The Love of Ice Cream and Loathing of Waste

A Simple Analogy on the Philosophy of Waste

The summer heat at the State Fair is intense. After wiping the sweat from his eyes, George sees an ice cream vendor in the distance. He loves ice cream and smiles, knowing there’s nothing better than its cold tastiness on a humid day. George walks over, fingering the money in his pocket, knowing he has no reason to count it. He came to the State Fair with enough money to play as many games and eat as much as he wanted. Once he reaches the ice cream trailer, George pulls out his wad of cash and orders. 

A couple of locals named Bill and Ted lean on a vacant trailer kiddie corner to the ice cream vendor and oogle at the massive amount of cash a slightly overweight, sweaty young man is holding. They then look at each other, aghast, as George turns away from the booth with a single cone filled with a ridiculous amount of Superman-flavored ice cream. The top scoop, which looks to be the eighth, immediately drops from the mountain of ice cream to the ground. George giggles as the dirty and dehydrated Bill and Ted hopelessly watch his waste splatter on the ground. George turns and walks away munching on his cold treat leaving a trail of swirly rainbow colored creamy liquid in his wake. 

Within a handful of steps, George’s enormous glob of ice cream had melted and spilled all over dry, dead grass. Bill and Ted, exhausted and too broke to afford ice cream, eye George with dumbfounded disbelief. George looks at the two townies and shrugs. Soon as his shoulders fall from his shrug, an old man comes up from behind George and taps him on the shoulder. George, still holding his empty cone, standing in a pool of melted Superman ice cream, turns around towards the sunken-cheeked, bearded man. 

“Everyone around here loves ice cream, but almost no one can afford it yet you waste it everywhere,” the tall old man says. George looks at the bearded man as if he said nothing, misses throwing his cone into a trashcan, and walks away. “I need to get out of this humid hell hole and eat some ice cream at home,” George says to himself as he approaches his car.

Soon as George gets home, he heads directly to his freezer and grabs a tub of ice cream without even reading its flavor. He then grabs a spoon and digs into what turns out to be delicious Cookies and Cream. Wasteful George doesn’t waste a moment thinking about what happened at the State Fair, or what the old man said earlier. George is just indulging in delicious Cookies and Cream ice cream.

The first few spoonfuls were miraculous. The ice cream stays tasty, but by the time he scarfs down his dozenth scoop, the intense gratification has long since faded. In due time, George becomes stuffed. But he figures anything he has to do, he can have someone else do as he wipes a drop of ice cream off his chin with cash. The next bite he eats slowly, almost reluctantly. His former pleasure in eating ice cream has diminished into bloatedness. He can hardly eat anymore, yet scoops up ice cream that sits in his mouth until he forces himself to gulp it down. 

Then there was a knock at his door. George rubs his stomach as he waddles to answer it. He opens his door, and standing in front of him is the thin, sunken-cheeked, bearded, old man from the State Fair.

The old man doesn’t say a word and looks down at George. He thinks about what he sees and has seen while stroking his beard. 

It is clear from the smeared ice cream on George’s face and his lethargic disposition that he had eaten a lot more ice cream. He displayed no guilt about the prior events. He never cared about the dehydrated and desperate locals that watched his surplus of ice cream splash onto the ground. George’s lack of compassion was his natural state. He stayed hunched over, never looking up, not caring that the old man was even there. With neither of them saying a word to each other, George shuts his door in the old man’s face, and the old man walks away, still thinking.

How could that guy behave that way knowing the malnourished inhabitants of that State Fair needed ice cream? George needed it too, but he had a lot of extra money, while the natives had none. I know if I had all that cash, I would have helped some of the townsfolk. Which means wealth alone does not make someone wasteful, but without it, there is no way to gorge irresponsibly. You need wealth to waste in order to be wasteful.

But everyone’s perception of waste differs from person to person, from culture to culture, and from community to community. Even though there are different beliefs, the ideal of waste exists uniformly. That ideal being frivolous excess. But back to the prior thought, we are all different and what is one person’s necessary indulgence is another’s wastefulness. 

Material goods illustrate this well. Expensive clothes, in some people’s eyes, are wasteful, but for others, an essential part of identifying their personal brand. Who is right? Both since neither is really wrong. But the ideal of waste is still out there. As a result, there is a point where everyone will view some surplus acquisition of clothes a waste. Similar to when George got an absurd amount of Superman ice cream, at what point would getting new leather jackets become wasteful for a solitary guy?

I am confident everyone will agree getting eighteen new leather jackets would be unnecessary and wasteful, just as George was with his eight scoops of ice cream. But I am also assured that George and the owner of those coats will not agree with the masses’ perception. Therefore, if we look towards each individual’s perception of waste, we will never have an agreement. A better route is highlighting the effect of potential waste. Most effects of frivolous excess are inarguable outcomes. For example, the more leather jackets bought, the more animals skinned to satisfy demand. When the result of the corresponding action is resoundingly negative, it is wasteful. If buying a new luxury car doesn’t meaningfully affect anyone, then it is not. But buying 20 of the same car when you will not drive most of them while people are poor and struggling then it is the vice of waste. 

“Now that I know what waste is, how do I convince George to change his ways?”

Not yet with an answer to this, the old bearded man knocks on George’s door again. George opened his door and looked up at the old man. “George, I have come back to ask you, why do you only think of yourself?”

“What are you talking about, and who are you?”

“I watched you buy a ridiculous amount of ice cream, and let it all fall to the ground back at the State Fair. Then, I came here and saw you so full of ice cream you could hardly stand. And from what I see right now, not much has changed. Was your glut pleasurable to the last scoop?”

George looked at the old guy with a snarl, and his head tilted in disbelief. He continued staring for a long second before replying.

“I do as I please. I bought all that ice cream because it makes me happy. What is wrong with that? I spend my money how I want!”

“Don’t you think those scoops were better off being eaten by someone who needed them than on the ground?”

George did not reply, and the old man started lecturing out of frustration.

“Then you come here and eat yourself into incapacitation. There is no joy in that. But you did it anyway because you could. You ate ice cream till you were sick because there was no consequence. Whatever you need done can be passed along to someone else, or could put off because you are already rich. Also, you apparently have infinite cream for just you! Excess that affects nothing does not matter. Needlessly hoarding and spilling the fruit of life as those in need watch matters and are wasteful. Do you understand?”

“My excess defines my superiority! Without it, I am like everyone else! When I walk around with my eight scoops, everyone knows I’m superior! I will do as I please with my wealth,” George said and slammed his door in the old man’s face!

The old man, in his well-worn overalls, turned away disillusioned but not hopeless. 

Knowing what waste is, is a start. I can explain to anyone that when needless excess has a real negative impact, it is waste. George was throwing money and ice cream in the trash rather than invigorating the health of the locals at the Fair; that is waste. Anyone would understand that. That message needs to be spread.

Those folks will also need to know that wastefulness of consequence is only possible with vast wealth. With that vastness, being relative. The richest man in town is to that town what the richest man in the region is to that entire region and everything in it. In both cases, those who need help have a numbers advantage. That advantage is only useful one way, by utilizing it politically. With no capital, votes are the only valuable currency the lower incomes possess. Working together, they win, but uninformed or misinformed apart, they are powerless, and waste prevails.