It's pretty funny watching destitute people spend their entire life trying to find someone to look down on and settling for some of the poorest people in the world.
All while Ranjeet overtakes their shit box in a brand new BMW in their own country.
Alternatively, his family has been in the west three generations, has generated more wealth than your entire ancestry and has a higher quality of life than you.
Ignoring the fact that he isn't a virgin and stands to inherit infinitely more wealth because Indians don't bin their kids into the street the second they turn 18.
Did you read the article? Their “soap” recipe contained donkey piss, and it also talks about how cow urine was used to wash clothes. Not really “hygiene” per se
The urine of another animal is hygienic... well, more hygienic than still water or human urine gets.
Reminder that natural soap is made of animal fat too.
And in the end we are all drinking recycled urine, just on a longer scale. Astronauts do drink literally their own recycled water however.
Today we in the West use synthetics and have good filtering systems so we no longer need "natural remedies", but if one lacks the industry, one does with what one has.
It's not. They have 1.4 billion population and not enough infrastructure to support such a large population across it's huge land mass. Which leaves several areas impoverished. They are undergoing rapid industrialization which leads to several sectors go unnoticed for the benefit of one. No one cared when people used to shit in the bushes, but those bushes are now roads and city buildings but a lot of people around those areas didn't get the opportunity to gentrify. So now they shit where there were once bushes and suddenly it's undignified and dirty. Foreigners love to degrade Indians for things like this but ignore all the brilliance that the Indian subcontinent has brought. Before colonisation, every culture north of the equator were pillaging, warring, raiding and enslaving. Their culture isn't centered on shit and piss, it's just your culture is centered around degrading others.
They sell cow piss to drink in my country. Had an argument with a bunch of Indians saying drinking cow piss is sterile and as good for you as eating the meat.
That's illiteracy not culture. Which festival in India celebrates drinking cow piss? In which scripture in India does it state that people should drink cow piss? Are you suggesting that people of other countries didn't do backward shit before they were gentrified?
The percentage of Indian population that drinks cow piss is definitely less than % of people in countries like America where they do other random shit like fuk and alligator or just shoot up random people on streets.
Nownim talking about % here. So let's say india has 100 people population then that means if 3 people drink cow piss that's 3% and that would still be lower than the percentage of Americans who do random shit when equated with American population.
Counterpoint: Gorehabba the festival where they throw manure around and at eachother I wouldn’t say it’s a “bad” culture but they definitely have some interesting views on public sanitation
Roman public urinals used to have pipes leading down to their laundries to use as soap. Women would bathe in it to soften their skin. They even used it as a mouthwash. Urine has been used as soap throughout British history, preferred for a long time even though they had other soaps, and throughout Roman, Japanese, European, Ancient Babylon, Native American histories.
It contains urea which is in a ton of beauty creams, Cerave and Eucerin soaps. We make it synthetically now thank fuck
One can only imagine how stanky goddamn donkey piss must be. So naturally, from donkey piss they make.... soap. what in the fuck were they thinking chat? The more I learn about this beautiful culture the less I understand.
honestly its the poorest places in india which are amongst the poorest places in the world. It's like the whole world just thinks of all indians as unhygenic now.. so no not "ironically". Racism on indians as a group seems ok now...
I havent used tp in years, ever since we had our son, we’ve discovered the magic of wipes. During the pandemic when no one could get tp, they still had a full isle of unscented wipes haha. i also don’t understand why thin tissue paper is the go-to
And womens restrooms are filthier (I say this as a woman who worked retail and cleaned restrooms) but mens restrooms smelled more like piss when I had to clean them
My god...
Mens room was just piss everywhere but I truly hated cleaning the womens room when I worked at TCBY. There was period blood on the walls, and shit and piss all over the toilet seats because women love to hover (allegedly)
Not to mention the countless clogged toilets from flushing the pads, like thats what the little "hygeine" bin was for!
I noticed a pattern at my office a few years ago before I switched to remote work.
If youre at a urinal, other men MIGHT wash their hands. If youre in a stall and another person finishes, they will not wash their hands. It has to do with being seen I think. Anytime I visually saw a person, they would wash their hands. If I was in a stall for a bit, no one would wash their hands. People are lazy. And fucking gross.
I admit defeat, I will stop spreading false narratives
I still think we wash our hands way less. I grew up in a rural area and you would be shocked how many rednecks think washing hands is "for pussy bitches" and just roam the earth with God knows what all over their hands
I tend to agree with your sentiment at least. The U.S. is number 16 on that list of per capita Covid deaths. But the U.S. could be, and should be, a lot further down on that list…
The cheaper off brands are about $200/mo without insurance, but they make you buy a 10 month supply at once, keeping it out of reach for a lot of Americans. Name brand wegovy is $1200+ per month, depending on dose.
Be me, 30 year old Indian. Take a shit, wipe my ass with my hand. Give it a good sniff. Hmmm, smells okay! Go back to my food cart. Proceed to work my shit claws into your food.
While the Romans had good hygiene, the northern barbarians still haven't got bidets.
Also, even Roman-inherited hygiene slowly lost ground between Christianisation and the Renaissance. And then they went around murdering Jews for surviving Plagues because they cleaned more.
Jokes aside, I meant the European colonizers of the 1500s
They had terrible dental health and horrible hygiene compared to Aztec, who regularly bathed and had basic dental health procedures.
Hell, even some European cultures still have a habit of not showering and letting their body odor wild, most people really get a bad first impression in some highly populated French cities.
I’m not a historian and I’m only talking about what I learned in school, I know Roman’s were pretty advanced for their age. What I’m saying is that often barbarians were quite civilized
The culture even in Europe differed wildly. For example the vikings bathed atleast weekly and braided their hair so it wouldn’t catch dirt and grime. There is no one European culture.
Well we were talking about hygiene but if you want to talk European savagery we could go all day. It was a global endeavor. It’s not any less savage if the babies you are killing are not your own people.
Not op, but I’ll argue yes. Burning witches is a crime of similar pointlessness. The only deference here is scale.
The entire continent of Europe wasn’t burning witches every day until around the black plague and 100 years war. Further, some of these were people on the other side of a war, or in a grey area of “who the fuck are we even fighting anymore.”
You could also argue that technically someone guilty of a crime might have died for witchcraft. Witchcraft, as a crime, had two criteria: a misfortune unexplainable through nature has occurred and the accused witch had motive. Example: begger was denied milk and now a baby is dead. Someone in that net might have murdered a person. Aztecs would literally prep people for death the majority of their life, basically ensuring their innocence.
Even worse of an example, because killing civilians in war is a thing but killing people because you think they’ve done something bad and horrible is even more justifiable than "if we don't kill people every other week the world ends"
Also 99% of the shit people know about witch hunting is made-up myths, most of which Protestant propaganda made to make the Catholics look bad. They weren't burned at the stake, for one.
In the early modern period, from about 1400 to 1775, about 100,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and British America.[1] Between 40,000 and 60,000 were executed, almost all in Europe.[2][3] The witch hunts were particularly severe in parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Prosecutions for witchcraft reached a high point from 1560 to 1630,[4][5] during the Counter-Reformation and the European wars of religion. Among the lower classes, accusations of witchcraft were usually made by neighbors,[6] and women and men made formal accusations of witchcraft.[7] Magical healers or 'cunning folk' were sometimes prosecuted for witchcraft, but seem to have made up a minority of the accused.[8][9] Roughly 80% of those convicted were women,[10] most of them over the age of 40.[11][12][13] In some regions, convicted witches were burnt at the stake, the traditional punishment for religious heresy.
Yeah violence is unfortunately a part of survival for the vast majority of species. However ritualistically cutting out the hearts of unwilling people to offer to the sun is mega regarded
Jesus disingenous Christ. Europeans spent literal centuries developing those systems by constantly questioning their status quo and evolving those systems by exposure to other cultures and ways of thought. Original European democracy wasn't even extended to all citizens - whereas there's evidence and accounts of American civilizations all having a degree of say in their collective decisions. That's without saying how brutal the entire era of European Colonialism was to the entire world, even the lower class Europeans themselves who had to perpetuate it for their Nobles.
It is entirely illogical to think that, given enough time, the American natives would NEVER have their own moment of status quo questioning leading to systemic evolution. Especially given how advanced they were in other fields.
I’m suggesting that it would have taken potentially thousands of years of more conquest, wars, scalping etc to have reached that point. How many lives were saved/ suffering prevented by the Europeans ripping off the Band aid ?
And now that culture and many within it are effectively dead. No one speaks Aztec or Nahuatl with any degree of propagative effectiveness. And the Mexican people themselves implicitly resent their pre-Hispanic roots whether they admit it or not. They use hostile language in regards to color, only ever cast White Actors in any media, and view Native practices as if they were lower class practices. That's without even mentioning the fact that Christ himself is depicted as White, even to Mexicans, despite the fact that real life Jesus was most certainly Brown.
Did the Europeans save the Aztecs? Or did they effectively wipe them off the Earth? Who stood to benefit from this 'salvation'? I'll tell you: the European colonialist who filled their coffers with Tenochtitlan's gold and silver. The colonialist who took Aztec wives. The colonialist who finally gained the land they were denied in their home continent.
Okay, bro. Good for you. At least you have a culture that can decline. For the Mexicans, their culture was subject to genocide and pillage, and now they worship the same people who did it, while rejecting their own heritage. Viewed literally for the facts of how that has played out, it's a cultural travesty with a profound cultural gaslighting effect that continues to perpetuate itself.
Dude why are you upset exactly ? Mexico is rated as one of the happiest countries on earth you’re mosey that their culture slightly changed ? Get over it, all cultures changed over time
Mexicans did not face genocide, Aztecs did and I honestly don’t give af about people that would happily rip out my heart
Because of the rampant sociopolitical and demographic inequality in that nation that you can trace back directly to the events of colonization, which are later compounded by the effects of American Imperialism.
Wild take, but you will hopefully grow up to not see the world as black and white. You are lucky enough to have presumably been born somewhere that got the charitable end of americas politics and not the murderous one
Do you think feeling shame for bad actions is a wrong thing? Its very christian to feel shame and to have a conscience about murdering people for profit you do realise that right?
So your answer is yes its wrong to feel shame for bad actions? Swell world view you have there but its gonna bite you in the ass soon enough when you exit the house and stop being chronically online and alone
Why should anyone feel shame about the actions of someone else who happened to be from the same country as you.
Its like trying to make someone feel bad over the actions of their ancestors. I had no control over their actions, I don't necessarily with their actions but I'm not going to feel shame over things I couldn't control.
What do you think would have convinced Aztecs, if given enough time, to stop sacrificing human beings if not exposed to an external conquering force like the Spanish?
The fact that we no longer burn witches or hertetics. Or honestly enact most of the biblical punishments for sins in the bible, like cutting off the hand of a thief. We stopped doing those things, without external influence, in a break from our own beliefs. If WE can do it, so could they. I'm more than positive that people in their age had disagreements with their clergy. Questioning the status quo is an intrinsic part of human nature at the population scale.
We don't do those practices anymore due to a very specific chain of events e.g. the rise of human rights, Renaissance, Enlightenment thinkers etc. which only occurred in Europe at very specific times in history. Although introspection is an inherent ability available to many people, the idea that we question our own values and practices as an academic, systemic and political exercise is a European invention, although it seems like it has always been the case, it really is a product of -again- a very specific chain of events that allowed these ideas to even be allowed to propagate in public life. I also disagree that it is intrinsic to human nature to question the status quo at a population level - that is a more individualised trait. There are many societies even in modernity that actively punish the questioning of status quo (i.e. currently established power structures). Now to return to the question as to whether given enough time, would the Aztecs (to be specific) have achieved all of the above, which was only done so by European countries? I actually think they would proceed down their own distinct chain of events, but there's no evidence to suggest it would result in the contemporary world-view you proffered.
The 2nd chapter in the book "The Dawn of Everything" is quite a compelling argument that a lot of european enlightentment thought came about through meetings with other cultures, especially native american societies.
Essentially Jesuits missionaries studied these tribes and found societial forms which were totally foreign to Europe at the time. There was quite a lot of liberty, where people where free to f.eks. divorce or disobey orders from authority (the Jesuits were actually quite critical of this liberty).
Many of these tribes also had what we might call democracies, large groups of people gathered commonly to discuss politics and local affairs, and it was noted that the in generel there were very skilled rhetorically.
And also a lot of enlightentment thinkers credit Native American thinkers directly. I don't remember the specifics of the chapter here exactly, but there was a native american statesman and philosopher called Kondiaronk who spent a long time in Europe actively engaged in intellectual debates. A friend of his published a series of dialouges in which were featured his critiques of European society and Christianity and they became hugely popular. In fact spawning a whole subgenre of literature in which a tribes person, or some other foreigner is shown a modern European insititution or city and presents a critique from an ourside perspective. Again this was incredibally popular.
Basically; there is a decent argument that European enlightment came about in a large part due to Europe encountering cultures with a totally different social fabric and suddendly feeling the need to either justify or reevaluate the European mode of existence.
You are correct. European change was largely in part to the Renaissance and subsequent movements. At the same time, like you yourself said - there could've been an event like it for the American natives. Ultimately, we'll never know.
Also, in regards to my claim about skepticism and challenging the status quo, I did say 'at the population level', in the sense that you'll basically always get at least one person that is inconform, even in a highly repressive status quo. Those presences and their effects are compounding.
Its an interesting discussion, but I think there's also an awkward factor whereby without the conquest and colonisation of the Americas (and elsewhere) by European powers, would that still have resulted in the same liberal/pluralistic sense of human rights and individual dignity that developed later in history? To some extent, without these events it is difficult to say whether or not European countries would have exited a form of late medieval society and political system i.e. there wouldn't be the rise of commerce and Atlantic slave trade - including its eventual international abolition by Britain, and would have prevented the development of the Enlightenment (a series of questions as to the nature of being within the world - as a very basic summary), today's world could be very different, and probably a lot more violent in nature despite the atrocities we see daily.
Correct. The church itself. Within itself. And the church itself was composed of the people, who overtime changed their beliefs and stances in regards to those practices' necessities.
Again, we're talking about the capacity for change over X period of time. Not the intensity of it over X period. It took ages for Christianity and European societies to appear half as civilized as they are now.
It, honestly, would have taken the American Natives longer in a vacuum, but my main point is to dispel the talking point that assigns them the inherent incapacity to change and evolve.
