The Ethics of Trail Mix

Friends,

Rather than just apologize for the hundredth time about how it's been almost a month since our last Tangent, I'm going to apologize AND vent my frustration. 

Sorry it's been so long. When I started this blog adventure (not to be mistaken with "adventure blog", which I would take to mean a blog about hiking and mountain bikes, which this most certainly is not), I had a handful things I needed to write about. Pro baseball realignment. The good and the bad of being single. When Harry Met Sally, both as a chart topper and a source of relational wisdom.

The problem is that my pool of ideas, while vast, has more or less run dry. Don't panic-- Tangent Space(s) will live on. But I just want you to know, faithful reader(s(?)), that I've used up all my go-to rants about dog crap and traffic merging. From here on out, the regular exchange of ideas that is TS(s) will depend on my discipline and your help with ideas. The former is practically non-existent, so yeah... please help me.

In the meantime, I tackle a problem that is reprehensible, heinous, outright egregious... to my friend Bob. For some reason. I'm going to try to be angry for him.


M&Ms and Human Depravity
Trying to think of some joke about melting in your mouth, not in your hand; failing to do so

If you've ever been to a party, you've probably been to a party with trail mix. If I had my own rant to deliver, it would probably be about how crappy trail mix is. It shouldn't exist. Or maybe its existence should be relegated to the "trail". But this is Bob's rant, and so for the sake of tangentment, please picture a bowl of trail mix at a party.

Now, the thing about trail mix is that it attempts to mix salty and sweet. In one bowl, you find peanuts, cashews, almonds, granola, raisins, a bunch of other crap, and M&Ms. But you're at a party and it's 9pm. You're not interested in protein just now. Fiber is not a high priority. You want chocolate and you want it bad.

This, then, is the trail mix party dilemma-- on a dish serving as a public medley, you are interested in one and only one item.

There are obviously three options before you: eat nothing, eat the trail mix evenly in all its heterogeneity, or pick out and eat the M&Ms.

I'm afraid now we must say the hard truth. Many may disagree. But "sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same" (that's for my mom, who has always loved that lyric from The Fray). Here it is, friends. Only the first two options are ethically permissible.

What's wrong, you might ask, with eating only the M&Ms? The answer is simple-- you ruin the trail mix for everyone else. Suppose the trail mix is 10% chocolate and 90% lame stuff. It won't take you long to eat all 10 of those percents. What you leave behind is an almost-full bowl that has become an abomination. 

You might respond with some hopeful thought that the mix and/or chocolate will be replaced. But that simply won't happen, because the bowl will be 90% full! The host won't even notice the change (unless shis hand scoops out the 'lame mix'), and no refill will take place.

This leads me to the point I want to make, the one part of this, umm, important problem that carries over into other parts of life. The violator of the trail mix dilemma typically isn't trying to be cruel, greedy, or self-centered. They legitimately just take the chocolate without thinking about the ramifications.

And that's the problem. In all our actions, large and small, we should be thinking about the ramifications. Will this affect other people? How will it make them feel? Will it make their lives better or worse?

When you eat all the M&Ms and nothing else, it affects us. It makes us feel sad. It makes our lives worse.


Trail Mix and You
Leave comments. It's sort of an "if you build it, they will come" principle in 2 directions

Have you come up against a trail mix devoid of chocolate?
Have you ever broken the ethical code of party food?
Have you any ideas for future tangents?

Jon