Sure... I've thought about that a lot too. You're saying I should have challenged their values with mine. I probably should have said something. And yet I would spend all day long every day in arguments with people who just don't agree with me. I tend to be rather non-confrontational and don't like arguments. Many people can just shrug it off but I get upset by them. In my mind, this is an example of an efficiency gained by the monoculture.

edit: Just thought of another little anecdote: I was sitting outside roppongi hills eating a bento on a bench when a woman with a kid and a little dog walked by. The dog stopped to poop and when he was finished she quickly scurried away into her high-rise.

My wife and I were flabbergasted. An old woman and her husband walking by gave her the glare and you could see everyone nearby was shocked. About 5 minutes later she came out without the dog but with the kid and a woman from the front desk of her building. They cleaned it up. I guess she didn't have a bag with her and she wanted to drop the dog off and then grab a bag from her house. During the five minutes that it was there, I was thinking how I should have said something.

Not that I would have done this either, but you could have just picked up their trash for them. Then the dad would have had to explain to his kid why you were cleaning up their mess. Not too confrontational, but it still gets the point across.

My current hobby is to make a visible point of calling out litterers and picking up their litter if they don't (especially cigaretes).

So far, I've gotten ignored a lot, a couple of sheepish looks or mutterings, and I've been assaulted once (after returning a dropped cigarette to the owner, she threw the coffee drink at me, littering further.)

I strongly exhort all decent people to make a point of transmitting their values loudly, clearly, and defensibly. If only vandals and thugs feel free to express their beliefs in public, where will that lead us?

That approach is a risky one:

a) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6947744.stm

b) You are directly trying to impose your value over someone else's value, with the assumption that you are correct. One has to be very careful sure you are not just projecting your frustration at the littering. What they are doing is completely correct for their worldview, which has a boundary round about where their clothing is.

If someone litters at all then they probably haven't much of an awareness outside of their own egocentric POV and it seems quite unlikely that a single intervention by yourself is going to change that, unless they are a kid of less than ~ ten years of age.

I like to smile and pick the litter up as a gift. If they notice they notice, if they don't they don't.

> You are directly trying to impose your value over someone else's value, with the assumption that you are correct.

I feel this takes political correctness too far. What if someone else's values are that theft is fine, if they need something. If you see someone stealing a bike, should you do nothing because you don't want to impose your values on them?

1. The murder in that news story was not triggered by the anti-litter. It seems highly likely that he murderer was already out for blood.

2. Litter travels beyond the boundary of the litterer's clothing, so I do not see the consistency of your model.

> The murder in that news story was not triggered by the anti-litter. It seems highly likely that he murderer was already out for blood

What makes you think that? From the story it seems clear that the confrontation took place due to the victim questioning the murderer's right to throw litter in to his sister's car.

Sadly, young men who would kill over such a minor thing as this are not uncommon in London.

I have difficulty imagining a person with the mindset "Violence is not the answer, excepting of course that I will fight to the death to defend a man's freedom to throw his trash in another person's car"

Next time, try saying something instead of thinking, and see how it goes. Science has two[0] legs, theory and experimentation.

([0] Some say that science has a third leg now: computation.)