Yes It’s True: We just don’t care about consequences

In recent times I’ve written about scofflaws, people who ignore minor laws and rules because it’s likely they won’t be prosecuted or face significant penalties.

The minor infractions include littering or going 5 or 10 miles an hour above the speed limit. The results of such violations most often are not catastrophic, but they can be annoying or irritating.

Most litter bugs, I believe most sincerely, don’t care about trashing our roadways, streams or back woods. They only seem to want to avoid the inconvenience of keeping the trash themselves and properly disposing of it later. I see evidence of this too often when I walk around town.

But there exist other violations that potentially are far more serious, yet too many of us do not seem to be concerned.

Submitted for your approval, just a few infractions that demonstrate a callous indifference to the welfare of others:

• The variety of bad behavior of motorists.

I once had an eye-opening chat with a Michigan State Police specialist in traffic crashes who told me the vast majority of fatalities on the highways is the result of avoidable bad driving. He said accident causes such as distracted driving (talking or texting on cellphones), driving while intoxicated, excessive speed and not wearing a seat belt are amazingly prevalent in fatal crashes.

And all of them would have been avoided if the motorist would have cared enough not to be a practicing scofflaw.

• Smoking cigarettes.

Fifty years ago there was a debate over whether smoking ruins your health. It’s pretty solid science now that it too often causes such serious illnesses as lung cancer and emphysema. Yet at least one-fifth of all American adults can’t or won’t kick the habit until it’s too late.

• Don’t get me started on refusal to wear a mask during a deadly pandemic.

• Refusing the spay or neuter cats and dogs. Every time I see a Facebook posting about a new litter of pups or kittens I am deeply saddened. Virtually all of us need to understand there are far too many cats and dogs that have to be “put down” in shelters because there aren’t enough owners.

Even worse, there is a common and wrong-headed belief that having pups and kittens is a good thing because they’re so cute. They grow up a little and become expendable.

In Bygone Days research last week I came across former Globe Editor-Publisher Rollo G. Mosher describing the process of neglectful owners dumping dogs and cats in the village or out in the wild, making them face unpleasant prospects of freezing to death or starving.

My paternal grandfather was a gentle soul who didn’t seem capable of harming anything, but he dutifully broke the necks of and killed feral cats at his barn, regarding it as just the nature of things.

TV game show host Bob Barker and later Drew Carey have been absolutely right to call attention to the need of all pet owners to have their cats and dogs spayed or neutered. Their populations have exploded now for half a century, and, as Bob Dylan asked in song, “How many deaths will it take ‘til he knows that too many people have died?”

A callous indifference to consequences seems to be one of our worst modern American shortcomings.