"Why shouldn't you throw trash out of your window if it's not your garden it's being thrown into and the council come to clean it?" (swirly girl) - surely it's not about legal ownership as such, it's a feeling that it is yours, which is slightly different.

I don't drop rubbish in the street, because I feel it is my street as much as anybody else's. A lot of people do, and maybe that's a sign that they feel that the only things that belong to them are the things which they legally own.

And that includes people who are wealthy just as much as people who are poor - it's why rich companies are happy to mess up the environment, all the way down to MacDonalds not giving a damn about their cartons being scattered all over the pace outside their shops.

It's about seeing the world around you as something where you have a part to play, as against thinking that it's nothing to do with you ("there's no sych thing as society"). It's an attitude that gives life, and the opposite of it is a poison, and I think it's a poison that spreads down from the top. There's a proverb that fish rot from the head down - I don't know if it's true of fish, but I think it's true of society.

And that other thing you said, swirlygirl: "we have a generation growing up who think there's very little to fear." In a real sense I think the reverse is true. We've a generation growing up that is scared of everything.