Thomas Sheng
January 25, 2016

Lessons and Philosophies in the Stages of Dumpster Diving
‘On Dumpster Diving’, a fascinating work written by Lars Eighner, showed the real lives of the homeless. While introducing his personal experience, Eighner also mentioned the stages a person goes through in learning to scavenge. By describing the stages, Eighner described an attitude towards life, that abandoning things is necessary, even though they may seem to be rare and precious; he also tried to change others’ opinions about Dumpster diving.
First, the evidence of Eighner’s attitude about life comes from a gentle suggestion that Eighner gave to the new Dumpster divers that being a pack-rat who collected everything in his sight was unrealistic, which Eighner described as “hopeless” (36). Also, at the end of the text, Eighner highlighted a deep lesson he had learned from Dumpster diving that, “Take what you can use and let the rest go by.” The statement indicates that even if something may be precious and rare, it is valueless if it cannot be made useful. How Eighner dealt with pieces from Dumpsters is a philosophy that can not only be applied in foraging food, but also in other circumstances, such as when Robinson was deserted on an island, he was willing to spend all his money on a pipe. Learning to forswear the articles found in trash is by far not all Eighner wanted to explain; it promotes an attitude, which can be and should be adopted by the “rat-race millions” of middle-class, that not everything is worth acquiring, .
Then, the stages that people go through in learning to become a scavenger are actually the steps that people learn any new things in real life. The very first hurdle to learn a new thing is the lack of confidence. Unsureness often restricts the talents from thriving. For example, in the passage the author described that the green new-comers had been often