Look, man. I'll throw you a bone. You're maybe right, and only - strictly only - if you limit yourself to the Aztecs; and only because they were the most barbarous. The North American Indians are by all historical accounts a bunch of legitimate victims, who only really retaliated when colonists repeatedly encroached upon them with aggressive intent. I don't know enough about the other South and Central American tribes to make a judgment call, but I do know there aren't whole chapters of history dedicated to them being barbarous ala Aztecs.
So maybe you have a point for basically the Yucatan Penninsula.
“Northern natives were innocent” dude this is also an ahistorical rhetoric. Just look at the Comanche. Brutal civilization that took whites and blacks as slaves. Would skin people alive and were so effective at killing. It took the invention of the 6 shot revolver by Samuel colt for the texas rangers to finally turn the tide of battle
“Retaliated” they retaliated by killing innocent women and children settlers. Were they also victims ?
After they were encroached upon. Do you even know what America did to the natives? How many treaties were violated, time and time again? Or do you only care when its your people who get caught in the crossfire?
Are you aware of the amount of native lives spared by Lincoln ? How much natives have got and continued to receive in reparations ? No other native group in human history has gotten the reparations native Americans have
Both sides did good and bad. Both sides were just trying to survive . It’s as simple as that
Simple? Hah. History is many things, but it is far from simple. How convenient. The Colonists were aggressors. There are many accounts thats verify this. Lincoln and other leaders wouldn't have had to 'spare' anyone if it wasn't for the fact that the first colonists were abusive bullies who kept trying to get more and more out of their relationship with the Indians. Fuck, man. You want to talk about Presidents? Andrew Jackson. The Trail of Tears? Manifest Destiny. The eradication of the Bison so as to literally starve them.
“Simple” my point was literally that history is nuanced and NOT good vs evil.
“All the colonists every single one were aggressors” now THAT is simply history 🤭
“Lincoln wouldn’t have needed to spare-“ close! It was the native senator started the Dakota war that kills hundreds of innocent settlers.
Why do you have a grudge against peaceful immigrants ?
Do you feel good adding words into other people's quotes? Or are you as illiterate and delusional as you are historically challenged? I sure love my strawman arguments. You probably learned how to argue at the Ben Shapiro School for Good Imperialists.
I did not say 'every single one' - but I do appreciate a glimpse into how your mind works, if only to disappoint.
The important distinction is the “exposure to other cultures” if every culture available (geographically) practices something, until proven otherwise by a different culture it would continue to be the norm, and would continue to happen.
That's not entirely true, and relies on the presupposition of perpetuity. In the European's case, there was cultural exposure, partly because the geography of Europe really did lend itself to that - whereas alot of the geography of the Americans led to effectively landlocked civlizations that couldn't really communicate amongst eachother. The Incas and the Aztec were going to have a rough time trying to communicate, the same for any of the Northern tribes.
Anyways, since we cannot control for cultural exposure there is no real way of knowing if it is the precise catalyst factor for change. What we do know is that changes, period, happen within groups over time. The proto-Aztecs were not the same people as the Aztecs towards their fall, and even relatively isolated parts of Europe developed within themselves prior to cultural exposure. There is room for them to have developed and changed without influence, and that is the important part to highlight. The European colonialist mindset would have you believe that things were otherwise irredeemable without their involvement.
Without change things remain the same (perpetual) that’s not presumptuous that’s just how it works.
This conversation now moves to what causes changes in culture and at what speeds. Interacting with another culture and comparing/questioning your cultures features and theirs is (probably?) the fastest way and reason that a culture can change.
Now, truthfully I don’t know enough about “proto-aztec” history so I wouldn’t be able to label certain interactions with other groups that could be reason for why the culture shifted.
So truthfully, given an indefinite amount of time, Aztec culture would EVENTUALLY stop with the human sacrifice, but how much time is completely inestimable. We can safely say (barring a catalyst within the culture like some completely insane unexpected scientific development) at least another 200 years until that change was made.
Which leads into a moral question, how long would the child sacrifice have to be guaranteed to continue to happen for the European intervention to have been a “good” thing, and how short would it have to be for it to have been better for the Aztecs to “figure it out” on their own.
I'm not going to disagree with the premise that it would've taken more time. 200+ seems about reasonable.
The moral question is a rough one to answer, particularly saliently to the modern era in regards to children. I want to preface that I 100% don't approve of the Aztec's practices, but at the same time how do you weight the morality of those lives vs the lives lost and currently historically affected by the direct effects of Spanish colonization? You kind of can't. They're different sorts of misery and tragedy. Nowadays, because of the traceable effects, we see rampant economic inequality and stratification in those areas, like Mexico, and particularly in regards to the vestiges of those cultures; the unintegrated and forgotten indigenous villages. Children go hungry. They die of disease or malnourishment, in ways we can trace back to Colonialism.
I would say the moral question is useless. The suffering persists in one way, shape, or another. The only purpose the moral question has is to allow the conquering culture an avenue to justify its actions.
In fact, I think: if it wasn't so easy to trace current inequalities and strife to the effects of Spanish Colonization - then we wouldn't be having this conversation, and it'd be infinitely easier to just blanket condemn the natives.
I very generally agree with this but it does leave out a crucial part of the (really don’t want to sound insensitive here) good that came out of the colonization of the region as well. If we are going to talk about current negative ripple effect of colonization you kinda have to talk about the eventual good (various technologies) which “offsets” at least some of the suffering. So I don’t think the morality question is completely pointless, as it does serve as an interesting hypothetical for good discussion nonetheless.
England had the beginnings of democracy and human rights, as did some of the Italian states and Iceland, among other nations. Though you’re pretty much right because they were not fully developed
It wasn’t about “cartoonishly evil”, many of those groups were doing the exact same things. They teamed up with Cortez because of political power plays and because they were sick of Aztecs absolutely trouncing them in every war game they held. It was politics, not morals
I mean you do have an “idea” it’s just not known with 100% certainty, but using inference and information already known it can be expected that it would be ongoing because before Spanish conquest, the culture(s) in Mexico involved child sacrifice for around 1500 years.
Well considering they introduced disease that would wipe out half of the native population they could have just stayed away as that really dwarfs anything the Aztecs ever did
You know that Europeans burned women alive at the stake right? No culture has a bloodless history. And if we go by that metric, no one should be washing their hands after they shit because of the atrocities committed by our people? Lmao
Popular history is so embarrassing lmao. They think people went from the beauty of rome to living in mud huts to the industrial revolution. No need for people to make stuff up when each culture they're elevating by putting Europe down has its own rich history that doesn't need to be compared in progress
During the Black Death, many Jewish communities were persecuted because Christians falsely blamed them for causing the plague, especially through accusations of poisoning wells. Some historians suggest that differences in hygiene practices or social separation may have affected infection patterns, but the persecutions were mainly driven by antisemitic scapegoating and conspiracy theories.
Jews were persecuted, but plague spread mostly by things like fleas. None of the customs (besides of living separately than the rest) would have impacted that. People don't need things to happen, to perceive them in a certain way. Just someone saying that group is bad, would've been enough.
I beg to differ. Washing clothes and bedding more often can help reduce flea exposure, and since fleas are a major vector of bubonic plague, that could lower the risk of transmission.
the fact is that europeans have long understood that cleanliness helped reduce the spread of sickness and disease. in particular, many doctors, civic authorities, and clergy in the 14th century believed that foul odours and decaying matter contributed to the spread of illness and plague through what was called miasma theory. while we now know that bad smells were not the direct cause of disease, the theory still encouraged medieval societies to actively pursue sanitation and public cleanliness.
medieval towns and cities passed laws against dumping waste into streets and rivers, organized street-cleaning efforts, maintained drainage systems and public wells, and employed workers to remove refuse and empty cesspits. many urban centres also had public bathhouses, while households commonly used latrines and waste pits. some cities even created officials or courts specifically responsible for roads, drains, water supplies, and sanitation.
Cleaning rituals isn't the same as figuring out medical procedures. Surgery as a field has been practiced since at least the crusades, and midwifery is even older. Those are the fields most impacted by germ theory and hygiene rules.
If someone has figured out earlier, there are no records of it and it has not been passed down.
They figured out why its good in the 19th c. But humans have always groomed and tried to stay clean. No one likes bad smells and being soiled. Just like a cat cleans itself. It doesnt know why.
That's why they killed the Jews during and after the Black Death. Jews washed their hands as part of their religious practices, consequently making them cleaner, resulting in far fewer of them dying via Yersinia Pestis...just to get pogrommed by butthurt superstitious Christians.
they sent a Hungarian doctor to a mental institution because he figured cleaning his tools and hands after autopsy reduced the infection rate of his surgeries.
Semmelweiß is more of a footnote in the history of modern hygiene, most Francophones are more likely to learn about Pasteur as the original advocate for disinfection, and most anglophones would have been taught about Joseph Lister.
So it's a pretty safe call to presume someone who knows about Semmelweiß Central European
But if you get shit on your hands, and your hands smell like shit, the natural reaction is, I don't want this to smell like shit and other people will smell it, etc.. no?
Which is why miasma theory, which said that diseases were caused by foul odours, was present across Europe for thousands of years before germ theory was accepted.
Ancient mongolians used to boil water because they thought there were invisible water demons that couldn't tolerate high temps, so they basically already reached the same conclusion on complete accident
Well, we just named some clump of things an "atom" and found out later that it was made out of more stuff. Quarks and eletrons are indivisible as far as we know and therefore are the true "atoms" so the ancient greeks were not THAT wrong.
Anyway, it's more likely that they are just excitations of one or multiple fields and there is no "pixel" of reality.
Fundamental particles and the 4 universal forces are the simplest means we have to explain physics. They behave more like waves in a field then particles and we don't know yet if there are many fields or just one indivisible thing.
They didn't. They only built a theoretical model of "atom" as "smallest, indivisible particle that everything is built from". Modern "atom" does not fit this term - the best fitting equivalent, for now and probably a few decades, until it inevitably will be 'split' again - is a "quark".
The number of lives saved by cars - making delivery of medicine and patients take days instead of months, for one - will make statements like yours be viewed as crazy
Nah, nobody sane views it like that. You equate progress of general transportation, especially long range, which most of the time isn't car, to cars in general. Ameribrain take.
When you call medical emergency, are you delivered to a hospital by a train? Are your medicine delivered to that hospital from the storage point by a helicopter?
Every long range transportation has a short range component, that is usually done on cars. Not every hospital can afford to build a railway station beside itself.
Long range medical transportation is predominantly done in cars since they’re just the best tool for the job. Aircraft are more expensive and less flexible while also needing more time to divert in case shit goes sideways and using a train for most medical transports is just laughably inefficient.
Nice try being witty. Except that when self driving car will be fully operationnal, the number of deaths will be close to 0. Lives will still be saved by medecine.
Car driven by any human moron will be seen as truely horrific
I mean not if the person viewing history realizes cars came into existence and prevalence well before the automation capable of safely operating them did
To be fair, it is all a leaded gas situation. Or even leaded water tubes, like ancient Rome had. Some scientists may know it is a terrible idea. Society however just looks at how much money they can save and closes off their ears.
The effects of plastic has been pretty widely documented as a problem, microplastics already have the current generations going wtf. Check out David Achu's recycling video, plastic companies sidestepped government regulations with shitty bandaid solutions and big marketing budgets
The alternative is building walkable and bikeable communities with job and grocery access located closeby to dense housing.
This would be built out along with reliable public transit like buses and subways, light rail. There are entire fields of urban planning dedicated to this.
You pretty much need to redesign most U.S. communities because the urban sprawl in the United States forces you to use a car. but this is by design
Do they naturally want that? Or is it culture that pushes them to do so?
People also want groceries, schools, services; Bars and other opportunities to socialise; their workspace; all closeby. Which is best achieved by living in an apartment.
And hey, if the walls are well isolated in terms of sound, it's not too different.
That’s the thing I think a lot of people don’t understand about the US. Most of us own dozens of acres. It’s not just a few fellers who own land then you’re in the city, most people own large lands around the city.
Most people in the usa don't own land though. USA has lower % of home ownership than european average, and europe is massively brought down by places like germany.
The thing you seem to not understand, but in american fashion assume that you got, is that living in a house or having "land", is not some kind of unique american experience. Difference is that instead of having redlined suburb with hoa, to keep them dark skinned away, you simply build it still within city limits,
Though, average new lot size in the usa is larger than european average, i don't care to research why, but it's probably safe bet, that it's both more completely empty spaces, and since only rich people in the usa will ever own anything, when you got it, you really got it.
I wasn’t referring to suburbs. Maybe it’s just the area of the US I live in, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t own at least an acre besides two people who rent. Most folks own ~50 acres, oftentimes more
Obviously that’s just the part of the country you live in lmao. Most Americans live in cities, and even the homeowners mostly live in suburbs and absolutely do not own multiple acres of property.
80 percent of Americans live in cities and not all of those are even home owners, you are extending reasoning justified in your surroundings to the general population. America is big though, the logistical problems in the more 'empty' states are hard to imagine an easy solution to which doesn't cost billions.
You can have both as options. The U.S. has an excess of the former and a shortage of the latter.
Personally, I'd like shared walls (assuming they're properly soundproofed, which most constructions here also suck at) because it means savings on energy bills.
You don't need to completely rebuild every city. That's absurd. You can make improvements and adjustments to what's there. We already did it once starting in the 50's. We can do it again if the willpower is there. It just isn't for the most part.
That would be absurdly expensive. Some communities can barely maintain existing roads, how the on earth are they to afford a redesign and maintenance of expensive infrastructure like light rail. Also walkability requires population density, you can’t just redesign most US communities and somehow generate ridership to justify the costs, people just aren’t going to use it.
It’s also not just by “design” people actively chose to live in more spacious single family homes, and you see suburban sprawl in other countries
Walkable cities and good public transport like buses, trains trams etc Suburbs is a stupid idea that causes commutes and city zoning laws that prevents apartments and has single story homes
But that's the whole problem, everyone wants a house in the suburbs, driving property price ever higher as a city prospers and pushing urban and road design to adapt to it with unending construction of highways and all the ensuing consequences that come with a car-centric culture. My cityhas been going through this very transformation in the last few decades.
