Oh no! Another rich person caring more about an Instagram photo then the environment on the mountain and the wellbeing of their sherpas has died! Aaaaanyway.
And of course they put aside enough money to have their corpses removed and all the rubbish they took up with them…right? Self indulgent, ego stroking narcissism is what this is. They could have used their wealth to help community development programs in Nepal and pushed for making Everest a restricted world heritage site.
I would have thought that until I read Jon Krakauer’s book about people ascending Everest, Into Thin Air, which includes a lady the Sherpas basically carried up.
Yeah, just live in poverty instead. They’re practically forced to because nobody can turn down that money. You going to let your extended family starve?
These tourists pay huge sums of money; do you think it’s fairly distributed? Do you think the rich assholes treat these highly skilled mountaineers well? Despite all that, and the danger, they still do it because it’s good money. There’s not many high paying jobs in Tibet.
I still feel bad for the exploited sherpas. They’re in a shitty situation. This isn’t just as easy as “it’s a personal decision”, which is a fucked up perspective imo.
According to Wikipedia there's ~600,000 Sherpas in the world. Are you seriously saying that the only thing they can do to avoid poverty is work as Everest guides (or have an extended family member doing it)?
I’m not talking about the Sherpa people, but rather the profession of Sherpa which is a subset of these people. There aren’t even 600k Sherpa (people) globally. A few hundred Sherpa (profession) handle Everest.
And yes, that’s what I’m saying. Tibet is a poor country. What industry aside from Everest tourism do they have?
So a few hundred Sherpa (profession) would be completely unable to find other jobs, like their hundreds of thousands of bretheren have somehow managed to do.
Look, I don't want people to die on Everest. But nobody is forced to go there, not even the Sherpas. They choose to go there. They know what they're getting into and what the risks are. If you're going to feel bad for them then you should also feel bad for the climbers, and vice versa.
If you’re going to feel bad for them then you should also feel bad for the climbers, and vice versa.
I don’t think so. This is an asymmetric relationship. It’s been documented time and time again the tourists treat the sherpas like shit. There’s also plenty of evidence they treat the mountain like shit, a mountain which is sacred to the Sherpa people. No, I don’t think I’ll feel bad for those who litter in what should be a pristine location and treat the locals poorly.
(Side note, I don’t even know what to call that extra vice versa. It’s like a vice versa double negative. You were already in vice versa mode by suggesting I should also feel bad for the tourists.)
And actually, my point is just that you should feel equally bad for them. They're both people who chose to be there and they're both people that died. If you don't want to feel bad for them then that's fine too.
Nope. There’s a good documentary called Sherpa you should check out. Also - why do so many people know who Sir Edmund Hillary is, but not Tenzing Norgay? They both were the first up there. Sherpas have been treated poorly as long as people have been summiting the mountain.
The mountain is covered in unrecoverable corpses, trash and literal human shit, it’s deadly, it’s freezing cold, there’s almost no oxygen, and there’s a line to get to the peak once you get there. The only reason to keep this nonsense up is that it gives the Sherpas money they would otherwise not have and they’re poor enough as it is.
Seriously though, why bother even if you love mountain climbing? Sure, it’s the highest point on the planet, but wouldn’t you rather climb something more pristine?
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