The tragedy of technology, wrote engineer Samuel Florman, is that it brings good things, and takes good things away, always. That’s the tradeoff, as I learned this week when I more or less casually mentioned that a dumpster was coming to the farm today to help us clear out the farmhouse as we begin preparations to sell the farm and move to a New Bedlam Farm. In the dizzying new world of social media, this opened a vein of deep concern and worry that amazed even me, a long-time hound for technology, and exposed me to the world in a new and unintended way. Beware the future, said the prophet, it is not what you think.

There were many messages of concern about my garbage plans, something I have never before discussed with the wider world. Nor did I ever dream my garbage, among the most intimate of things, was anyone else’s business.  Carole was disturbed by the dumpster, and she wrote that there was a charity called the Salvation Army, and one called Goodwill and that they took donations and we might consider donating things to them. Some people are in need in this economy, she said. It would be a shame to toss out all of my books when people might like to read them and Maria might consider recycling rather than throwing her clothes away.

Sharon wrote that she was surprised we were throwing things in a dumpster. “I guess I thought with as  much as Maria buys from second hand stores that you would donate anything that is useable.” Libraries, she told me, are in need of donations these days. I might consider the idea of recycling things, she said, thought I might think about it. And she added generously, “Still love your blog…” despite my environmental depredations. Amanda wrote she was stunned that I would get a dumpster when good-hearted people give away their used clothes and books and belongings.

For once, I was at a loss. Did I say I was tossing out books? That Maria was throwing clothes away? Had I talked about my moral garbage choices at all? Not that I could find. Why didn’t that matter?

I guess I am outed. For years I have been hauling books out to the barn and burning them, rather than see them go to libraries or people in need. How many ways, I often think, can I rub salt in the wounds of the poor? That visit we made to the Cambridge Library Sunday with a car full of books was just a ruse. And our deposits at the Salvation Army were a tease – we drove by, showed them our stuff, and then pulled away, laughing and jeering. We pretended to drop off boxes of books, but it was just straw, the better to fool poor children into thinking they might read, or their parents have sofas to sit on.

And my former girlfriend, who has pretended for some years to make art out of recycled fabric, has been outed as well. I can tell the truth now. Even thought she had never brought a new article of clothing in her life (she squeaks like a mouse and is tight as a tick), I can now tell Sharon and Carole and the others that she actually  shops at Sak’s Fifth Avenue in New York City for her clothes, and when she is done with them – it usually takes a week – she burns them and her jewelry and shoes in the same fire that I toss my books in. And oh how we laugh in the glowing flames of waste and greed – shades of Marie Antoinette – as we sink into our self-absorbed lives and deprive the poor of salvation and comfort.

We have no excuse, really.  Except ignorance. We did not know there was recycling, we never heard of it out here in the country.  Thank you Sharon. We did not know of the Salvation Army or of Goodwill Industries. Never heard of thrift shops.  Thank you, Carole.  Living on a farm, we did not think to take our house and barn garbage –  discarded asphalt roof times, rotten wood, or broken glass and vases to the poor, as we obviously should.  Foolishly, we thought they belonged in a dumpster.

We did not know there were people out there so savvy as to know what was in our garbage, that  we must be getting a dumpster to throw out books and fine clothing and shoes. We thought we could get away with it.  As the author of 21 books, I never thought to give any of them away – I just toss my old books, my  Marquez and Austen and Naipaul and Merton volumes into the trash. No one told me that libraries were need. I didn’t hear that at any of the appearances I made to raise money for libraries this year. Nor could we, living on Patterson Boulevard in wealthy Hebron, N.Y., have imagined there were poor people in this economy, in this battered world. Thank you, Amanda, we just never heard about it. Why weren’t we told?

As Florman wrote, we did not imagine the future. Could you even imagine a world in which people assumed they knew what you would put in a dumpster? Or that your garbage was in any conceivable way their business? Can you imagine the writer and the fiber artist turning red at breakfast, spouting curse words and venom in their kitchen as they were informed via Facebook that recycling was an option in the world, and that the Salvation Army existed, and that books were not garbage and that fabric ought to be recycled rather than tossed in a dumpster? Pretty steamy in there – we hardly needed to warm up our rolled oats. And it was fun to see the writer and the artist got a grip on their spiritual selves, settle a bit and start laughing.

Well, we are out now, and have to live with ourselves. The dumpster of shame will be here momentarily. And bless you, Mr. Orwell. Reviled in your own time, you are a prophet in ours. And you, too, Mary Shelley. Technology bringeth, and it taketh away. Every day, we are called upon to set our new boundaries and live by them. To keep our souls from being eaten alive by people who want to know others but don’t want to do the work.

And if we are called to change, we are also called to smile, and laugh. Because life taken too seriously is not worth living. Are you out there,  Carole and Sharon? Amanda and Patricia, and Sam and Jane?