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Teaching Our Children to Help Make the World Better
Maintaining a flourishing civilization depends on people passing down the knowledge and values on which civilization rests.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
Recently my family was walking through a strip mall. A young woman riding in an expensive vehicle threw several bags of fast-food trash out of her window onto the pavement. She walked up to the front door of a business, where there was a trashcan, saw the business was closed, and walked back to her vehicle.
"I think you dropped something," I said. The women then picked up her trash and threw it in a bush. After she drove away, I retrieved her trash and threw it in the trashcan that she had walked past.
Scores of dog owners use the open-space trails near my house. Almost all of them clean up after their dogs, as they are morally and legally required to do. But one or two people just refuse to pick up their dog poop.
One day I got tired of walking around the trail littered with piles of feces and resolved to clean it up myself, even though my family doesn't even have a dog. I've now picked up and discarded dozens of piles of other people's dog poop.
People fish in the reservoir near my house, and most of them leave no trace. But at least one person regularly brings a large bag of stuff and just leaves his trash behind. Recently my son and I spent a few minutes cleaning up this person's empty bottles and cans, tangled fishing line, bait boxes, and assorted other trash. At least he was considerate enough to leave a bag that we used to collect the rest of his trash.
Lessons for Our Children
I frankly do not understand the mentality of litterbugs and others who consciously choose to make the world a worse place. The sense of entitlement, the meanness, the disrespect for others bogle the mind.
At least these cases have offered me the opportunity to discuss with my son, and to show him through my actions, that it is possible to act to make the world a better place. This is true in obvious cases such as picking up others' trash, and it is true in other contexts as well.
Conspiracy mongering and spreading misinformation ("flooding the zone with shit," as Steve Bannon describes it) are sorts of intellectual littering. They mar the intellectual landscape as dog poop mars an outdoor trail. A difference is that knowingly or carelessly spreading bogus claims can have far more serious consequences.
Those who make it their job or avocation to responsibly clean up misinformation, as journalists at their best do, deserve our gratitude.
An obvious difference between physical litter and misinformation is that, while government properly defines litter and enforces laws against it as best it can, we cannot trust government to reliably identify misinformation. And a government powerful enough to ban misinformation is a government powerful enough to ban any speech.
The potentially good news is that misinformation only works insofar as people embrace and spread it. You can choose not to do that.
Civilization Is Fragile
Building and maintaining a flourishing civilization is hard work. It depends on people, and especially parents, passing down the knowledge and values on which civilization rests. It depends on people working to improve the world despite the best efforts of some to mess it up and tear it down.
In economic jargon, litter is a sort of externality, someone pushing costs onto others. Me cleaning up litter is a sort of external good; I'm doing something that benefits others as well as me.
Civilization depends on enough people making that extra effort to make the world a better place, whether by cleaning up litter, fostering fact-based discussions, promoting virtuous behavior, or teaching our children well.
If you call this article virtue signaling then I say hurrah for virtue signaling. Obviously no one likes a cocky show-off, and we won't always be recognized for our good deeds, but there's nothing wrong with doing the right or helpful thing and letting others notice us doing it. If this column encourages others to put in the extra effort, great. Maybe it will also discourage some vice signaling, which some people seem desperate to do.
Now I hope you'll excuse me as I go out for a short walk. I'll take a doggie bag with me. I'll probably need it.