Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Western culture? What?

Besides some filthy cultures in the East, the majority of Eastern cultures have cleanliness even baked into their faith affecting everything from how they shower to how they pray to how they eat.



Which reminds me of this most likely apocryphal quote:

"Interviewer: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think about Western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/23/good-idea/


I put "dirty" in quotes for a reason. People are just expected to hold themselves to a higher standard of cleanliness in other cultures instead of hacking around it with copious amounts of plastic.

Much of the rest of the civilized world holds cleanliness in high(er) regard, but they're not germophobes.


I'm not sure what "dirty" is, but a major reason for Western cleanliness was Florence Nightingale, a pioneer of medicine and statistics:

Washing of hands wasn't a big thing before her.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale


The argument being made is that in terms of achieving cleanliness, wrapping things in plastic is the opposite of washing your hands.


Your hands get raw after washing too much.

Wrapping things up is a natural progression from constant hand washing.


Hand washing doesn't need to be constant to be effective in the vast majority of situations, especially the situations where you're setting up a big bunch of items and you could wrap them.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: