A Disposable Society by Patrick Deneen

In a way, our inattentiveness and the plastic stirrer are deeply and profoundly related: they both derive from our massive employment of fossil fuels. The coffee stirrer - and all the plastic that undergirds our throw-away society - are made primarily from chemicals derived from fossil fuels. And our inattentiveness is primarily undergirded by that amazing resource that allows us much of the time to live elsewhere than where we actually are - whether by fueling the transportation system that has made global mobility as easy as chewing gum, or primarily powering the electrical grid that serves as a virtual transporter, affording a constant and often illusory, hypnotic and addictive form of displacement and disembodiment. Our lack of any relationship to the coffee stirrer is born of the same resource that made the stirrer.