But why would that made it car centric ? i don't live in the US so i probably don't realise it but can't you just run buses or trams through the suburbs ? or even trains like in Paris, we have multiple trains that goes through all the surburbs and you only need the regional commute subscription to hop on them, 18 lines of metro, multiple tram lines, hundreds of buses (maybe even thousands even i haven't counted them all lmao but i did saw some 900+ numbers on buses), and even a telescopic sky cabin (i forgot the name in English)
I'm also not in the USA. I think Paris, despite its recent reputation as a 'green city' focused away from cars is a bad example though, plenty of people shun the RER and the périph' is rage-inducingly clogged at morning and evening rush hour. Paris has really good public transport into the whole Ile de France though, despite some RER line being absolute shit compared to others both comfort, density, frequency and dependability wise (just compare RER C and D), most places in Europe or even France don't have anything approaching that despite similar commute problems. The car or public transport issue is still very divisive in most major cities and was a big thing in the municipales where I live. Even considered nation wide our public transport system is in shambles compared to what it was in the golden age of the post-war era: more than half of our train stations closed and that number keeps rising, some départements barely have any transport solutions or just a bus morning and evening, rideshare monopoly of Blablacar (a company heavily subsidized by the state in its infancy) serving as a pale subsitute to real public infrastructure, train tickets absurdly expensive ... We have it great compared to a lot of places but it's nowhere near what most people would need, especially in isolated province. But I've strayed far from our original discussion so I'll leave it at that before I rant anymore. I'm happy Paris at least eliminated that 5 zone thing though I used to have to commute Evry-La Defense and it sucked paying for all zones even though I wa almost never spending time in Paris intramuros, very depressing getting on the early morning train for 2 hours with all the other office drones.
Concerning the USA honestly I can't give a detailed answer that I would be satisfied with, most of my reasoning is from a college study I had to write 13 years ago with some refreshers from an AskHistorians thread about it a while ago... The only thing I can say for sure is that it has an entrenched car-centric approach to commute both culturally and geographically, so the transition to anything else would be very difficult. I'd advise looking for that AskHistorian thread for a real answer.
It’s a skew from how people will live in the future. At a certain point we can expect all cars to be autonomous. Most will probably be terrified of the idea of controlling a death machine on a daily basis that they’ve never had to operate themselves.
Plus, I could see a future renewable resource becoming available causing future generations to go “they used gross shit from the ground to power their fucking cars?”
It all makes sense with our context but could be viewed as silly in 100 years
These are all known to be bad, people just don't care. I'm thinking more along the lines of something bizarre like too many tomatoes in your diet (looking at your Americans) gives your kids webbed feet after 4 or 5 generations and the U.S is about to become a swimming powerhouse accidentally.
With leaves, plus most of them shat while crunching because there were no real toilets, I don't know when they started digging up holes and shitting in them, which is better way of taking shit because it doesn't activate your hemorrhoids, so their asses wouldn't be burning as ours today.
That train of thought wasn’t completely unfounded, stinky stuff usually was full of bacteria and prone to cause infections but it was certainly an outdated idea by the 19th fucking century
Don't read about the practices of European surgeons back then. They actually kept their tools dirty on purpose because it was considered a symbol of a successful professional.
iirc the guy who first brought up washing your hands when going from a corpse examination to a surgery was laughed out of the room and never taken seriously.
Thank you! Couldn't remember his name as I only remember the story from an epistemology course I took in college a long time ago. Damn the story is sadder than the quick summary our professor gave us.
Honestly tragic. When he realized he unknowingly was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of deaths it broke him mentally. Only for the medical community to ridicule him as well.
real talk though, it's absolutely disgusting how many people don't wash hands. Like, ever.
Next time you're in a public bathroom, keep watch. Eyes on your own dicklet and all, but use your peripherals to observe and see how many men don't wash after using the bathroom.
And if you aren't washing after taking a fat dookie or squeezing the sausage... it's probably safe to say they nearly never do.
It's absolutely foul. These are the same dudes touching handrails, buttons, carts, door handles, etc that you are. Maybe even preparing your food.
Real talk my dick is cleaner than any surface in that washroom, if I have to touch literally anything TO wash my hands ill leave and apply hard sanitizer.
If I touch stuff in the washroom then whatever ill wash full soap and lather and such but if I've avoided everything except the base of my shaft then fuck outta here touching everyone else's shit and piss germs TO wash my hands.
This gotta be a location by location thing because it's like, one guy every couple months I hear leave the restroom without washing their hands.
There is one engineer in the \~500 at our company who doesn't wash his hands and he is well known as dont let him touch your keyboard. That still feels like a bad ratio.
That is just totally opposite my experience. Most guys put soap on their hands and wash and while I could critique their technique, they're getting soap and water.
I will say bars later at night when people are hammered I would see thats when I see 99% of people who dont wash their hands. Outside of that day to day non-washers are basically nonexistant.
Except for you, Dave. Wash your fucking hands and don't touch my keyboard and mouse.
I've literally seen people touch the stalls, use the bathroom, check themselves in the mirror, run their fingers through their hair, use their phone, and leave without washing their hands. It's genuinely baffling how disgusting people are.
We used to have no idea what happened to migratory birds in winter. Best guesses were that they went underwater to hibernate, or transform into mice. I'm not even making that up. It took scientists a ridiculously long time (until the early 1820s) to figure it out.
He was put in a mental hospital because he was an obstetrician working in the dirtiest hospital in Europe so he caught syphilis which eventually developed into neurosyphilis which really does make you insane.
Though the mental hospital he was sent to was absolutely horrible they basically just executed him slowly over the course of two weeks in there. The general concept of Semmelweis being sent to a mental hospital would be correct.
Also when I went to check exactly how his death went I found that the rejection of his ideas is greatly overstated. There were a bunch of British doctors that agreed with his ideas and began spreading them, reportedly very successfully. And actually the first response he received from a British doctor was that Austria-Hungary must have no knowledge of british obstetrical literature, because he had already found out that childbed fever was contagious and chlorine washing should be used to protect from it.
page 174 of this book https://archive.org/details/etiologyconcepta0000unse/page/174/mode/2up
On the page before that he actually mentions a favorable review from the chief physician at the imperial hospital in vienna.
Getting to the ones critical of him, there's some decent criticisms about the way he conducted the experiment, and lots of hospitals going like "We already don't do dissections and childbirths by the same people."
It's a lot more, "I think there's a different cause to this problem than just "corpse contamination" and so there are probably better solutions, and we should be trying different things instead." than "You dare insult my heavenly doctory hands? These could never spread a disease!" To my understanding his treatment at his home hospital was quite negative, which was probably something of a "I couldn't have been responsible for killing all these women at the worst hospital in the country! It must be Semmelweis who's wrong!" But the wider medical response seems pretty reasonable actually.
I'm really happy to finally find this book. I tried to do a huge school project on Semmelweis in 11th grade and it was really stressful because I could tell the whole time that something was off about the simplistic version of the story but I struggled to find direct sources that explained what it was exactly.
I haven’t looked into it in a while (and I even forget the guy’s name, I think he was Austrian?) but I remember learning that the guy was a dickhead to all of his colleagues, and wouldn’t subject the handwashing to any kind of scientific method to actually see if that’s what was lowering the mortality rates in his hospital. It’s hard to get traction in the scientific community when you’re being a combative dick with everyone else in that community.
He did write a lot of notes on how the handwashing changed mortality. I tried to read them once but they were in German so I had a limited ability to understand it.
It's hard to get traction in the scientific community even if you're not being a dick from what I've read. That is, if the right people are butthurt about you challenging the ideas they've been spouting for a given amount of time.
Wait until people find out about the unfathomable technology called bidet. I wonder how many centuries will people continue to be hell-bent on wiping their ass with toilet paper which is both wasteful and doesn't do shit for hygiene.
Dumb question but don't most people who use TP wet the TP? I'm in the U.S and never had a bidet but when shit gets sticky I wet my TP rather just wipe it dry as that does nothing unless you have one of those pleasant poops where when you wipe nothing sticks to the TP lol
It's still much more wasteful. Water costs of producing toilet paper are larger than water costs of showering or using a bidet. If you wet TP you might as well have taken a shower.
truth, i started using a bidet 5 years ago and I will never go back. whenever im in a place without one i just take a shower after taking a shit or else i feel like a disgusting savage.
It was widely accepted and recorded in texts by then.
It was figured out multiple times. It just never survived outside of certain areas as knowledge wasn’t properly accumulated and assimilated by conquering empires.
Europe could have discovered it earlier but the doctor who made the connection went against the established norms and was ostracised and discredited, which still happens today, albeit less frequently
I mean, they weren't idiots
They did understand bathing and washing of themselves and clothes and did reason it could affect health.
And they knew that like rotting flesh and corpses could make water or food dangerous
But due to not knowing about germs, they didn't know of the impact of regular washing hands after specific things had
Plus like, clean water and cleaning stuff like soap wasn't something that was so readily available for most ppl so that you could wash your hands regularly several times a day
They understood cleaning helped, that's why bath houses showed up independently across several cultures. Just not the details of how and how much
Mf they invented crop rotation in the middle ages, selective breeding for much longer, natives understood burnings to care for forests, the shape of the earth, gunpowder, chemistry, astral navigation among many other inventions
Ancient people aren't dumb just because you find things intuitive
Quit spreadin misinformation, they drank low alcohol beverages as a food, they knew that shitting and drinking in the same river wasnt great, they had wells. I
Yeah, but wells don't exist anywhere you want them to exist.
They're also only as clean as the water feeding it too. Humans and other animals and their different activities in our society can be pretty dirty. I don't know about you but if I lived back in the middle ages I would opt out of drinking from wells if possible.
We don't use wells today because it's just much more unsafe than "real clean water".
We don't use wells today because of chemical agents seeping into the ground from intense agriculture or industry, problems that didn't exist for the majority of human history. Unless you were just building wells in random spots and were unlucky with your nearby surrounding mineral composition you were good with wells and it was an indicator of wealth and stability.
its sort of very random to assume that rubbing your hands happy merchant style under water prevents the disease spirits from tormenting you for some hours
Many religions and cultures have some sorts of ritual washing, so I think many understood that it was good to be clean, they just didn't understand why
It took >!useimagination!<s until the mid 21st century to figure out that shitting in toilets instead of streets could prevent you from getting sick, and I'm still not convinced that they're there yet. It's a wild time to be alive, that's for sure
In the US, it is the law that all homeless people must shit in the street, because there are very few publuc bathrooms and they close for the night at 3pm
So this is quite a misrepresentation, because we had it figured out for a long time. What actually happened is that it took that long for the scientific community to accept it.
There's a few reasons for this. One is that the scientific community as we know it is quite new. The other is that early science was often quite skeptical of folk knowledge and mostly saw it as superstition. Traditional midwives thus knew to wash their hands, not because they had any idea of germ theory, but because it was a tradition passed down that they superstitiously followed, but trained doctors didn't, because it was not a part of their education and the scientific world didn't know this was important or how it worked.
It's a mark of a transition period from tradition to science, where these things did not get along. And in all fairness it was for a reason. A lot of traditional practices and medicine were nonsense. Today of course traditional medicine that actually works is proven and called medicine, and we've rediscovered things that work and can now actually explain them.
There was perhaps irrational arrogance and resistance involved towards doctors washing their hands, but this doesn't mean Europeans or people globally actually never washed their hands in the past nor were people actually stupid. Epistemology changed and caused frictions temporarily, that's all.
Even better. It took until the LATE 19th century to figure out that doctors washing their hands prevented patients from getting sick (really, really, really sick).
Well Jews and Muslims had/have strict hygiene, cleanliness, and food preparation religious laws. This is what led to the propaganda that "Jews were poisoning well with sick animals" as they weren't as effected during the black plague.
But did we really figure that out? I can't count how many times I've walked into the restroom at work or a restaurant just to see some guy having finished his business and walking out without washing.
Haven't seen it mentioned here but the reason European doctors didn't wash their hands was because they genuinely believed 'a gentleman's hands are never dirty' and the mortality rate of women during labor was high because doctors would legitimately handle corpses/perform autopsies before delivering a baby without washing or cleaning themselves and pass on god knows what to the immuno-compromised mothers.
Then the guy who suggested doctors should wash their hands was publicly shamed, discredited and tricked by other doctors into an asylum where he was beaten by guards for trying to leave and died of sepsis stemming from injuries from the beating.
Also, prime example of what a real example of toxic masculinity is, many doctors still refused for a long time because nurses washed their hands and they viewed it as effeminate.
dontshitaboutotol@reddit
They thought it was feminine to do, so... "That's gay bro"
iSailor@reddit
Well Europeans specifically. There's been many cultures who figured it out earlier.
Tr1LL_B1LL@reddit
I think there are some cultures who still haven’t seemed to figure it out
nowlickmyfet@reddit
SAAAR! DO NOT WASH HAND
rionitra95@reddit
We live rent free on you guys head
ZyklonFart@reddit
It's pretty funny watching destitute people spend their entire life trying to find someone to look down on and settling for some of the poorest people in the world.
All while Ranjeet overtakes their shit box in a brand new BMW in their own country.
xTheyCameBurningx@reddit
He has a brand new BMW because he has 12 roommates in a 2 bedroom house and they all smell like shit, tobacco, and cologne
ZyklonFart@reddit
Alternatively, his family has been in the west three generations, has generated more wealth than your entire ancestry and has a higher quality of life than you.
Ignoring the fact that he isn't a virgin and stands to inherit infinitely more wealth because Indians don't bin their kids into the street the second they turn 18.
xTheyCameBurningx@reddit
Bin their kids? Sounds British.
Sorry wrong continent
Familiar-Coconut90@reddit
Hehe lol
WintersbaneGDX@reddit
You live rent free on those designated streets
CumInYoBum99@reddit
ironically indians were some of the first to figure out hygiene
whimsical_Yam123@reddit
So long ago that they forgot I guess.
The_Shittiest_Meme@reddit
India is just going through the unfortunate consequences of rapid industrialization and is severely mishandling it.
6h00@reddit
Not to forget 200 years of unchecked exploitation from a foreign power.
Cute-Operation7192@reddit
Ah yes, the theft of free will not to walk around with shit on your hands.
6h00@reddit
Talking from experience, white boy?
dontdropducks@reddit
You assume he’s white because he’s telling people to wash their hands?
