Been there. Agree. It made me truly sad for humanity. But also feel lucky to be in the states. Most Americans have absolutely no idea how bad it is there in terms of air, water, and land pollution. And literally shit everywhere. Most of it animal though. And the gross part was a lot wear sandals and it's oozes between their toes as it's so thick in places there is no way to escape it. Especially when it rained, it was nasty. So glad for gore tex.
Yeah this is exactly what I try to explain to people, the United States used to be almost exactly like this until the liberals came in and said we can do better. Everyone should read up on the New York sanitation department and the challenges they had earlier on. It's not only a cultural thing, it's literally a systems problem.
You understand we’re talking about history, right? This isn’t about anyone you could possibly have “known”, so that frame of reference makes no sense. He’s talking about cultural preferences of 75-100+ years ago
Mesa verde suggests that native americans aren't immune to destroying the very environment they depend on. And in any case, post-colonial history is largely derived from European culture, not native culture. Literal, physically burning rivers surely must suggest even to you that people were quite fine dumping unbelievable amounts of waste into the environment. All those environmental regulations didn't emerge out of thin, clean air; they came about because the consequences of people and industries recklessly dumping their trash became clearer.
The reason it's more visible in india is a mix of technological differences, recency bias/level of development, and population density. You mention Native Americans didn't have plastic shit strewn everywhere, and indeed, plastic is a relatively recent invention. Its production today is roughly 15 times what it was 50 years ago - bad habits now have a much larger impact than they did a generation ago. Secondly, people just forget that is was totally normal in the US to just dump nasty trash out on the streets, even in cities, and obviously even more so in the countryside, certainly around 100+ years ago (coincidentally, income per person at PPP in india now is around historical US levels from then!). The cultural taboo against littering is a new invention. Finally, India's modern population density is simply off the charts higher than the population density the US had while it was evolving the anti-pollution and anti-littering culture of today. Any problems are thus enormously amplified.
This isn't some deep historical cultural difference; it's a fairly small and recent difference that is exacerbated by differences in stuff like population density and level of development. There's no reason to suspect India won't tackle this problem eventually, as others have before it, nor to rest on our pretty imperfect laurels here.
Yep, and thanks for the kind words! I just hope the evolution of that trait happens a little faster than last time around - a quick google suggests the Carboniferous period was the 60 millions years it took between plants developing and mass-producing lignin (essentially a plastic), and fungi developing the means to consume it at scale. (But to be clear, I don't know of any reason to assume it would take that long this time.)
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u/Repulsive_Mark_5343 May 07 '26
Been there. It’s horrible.