12 ms·

I find that the root issue is individualism. There are immaculately clean cities in east asia whos parent societies would definitely qualify as highly "consumer

• seattle_spring 7y ago
  East Asian national parks are also completely paved over and devoid of almost any remnant of a natural experience. And please don't tell me it's only westerners breaking all of the rules in US national parks.
  • ixtli 7y ago
    Can you explain why this seems so to you? Totally not my experience with visiting national parks in Korea and Japan. For one thing, much of Japans un-developed nature is such because its largely as impassable now as it was in the 1600s when Basho wrote Ooku no hosomichi. I dunno why you'd bother paving anything. EDIT: It's also certainly not just westerners, but again, my experience has shown me that there are societies that do better at training citizens not to litter.
    • seattle_spring 7y ago
      Never been to Korea or Japan, but I spent several months exploring the parks of China. I never want to go back.
      • yannyu 7y ago
        So your experience of "East Asian national parks" is just China?
      • jacquesm 7y ago
        You really should not extrapolate to a whole continent from such a small sample.
        • cglace 7y ago
          Do be fair, they did say "east asia" and China does make up the majority of east asia by population and land mass.
          • jacquesm 7y ago
            Yes, but at the same time it is a-typical in its approach to many concepts, apparently including national parks. And even there, given the size of the country there is a very large chance that OP's sample size is small even within China alone. They could have just as well been more specific and simply said 'China' or name the specific parks rather than to write 'east Asia'.
            • cglace 7y ago
              My main point was just that he was not "extrapolating to a whole continent". Which is a nitpick, however, it also makes your nitpick more nitckpicky due to his generalization becoming far less general.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
• brokenkebab 7y ago
  It's like saying that USA is mostly taiga, and tundra, because there's Alaska. Most of those collectivist societies have very dirty cities (both in terms of ecology, and esthetics). And nobody seems to care. Singapore, and Japan (and Korea, but only in south) stand as exceptions.
• StreamBright 7y ago
  How would you explain Singapore then?
• jsonne 7y ago
  8 of the 10 most polluted rivers in the world are in East Asia. Of the top polluted cities in the world 8 of 10 are in Asia. Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search.
  • Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    The grandparent is probably pointing to Singapore. That is a state that is infamous for being extremely clean and tidy. At the same time, it is highly consumerist, with so much of its traditional community infrastructure demolished and replaced with shopping malls.
    • whatshisface 7y ago
      Don't the massive government penalties for littering have something to do with it? It turns out that, yes, after all, laws and punishment do act as a deterrent.
      • gambiting 7y ago
        No, time and time it has been proven that the inevitability of punishment is a deterrent, not the punishment itself. A punishment for littering could be 10 years of hard labour, but it doesn't matter a little bit if there's no one enforcing it and there's no police on the streets. Like.....you know why people are speeding? Not because anyone thinks "meh, the fine is only $200, I can afford that" but because they think "I'm not going to get caught today".
      • philliphaydon 7y ago
        Yes. It works in Singapore. In places like japan and Taiwan though, they have much more respect for their country. Even Thailand. In Phuket I’ve seen the locals who live off tourism on the beaches picking up rubbish the tourists leave behind. Never see that sort of thing in the west. Malaysia and Myanmar however they just throw it out the window as they drive.
  • onion2k 7y ago
    8 of the 10 most polluted rivers in the world are in East Asia. Of the top polluted cities in the world 8 of 10 are in Asia. Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search. Those rivers and cities are all in the manufacturing regions that supply goods to customers in the west. The root cause of the pollution is our consumerism coupled to the governments of Eastern countries enabling exceptionally cheap labor that we exploit. To blame the nations of East Asia for the problem is a pretty poor analysis on your part.
• lm28469 7y ago
  > There are immaculately clean cities in east asia Isn't it because they have armies of cleaning people in the streets ? A friend of mine told me about it, I think he was in South Korea, Seoul perhaps, at the time. He told me people mostly act the same but their cities are more efficient at cleaning the mess before it piles up. I don't know if there are other laws similar to that [0] but it probably explain some behaviours too. I agree with the underlying point though, some people just don't give a shit. I visited a small greek island last year and was appalled to see that locals were throwing their trash, old furnitures, construction materials, &c. over a cliff, straight to the ocean. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore
  • jshowa3 7y ago
    I've frequented China quite a lot the past year. They usually have people that clean the streets regularly as part of their job. They often hall two wheel carts around to carry their equipment and large brush that has fallen from trees. However, I don't think Chinese do a great job of separating their trash that well despite having recycle bins and trash bins clearly labeled on the streets.
  • dasloop 7y ago
    Not in Japan. No armies of cleaning people are required.
