My friend Rob sent me (and some other Prius owners) this:
and I’ve seen all of you do worse…
I would like to address a common misconception — that the Prius is the final conquest, the proverbial cherry on top of the human quest for ethical perfection. Spotting a chink in imagined armor, people just can’t wait to call out a Prius owner’s “hypocrisy” when he, for example, fails to recycle.
Whether I don’t recycle, I’m a mobster, or I’m just doing it to be cool, do any of those things make it wrong for me to own a Prius? Whatever other bad decisions I make, isn’t that one still good?
I, for one, own a Prius because they’re neat and gadgety. The gas engine doesn’t turn on until you’re going 12 MPH, and it has a built-in computer you can hack to do all kinds of things. I haven’t hacked it, but I like knowing that I can.
Also, I don’t recycle. Not even at work, where the recycling bin is 1 inch from the normal trash. There I go out of my way to not recycle, subconsciously and completely irrationally, to punish Joe (who loves recycling) for allowing dirty cups to collect in the conference room, even though it isn’t his job to clean them.
One Comment
nice blog on vision overload. Key concept not often discussed.