The “overwhelming majority” of stories? Really? You’ve personally counted all of them?
Never occurred to you that just maybe you’re paying especial attention? Or that maybe the number of stories is proportional to population?
You’ve gotten a reasonable answer - healthy doses of confirmation and selection bias.
Then, instead of accepting that as potentially reasonable, you decided to come back with an anecdote (not even data but a friggin’ anecdote) about “one time, this happened to me”. And you wonder why people are pointing fingers? :dubious:
I was very impressed with Seoul. With its newness, its size and its brilliance. But parts of Soo-won are still quite grubby. It’s almost as if it’s mostly a modern country but in places you can see the old developing world bits showing through.
…just like developed countries that let their back streets and lesser-known spots look worse than anything in Asia. Ever been to Gatwick airport? It’s not like anything I’ve seen.
My wife is at times disgusted by my occasional preference of going straight to bed and only taking a shower in the morning. She says I’m taking the germs I picked up from the subway and elsewhere during the day and sowing them into the bedsheets.
My observation is that there is a difference between the Chinese, and Southeast Asians.
In the past I spent about 7 years in several Southeast Asian countries, and most do seem to shower more than once a day due to it being so hot.
After 5 years in China, my observation is that many of my university students shower only a few times a week, if that often.
In other words, many of them smell of B.O. and dirty feet.
In the colder parts of China, some of my Chinese friends told me that they may shower only once a week in the Winter.
As far as India is concerned, the answer to the OP’s question is: “It is part of their culture.” (sigh, here come the anti-India accusations…).
Anyway, until very recently, a vast majority of the Hindus of the gangetic plains held the belief that a river as holy as the Ganges could never be defiled, no matter how filthy it is. That sort of a belief goes beyond poverty and falls into the realm of religious conditioning. I have had the honour to visit some of the most glorious and ancient Hindu temples of India, which are still functioning. I have been horrified by the piles of rotting garbage (discarded offerings to the deities), that are allowed to build up at their entrance. In one such cavernous edifice, visitors & worshippers were required to walk barefoot over a slimy floor because water and (other fluids) was regularly spilling from the jugs laborously carried by the devout. Certainly, none among the legions of devotees had any concern for accidents, broken bones, or even foot fungus!
Poverty may force millions to defecate in the fields, or on the road side. But what prevents them from at least digging a hole and filling it up as they go, instead of leaving out their stools to dry in the sun, or to disintegrate in the monsoon waters (and swirl around the feet of hapless pedestrians during the inevitable waterlogging)?
Likewise, I am constantly astounded by the fact that India can support a space programme, squander money over various corrupt (and impractical) schemes, but not have a dedicated infrastructure programme. Take Bangalore, for instance. This self-declared “silicone valley” has pavements which are mostly unhewn granite slabs laid over open storm drains. Sometimes, random slabs are missing, leaving a gaping, 3-4 foot drop into a stinking, mud-caked drain. The drains empty out in to a little stream which stinks like a sewer – but ask a native and he will deny that it is one. It is absolutely mind boggling that the very people who will take umbrage and resort to deadly riots over a petty religious argument will not raise a word against the city administration that subjects them to such nauseous, apalling conditions.
Anecdotal evidence has convinced me that years of living in a filthy, corrupt country has caused a blind spot to develope amongst Indians, which obscures filth of any kind. They just don’t see it the way someone from the western hemisphere would.
Regarding India: I have never been there, but people tell me that the Ganges (in its lower reaches) is an open sewer-corpses, dead animals, garbage, etc., floats by…yet people bathe in it. I imagine that bathing in these rivers is quite dangerous-why do they do it?
St.Joan, since you feel that way, maybe you should pass up any future ‘honors’ to visit sacred temples that you know have a centuries old belief that no sacred space can ever be too filthy. If you can’t set aside your Western eyes and try to see things their way, then why go walking through their so called sacred spaces? I haven’t been to India, but if I ever get the chance to go, I know I will only accept the honor of going into the areas that they deem sacred if I’m going to be willing to put aside my judgments and try to understand how they see things. In any event, I wouldn’t walk through their with my nose crinkled, and then come back here and rag on them about how awful it all was.
ETA: In other words, I guess I"m saying that if I get an offer to go to the River Ganges, I know what I’m in for, I can either go there and take in the experience without being judgmental about it, or I can just say, “No, thank you, I don’t think I want to go.”
I have been to India, and was hoping to go again this year. Budget constraints Anything that I could say would not do the experience justice, so I won’t even try. There was not a moment of judgmental disgust in the experience, though. Mostly, just struck by how life seems (to my Western eyes) to be very messy and vibrant and tragic and beautiful. My experience is that the wealthy in America live behind gated communities and with nothing but equal displays of wealth and privilege all around them. This is generally true even for the middle class. We keep the impoverished contained to inner cities and there are clear demarcation lines between the social classes. If not for the nature of my occupation, I could go through life consciously choosing not to be ‘inconvenienced’ by visual signs of poverty and the stark need that consumes the daily lives of the people who experience it. I suspect this is true for many of us living in America; troubling moments are contained to walking around beggars, eyes averted, underlying assumption being that ‘he’s a drunk’ or ‘she’s a crack ho’ (in other words, it’s their fault, so I don’t have to feel uncomfortable about my unconscious choice to not really see at all).
In India, and in many parts of Southeast Asia, the rich and the poor live in close quarters to each other. One of my husband’s family members is quite wealthy and lives in a large, breath-takingly beautiful home. Directly across the street resides a cluster of squatters.
It is fascinating to me to see from an outside perspective how such groups choose to live in uncomfortable symbiosis, and I don’t mean that in a “bug under the microscope” kind of way. I mean it as glimpse at life that has no artificial constructs, or at least, ones that aren’t apparent to me. And of how the wealthy in such circumstances devise their own methods of seen but not seen.
Initial lyrics of this song fits what I feel for StJoan now Kadi te hans bol ve (do smile or talk nice sometimes) Na jind sadi rol ve (do not spoil our lives)
Most of the time the wealthy in India or Southeast Asia do not live near the squatters because they choose to, they live surrounded by the squatters because there is no other available land.
Also, many of the wealthy in those countries prefer to keep the majority of the population poor and uneducated so that the wealthy have a huge supply of cheap labor.
Uh, well, there’s the caste system, for starters . . . I don’t think it’s nice to believe that every poor person must have done something to be in such circumstances; but neither do I agree with the idea of nonchalantly stepping over the poor people sprawled outside one’s gate as if they were some kind of subhumans, congratulating oneself for being part of the naturally superior Brahmin class.
Anything that I could say would not do the experience justice, so I won’t even try. There was not a moment of judgmental disgust in the experience, though. Mostly, just struck by how life seems (to my Western eyes) to be very messy and vibrant and tragic and beautiful. My experience is that the wealthy in America live behind gated communities and with nothing but equal displays of wealth and privilege all around them. This is generally true even for the middle class. We keep the impoverished contained to inner cities and there are clear demarcation lines between the social classes. If not for the nature of my occupation, I could go through life consciously choosing not to be ‘inconvenienced’ by visual signs of poverty and the stark need that consumes the daily lives of the people who experience it. I suspect this is true for many of us living in America; troubling moments are contained to walking around beggars, eyes averted, underlying assumption being that ‘he’s a drunk’ or ‘she’s a crack ho’ (in other words, it’s their fault, so I don’t have to feel uncomfortable about my unconscious choice to not really see at all).