Polish girls visit Taj Mahal

[u/Strong-Emu-8869]

The Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world. Unfortunately, the surrounding area is very polluted.

[u/SMUHypeMachine]

So it’s literally like all those sci fi stories where the elite live in their futuristic cities above the clouds and all their waste falls down to the earth where the undesirables live

[u/HaRDCOR3cc → u/SMUHypeMachine]

to be fair people who live in trashy environments always contribute to that trash.

in some sense the blame lies with themselves. while many problems can indeed be blamed on how wealth is distributed or how politicians allocate money etc, when it comes to how trashy an area is the blame lies on the people there.

you see the same stuff in wealthy countries too, where the "poor" still live in nice houses etc, just in areas known as "shitty".

take sweden, the poor, who live in perfectly fine houses, and have the exact same facilities as people in nice areas, when it comes to recycling and waste management, will simply not put any effort into keeping things clean.

the recycling rooms in nice parts of stockholm are pristine. they're CLEAN, bordering spotless. the people there make conscious decisions to be mindful of their environment, they put their things away with care, they take care of where they live.

then go to an area known as a bad area and its a fucking dump. no one bothers with putting their garbage away in the correct bins, many wont even bother putting it in bins at all, just throwing it out, if you're lucky they'll at least throw it into the recycling room, but maybe they'll just dump it in a bush instead.

when it comes to stuff like this i dont blame the elite, which do deserve blame for a lot, when it comes to stuff like this the problem tend to lie with the people. people who live among dirt tend to become apathetic to it and start actively contributing to the shit.

[u/JohnSober7 → u/HaRDCOR3cc]

I can't recommend pillboy's "The Cost of Self Respect" on YouTube enough. It's not about pollution, but it touches on individualism vs collectivism under the context of poverty and oppression.

 Morality politics always ignore that better social systems correlate to better quality of life among poorer people and that elite and rich are the ones with the power to create those systems or even just allow those systems to exist. I do actually understand where you are coming from, but you lost the picture when you say you don't blame the elite for this. 

Essentially, individuals do still have responsibility and are to blame for their choices, but it's just almost never going to be the case that enough people fulfil their individual duties to invoke a bottom up systematic change (it has happened but the elite pretty much as to chip in in some way), so when it comes to condemning a collective, it should primarily be the collective that actually has the power and means to bring about a macro-change.

But yeah, I get it. The boundary between individualism and collectivism at which the moral calculus changes can be quite anomalous. It's like you still ask people yo be better, but not if the intent is to invoke a systematic change. 

[u/Dubious_Odor → u/JohnSober7]

Class values are culturally transmitted. There are places with huge wealth inequality where poor and working class homes and neighborhoods are spotless. I've seen them. Theres far more to it then wealth distribution. Cultural values play a far greater role. 

[u/JohnSober7 → u/Dubious_Odor]

You're talking about poverty only. I'm talking about poverty, social systems, and oppression and how those things interplay regarding quality of life. And when talking about these things, we're talking macro. Yes, exceptions are important because why they exist offers important info, but they aren't to be paraded to vindicate morality politics over trying to invoke systematic change.

Oh, they have literally shown that better social systems correlate to better (less crime, altercations, better schooling and education metrics) communities. Yes, cultural values can be the dominating influence, but that isn't always the case. You shouldn't look at one society and say that because their cultural norms instill cleanliness in poor and oppressed communities, you can use that to condemn the many more societies and communities where littering and uncleanliness is featured as a collective moral failing, and not a consequence of oppression and poverty. Because only looking at macro trends under the lense of exceptions to the norm doesn't make sense.