpful alphabets for creating words of peace and messages about making better neighborhoods and better worlds. |
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