"Pollution control" has long been problematic because, as time passed, it became obvious that pollution, the flow of mostly man-made toxins into the environment, was not even lessened, never mind eliminated by what boiled down to little more than keeping records. So, it looked like the word "control" was deployed as a palliative to assuage the concerns of people who don't know any better than to object to the "necessary" discomforts of modern existence. That is, if the air is to be "conditioned" in summer and winter, some people (asthmatics) are going to find breathing harder.
More recently, the growing popularity of other kinds of control (animal control, pest control, population control, even birth control) suggests the word has morphed and is now a euphemism for elimination or extermination. It's almost as if a strategy that wasn't effective in one venue (the elimination of pollutants) is being hijacked for other venues where it might be effected with greater ease. Or is it because, as it turns out, targeting visible organisms is more satisfying/gratifying than dealing with molecules?
Visibility seems to be determinative. Or rather, most humans seem more inclined to attend to what they can see and ignore what they can't. Or is it just some humans? Is that what accounts for some humans not having any control over themselves and, at the same time, being fixated on controlling everyone else? Is it a matter of existing in the present, as in a bubble, and not being able to look ahead to identify a goal or purpose?
Is the absence of self-control a matter of awareness (a failure to know the self) or a matter of perspective (not seeing the self)? In either case, there seems to be a paucity of alternatives. That is, if one doesn't know where one is going -- i.e absent direction -- then the only choice would seem to be to go or not. Motion or inaction. Yes or No. All or nothing. Ambiguity would be most upsetting. Even the option of deferring until later, of exercising restraint in the present in anticipation of more success at another time, doesn't exist.
To what extent does the organization (familial, religious, industrial, commercial) compensate for the lack of control/direction on the part of some individual persons? Is direction the function we monetarily compensate so highly?
Senator Harry Reid says female senators are different from male senators. He particularly touts their service as chairs of committees. Is that because those females who get elected are more organized than their male counterparts who get ahead by "beating the shit out of each other" as Reid good-naturedly claims?
Time for Les Barker to weigh in.
Thecivilisedworld