You are mad as fuck
6h00@reddit
Nah you stupid fuck. He's from Norway.
revanisthesith@reddit
_CalculatedMistake_@reddit
Naw, the british came along and they didn't like it.
Freddit330@reddit
They went through multiple kingdoms.
WordsMort47@reddit
It's cyclical. Any day now, I guess...
marshaboogie67@reddit
Did you read the article? Their “soap” recipe contained donkey piss, and it also talks about how cow urine was used to wash clothes. Not really “hygiene” per se
SergenteA@reddit
The urine of another animal is hygienic... well, more hygienic than still water or human urine gets.
Reminder that natural soap is made of animal fat too.
And in the end we are all drinking recycled urine, just on a longer scale. Astronauts do drink literally their own recycled water however.
Today we in the West use synthetics and have good filtering systems so we no longer need "natural remedies", but if one lacks the industry, one does with what one has.
JPowTheDayTrader@reddit
WTF why is their culture centered on shit and piss?
ShankMeHarder@reddit
It's not. They have 1.4 billion population and not enough infrastructure to support such a large population across it's huge land mass. Which leaves several areas impoverished. They are undergoing rapid industrialization which leads to several sectors go unnoticed for the benefit of one. No one cared when people used to shit in the bushes, but those bushes are now roads and city buildings but a lot of people around those areas didn't get the opportunity to gentrify. So now they shit where there were once bushes and suddenly it's undignified and dirty. Foreigners love to degrade Indians for things like this but ignore all the brilliance that the Indian subcontinent has brought. Before colonisation, every culture north of the equator were pillaging, warring, raiding and enslaving. Their culture isn't centered on shit and piss, it's just your culture is centered around degrading others.
Zebra1523@reddit
They sell cow piss to drink in my country. Had an argument with a bunch of Indians saying drinking cow piss is sterile and as good for you as eating the meat.
ShankMeHarder@reddit
That's illiteracy not culture. Which festival in India celebrates drinking cow piss? In which scripture in India does it state that people should drink cow piss? Are you suggesting that people of other countries didn't do backward shit before they were gentrified?
carsnbikesnplanes@reddit
Cow piss is literally sacred in Hinduism for its healing properties when drank
Anonreddit96@reddit
Dude, it really isn't.
The percentage of Indian population that drinks cow piss is definitely less than % of people in countries like America where they do other random shit like fuk and alligator or just shoot up random people on streets.
Nownim talking about % here. So let's say india has 100 people population then that means if 3 people drink cow piss that's 3% and that would still be lower than the percentage of Americans who do random shit when equated with American population.
Eyes_of_Aqua@reddit
Counterpoint: Gorehabba the festival where they throw manure around and at eachother I wouldn’t say it’s a “bad” culture but they definitely have some interesting views on public sanitation
bunchedupwalrus@reddit
Lmao bruh acting like they’re the odd one out.
Roman public urinals used to have pipes leading down to their laundries to use as soap. Women would bathe in it to soften their skin. They even used it as a mouthwash. Urine has been used as soap throughout British history, preferred for a long time even though they had other soaps, and throughout Roman, Japanese, European, Ancient Babylon, Native American histories.
It contains urea which is in a ton of beauty creams, Cerave and Eucerin soaps. We make it synthetically now thank fuck
Jwkaoc@reddit
Egyptians brushed their teeth with it.
subatomic_ray_gun@reddit
One can only imagine how stanky goddamn donkey piss must be. So naturally, from donkey piss they make.... soap. what in the fuck were they thinking chat? The more I learn about this beautiful culture the less I understand.
jimmijohnson@reddit
honestly its the poorest places in india which are amongst the poorest places in the world. It's like the whole world just thinks of all indians as unhygenic now.. so no not "ironically". Racism on indians as a group seems ok now...
juugsd@reddit
What were you expecting? It's reddit, of course its racist
power899@reddit
Reddit isn't racist as a whole. It's certain subs.
JimboLimbo07@reddit
Is that why they use cow dung soap?
c0smico@reddit
Laughs in affordable healthcare 🤣
After-Cockroach-1280@reddit
many cultures still feel cleaning your shit stained ass with paper is a great idea.
SergenteA@reddit
Agreed. Unwashed barbarians, all of them.
Tr1LL_B1LL@reddit
I havent used tp in years, ever since we had our son, we’ve discovered the magic of wipes. During the pandemic when no one could get tp, they still had a full isle of unscented wipes haha. i also don’t understand why thin tissue paper is the go-to
bunchedupwalrus@reddit
I hope you ain’t got a septic tank or your city has cheaped out on sewer lines, that shit is not flushable. Bidet life is the only way
Tr1LL_B1LL@reddit
We now have a bidet, but wipes were what got me looking for tp alternatives. And yeah, you’d have to be awfully shitty to flush wipes..
orangefalcoon@reddit
Because wipes block the fucking sewage system you imbecile, even the "flushable" ones
JCampenish@reddit
yeah but I don't eat with my ass
brotherofgurnip@reddit
It builds character
joeyo1423@reddit
It builds A character. His name is Steven J. Püpman
miraclewhipisgross@reddit
Americans
TomFoxxy@reddit
Are you under the impression that Americans do not wash their hands?
I’ve never heard of this before as an American, washing your hands is the norm and I’ve never met someone who doesn’t, at least as far as I’m aware.
Comfortable-Mode-972@reddit
You’ve met plenty of people that don’t wash their hands as much as they should. Stand in a men’s bathroom for 5 minutes and you’ll be disgusted
Teethdude@reddit
You can stand in the women's for equal time. This isn't sex specific as much as people love to assume.
Sofagirrl79@reddit
And womens restrooms are filthier (I say this as a woman who worked retail and cleaned restrooms) but mens restrooms smelled more like piss when I had to clean them
Mikethederp@reddit
My god...
Mens room was just piss everywhere but I truly hated cleaning the womens room when I worked at TCBY. There was period blood on the walls, and shit and piss all over the toilet seats because women love to hover (allegedly)
Not to mention the countless clogged toilets from flushing the pads, like thats what the little "hygeine" bin was for!
Comfortable-Mode-972@reddit
Trust me I’ve tried. They get pretty upset when I go in there
Bepehandle@reddit
My brother has always said the same thing about washing his hands;
"I know my dick is cleaner than the bathroom so I'm not touching shit while I'm in there, I piss in the toilet and bounce"
SuperSaiyanTrunks@reddit
I noticed a pattern at my office a few years ago before I switched to remote work. If youre at a urinal, other men MIGHT wash their hands. If youre in a stall and another person finishes, they will not wash their hands. It has to do with being seen I think. Anytime I visually saw a person, they would wash their hands. If I was in a stall for a bit, no one would wash their hands. People are lazy. And fucking gross.
ghanlaf@reddit
No no no, you got it wrong. Dont forget that america always bad.
You are talking to a troll.
miraclewhipisgross@reddit
So we had the highest number of Covid deaths for no reason right?
BankofAmericas@reddit
America did not have “the highest number of Covid deaths” either in total or per capita. It was not even in the top 10.
Also, I didn’t know that the Americans who refused to wear masks or social distance also refuse to use soap. But okay…
miraclewhipisgross@reddit
BankofAmericas@reddit
miraclewhipisgross@reddit
I admit defeat, I will stop spreading false narratives
I still think we wash our hands way less. I grew up in a rural area and you would be shocked how many rednecks think washing hands is "for pussy bitches" and just roam the earth with God knows what all over their hands
BankofAmericas@reddit
I tend to agree with your sentiment at least. The U.S. is number 16 on that list of per capita Covid deaths. But the U.S. could be, and should be, a lot further down on that list…
lmay0000@reddit
Ahh yes directly attributed from lack of hand washing!!!
atubadude@reddit
IDK why you're getting downvoted, during COVID there were endless videos about how Americans NEED TO WASH THEIR HANDS CONSISTENTLY
JustChillin3456@reddit
Best healthcare in the world 🤭
doublegulpofdietcoke@reddit
The do have some of the best healthcare in the world. They gatekeep it for the rich though.
Altruistic-Local-541@reddit
is this a joke?
JustChillin3456@reddit
Highest cancer survival rates, most medical tech/ patents created, highest salaries for doctors creating competition for best and brightest
Our mortality rates are tied to high obesity rates. Ozempic will fix that
airfryerfuntime@reddit
All of the things you listed are why the average American can't afford sufficient heathcare.
JustChillin3456@reddit
Yes I agree with you, universal healthcare would lower the quality / speed of care
“Expensive” Knock offs are $100-$200 without insurance
airfryerfuntime@reddit
The cheaper off brands are about $200/mo without insurance, but they make you buy a 10 month supply at once, keeping it out of reach for a lot of Americans. Name brand wegovy is $1200+ per month, depending on dose.
JustChillin3456@reddit
I’m sure there are plenty of apps cards you could use to purchase it and end up paying $210 a month for the 10 month supply .
airfryerfuntime@reddit
Good luck finding one.
JustChillin3456@reddit
Klarna
airfryerfuntime@reddit
Dumb and expensive.
Financing weight loss drugs at a 33% interest rate just furthers my point.
JustChillin3456@reddit
Your point is that it’s expensive and I disagree. $2000 is easily recouped by the amount of food you stop eating
LordDickSauce@reddit
Highest rates of medical debt too!!
JustChillin3456@reddit
The cost of the best healthcare
LordDickSauce@reddit
Lol k
ShieldsRe@reddit
lol ok https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2024/sep/mirror-mirror-2024
airfryerfuntime@reddit
Americans compulsively wash their hands. It's like a thing here. I'm pretty sure we also pioneered the twice daily shower.
Early_Box2896@reddit
Why do you need to shower twice daily? Does one shower not even keep you clean for 18 - 24hrs? Or do yall sweat so much cuz yall fat as fuck?
airfryerfuntime@reddit
It's so we don't smell like our stinky european ancestors.
Ok_Interest3555@reddit
Europoors can never relate
Beemo-Noir@reddit
Be me, 30 year old Indian. Take a shit, wipe my ass with my hand. Give it a good sniff. Hmmm, smells okay! Go back to my food cart. Proceed to work my shit claws into your food.
It’s called culture, honey.
Proglamer@reddit
Dedicated washing sinks
AlmightyDarkseid@reddit
Specifically only some Europeans
srcactusman@reddit
Funnily enough, some of the people that Europeans called barbaric had way better hygiene than Europeans (Aztecs are a good example)
Ardalev@reddit
Brother are you regarded? "Europeans" had figured out better hygiene than most, if not all of the "barbarians" you probably have in mind.
I mean, the friggin Romans had indoor heated baths for crying out loud!
SergenteA@reddit
While the Romans had good hygiene, the northern barbarians still haven't got bidets.
Also, even Roman-inherited hygiene slowly lost ground between Christianisation and the Renaissance. And then they went around murdering Jews for surviving Plagues because they cleaned more.
srcactusman@reddit
The sponge.
Jokes aside, I meant the European colonizers of the 1500s
They had terrible dental health and horrible hygiene compared to Aztec, who regularly bathed and had basic dental health procedures.
Hell, even some European cultures still have a habit of not showering and letting their body odor wild, most people really get a bad first impression in some highly populated French cities.
I’m not a historian and I’m only talking about what I learned in school, I know Roman’s were pretty advanced for their age. What I’m saying is that often barbarians were quite civilized
Lol3droflxp@reddit
The sponge was probably used for cleaning the toilet, not the ass.
horny_coroner@reddit
The culture even in Europe differed wildly. For example the vikings bathed atleast weekly and braided their hair so it wouldn’t catch dirt and grime. There is no one European culture.
brotherofgurnip@reddit
They sacrificed babies dude, who gives a shit if they scrubbed their fingies before and after
Vex_Appeal@reddit
Well we were talking about hygiene but if you want to talk European savagery we could go all day. It was a global endeavor. It’s not any less savage if the babies you are killing are not your own people.
_sephylon_@reddit
Nah, there really is a major civilizational difference between being violent in wars while pillaging and ritually and regularly sacrificing people
onarainyafternoon@reddit
Like how Euros burned women alive for being witches a hundred years after the Aztecs were defeated?
Section8firearms@reddit
Not op, but I’ll argue yes. Burning witches is a crime of similar pointlessness. The only deference here is scale.
The entire continent of Europe wasn’t burning witches every day until around the black plague and 100 years war. Further, some of these were people on the other side of a war, or in a grey area of “who the fuck are we even fighting anymore.”
You could also argue that technically someone guilty of a crime might have died for witchcraft. Witchcraft, as a crime, had two criteria: a misfortune unexplainable through nature has occurred and the accused witch had motive. Example: begger was denied milk and now a baby is dead. Someone in that net might have murdered a person. Aztecs would literally prep people for death the majority of their life, basically ensuring their innocence.
_sephylon_@reddit
Even worse of an example, because killing civilians in war is a thing but killing people because you think they’ve done something bad and horrible is even more justifiable than "if we don't kill people every other week the world ends"
Also 99% of the shit people know about witch hunting is made-up myths, most of which Protestant propaganda made to make the Catholics look bad. They weren't burned at the stake, for one.
onarainyafternoon@reddit
Man you really are just full of misinformation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period
Max2tehPower@reddit
60,000 people in about a 400 year period? So like 160 people a year or even less if we consider that most executions happened in certain periods.
puff_of_fluff@reddit
I’m gonna take a random guess that the term “ethnocentrism” doesn’t have much meaning for you?
_sephylon_@reddit
Now tell me how does this relate to anything instead of throwing buzzwords around
puff_of_fluff@reddit
“Words I don’t know” =/= “buzzwords” lmfao
Go read a book sometime buddy. They’ll give you some good recommendations in freshman Lit.
Flamefull-the-meme@reddit
The Romans committed multiple genocides and ritual sacrifices on the steps of Jupiter’s temple.
_sephylon_@reddit
Did the Roman Empire fight the Aztecs
gishgudi@reddit
Yeah violence is unfortunately a part of survival for the vast majority of species. However ritualistically cutting out the hearts of unwilling people to offer to the sun is mega regarded
Cibranith@reddit
What is Blood Meridian? For 500
JustChillin3456@reddit
Europeans on their own created democracy, human rights, modern healthcare
If left on their own Aztecs would develop a more efficient baby murder method
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
Jesus disingenous Christ. Europeans spent literal centuries developing those systems by constantly questioning their status quo and evolving those systems by exposure to other cultures and ways of thought. Original European democracy wasn't even extended to all citizens - whereas there's evidence and accounts of American civilizations all having a degree of say in their collective decisions. That's without saying how brutal the entire era of European Colonialism was to the entire world, even the lower class Europeans themselves who had to perpetuate it for their Nobles.
