[at-l] "Externality": Cell phones, cigarettes, nudity, sports broadcasts, drunkenness, wet dogs, body odor...

[sloetoe at yahoo.com (Sloetoe)]

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 22:01:17 -0500
From: Felix <AThiker@smithville.net>

Jason wrote:
>what about the guy that is taking a month to do some hiking and
spends 5 mins a night to tell his wife and daughter that his is
doing ok ? is this such a bad thing ?

Felix answered:
It might be to the guy who is out in the woods so he doesn't
have to listen to people talking on the phone.

### Egg-ZAK-ly.
Why is this so hard, folks? It is no different than being in
town, living next to the guy who idles his unmuffled car 10
minutes every morning, or living next to the factory that spews
noxious gas 24/7, or a thousand other events that intrude into
our lives. It is what economists call an external effect, or
"externality" -- your activity (be it smoking, phone use,
playing your radio without headphones, strolling the trail
without clothes ("well you don't have to looooook!") has degrees
of external effect on those around you. Doesn't matter whether
its air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, sight
pollution, or as I would observe for cell phones: civilization
pollution, it has a deleterious effect on those subject to it.

And so when Jason wrote:
>what about the guy that is taking a month to do some hiking and
spends 5 mins a night to tell his wife and daughter that his is
doing ok ? is this such a bad thing ?

And Felix answered:
It might be to the guy who is out in the woods so he doesn't
have to listen to people talking on the phone.
### Felix was perfectly describing "civilization pollution". We
can all sit here and wax eloquent about our love for the woods,
appreciation of good gear and hard trail, and all that, but NONE
of it means a dang thing when considered outside of a value
system which demands a full-time focus on the simple
here-and-now: what's for dinner? where's the water? is it good?
how high the next hill? will we make it before the lightning?
how're my feet? Wear my shirt? WHERE'S THE FOOD??? THESE are
things that matter. (And if they aren't paramount, then you've
got the wrong priorities for the trail, and you're going to quit
the minute you realize that perfectly good roads go where it is
you're trying to walk...)

### You want dissonance? Throw into that trail value system
somebody else having (apparently) a one-sided conversation.
"What? You talkin' ta *me*?" Your mind is drawn inexoribly right
into a conversation to which you'd normally be considered
eavesdropping. How rude! But don't respond when the caller askes
a question of the passing breeze aloud -- they think *that's*
rude! And then to hear the debate about whether to buy regular
thermopane windows or the high energy model or whether the
equity account would cover it or how 'bout the economy tanking
in the near future and hey (after all) did the cat get fed?

WHO F'IN' CARES OUTSIDE OF YOU AND THE CIVILIZATION-TRAPPED YUTZ
AT THE OTHER END? Bet your bippy *I* care, but in a badddd way,
and all the more the more I had to hump some backpack up/over
hill and dale in wind and cold to get to whereever you've
decided this vital conversation must go on. I work my *arse* off
to get in the woods, on the *smidgent* of time/money available
to me, to focus on a whole boatload of here-and-now and what's
truly important. How DARE you stick your intrusive stink, noise,
or behavior into my backcountry use; I would be *mortified* to
find I had intruded into yours.

And that's the bottom line. I would be mortified to find my
behavior would, through external effects, have negatively
intruded on your use of the backcountry we all work so hard to
get to, maintain, traverse, and enjoy.

sloetoe

Spatior! Nitor! Nitor! Tempero!
   Pro Pondera Et Meliora.