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Normally you need to put a coin in shopping trollies around here to take them out. When you properly return them you get the coin back. It's not a lot of money, usually 50 cents. And if you don't happen to have a coin on hand most shops will give you a key chain with a properly sized round bit of metal. It being so common, most people have one of those key chains anyways. I'd always thought it was a fine system, but people were pretty decent anyways.
Then during corona because of hygiene reasons shops could only reopen if they cleaned the trollies after every use and that meant not using the coin system. Later the cleaning part was delegated to customers using facilities from the shop and then got rid of entirely. But the coin system wasn't put back due to hygiene.
To my surprise people would just dump the trollies everywhere. They would not care one bit where they put them. Some people put them away neatly, some just shove them sort of in the right place. Others would just leave them on the parking lot or shove them aside to end up in a ditch.
As soon as possible the coin system was put back into place. Later some shops got rid of it again, because it's easier for customers. But only in select places where people are decent I guess, or the shop puts in the effort to monitor and handle the carts. You would think it'd be the crowded inner city parts where the coin system was needed. But near me in a rich part of town they use the coin system because rich folk just leave the carts in the parking lot, feeling like putting it back is beneath them or something. In a more crowded normal part of town one shop I go to doesn't use the coin system and I'm surprised every time. The carts there are always perfectly placed. Although that shop has an issue with people using the disabled parking spaces if they need to run in and out quickly, which is a terrible thing to do.
This whole experience changed my view of humanity. I used to think almost all or at least most people were decent. Trying to do the right thing, with only a few assholes spoiling stuff for the rest of us. It showed me that a tiny little coin, not really worth anything is all that stands between a functioning neat system and total chaos. And it's not just a couple of people, it's more like half of them. A lot of people are lazy and inconsiderate, caring only about themselves. If it costs them money, no matter how little, they will do what's required (because money is everything in this fucked up capitalist world). But if it doesn't cost them money, they will just do whatever and not care.
This experience, along with many other during the past 10 years have spoiled my view on humanity. I tend to assume everyone is a total asshole in some way or another, which is honestly kind of a sad way to live. So I make an active effort to give people the benefit of the doubt, but it can be hard and a lot of people shortly prove they are indeed assholes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_cart_theory
There's a radio guy that has a series called Cart Narcs on YouTube where he runs around patrolling shopping parking lots and shaming people into putting their carts back.
It's a guilty pleasure of mine.
"Assholes" imply that its malicious, when people are just very, VERY lazy. Only the "laziest", most energy conserving humans would have survived, exhibiting the least amount of energy required to sustain themselves. Since putting away a cart isn't strictly required, a lot of people just don't care. Only those who know better will.
Nah. Grasshopper and the ants.
Good point, however I don't know if I agree actually. That's looking at a human in a very simplistic way, which probably means it isn't fully true.
For example humans live (and always have lived) to a relative old age, well past their prime and past the point where they can produce offspring. Even back when the average life expectancy was low, people still easily lived to 50 years old. It's just that a high infant mortality and death due to accidents and illness pushed the number down, a single human could easily live to be 50. At this age they don't work as hard, can't produce offspring and can't really compete, so why keep them around? Many other species don't live that long or are even actively killed off. The theory is with humans being very social creatures, always working together to outcompete everything else, keeping the older ones around must serve some kind of benefit. It is thought they could no longer work hard in terms of hunting and gathering, they could still look after offspring whilst the rest does those tasks. They could also do smaller, less demanding tasks and so still contribute. This made them earn their keep so to speak, providing more benefits than the extra resources they consume. This meant a group which had elders around had a better chance of survival than a group which didn't or had less of them. Thus there was an evolutionary gain to living into old age and it was selected for, giving humans (and other hominids who we are related to) a much longer lifespan than one would otherwise expect.
This means being lazy to conserve energy isn't the full story, there's also the social aspect. Someone contributing to a tribe not only helps boost the survival of that tribe and therefor themselves, it also helps them not be ousted from the tribe and thus significantly decreasing survival odds. This means going the extra mile for the tribe, even self-sacrifice, would be selected for in terms of evolution.
Another side would be I expect a modern human to be slightly more advanced than our hominid cousins and not be driven purely by instinct. We live in a society with rules and expectations and it's a conscience choice whether to adhere to them or ignore them. It is generally accepted that in normal circumstances a person is fully responsible for every action they do or do not undertake.
But the theme I've noticed is people are caring less and less about society and more and more about their own bubble, so in that sense they might not be malicious. They might be driven by this general trend and the causes for them, which I'm unable to speak of with any kind of expertise. I shared my personal experience, which might or might not be reflected by reality.
But thank you for shining your light on this, I agree the term assholes implies it's malicious.