It is entirely illogical to think that, given enough time, the American natives would NEVER have their own moment of status quo questioning leading to systemic evolution. Especially given how advanced they were in other fields.
JustChillin3456@reddit
I wouldn’t say it would NEVER have happened
I’m suggesting that it would have taken potentially thousands of years of more conquest, wars, scalping etc to have reached that point. How many lives were saved/ suffering prevented by the Europeans ripping off the Band aid ?
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
And now that culture and many within it are effectively dead. No one speaks Aztec or Nahuatl with any degree of propagative effectiveness. And the Mexican people themselves implicitly resent their pre-Hispanic roots whether they admit it or not. They use hostile language in regards to color, only ever cast White Actors in any media, and view Native practices as if they were lower class practices. That's without even mentioning the fact that Christ himself is depicted as White, even to Mexicans, despite the fact that real life Jesus was most certainly Brown.
Did the Europeans save the Aztecs? Or did they effectively wipe them off the Earth? Who stood to benefit from this 'salvation'? I'll tell you: the European colonialist who filled their coffers with Tenochtitlan's gold and silver. The colonialist who took Aztec wives. The colonialist who finally gained the land they were denied in their home continent.
JustChillin3456@reddit
Ok? Many languages and cultures die.
My own culture has been in decline for decades. Perhaps the Aztecs should have been Nicer.
Race is a social construct just like gender. If Mexicans want a white Jesus let them have it
“Who benefited from salvation” Literally the thousands of native that sided with Spaniards who were sick of being brutalized by the Aztecs 😂
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
Okay, bro. Good for you. At least you have a culture that can decline. For the Mexicans, their culture was subject to genocide and pillage, and now they worship the same people who did it, while rejecting their own heritage. Viewed literally for the facts of how that has played out, it's a cultural travesty with a profound cultural gaslighting effect that continues to perpetuate itself.
Literal genocide apologist.
JustChillin3456@reddit
Dude why are you upset exactly ? Mexico is rated as one of the happiest countries on earth you’re mosey that their culture slightly changed ? Get over it, all cultures changed over time
Mexicans did not face genocide, Aztecs did and I honestly don’t give af about people that would happily rip out my heart
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
Because of the rampant sociopolitical and demographic inequality in that nation that you can trace back directly to the events of colonization, which are later compounded by the effects of American Imperialism.
JustChillin3456@reddit
America is the most charitable nation in all of human history. We’ve donated more aid and saved more foreign live than any other nation.
Ergo, American imperialism is always justified
Pxel315@reddit
Wild take, but you will hopefully grow up to not see the world as black and white. You are lucky enough to have presumably been born somewhere that got the charitable end of americas politics and not the murderous one
JustChillin3456@reddit
I’m an American
I was born and raised to be ashamed of my country, ancestors and actions abroad
No longer
Pxel315@reddit
Do you think feeling shame for bad actions is a wrong thing? Its very christian to feel shame and to have a conscience about murdering people for profit you do realise that right?
JustChillin3456@reddit
I’m not a Christian 😉
Pxel315@reddit
So your answer is yes its wrong to feel shame for bad actions? Swell world view you have there but its gonna bite you in the ass soon enough when you exit the house and stop being chronically online and alone
JustChillin3456@reddit
No , shame is good
I’m saying I have nothing to be ashamed of
Pxel315@reddit
So you are saying the US is infallible?
JustChillin3456@reddit
Literally the opposite . No country is
Conzyyyyyyy@reddit
Why should anyone feel shame about the actions of someone else who happened to be from the same country as you.
Its like trying to make someone feel bad over the actions of their ancestors. I had no control over their actions, I don't necessarily with their actions but I'm not going to feel shame over things I couldn't control.
brotherofgurnip@reddit
What do you think would have convinced Aztecs, if given enough time, to stop sacrificing human beings if not exposed to an external conquering force like the Spanish?
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
The fact that we no longer burn witches or hertetics. Or honestly enact most of the biblical punishments for sins in the bible, like cutting off the hand of a thief. We stopped doing those things, without external influence, in a break from our own beliefs. If WE can do it, so could they. I'm more than positive that people in their age had disagreements with their clergy. Questioning the status quo is an intrinsic part of human nature at the population scale.
brotherofgurnip@reddit
We don't do those practices anymore due to a very specific chain of events e.g. the rise of human rights, Renaissance, Enlightenment thinkers etc. which only occurred in Europe at very specific times in history. Although introspection is an inherent ability available to many people, the idea that we question our own values and practices as an academic, systemic and political exercise is a European invention, although it seems like it has always been the case, it really is a product of -again- a very specific chain of events that allowed these ideas to even be allowed to propagate in public life. I also disagree that it is intrinsic to human nature to question the status quo at a population level - that is a more individualised trait. There are many societies even in modernity that actively punish the questioning of status quo (i.e. currently established power structures). Now to return to the question as to whether given enough time, would the Aztecs (to be specific) have achieved all of the above, which was only done so by European countries? I actually think they would proceed down their own distinct chain of events, but there's no evidence to suggest it would result in the contemporary world-view you proffered.
12wigwam2@reddit
The 2nd chapter in the book "The Dawn of Everything" is quite a compelling argument that a lot of european enlightentment thought came about through meetings with other cultures, especially native american societies.
Essentially Jesuits missionaries studied these tribes and found societial forms which were totally foreign to Europe at the time. There was quite a lot of liberty, where people where free to f.eks. divorce or disobey orders from authority (the Jesuits were actually quite critical of this liberty).
Many of these tribes also had what we might call democracies, large groups of people gathered commonly to discuss politics and local affairs, and it was noted that the in generel there were very skilled rhetorically.
And also a lot of enlightentment thinkers credit Native American thinkers directly. I don't remember the specifics of the chapter here exactly, but there was a native american statesman and philosopher called Kondiaronk who spent a long time in Europe actively engaged in intellectual debates. A friend of his published a series of dialouges in which were featured his critiques of European society and Christianity and they became hugely popular. In fact spawning a whole subgenre of literature in which a tribes person, or some other foreigner is shown a modern European insititution or city and presents a critique from an ourside perspective. Again this was incredibally popular.
Basically; there is a decent argument that European enlightment came about in a large part due to Europe encountering cultures with a totally different social fabric and suddendly feeling the need to either justify or reevaluate the European mode of existence.
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
You are correct. European change was largely in part to the Renaissance and subsequent movements. At the same time, like you yourself said - there could've been an event like it for the American natives. Ultimately, we'll never know.
Also, in regards to my claim about skepticism and challenging the status quo, I did say 'at the population level', in the sense that you'll basically always get at least one person that is inconform, even in a highly repressive status quo. Those presences and their effects are compounding.
brotherofgurnip@reddit
Its an interesting discussion, but I think there's also an awkward factor whereby without the conquest and colonisation of the Americas (and elsewhere) by European powers, would that still have resulted in the same liberal/pluralistic sense of human rights and individual dignity that developed later in history? To some extent, without these events it is difficult to say whether or not European countries would have exited a form of late medieval society and political system i.e. there wouldn't be the rise of commerce and Atlantic slave trade - including its eventual international abolition by Britain, and would have prevented the development of the Enlightenment (a series of questions as to the nature of being within the world - as a very basic summary), today's world could be very different, and probably a lot more violent in nature despite the atrocities we see daily.
JustChillin3456@reddit
Dude it was the church itself that put a stop to witch hunts.
The question isn’t “if” They could have done it the question is how many centuries would it have taken of prolonged human suffering ?
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
Correct. The church itself. Within itself. And the church itself was composed of the people, who overtime changed their beliefs and stances in regards to those practices' necessities.
JustChillin3456@reddit
But the beliefs only slightly strayed from its original intent / values
There’s a difference between Christianity (a religion designed around ending pagan human/ animal sacrifice)
And a culture that is built around human sacrifice
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
Again, we're talking about the capacity for change over X period of time. Not the intensity of it over X period. It took ages for Christianity and European societies to appear half as civilized as they are now.
It, honestly, would have taken the American Natives longer in a vacuum, but my main point is to dispel the talking point that assigns them the inherent incapacity to change and evolve.
JustChillin3456@reddit
My intention was never to say they couldn’t evolve change, that goes against literally all of human history
My point is that the colonization of the Americas was ultimately a good thing for humanity
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
Look, man. I'll throw you a bone. You're maybe right, and only - strictly only - if you limit yourself to the Aztecs; and only because they were the most barbarous. The North American Indians are by all historical accounts a bunch of legitimate victims, who only really retaliated when colonists repeatedly encroached upon them with aggressive intent. I don't know enough about the other South and Central American tribes to make a judgment call, but I do know there aren't whole chapters of history dedicated to them being barbarous ala Aztecs.
So maybe you have a point for basically the Yucatan Penninsula.
JustChillin3456@reddit
“Northern natives were innocent” dude this is also an ahistorical rhetoric. Just look at the Comanche. Brutal civilization that took whites and blacks as slaves. Would skin people alive and were so effective at killing. It took the invention of the 6 shot revolver by Samuel colt for the texas rangers to finally turn the tide of battle
“Retaliated” they retaliated by killing innocent women and children settlers. Were they also victims ?
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
After they were encroached upon. Do you even know what America did to the natives? How many treaties were violated, time and time again? Or do you only care when its your people who get caught in the crossfire?
JustChillin3456@reddit
“Do you know what happened to the natives”
Ofc it’s core curriculum in our schools
Are you aware of the amount of native lives spared by Lincoln ? How much natives have got and continued to receive in reparations ? No other native group in human history has gotten the reparations native Americans have
Both sides did good and bad. Both sides were just trying to survive . It’s as simple as that
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
Simple? Hah. History is many things, but it is far from simple. How convenient. The Colonists were aggressors. There are many accounts thats verify this. Lincoln and other leaders wouldn't have had to 'spare' anyone if it wasn't for the fact that the first colonists were abusive bullies who kept trying to get more and more out of their relationship with the Indians. Fuck, man. You want to talk about Presidents? Andrew Jackson. The Trail of Tears? Manifest Destiny. The eradication of the Bison so as to literally starve them.
Get your history straight.
JustChillin3456@reddit
“Simple” my point was literally that history is nuanced and NOT good vs evil.
“All the colonists every single one were aggressors” now THAT is simply history 🤭
“Lincoln wouldn’t have needed to spare-“ close! It was the native senator started the Dakota war that kills hundreds of innocent settlers. Why do you have a grudge against peaceful immigrants ?
Again both sides. Accept it or cope
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
Do you feel good adding words into other people's quotes? Or are you as illiterate and delusional as you are historically challenged? I sure love my strawman arguments. You probably learned how to argue at the Ben Shapiro School for Good Imperialists.
I did not say 'every single one' - but I do appreciate a glimpse into how your mind works, if only to disappoint.
JustChillin3456@reddit
I honestly had no idea how else to interpret that “settlers are aggressors” 😂
Ben Shapiro? I’d slay him on sight
Epicmitch197@reddit
The important distinction is the “exposure to other cultures” if every culture available (geographically) practices something, until proven otherwise by a different culture it would continue to be the norm, and would continue to happen.
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
That's not entirely true, and relies on the presupposition of perpetuity. In the European's case, there was cultural exposure, partly because the geography of Europe really did lend itself to that - whereas alot of the geography of the Americans led to effectively landlocked civlizations that couldn't really communicate amongst eachother. The Incas and the Aztec were going to have a rough time trying to communicate, the same for any of the Northern tribes.
Anyways, since we cannot control for cultural exposure there is no real way of knowing if it is the precise catalyst factor for change. What we do know is that changes, period, happen within groups over time. The proto-Aztecs were not the same people as the Aztecs towards their fall, and even relatively isolated parts of Europe developed within themselves prior to cultural exposure. There is room for them to have developed and changed without influence, and that is the important part to highlight. The European colonialist mindset would have you believe that things were otherwise irredeemable without their involvement.
Epicmitch197@reddit
Without change things remain the same (perpetual) that’s not presumptuous that’s just how it works.
This conversation now moves to what causes changes in culture and at what speeds. Interacting with another culture and comparing/questioning your cultures features and theirs is (probably?) the fastest way and reason that a culture can change. Now, truthfully I don’t know enough about “proto-aztec” history so I wouldn’t be able to label certain interactions with other groups that could be reason for why the culture shifted.
So truthfully, given an indefinite amount of time, Aztec culture would EVENTUALLY stop with the human sacrifice, but how much time is completely inestimable. We can safely say (barring a catalyst within the culture like some completely insane unexpected scientific development) at least another 200 years until that change was made.
Which leads into a moral question, how long would the child sacrifice have to be guaranteed to continue to happen for the European intervention to have been a “good” thing, and how short would it have to be for it to have been better for the Aztecs to “figure it out” on their own.
TrafalgarMathias@reddit
I'm not going to disagree with the premise that it would've taken more time. 200+ seems about reasonable.
The moral question is a rough one to answer, particularly saliently to the modern era in regards to children. I want to preface that I 100% don't approve of the Aztec's practices, but at the same time how do you weight the morality of those lives vs the lives lost and currently historically affected by the direct effects of Spanish colonization? You kind of can't. They're different sorts of misery and tragedy. Nowadays, because of the traceable effects, we see rampant economic inequality and stratification in those areas, like Mexico, and particularly in regards to the vestiges of those cultures; the unintegrated and forgotten indigenous villages. Children go hungry. They die of disease or malnourishment, in ways we can trace back to Colonialism.
I would say the moral question is useless. The suffering persists in one way, shape, or another. The only purpose the moral question has is to allow the conquering culture an avenue to justify its actions.
In fact, I think: if it wasn't so easy to trace current inequalities and strife to the effects of Spanish Colonization - then we wouldn't be having this conversation, and it'd be infinitely easier to just blanket condemn the natives.
