2020: Cultural Hygiene

March 31, 2020

By AHNZ

COVID-19 or not, influenza-like illness was bound to hit NZ this cold and flu season and fall heaviest upon Maori and Pacific people. Based on history, we can expect 2020 to play out the same way.

During the Edwardian and late-Victorian eras that founded New Zealand as a British colony certain values were strongly held. A particular upgrade to our cultural firmware was installed vigorously. One historian even describes the adoption of hygiene culture as a “paranoid craze.”

“In the late Victorian and Edwardian period people are first really getting to grips with what germs are….as a result it sort of promotes almost a paranoia really about germs and bacteria and dirt so that you find really very rigorous cleaning regimes.”- Ruth Goodman; Edwardian Farm (2010)

 

These attitudes and practices are written into the cultural code of The West. British in particular practice ‘social distancing’ as a matter of normal interaction. As a result, we are infected less and especially transmit diseases less than other cultures yet to follow the same example. When I was a kid we were taught about Joseph Lister as a great hero of our society and the importance of his contribution to our culture. It left such an impression on me that I kept the notes about him from my 10-yo self (image right.) It was impressed upon my generation, especially by our grandparents, I think, to keep clean habits and certainly not to spit.

It is not the Western New Zealander with these values who needs to fear epidemic. Those who have not received this firmware, or who have shirked it, put themselves and those around them at risk.

Lapse in Cultural Hygiene

During Concrete Culture times, such as the mid-1940s when this poster (left) was created, we seem to need a reminder about Lister’s lessons. The abstract Dignity Culture idea of being hygienic on principle doesn’t translate to the mindset of the Concrete Cultures (SC and HC.) A definitive trait of the Concrete mind is that it has a very low time preference and does not see the further reaching consequences to sneezing or snot-rocketing or non-cleaning of bodies and surfaces.

Sportsmen, in particular, are Honour Culture and have a very strong tendency to put their individual athletic efforts far ahead of basic hygiene. This is evidenced by countless examples of rugby players cleaning their nose via a Snot Rocket (aka Farmer’s Blow) directly into the field of play. You may have noticed in increase in spitting and rocketing into public places during these last few years as a result of SC and HC being on the rise and increasingly unrestrained by Abstract edicts from the VC or DC.

Runners and cyclists, in particular, encourage one another to Snot Rocket in public without reproach…

Your adoring family are waiting in the stands ‘We saw you do this massive snot rocket as you came past the grandstand. You’re disgusting. Great run.”- My Romance With Running

Even on television, where we can expect broadcasters to try to cut such scenes, we often see rugby players spitting and rocketing these days without reproach. It’s times like these an epidemic must be on the horizon.

Maoris and Hygiene

The first hit on Google search for “maori spitting” yields an anecdotal Reddit post. Apart from the VC Macron Maoris, and a few DC ones, the majority are grouped into HC and SC. As such, their hygiene is low and spitting correspondingly high. Apparently the Chinese are the same way. They have not received that cultural firmware upgrade of the Edwardian British.

Spitting and projectile snot are common within certain ethnicities. They do it in public and in the most unlikely places and is part of the reason illness spreads in the places they live.

I think our society has become particularly blind to this sort of behaviour because it’s not Politically Correct to even sugges such ethinic differences. We can thank our recent ‘Me Too’/Outrage/SJW  Hard Victimhood Culture era for that.

Think back to the outrage last year¹ when brown cartoon children were used to remind everyone not to use public swimming pool as toilets. “How dare you come within range of insinuating such ethnic difference!” said the SJW.

“It is well known to us that human saliva was viewed by the Maori as a very effective medium in the practice of the arts of black magic. To obtain a portion of a person’s saliva means that his life is in the hands of him who so obtains it.”

“Thus, when a person was taken ill, and it was assumed that his illness was caused by some wizard, a portion of the patient’s saliva was carried by a priest to the tuahu on a leaf.”

“The afflicted one was conducted by the expert to a stream, where, after certain preliminaries, he was told to expectorate into the water. When he had done so the expert caught the saliva in his right hand, and clapped that on his right cheek, whereupon he saw the spirit of the wizard on his left side. Another rite was then performed in order to slay the wizard.”- The Use of Human Saliva in Ritual; Maori Religion and Mythology Part 1; Elsdon Best ee1976

As Politically Incorrect as it is to say this, based on the epidemic of 2009 (H1N1/Swine Flu,) the flu season of 2020 is going to fall hardest upon Maori and Pacific populations too.

Currently the incidence is falling on Europeans and Asians most of all. I think those latter ethnicities are most likely to be infected but the former, Maori and Pacific, are most likely to transmit disease to one another.

COVID-19 or not, influenza-like illness was bound to hit NZ this cold and flu season and fall heaviest upon Maori and Pacific people. Based on history, we can expect 2020 to play out the same way….

Ideally these at-risk ethnicities would amend their habits and living situations. Instead of taking the opportunity to do so, Big Brother has locked them down so they wont need to learn self-responsibility.

Unfortunately, The State has locked down everyone else too which includes those who could keep themselves healthy and productive. To acknowledge at-risk ethnicities is Politically Incorrect (“racist”) and this attitude is going to cost us dearly in 2020. We’re going to have to learn the hard way, through authoritarianism and illness, that not all people are the same.

Different cultures *are* on their own individual journeys of development. It’s not “racist” to point that out. Actually, it’s cruel and superior (aka VC at its worst) to deprive those peoples from their opportunity to learn and grow stronger.

 

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1 Tamati Coffee the MP for VC; Don’t pee in the pool: Sign labelled ‘casual racism’ by Labour MP; NZ Herald

Ref. Episode 3, Edwardian Farm (2010); Youtube

Ref. Ethnic incidence in the cold/flu season; Otago University

Ref. Also. From May 2020, Kāinga Ora – Housing New Zealand’s successor – wants to begin installing multiple sensors in up to 2000 state houses;  Slum Surveillance; NZB3

Image ref. Don’t Spit; Te Ara

Image ref. Athlete blowing Snot Rocket fan; Athletes Picking their Noses.com

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