Soul-Crushingly depressing? As being the normal life of a good chunk of human beings I think it's excessive.

etb said:

Soul-Crushingly depressing? As being the normal life of a good chunk of human beings I think it's excessive.

Well, but isn't that exactly why it is depressing?

Plot twist: it's a paint factory out the window.

Makes you wonder why people would trade the blue skies and green fields for crude factories and choking smog...

CWHargraves said:

Makes you wonder why people would trade the blue skies and green fields for crude factories and choking smog...

There oughta be a name for this perspective. Perhaps myopic virtue?

CWHargraves said:

Makes you wonder why people would trade the blue skies and green fields for crude factories and choking smog...

Its where the jobs are, that's why anybody ever did it.

HaroldRowsdower said:

Its where the jobs are, that's why anybody ever did it.

Exactly. You can have those green and wide lands, but you will have to sacrifice all of your modern conveniences as well as occupying all your free time farming or marketing your profession. Its a case of the grass is greener on the other side. Haha.

Until 20-th century average age of die was 30-35. And it's reason was starvation or illness.
I think when someone dies from starvation they don't give a .... about beautiful scenery around them.

So we swapped dying of starvation for dying from air pollution.

Claverhouse said:

So we swapped dying of starvation for dying from air pollution.

You aren't dying of air pollution when you are living longer. In fact, air quality is far better now than it used to be living in industrialized areas. Modern technology allows us to live more varied and independent and longer lives. Look at it this way, we get to talk about cute animu girls every day on this cardboard box rather than about how "old man" Ed finally succumbed to pneumonia at the tender age of 30, or best farming techniques to ensure a good harvest. We can sit down and eat a hamburger while watching cute girls doing cute thing in tanks rather than tending to crops 10 hours a day and skipping lunch because otherwise we might not have enough food for winter. We can walk down the street to the konbeni at night to pick up a chimichanga without having to play literal danmaku with raiding factions or criminal elements looking to prey on individuals not traveling in packs.

I say we got the good life no matter how you look at it. If it isn't broken, don't "fix" it.

Those in Beijing may differ. The WHO reckons one in eight premature deaths are due to air pollution worldwide.

Claverhouse said:

Those in Beijing may differ. The WHO reckons one in eight premature deaths are due to air pollution worldwide.

Beijing/China is a bad and an extreme example.

Long story short : When the government says "more factories", you build more factories, damn everything else.

Why are there Captain Planet villians in the comment section?

TheGame7 said:

Why are there Captain Planet villians in the comment section?

Captain planet and the Earth really doesn't give a damn about human pollution. Humans may come and go but Earth abides. Very Doctor Manhattan-like (Watchmen). What we call "waste" is really the building blocks that make cellulose (plant stuff), ore, and other matter found in this world. People have a religious viewpoint on what is "natural" or not (which is arbitrary since anything that exists is really natural unless you view humans as some kind of force separate from the random chance or divine guidance of reality), when really we should be asking what works and what doesn't. I say that if we are living longer, 2>1, I'll take it and I don't have any complaints unless we find a new way of living that is objectively better.

Claverhouse said:

Those in Beijing may differ. The WHO reckons one in eight premature deaths are due to air pollution worldwide.

China has their own clusterfuck to deal with because the people in power are corrupt (then again, which government doesn't have their bad apples...) but because they are communistic (or socialism, same thing in economics) and not capitalistic their industrialization is not a result of a response to a market deficiency and does not actually help the individual, but the "community", which is whatever the state decides to define as they execute or protect different categories of people on a whim. It's a sad state because Chinese people are some of the smartest, innovative, and hard working people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Hong Kong should never have been released from British rule, but I digress...

I said that because there's people here trying to defend pollution in the comments here.

"We're living longer because of pollution!"

That's dumb.

Knowing to boil water before you drink it and sanitize medical tools before you cut into someone has nothing to do with the lack of foresight and morals of industry founders.

Medical knowledge's progress is incidental to giant smoke stacks bellowing black death into the skies. It's a logic fallacy that's on par with saying that after the holocaust human populations went up in the next few decades so that means killing millions in gas chambers is a good way to increase populations.

"It's were the jobs are!"

There's also jobs in small town that have no overindustalized environment-killing sectors. The amish get by just fine without stereotypical smokestack industry as well.

These pro-pollution people sound like they had really bad camping experiences and now hate nature and anything green in general.

TheGame7 said:

...

You do realize that all that pollution is what is greasing the gears of society that produces food, medicine, technology, security, etc? THAT is what is making us live longer, not air quality. Small towns with no industrialized sectors have very little exports which is why they never grow and usually die off when the original population dies or moves. You can't say you want rural life AND the benefit of urban conveniences at the same time. If we could have both, then attempts to do so would have succeed, but unfortunately in the process of "cleaning things up" humanity takes several leaps backwards in suppressing the industries that make modern life. For example, we never had an energy crisis until environmentalism started isolating certain energy sources as "unnatural" arbitrarily. I'll take longer life and dirty air over shorter life and clean air.

Even if what you said is true, I still feel uncomfortable with the idea of living longer by depending on artificial human technology. Why won't you choose the shorter, less suffering one? And this might be the first time I heard pollution improves life quality.

RomanticTP said:

Even if what you said is true, I still feel uncomfortable with the idea of living longer by depending on artificial human technology. Why won't you choose the shorter, less suffering one? And this might be the first time I heard pollution improves life quality.

Who says we are suffering? At least, I'm not. I live a fulfilling day at work, classes, and come home to anime watching cute girls doing cute things. I eat 2 full meals daily (meals puts you in parasympathetic response making you sleepy so I skip breakfast), and can buy literally anything I want in the world [even stuff I didn't even know I wanted] if I have the money. I'm literally living like a king in such a posh way that has never been known to man until the last couple of decades. Pollution seems more over-hyped by special interest groups that profit by selling government policy and political following than a real problem to humanity. We have been brainwashed from public education (well, depends what year you went through your education) and public media that there is a problem when there really isn't,, and to solve this mythical problem we have to place our trust and money in these people with the "solutions" who will fix what isn't broken. We are made to believe humans are somehow "unnatural" and inherently undesirable, when we are a force of nature on our own.

Without that "pollution" we will all die quickly from disease and starvation due to low industry. Just take a look at Africa or other places in the world. No industry equals poor living (aside from other factors such as no law/order, terrorism, and adherence primitive tribal cultural standards vs nationalism) despite all the billions of dollars pumped into that money pit yearly.

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