Epicmitch197@reddit
I very generally agree with this but it does leave out a crucial part of the (really don’t want to sound insensitive here) good that came out of the colonization of the region as well. If we are going to talk about current negative ripple effect of colonization you kinda have to talk about the eventual good (various technologies) which “offsets” at least some of the suffering. So I don’t think the morality question is completely pointless, as it does serve as an interesting hypothetical for good discussion nonetheless.
captaincw_4010@reddit
Europe didn’t have any of those things when they destroyed the Aztecs come on now
Matt_2504@reddit
England had the beginnings of democracy and human rights, as did some of the Italian states and Iceland, among other nations. Though you’re pretty much right because they were not fully developed
JustChillin3456@reddit
Ok? Why wouldn’t they destroy the Aztecs ? If anything it was other natives who did most of the destruction since they were sick of Aztec oppression
Altruistic-Local-541@reddit
you have no idea what the aztecs would have done if left alone, lets not pretend otherwise
do not try to whitewash any colonist history it is a futile endeavour
JustChillin3456@reddit
Dude white washing is ignoring the fact that natives made up the VAST majority of Cortez’s forces because of how cartoonishly evil the Aztecs were
MagentaDinoNerd@reddit
It wasn’t about “cartoonishly evil”, many of those groups were doing the exact same things. They teamed up with Cortez because of political power plays and because they were sick of Aztecs absolutely trouncing them in every war game they held. It was politics, not morals
JustChillin3456@reddit
The surrounding native tribes also practiced sacrifice but nearly at the same scale of the Aztecs
The goal to not be murdered I never claimed morality , although the outcome was beneficial for all of humanity
findingthesqautch@reddit
well spanish conquistadors did partner with local tribes to boost their forces
Epicmitch197@reddit
I mean you do have an “idea” it’s just not known with 100% certainty, but using inference and information already known it can be expected that it would be ongoing because before Spanish conquest, the culture(s) in Mexico involved child sacrifice for around 1500 years.
captaincw_4010@reddit
Well considering they introduced disease that would wipe out half of the native population they could have just stayed away as that really dwarfs anything the Aztecs ever did
JustChillin3456@reddit
How could they prevent something they didn’t know existed ?
By your logic east and west would have to have stayed separated indefinitely for disease not ravage the natives
uknowthe1ph@reddit
They washed their hands though
brotherofgurnip@reddit
You think Europeans just went around with chicken guts smeared on their hands until the invention of germ theory?
OCD-but-dumb@reddit
Yes
lunacraz@reddit
i mean, pretty much the equivalent, yeah
Spaceman_05@reddit
well thats what i did
onarainyafternoon@reddit
Like how Euros burned women alive for being witches?
power899@reddit
You know that Europeans burned women alive at the stake right? No culture has a bloodless history. And if we go by that metric, no one should be washing their hands after they shit because of the atrocities committed by our people? Lmao
BurnMeTonight@reddit
Not washing your hands after you pee is way more barbaric than killing any number of babies.
ChrisDEmbry@reddit
Abortion
daren5393@reddit
I don't think anyone is denying that, but I also don't think we were even remotely talking about that
uknowthe1ph@reddit
Sorry it doesn’t matter because this is reddit
SharpClaw007@reddit
As opposed to the peaceful and benevolent Europeans? Lmao they both were on some demon shit
snowydays666@reddit
to be fair the Aztecs had a better fighting spirit. They used corpses as fertilizer and didn’t eat babies
ChadPowers200_@reddit
You eat the heart and let the blood cleanse your hands. You want to be like a dirty European?
StandardN02b@reddit
The Romans figured it out 2000 years ago.
OCD-but-dumb@reddit
And then their decedents forgot
Sarctoth@reddit
Africans too
Kelvinek@reddit
That's absolutely incorrect though. Germs were figured out by an european. Hygiene standards differed widely by period, and place.
Other than that it's basically just all of you failing for Mansa Musa meme.
Someone exaggerated a claim you liked, and you just ran with it.
That's completely ignoring that europe became semi unified only recently, and standards of everything differed widely.
-accro@reddit
Popular history is so embarrassing lmao. They think people went from the beauty of rome to living in mud huts to the industrial revolution. No need for people to make stuff up when each culture they're elevating by putting Europe down has its own rich history that doesn't need to be compared in progress
Attya3141@reddit
Let them have their moment
Lol3droflxp@reddit
Europeans also washed their hands, this is such an absurd notion.
zombieGenm_0x68@reddit
france was holding them back 🥀
_sephylon_@reddit
You will never guess which country the scientist who proposed germ theory and pasteurization came from
BurnMeTonight@reddit
Only reason he figured it out was because he had an abundance of examples around him.
MrPopanz@reddit
Germany of course, that's why it's called germs after all 👨🔬
marshaboogie67@reddit
No, there werent
dalepo@reddit
During the Black Death, many Jewish communities were persecuted because Christians falsely blamed them for causing the plague, especially through accusations of poisoning wells. Some historians suggest that differences in hygiene practices or social separation may have affected infection patterns, but the persecutions were mainly driven by antisemitic scapegoating and conspiracy theories.
Kelvinek@reddit
Jews were persecuted, but plague spread mostly by things like fleas. None of the customs (besides of living separately than the rest) would have impacted that. People don't need things to happen, to perceive them in a certain way. Just someone saying that group is bad, would've been enough.
dalepo@reddit
I beg to differ. Washing clothes and bedding more often can help reduce flea exposure, and since fleas are a major vector of bubonic plague, that could lower the risk of transmission.
YouKnowWho-54@reddit
can't believe this myth is still being perpetuated
Few-Requirement-3544@reddit
What is the alternative narrative?
YouKnowWho-54@reddit
the fact is that europeans have long understood that cleanliness helped reduce the spread of sickness and disease. in particular, many doctors, civic authorities, and clergy in the 14th century believed that foul odours and decaying matter contributed to the spread of illness and plague through what was called miasma theory. while we now know that bad smells were not the direct cause of disease, the theory still encouraged medieval societies to actively pursue sanitation and public cleanliness.
medieval towns and cities passed laws against dumping waste into streets and rivers, organized street-cleaning efforts, maintained drainage systems and public wells, and employed workers to remove refuse and empty cesspits. many urban centres also had public bathhouses, while households commonly used latrines and waste pits. some cities even created officials or courts specifically responsible for roads, drains, water supplies, and sanitation.
Neomataza@reddit
Cleaning rituals isn't the same as figuring out medical procedures. Surgery as a field has been practiced since at least the crusades, and midwifery is even older. Those are the fields most impacted by germ theory and hygiene rules.
If someone has figured out earlier, there are no records of it and it has not been passed down.
CruisingandBoozing@reddit
With soap?
Idiot_of_Babel@reddit
Europeans do with history what Americans do with current events
Champigne@reddit
Much of the world doesn't even have running water, let alone wash their hands.
Pepperonidogfart@reddit
They figured out why its good in the 19th c. But humans have always groomed and tried to stay clean. No one likes bad smells and being soiled. Just like a cat cleans itself. It doesnt know why.
maracujas_amarelos@reddit
Europeans still haven't even figured out that you need to shower every day
inthebushes321@reddit
That's why they killed the Jews during and after the Black Death. Jews washed their hands as part of their religious practices, consequently making them cleaner, resulting in far fewer of them dying via Yersinia Pestis...just to get pogrommed by butthurt superstitious Christians.
Wiinterfang@reddit
Try explaining to a peasants that there's some invisible animals called bacteria making people sick
GordoToJupiter@reddit
they sent a Hungarian doctor to a mental institution because he figured cleaning his tools and hands after autopsy reduced the infection rate of his surgeries.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
boxxybrownn@reddit
Kraut detected
SilliusS0ddus@reddit
?
Habubu_Seppl@reddit
Semmelweiß is more of a footnote in the history of modern hygiene, most Francophones are more likely to learn about Pasteur as the original advocate for disinfection, and most anglophones would have been taught about Joseph Lister. So it's a pretty safe call to presume someone who knows about Semmelweiß Central European
SilliusS0ddus@reddit
pretty sure there were some big popular infotainment videos about Semmelweiss because of his tragic fate.
He's not a famous figure in German speaking countries either.
I learned about him from the internet.
vjmdhzgr@reddit
Well no he was sent to a mental institution because he went insane from neurosyphilis which he caught from his work as an obstetrician.
Prestigious-Fig1172@reddit
Reddit moment
Substantial_Net9923@reddit
Hello Winterfang of the clan of GayIndianGreenText, gather around:
" there's some invisible animals called bacteria making people sick"
-
CrispBit@reddit
But if you get shit on your hands, and your hands smell like shit, the natural reaction is, I don't want this to smell like shit and other people will smell it, etc.. no?
Real_Lil_Tater@reddit
Which is why miasma theory, which said that diseases were caused by foul odours, was present across Europe for thousands of years before germ theory was accepted.
CrispBit@reddit
wat about slimy
Flashlight_Inspector@reddit
Ancient mongolians used to boil water because they thought there were invisible water demons that couldn't tolerate high temps, so they basically already reached the same conclusion on complete accident
Aethred@reddit
They got that knowledge from aliens obviously.
MyHeadIsFullOfFuck@reddit (OP)
The ancient greeks knew about "the atom".
SpottedWobbegong@reddit
They didn't, they just theorized about it.
The_Nude_Mocracy@reddit
The indivisible atom, which turned out to be divisible
Leozito42@reddit
Well, we just named some clump of things an "atom" and found out later that it was made out of more stuff. Quarks and eletrons are indivisible as far as we know and therefore are the true "atoms" so the ancient greeks were not THAT wrong.
Anyway, it's more likely that they are just excitations of one or multiple fields and there is no "pixel" of reality.
FunnyP-aradox@reddit
Aren't all of those divisable and made of singularities ?
Leozito42@reddit
Fundamental particles and the 4 universal forces are the simplest means we have to explain physics. They behave more like waves in a field then particles and we don't know yet if there are many fields or just one indivisible thing.
Greencheezy@reddit
Google the difference between theory vs hypothesis, you fucking moron
Alive_Ice7937@reddit
How many atoms have you seen?
SpottedWobbegong@reddit
Unimaginable numbers of them, technically.
Our theory is backed up by countless experiments, theirs was just imagination. It's very impressive, yes, but I wouldn't call it knowing.
Altruistic-Local-541@reddit
we don't really know anything either, we just have better experiments and can guess with more confidence
Retnuhswag@reddit
We definitely know more than you’re leading on with this comment.
Zackie86@reddit
Go on Google images, type "photo of atom" you will find a few
PomegranateHot9916@reddit
germ theory btw
also a theory, developed before technology allowed us to see and study microorganisms like bacteria.
Supershadow30@reddit
They theorized about it, but the leading theory was that of the elements up until 18th century chemists proved atoms existed
PeterVN13032010@reddit
they did not know about invisible animals
Kazuma_Megu@reddit
There's a Drop Bear behind you.
Antanarau@reddit
They didn't. They only built a theoretical model of "atom" as "smallest, indivisible particle that everything is built from". Modern "atom" does not fit this term - the best fitting equivalent, for now and probably a few decades, until it inevitably will be 'split' again - is a "quark".
Judah_Earl@reddit
Just imagine the shit we do today that will cause future generations to go WTF?
JustChillin3456@reddit
Abortion
deadthrees@reddit
idk shit about fuck but that just sounds like it would cause overpopulation issues
CheeseNexus@reddit
Smoking, cars, deforestation on unprecedented scale, eating so much processed/fried food
BoeufBourgui@reddit
The number of car deaths during its 150 years (ish) of existence will be viewed as crazy
Antanarau@reddit
The number of lives saved by cars - making delivery of medicine and patients take days instead of months, for one - will make statements like yours be viewed as crazy
CheeseNexus@reddit
Transport is essential yeah, my issue is more with oil, roads and morons driving 200 ton vehicles
Antanarau@reddit
Then your issue isn't with cars
Quolley@reddit
He didn't say he has an issue with cars, he said the number of car deaths would be seen as crazy.
Antanarau@reddit
My dude.
Cheese Nexus in his OWN comment wrote THIS:
>Smoking, cars, deforestation on an unprecedented scale, eating so much processed/fried food
Quolley@reddit
Yeah exactly, so reply to Cheese Nexus and not the guy adding to the point. At that point you're putting words into someone else's mouth
Antanarau@reddit
But I did???? Like, and I can't stress this enough, I replied to CheeseNexus who replied to me.
Quolley@reddit
My bad you're right, I read that wrong
Antanarau@reddit
25 or more (Judging by the upvotes) people telling me that I replied to the wrong person without even reading who I replied to
Quolley@reddit
https://i.redd.it/qg9i2pfc1c0h1.gif
beaverpoo77@reddit
No fucking shit? Did you even read the comments you're replying to, or were you too busy picking your nose and ass at the same time to bother?
KnownAsAnother@reddit
Cars are cool as hell.
A car dependent dociety where you have to drive your own car to live is not.
Kelvinek@reddit
Nah, nobody sane views it like that. You equate progress of general transportation, especially long range, which most of the time isn't car, to cars in general. Ameribrain take.
Antanarau@reddit
When you call medical emergency, are you delivered to a hospital by a train? Are your medicine delivered to that hospital from the storage point by a helicopter?
Every long range transportation has a short range component, that is usually done on cars. Not every hospital can afford to build a railway station beside itself.
Regular-Cup9528@reddit
Long range medical transportation is predominantly done in cars since they’re just the best tool for the job. Aircraft are more expensive and less flexible while also needing more time to divert in case shit goes sideways and using a train for most medical transports is just laughably inefficient.
BoeufBourgui@reddit
Nice try being witty. Except that when self driving car will be fully operationnal, the number of deaths will be close to 0. Lives will still be saved by medecine.
Car driven by any human moron will be seen as truely horrific
Icy_Magician_9372@reddit
But that's a problem with morons not cars.
ImJLu@reddit
And with allowing morons to pilot 3 ton death machines with the pathetic licensing standards we have...
_bully-hunter_@reddit
I mean not if the person viewing history realizes cars came into existence and prevalence well before the automation capable of safely operating them did
SergenteA@reddit
MICROPLASTICS
To be fair, it is all a leaded gas situation. Or even leaded water tubes, like ancient Rome had. Some scientists may know it is a terrible idea. Society however just looks at how much money they can save and closes off their ears.
CheeseNexus@reddit
The effects of plastic has been pretty widely documented as a problem, microplastics already have the current generations going wtf. Check out David Achu's recycling video, plastic companies sidestepped government regulations with shitty bandaid solutions and big marketing budgets
infinityeunique@reddit
Cars? Whats the alternative? Walking 10km+ every goddamn day to a job youre already tired from?
uwu_PD@reddit
The alternative is building walkable and bikeable communities with job and grocery access located closeby to dense housing.
