I witnessed a disgraceful sight the other day across my house: A woman came in her pickup truck from another neighborhood and dumped a mountain of old electrics and electronics in the empty field that is there.
I immediately took out my cellphone and took several pictures of her “in action” and noted her truck’s license plates, with the intention to send everything to the authorities.
I didn’t do it.
After I had calmed down a few moments later, I recalled that her truck was fairly old and so was she. And so I assumed that she was poor and felt sorry for her.
On the other hand I am very well aware that the local municipality of Strovolos hasn’t done anything of note in the way of facilitating the citizens’ electronic recycling needs, although it’d be fairly easy to do so.
So who’s at fault here? The old (and probably also poor) lady, or the mayor? In my view, they both lack in conscience…
We often notice that people who end up in prison return there soon after they leave. They are also often coming from the lower income classes. Who’s at fault there? Those people, or the society that doesn’t seem to be giving them a ledge to hold onto?
Granted, there are lots of people who just don’t care and will act in a selfish way, irrespective of the support they get. But if we want to enforce compliance the easiest way to do it is (apart from the obvious measure of education at an early age) to make it easy to comply with the rules.