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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44988 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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But why do you have a nightly shower? Are you so dirty that you must wash every night? Are you engaged in strenuous or muddy labour?

It's not mere hygiene at work, since if you have a conventional office job, you're not exerting yourself physically enough to require constant washing. It's the ideal of hygiene. If you skipped a night without showering, would you miss it? Would you feel, somehow, 'dirty'? Isn't there, in a sense, a moral obligation to keep yourself clean according to how you were raised?

And if it were difficult for you to have that shower every night, if you didn't have access to a bathroom and heated water and convenient disposal of same, and easy to keep dry and warm afterwards, then would you shower every night? Increasing convenience, increasing access to what were once 'luxury' resources, increasing space, means that it becomes easier to copy the rich in their habits, and that builds up expectations thereafter, so that I doubt if you could get away today with building a house or apartment that had no shower.

So "poor people should have access to means of hygiene" does arise out of a particular political philosophy, and ends in you having a nightly shower as well as brushing your teeth, because 'this is just how it is done'.

But why do you have a nightly shower? Are you so dirty that you must wash every night? Are you engaged in strenuous or muddy labour?

It's not mere hygiene at work, since if you have a conventional office job, you're not exerting yourself physically enough to require constant washing. It's the ideal of hygiene. If you skipped a night without showering, would you miss it? Would you feel, somehow, 'dirty'? Isn't there, in a sense, a moral obligation to keep yourself clean according to how you were raised?

I run over 3 miles almost daily and lift weights, and even if I don't do that I get greasy if I don't shower. I do it for purely physical reasons.

And if it were difficult for you to have that shower every night, if you didn't have access to a bathroom and heated water and convenient disposal of same, and easy to keep dry and warm afterwards, then would you shower every night?

No, so if you took me from the woods and put me in a house my change in showering behavior would be explained by physical environment.

So "poor people should have access to means of hygiene" does arise out of a particular political philosophy, and ends in you having a nightly shower as well as brushing your teeth, because 'this is just how it is done'.

I think it's pretty clear increases in hygiene are due to changes in physical environment, not John Locke's moral ontology ...

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