This would be built out along with reliable public transit like buses and subways, light rail. There are entire fields of urban planning dedicated to this.
You pretty much need to redesign most U.S. communities because the urban sprawl in the United States forces you to use a car. but this is by design
Retnuhswag@reddit
because people want property and their own land. Not to be on the 16th floor of some apartment. With shared walls in every direction.
SergenteA@reddit
Do they naturally want that? Or is it culture that pushes them to do so?
People also want groceries, schools, services; Bars and other opportunities to socialise; their workspace; all closeby. Which is best achieved by living in an apartment.
And hey, if the walls are well isolated in terms of sound, it's not too different.
Shonnyboy500@reddit
That’s the thing I think a lot of people don’t understand about the US. Most of us own dozens of acres. It’s not just a few fellers who own land then you’re in the city, most people own large lands around the city.
Kelvinek@reddit
Most people in the usa don't own land though. USA has lower % of home ownership than european average, and europe is massively brought down by places like germany.
The thing you seem to not understand, but in american fashion assume that you got, is that living in a house or having "land", is not some kind of unique american experience. Difference is that instead of having redlined suburb with hoa, to keep them dark skinned away, you simply build it still within city limits,
Though, average new lot size in the usa is larger than european average, i don't care to research why, but it's probably safe bet, that it's both more completely empty spaces, and since only rich people in the usa will ever own anything, when you got it, you really got it.
Shonnyboy500@reddit
I wasn’t referring to suburbs. Maybe it’s just the area of the US I live in, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t own at least an acre besides two people who rent. Most folks own ~50 acres, oftentimes more
ItBelikeThatSomeTme_@reddit
Yeah buddy that’s really really obviously just the area you live in lol
onarainyafternoon@reddit
Obviously that’s just the part of the country you live in lmao. Most Americans live in cities, and even the homeowners mostly live in suburbs and absolutely do not own multiple acres of property.
Aethred@reddit
80 percent of Americans live in cities and not all of those are even home owners, you are extending reasoning justified in your surroundings to the general population. America is big though, the logistical problems in the more 'empty' states are hard to imagine an easy solution to which doesn't cost billions.
Jwkaoc@reddit
You can have both as options. The U.S. has an excess of the former and a shortage of the latter.
Personally, I'd like shared walls (assuming they're properly soundproofed, which most constructions here also suck at) because it means savings on energy bills.
FunnyP-aradox@reddit
You can have houses and trams/bus driving you to the neibourghood, no need to have appartement complexes to have public transport
ImJLu@reddit
Hope you haven't been complaining about the prices of gas that you insist on needing then 🤷
SortOfSpaceDuck@reddit
Solution to cars? Rebuild every city. Good one.
Jwkaoc@reddit
You don't need to completely rebuild every city. That's absurd. You can make improvements and adjustments to what's there. We already did it once starting in the 50's. We can do it again if the willpower is there. It just isn't for the most part.
benjyvail@reddit
That would be absurdly expensive. Some communities can barely maintain existing roads, how the on earth are they to afford a redesign and maintenance of expensive infrastructure like light rail. Also walkability requires population density, you can’t just redesign most US communities and somehow generate ridership to justify the costs, people just aren’t going to use it.
It’s also not just by “design” people actively chose to live in more spacious single family homes, and you see suburban sprawl in other countries
Trash_Writer@reddit
[ Removed by Reddit ]
infinityeunique@reddit
Well that aint going to happen anytime soon, buddy, thanks to lobbyists and capitalism and whatnot
EquivalentSnap@reddit
Walkable cities and good public transport like buses, trains trams etc Suburbs is a stupid idea that causes commutes and city zoning laws that prevents apartments and has single story homes
FunnyP-aradox@reddit
Why ? you can have single homes suburbs and public transports
Aethred@reddit
But that's the whole problem, everyone wants a house in the suburbs, driving property price ever higher as a city prospers and pushing urban and road design to adapt to it with unending construction of highways and all the ensuing consequences that come with a car-centric culture. My cityhas been going through this very transformation in the last few decades.
FunnyP-aradox@reddit
But why would that made it car centric ? i don't live in the US so i probably don't realise it but can't you just run buses or trams through the suburbs ? or even trains like in Paris, we have multiple trains that goes through all the surburbs and you only need the regional commute subscription to hop on them, 18 lines of metro, multiple tram lines, hundreds of buses (maybe even thousands even i haven't counted them all lmao but i did saw some 900+ numbers on buses), and even a telescopic sky cabin (i forgot the name in English)
Aethred@reddit
I'm also not in the USA. I think Paris, despite its recent reputation as a 'green city' focused away from cars is a bad example though, plenty of people shun the RER and the périph' is rage-inducingly clogged at morning and evening rush hour. Paris has really good public transport into the whole Ile de France though, despite some RER line being absolute shit compared to others both comfort, density, frequency and dependability wise (just compare RER C and D), most places in Europe or even France don't have anything approaching that despite similar commute problems. The car or public transport issue is still very divisive in most major cities and was a big thing in the municipales where I live. Even considered nation wide our public transport system is in shambles compared to what it was in the golden age of the post-war era: more than half of our train stations closed and that number keeps rising, some départements barely have any transport solutions or just a bus morning and evening, rideshare monopoly of Blablacar (a company heavily subsidized by the state in its infancy) serving as a pale subsitute to real public infrastructure, train tickets absurdly expensive ... We have it great compared to a lot of places but it's nowhere near what most people would need, especially in isolated province. But I've strayed far from our original discussion so I'll leave it at that before I rant anymore. I'm happy Paris at least eliminated that 5 zone thing though I used to have to commute Evry-La Defense and it sucked paying for all zones even though I wa almost never spending time in Paris intramuros, very depressing getting on the early morning train for 2 hours with all the other office drones.
Concerning the USA honestly I can't give a detailed answer that I would be satisfied with, most of my reasoning is from a college study I had to write 13 years ago with some refreshers from an AskHistorians thread about it a while ago... The only thing I can say for sure is that it has an entrenched car-centric approach to commute both culturally and geographically, so the transition to anything else would be very difficult. I'd advise looking for that AskHistorian thread for a real answer.
EquivalentSnap@reddit
Sure but it means those homes are more expensive and further away
ITheBirdKingI@reddit
It’s a skew from how people will live in the future. At a certain point we can expect all cars to be autonomous. Most will probably be terrified of the idea of controlling a death machine on a daily basis that they’ve never had to operate themselves.
Plus, I could see a future renewable resource becoming available causing future generations to go “they used gross shit from the ground to power their fucking cars?”
It all makes sense with our context but could be viewed as silly in 100 years
Ok_Interest3555@reddit
Don't argue with these people. It gives them too much anxiety to leave a 2 square mile area around their house so they don't see a need for cars.
GordoToJupiter@reddit
You do not have public transport in your country?
BoeufBourgui@reddit
The problem is not the car, but who is driving it. But that problem will soon be fixed
fischarcher@reddit
Having airport in 24/7
EquivalentSnap@reddit
Not to mention plastic, alcohol, vapes, meat consumption
Retnuhswag@reddit
Meat consumption? 😂
The_Gorge_of_Harry@reddit
Eating meat is inherently wrong. Once we can make lab grown meat taste like the real thing there will be 0 excuse to torture animals anymore
Ok_Interest3555@reddit
Vegan comes in from the top rope saying the dumbest shit imaginable.
EquivalentSnap@reddit
I’m not vegan
jarvi123@reddit
These are all known to be bad, people just don't care. I'm thinking more along the lines of something bizarre like too many tomatoes in your diet (looking at your Americans) gives your kids webbed feet after 4 or 5 generations and the U.S is about to become a swimming powerhouse accidentally.
Good_Smile@reddit
Tiktok
TSiQ1618@reddit
TikTok dances, boofing, tide pods, hentai, MAGA
themightyscott@reddit
Being human probably, when the robots take over.
TactfulOG@reddit
plastic everywhere, insane levels of pollution, ultra processed food
Hect0r92@reddit
Chemotherapy
rycerzDog@reddit
Wiping our asses with paper is one I can think of already.
Daysleeper1234@reddit
With leaves, plus most of them shat while crunching because there were no real toilets, I don't know when they started digging up holes and shitting in them, which is better way of taking shit because it doesn't activate your hemorrhoids, so their asses wouldn't be burning as ours today.
chudjaka@reddit
personally i use sponge on a stick like a true Roman
Alive_Ice7937@reddit
In the future everyone will be wiping their asses with tongue.
Tr1LL_B1LL@reddit
Triple ply yak tongue butt wipe does sound pretty soft..
Tr1LL_B1LL@reddit
If you can’t install a bidet, at least switch to wipes. But DOnT flush them ha
Judah_Earl@reddit
The three seashells are only ten years away
RaoulLaila@reddit
Chemotherapy
Flodge100@reddit
Im hitting a miami mint vape. Who knows what tf im suckin on
Funneduck102@reddit
That Miami mint is fire though. Shits definitely just pure cancer. I'm not gonna get old lol.
MinuetInUrsaMajor@reddit
“And we took our pet rectangle everywhere. We used it to see things from around the world that enrage us instead of talking to any human near us.”
SpaceBug176@reddit
Something something I'll be cancelled if I say what I want to say.
lesecksybrian@reddit
Something something something complete
_eleutheria@reddit
It took until the 19th century to figure out the WHY behind the microscopic process... People have been washing their hands and clothes since forever.
EquivalentSnap@reddit
Actually a lot of doctors didn’t and caused mortality rate for women giving birth as they didn’t wash their hands in between patients
_eleutheria@reddit
Holy shit. That's actually true... Doctors in the 1840s used to think that diseases were caused by fucking "miasma".
Nadiadain@reddit
That train of thought wasn’t completely unfounded, stinky stuff usually was full of bacteria and prone to cause infections but it was certainly an outdated idea by the 19th fucking century
JMcField@reddit
People today still don't believe vaccines actually work
Soft-Low1471@reddit
You mean Europeans
Zebedeuepaminondas@reddit
Don't read about the practices of European surgeons back then. They actually kept their tools dirty on purpose because it was considered a symbol of a successful professional.
spookymemeformat@reddit
Damn really?
Aethred@reddit
iirc the guy who first brought up washing your hands when going from a corpse examination to a surgery was laughed out of the room and never taken seriously.
sevivi@reddit
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Aethred@reddit
Thank you! Couldn't remember his name as I only remember the story from an epistemology course I took in college a long time ago. Damn the story is sadder than the quick summary our professor gave us.
StarSpliter@reddit
Honestly tragic. When he realized he unknowingly was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of deaths it broke him mentally. Only for the medical community to ridicule him as well.
TheOldGenesys@reddit
wasn't he put in a mental hospital and beaten to death too?
spookymemeformat@reddit
Holy shit
Adam__999@reddit
I hope they at least washed their hands before beating him to death
AyFrancis@reddit
He probably read it on tiktok thats taken from a urban legend of a single mental deranged guy
-accro@reddit
Reddit when ahistoric whiggism on progress about the people they dislike 😊
Soft-Low1471@reddit
And Who told you I hated Europeans?
-accro@reddit
Fair point, I was more annoyed by the bad history in other comments. My bad.
agusrosich@reddit
TO PREVENT WHAT??
sebastianinspace@reddit
bubonic plague
thr33beggars@reddit
To prevent Europeans
Hello_IM_FBI@reddit
'Ello guv!
Reading_username@reddit
real talk though, it's absolutely disgusting how many people don't wash hands. Like, ever.
Next time you're in a public bathroom, keep watch. Eyes on your own dicklet and all, but use your peripherals to observe and see how many men don't wash after using the bathroom.
And if you aren't washing after taking a fat dookie or squeezing the sausage... it's probably safe to say they nearly never do.
It's absolutely foul. These are the same dudes touching handrails, buttons, carts, door handles, etc that you are. Maybe even preparing your food.
Wash wash wash every opportunity you can.
sassystardragon@reddit
Real talk my dick is cleaner than any surface in that washroom, if I have to touch literally anything TO wash my hands ill leave and apply hard sanitizer.
If I touch stuff in the washroom then whatever ill wash full soap and lather and such but if I've avoided everything except the base of my shaft then fuck outta here touching everyone else's shit and piss germs TO wash my hands.
Reading_username@reddit
Remember folks, these are the kinds of people you are surrounded by in public.
sassystardragon@reddit
People that use hand sanitizer?
ItBelikeThatSomeTme_@reddit
People who put self importance over public health
AmbitiousEconomics@reddit
This gotta be a location by location thing because it's like, one guy every couple months I hear leave the restroom without washing their hands.
There is one engineer in the \~500 at our company who doesn't wash his hands and he is well known as dont let him touch your keyboard. That still feels like a bad ratio.
Reading_username@reddit
I mean... every time im in a public mall bathroom, a movie theater, etc. I observe it.
And it's not even a lowclass thing! The highest ratio of non-washers I see is at ski resorts, airports and golf courses.
And lets be honest, even many of the "washers" are just a quick water rinse. Nothing more.
AmbitiousEconomics@reddit
That is just totally opposite my experience. Most guys put soap on their hands and wash and while I could critique their technique, they're getting soap and water.
I will say bars later at night when people are hammered I would see thats when I see 99% of people who dont wash their hands. Outside of that day to day non-washers are basically nonexistant.
Except for you, Dave. Wash your fucking hands and don't touch my keyboard and mouse.
Mellohh@reddit
I’m with the other guy on this. Rarely see dudes wash their hands regardless of where I am. This is East and South USA in my experience.
Medical_String_3501@reddit
I've literally seen people touch the stalls, use the bathroom, check themselves in the mirror, run their fingers through their hair, use their phone, and leave without washing their hands. It's genuinely baffling how disgusting people are.
Fummy@reddit
People washed their hands to get dirt if them, there wasn't a connection with getting sick until the germ theory.
According_Tourist_69@reddit
Well for a long time we also thought flies come out of thin air right?
MrWink@reddit
We used to have no idea what happened to migratory birds in winter. Best guesses were that they went underwater to hibernate, or transform into mice. I'm not even making that up. It took scientists a ridiculously long time (until the early 1820s) to figure it out.