    • mistermann 7y ago
      Kids clean their own schools in Japan. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/students-in-japan-clean-their-own-classrooms-and-school-toilets-and-the-reason-is-incredible-1227619-2018-05-06 https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/stor... Whereas in the West, we just tell ourselves stories like all cultures are equal, and even though it's obviously not even remotely true, most people seem to believe it.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
• PavlovsCat 7y ago
  > A more collectivist attitude appears, from my experience, to get people to be more thoughtful. Doing something good today, just because of peer pressure, means a person might take part in a progrom tomorrow, for the same motivation. I'd rather say collectivism and thought are directly opposed. > The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons. -- Hannah Arendt, "On Evil" And when it comes to large scale pollution, plastic flowing into the ocean, Asian nations at the very least don't seem any better than western industrialized ones, do they?
• tomxor 7y ago
  I think you're both wrong. Since the dawn of civilization there has and always will be people disrespectful of nature. Your proposed causes are merely localised perturbations. I think the _recent_ issue is in the title, and it's global, it's social networking. I can't think of any other force in the world that pushes huge numbers of people who have basically no interest or respect for nature, to go out into it, not learn anything, not gain any respect, and then destroy it... Selfies are a natural resource for social networking, and the natural world is full of them, ripe for exploitation.
  • PavlovsCat 7y ago
    > Pictures are the a natural resource for social networking, and nature is full of them, ripe for exploitation. > [..] it is an economic function of photography to supply the masses, by modish processing, with matter which previously eluded mass consumption. -- Walter Benjamin, 1934 It's like people shifted from even that, to needing to have a photo with themselves front and center. Trample nature, then mess up the photo, too, and of course, burn a whole lot of kerosene. To be less bitter about it, if people had more imagination and confidence, they wouldn't need to see everything first-hand, and wouldn't need to collect external proof that they're "someone". That seems achievable and worthwhile.
• rhino369 7y ago
  Chinese tourists are considered some of the most rude and dirty, and China is a collectivist society. I think it’s just a problem with tourism.
  • paulsutter 7y ago
    “are considered”? This is a ridiculous stereotype. I’ve seen Chinese travelers around the world and they’re as sophisticated as anyone
    • rhino369 7y ago
      It's certainly a generalization, but I'm not sure how to talk "societies" (per the post I was responding to) without generalizing. So it's definitely a stereotype, but I don't think it is an unearned stereotype. And like all generalizations, it not accurate on a person by person basis. Just look at what China did to its own environment to get a sense of how much that society values the environment.
    • ubercow13 7y ago
      Yes I agree, I have been traveling a lot recently and Chinese tourists usually seem respectful and amongst the best behaved. This stereotype is ridiculous.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• naravara 7y ago
  In spite of our individualism, most Americans still stop at red lights and wait for--sometimes inordinately long--lengths of time for it to turn green before proceeding despite there being no cross traffic and no practical reason why they should. They do this even if they know there is no enforcement or traffic camera. They do this because they are educated and have the value inculcated in them very early on that "red means stop and green means go." They also learn that behaving in compliance with this rule is critical for the orderly functioning of society. Interestingly, when people are out of their cars, suddenly their ideas about the iron law of traffic lights get way more loosey-goosey. Part of this is because they sense, deep down, that the traffic laws aren't designed with non-car road users in mind, so cyclists think it makes more sense to treat red lights as stop signs and pedestrians resent not being able to walk wherever and however they please. But a bigger part of it is that all the social conditioning is based on driving and not on walking. So that deep-down sense of "This is wrong" that keeps people in line doesn't exist once they're out of their cars. This guidance even applies in the car for signage that isn't common. Stop signs and traffic lights are explained to you from when you're a child. But Yield signs and 4 way stops are not always and, consequently, you see a lot less compliance among drivers on this front. In places like Japan, it's not some property of the "communitarian culture" that magically makes people more likely to pick up after themselves. It's drilled into them from childhood. Kids are expected to tidy up at home by themselves. It's a standard part of the pre-K and early childhood education to clean up your spaces regardless of who made the mess. And when the cleaning staff comes by to do the deep cleaning, the children are generally told to THANK THEM for their contributions rather than taking them for granted. Culture isn't some exogenous force that falls out of the sky or is bred into our genes. It emerges as a consequence of how we socially condition ourselves, what we teach our kids, what we expect from each other, and what we are willing to put up with. To put up with shitty aspects of our own cultures rather than adapting or changing is a choice we make.
• LMYahooTFY 7y ago
  I don't find "individualism" to be mutually exclusive to "collectivism" in this way. They may counter balance each other to some degree, but I have serious doubts that there is any issue that can be elevated to "root issue". Especially with concepts as ambiguous as "individualism".