David Sirota has a helpful column today, in the Chron among other places.
The seat recliner [in airplanes] uses the public domain — in this case, space — and we have gotten used to using as much of that domain as we can, not just on planes but everywhere. This is our destructive “me” culture: Anything we want in the public sphere, we take or use, with little regard for the overall ramifications.
A stranger reclines into your lap. Someone in a theater talks through the movie. The guy at the next table yammers so loudly on his cell phone that you can’t hear your lunch companion. A passerby litters in the park. In each example, the public domain is trampled and usurped by the “me” culture.
But what happens when this culture affects the really big stuff — like, say, planetary survival?