IAMA_Ghost_Boo@reddit
I'm drunk and don't wanna Google, anywhere I can read about this? Thanks
zombieGenm_0x68@reddit
back in the day mfs thought animals spawned like in minecraft 😭
PranshuKhandal@reddit
wait, they don't? minecraft has been lying to me?
TheRrandomm@reddit
Banana flies surely do
CptSandbag73@reddit
Fruit flies like a banana. Time flies like an arrow.
UPVOTE_IF_POOPING@reddit
Good ol’ spontaneous generation
chengiz@reddit
They spontaneously generate in the primordial soup at the bottom of your garbage on a hot day.
bonger3113@reddit
And the guy who figured it out was later put in to a mental hospital
Anonreddit96@reddit
Figured it out in Europe.
This was common sense in plenty of eastern countries.
vjmdhzgr@reddit
He was put in a mental hospital because he was an obstetrician working in the dirtiest hospital in Europe so he caught syphilis which eventually developed into neurosyphilis which really does make you insane.
Though the mental hospital he was sent to was absolutely horrible they basically just executed him slowly over the course of two weeks in there. The general concept of Semmelweis being sent to a mental hospital would be correct.
Also when I went to check exactly how his death went I found that the rejection of his ideas is greatly overstated. There were a bunch of British doctors that agreed with his ideas and began spreading them, reportedly very successfully. And actually the first response he received from a British doctor was that Austria-Hungary must have no knowledge of british obstetrical literature, because he had already found out that childbed fever was contagious and chlorine washing should be used to protect from it.
page 174 of this book https://archive.org/details/etiologyconcepta0000unse/page/174/mode/2up
On the page before that he actually mentions a favorable review from the chief physician at the imperial hospital in vienna.
Getting to the ones critical of him, there's some decent criticisms about the way he conducted the experiment, and lots of hospitals going like "We already don't do dissections and childbirths by the same people."
It's a lot more, "I think there's a different cause to this problem than just "corpse contamination" and so there are probably better solutions, and we should be trying different things instead." than "You dare insult my heavenly doctory hands? These could never spread a disease!" To my understanding his treatment at his home hospital was quite negative, which was probably something of a "I couldn't have been responsible for killing all these women at the worst hospital in the country! It must be Semmelweis who's wrong!" But the wider medical response seems pretty reasonable actually.
I'm really happy to finally find this book. I tried to do a huge school project on Semmelweis in 11th grade and it was really stressful because I could tell the whole time that something was off about the simplistic version of the story but I struggled to find direct sources that explained what it was exactly.
-accro@reddit
Thank you for providing some information. History is never so absolute
3016137234@reddit
I haven’t looked into it in a while (and I even forget the guy’s name, I think he was Austrian?) but I remember learning that the guy was a dickhead to all of his colleagues, and wouldn’t subject the handwashing to any kind of scientific method to actually see if that’s what was lowering the mortality rates in his hospital. It’s hard to get traction in the scientific community when you’re being a combative dick with everyone else in that community.
vjmdhzgr@reddit
He did write a lot of notes on how the handwashing changed mortality. I tried to read them once but they were in German so I had a limited ability to understand it.
Kazuma_Megu@reddit
It's hard to get traction in the scientific community even if you're not being a dick from what I've read. That is, if the right people are butthurt about you challenging the ideas they've been spouting for a given amount of time.
GuerillaGandhi@reddit
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis from, at the time, Austria-Hungary.
Proglamer@reddit
The Orthodoxy of Science™ is never wrong, but if it is, its victims are mere pavement stones on the Road of Progress®
strawberry_semenade@reddit
Where he died of a disease that could've been prevented if everyone washed their hands properly.
1960somethingbatman@reddit
RIP Ignaz Semmelweis. Maxxed out intelligence, but his negative Charisma score got him killed.
Limp-Temperature1783@reddit
Wait until people find out about the unfathomable technology called bidet. I wonder how many centuries will people continue to be hell-bent on wiping their ass with toilet paper which is both wasteful and doesn't do shit for hygiene.
Sofagirrl79@reddit
Dumb question but don't most people who use TP wet the TP? I'm in the U.S and never had a bidet but when shit gets sticky I wet my TP rather just wipe it dry as that does nothing unless you have one of those pleasant poops where when you wipe nothing sticks to the TP lol
Limp-Temperature1783@reddit
It's still much more wasteful. Water costs of producing toilet paper are larger than water costs of showering or using a bidet. If you wet TP you might as well have taken a shower.
da_foamy_pancake@reddit
truth, i started using a bidet 5 years ago and I will never go back. whenever im in a place without one i just take a shower after taking a shit or else i feel like a disgusting savage.
EddieDIV@reddit
It truly is life changing. I do feel that wet wipes are a solid second choice when away from home though
AnkleMuncher64@reddit
It took white people that long to figure it out *
MariusCatalin@reddit
EXCEPT ITS A LIE, many many many people washed their hands before that
NakedAggression@reddit
TheTMJ@reddit
It was widely accepted and recorded in texts by then.
It was figured out multiple times. It just never survived outside of certain areas as knowledge wasn’t properly accumulated and assimilated by conquering empires.
Europe could have discovered it earlier but the doctor who made the connection went against the established norms and was ostracised and discredited, which still happens today, albeit less frequently
piketpagi@reddit
I mean, we still have people with lack of hygene education who thinks touching the asscrack is gay
WSuperOS@reddit
Well they did wash them. There wasn't any soap :/
critsalot@reddit
the romans used olive oil to cleanse themselves. people knew to be clean before soap.
DepartureNatural9340@reddit
I mean, they weren't idiots They did understand bathing and washing of themselves and clothes and did reason it could affect health.
And they knew that like rotting flesh and corpses could make water or food dangerous
But due to not knowing about germs, they didn't know of the impact of regular washing hands after specific things had
Plus like, clean water and cleaning stuff like soap wasn't something that was so readily available for most ppl so that you could wash your hands regularly several times a day
They understood cleaning helped, that's why bath houses showed up independently across several cultures. Just not the details of how and how much
Mf they invented crop rotation in the middle ages, selective breeding for much longer, natives understood burnings to care for forests, the shape of the earth, gunpowder, chemistry, astral navigation among many other inventions
Ancient people aren't dumb just because you find things intuitive
ThrowAbout01@reddit
Most water wasn’t safe to drink so their primary means of hydration was alcoholic beverages.
Everyone was too sloshed.
gooberphta@reddit
Quit spreadin misinformation, they drank low alcohol beverages as a food, they knew that shitting and drinking in the same river wasnt great, they had wells. I
TheMacarooniGuy@reddit
Maybe they knew it, but knowledge doesn't make water clean
Kotoy77@reddit
wells have clean water bro
TheMacarooniGuy@reddit
Yeah, but wells don't exist anywhere you want them to exist.
They're also only as clean as the water feeding it too. Humans and other animals and their different activities in our society can be pretty dirty. I don't know about you but if I lived back in the middle ages I would opt out of drinking from wells if possible.
We don't use wells today because it's just much more unsafe than "real clean water".
Aethred@reddit
We don't use wells today because of chemical agents seeping into the ground from intense agriculture or industry, problems that didn't exist for the majority of human history. Unless you were just building wells in random spots and were unlucky with your nearby surrounding mineral composition you were good with wells and it was an indicator of wealth and stability.
gooberphta@reddit
No but it compells to build a well or boil your water?????
PinoManfrinoSandrigo@reddit
Wrong, both historically and scientifically.
b2hcy0@reddit
its sort of very random to assume that rubbing your hands happy merchant style under water prevents the disease spirits from tormenting you for some hours
Flab_Queen@reddit
Washing your hands in contaminated water would make you sick, so it wasn’t necessary obvious.
DAN3KE@reddit
*Europeans*
yusuf1029@reddit
Germ theory is a plot. Terrain theory is a lot closer to reality.
yaosio@reddit
The modern bike wasn't invented until the 1880's. This was after the car was invented.
OfficialHelpK@reddit
Many religions and cultures have some sorts of ritual washing, so I think many understood that it was good to be clean, they just didn't understand why
bmcgowan89@reddit
It took >!useimagination!<s until the mid 21st century to figure out that shitting in toilets instead of streets could prevent you from getting sick, and I'm still not convinced that they're there yet. It's a wild time to be alive, that's for sure
CptSandbag73@reddit
Oh no… it’s not the mid 21st century yet!
UncleBlob@reddit
It's almost like centuries of imperial rule and oppression stunts the progress of culture and technology.
floydianvergil@reddit
Latvians? Let them fertilise the street ffs
shroomigator@reddit
In the US, it is the law that all homeless people must shit in the street, because there are very few publuc bathrooms and they close for the night at 3pm
TGWsharky@reddit
I know this seems really obvious once you know about germs and bacteria, but there was genuinely no reason to believe that it would be necessary.
I have no doubts that in 100 years, we will be looked back at with the same expressions of dumbfoundedness.
Churchofdoom@reddit
India is behind
Eevertti@reddit
It didn't used to. It was only "found out" after the industrial revolution polluted the environment enough for bacteria to become toxic.
FunnyP-aradox@reddit
There always were toxic bacterias
GalaXion24@reddit
So this is quite a misrepresentation, because we had it figured out for a long time. What actually happened is that it took that long for the scientific community to accept it.
There's a few reasons for this. One is that the scientific community as we know it is quite new. The other is that early science was often quite skeptical of folk knowledge and mostly saw it as superstition. Traditional midwives thus knew to wash their hands, not because they had any idea of germ theory, but because it was a tradition passed down that they superstitiously followed, but trained doctors didn't, because it was not a part of their education and the scientific world didn't know this was important or how it worked.
It's a mark of a transition period from tradition to science, where these things did not get along. And in all fairness it was for a reason. A lot of traditional practices and medicine were nonsense. Today of course traditional medicine that actually works is proven and called medicine, and we've rediscovered things that work and can now actually explain them.
There was perhaps irrational arrogance and resistance involved towards doctors washing their hands, but this doesn't mean Europeans or people globally actually never washed their hands in the past nor were people actually stupid. Epistemology changed and caused frictions temporarily, that's all.
oberstein123@reddit
and they laughed at the dude who figured it out
thomstevens420@reddit
“It took humans until the 25th century to figure out that air is what causes cancer. What the fuck?”
romulusnr@reddit
Even better. It took until the LATE 19th century to figure out that doctors washing their hands prevented patients from getting sick (really, really, really sick).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Okaoka_12@reddit
Seriously it took that long? Now I'm wondering what else we don't know
Marciano_il_Mario@reddit
Yet Anon still hasn't figured out how to bathe.
MrYougan@reddit
No it didn't, but stupid myth depicting pass generations as more stupid than the current one are very hard to kill.
Wich is why we still have books calling the early medieval "the dark age".
agentofmidgard@reddit
On a related note, remember when celebrities filmed tutorials on how to wash hands during the lockdown?
Treqou@reddit
200 million years of evolution baby to get wiped out by an invisible boogy man. Open your eyes sheeple /s
BankofAmericas@reddit
America did not have “the highest number of Covid deaths” either in total or per capita. It is not even in the top 10.
Also, I didn’t know that the Americans who refused to wear masks or social distance also refuse to use soap. But okay…
SherabTod@reddit
And then the guy who figured it out got absolutely shat on by his medical peers for daring to suggest such a thing
Pintsocream@reddit
Jews were blamed for the black plague because they weren't getting sick as much. Turns out they were the only ones washing their hands.
Monty423@reddit
It upsetting the 4 humours or something
airfryerfuntime@reddit
Nah, they knew, they just liked being gross slobs.
GrondForGondor@reddit
Surgeons used to keep their clothes and aprons bloodied and dirty as a sign of experience.
Thedinomage@reddit
Even worse, the guy who found out was told he was wrong. He went crazy and killed himself.
JustChillin3456@reddit
We are just as smart as our ancestors
The only difference is we have al of humanity’s knowledge in the palm of our hand
revolverXD@reddit
Expect the Jews that always washed their hand
Which caused the rest of the population to try and kill them all the time
CallMeBaitlyn@reddit
Well Jews and Muslims had/have strict hygiene, cleanliness, and food preparation religious laws. This is what led to the propaganda that "Jews were poisoning well with sick animals" as they weren't as effected during the black plague.
richard_stank@reddit
From then on it was like 70 years to the atomic bomb. That’s pretty neat.
YaBoiiRunk@reddit
You'd be surprised how many to this day still need to discover this fact
SunriseSurprize@reddit
Some people still haven't figured it out
Weneeddietbleach@reddit
But did we really figure that out? I can't count how many times I've walked into the restroom at work or a restaurant just to see some guy having finished his business and walking out without washing.
SlayerOfShitbulls@reddit
2026 and there are people who still believe communism is a good idea.
baudmiksen@reddit
Seems like a bit too much of anything has diminishing returns. Except pizza, maybe
MyHeadIsFullOfFuck@reddit (OP)
china will grow larger
plain_handle@reddit
China is ... not a communist state ? Just totalitarian.
tukebeard@reddit
We’re learning that China might not even have a billion people, maybe as few as 600 million.
Quitthesht@reddit
Haven't seen it mentioned here but the reason European doctors didn't wash their hands was because they genuinely believed 'a gentleman's hands are never dirty' and the mortality rate of women during labor was high because doctors would legitimately handle corpses/perform autopsies before delivering a baby without washing or cleaning themselves and pass on god knows what to the immuno-compromised mothers.
Then the guy who suggested doctors should wash their hands was publicly shamed, discredited and tricked by other doctors into an asylum where he was beaten by guards for trying to leave and died of sepsis stemming from injuries from the beating.
NotRandomseer@reddit
The vast majority of progress has happened relatively recently. For most of human history progress was slow
SmoothPimp85@reddit
Many people still do believe that washing hands and food reduces their immunity.
MiNdOverLOADED23@reddit
It was such a point of contention that even after the US civil war president Garfield died because his Drs didn't want to wash their hands
Tsorm@reddit
It's just white people specifically doesn't want to shower
chantsnone@reddit
Modern humans have been around for 300,000 years. We need a lot of time.
IlIIllIIIlllIlIlI@reddit
Also, prime example of what a real example of toxic masculinity is, many doctors still refused for a long time because nurses washed their hands and they viewed it as effeminate.
SpaceBug176@reddit
Reminds me of when they let women steal high heels from them.
shroomigator@reddit
And the guy who pointed it out got put into an asylum for it