Such senseless loss of life in the name of religion. Many hundreds or thousands of people die each year doing the pilgrimage, often times from crowd crushes, literally getting squished to death because there are so many people, or just exhaustion.
There are only a few short video clips on YouTube of the massive crowds and it is sort of unnerving seeing that many people in a moving crowd. Super weird what religion makes people do.
There is also this weird video which talks about how they plan to revolutionize the hajj to make it safer and accessible to more people - using technology in a weird blend of old world meets new.
I do hope they find a way to make it safer because people will never stop doing it, but the whole concept just seems absurd to me.
Such senseless loss of life in the name of religion.
If they’d died in the Saudi heat to a secular activity - at an F1 race event or inside a poorly A/C’d movie theater or trapped on an overheated bus - would that have been better?
There is also this weird video which talks about how they plan to revolutionize the hajj to make it safer and accessible to more people - using technology in a weird blend of old world meets new.
So much of the modern Saudi state sees the Hajj as little more than a massive tourist attraction. They’re heavily invested in Disney-fying the experience, such that the maximal number of high-paying visitors can slide through the building frictionlessly.
Which is a shame, because the Hajj as a cultural event was originally intended as this class-agnostic unifying practice social event. You aren’t supposed to visit these holy sites encapsulated into these exclusive expensive little bubbles. You’re intended to mingle with people from the rest of the world and revel in a certain shared experience common to the faith the world over.
What we’re seeing isn’t some toxic religious ideology that Saudi administrators need to cleanse for mass consumption. Instead, we’re seeing a commercialization and stratification of ideology, by which elites get a bespoke Hajj experience and Saudi officials get to operate as gatekeepers of tradition at some astronomical markup.
If they’d died in the Saudi heat to a secular activity - at an F1 race event or inside a poorly A/C’d movie theater or trapped on an overheated bus - would that have been better?
What a ridiculous statement. No it wouldn’t be better, but when was the last time you heard of nearly a thousand people dying at an F1 race event, or inside a movie theatre due to lack of AC? If that were happening multiple times per year we would shut down F1 /movie theaters in a heartbeat.
Fact is that the Hajj claims thousands of lives every year, all in the name of religion.
Which is a shame, because the Hajj as a cultural event was originally intended as this class-agnostic unifying practice social event. You aren’t supposed to visit these holy sites encapsulated into these exclusive expensive little bubbles. You’re intended to mingle with people from the rest of the world and revel in a certain shared experience common to the faith the world over.
Yea as long as you aren’t a woman.
Don’t be surprised that people are using religion to grift the gullible and exploit the poor - that’s what religion is best at.
The Saudi government has an ethical responsibility to mitigate the risks. It’s not like this was some freak accident. This was entirely predictable and this will defiantly continue to happen until protections are put into place.
when was the last time you heard of nearly a thousand people dying at an F1 race event, or inside a movie theatre due to lack of AC?
The Qatar World Cup killed a minimum of 400-500 project workers during construction.
If that were happening multiple times per year we would shut down F1 /movie theaters in a heartbeat
I wish that were true. But we’ve got a history of being extremely callous with athletes and spectators alike.
The Saudi government has an ethical responsibility to mitigate the risks.
I couldn’t agree more. Shane they’re cheap ass fucks
Allah works in mysterious ways.
Religion murdered these people.
The Hajj has been taking place over 1000 years. Hyper-aggro heatwaves in June is a new thing however. It wasn’t religion, it was climate change.
Yeah that would be a good story and support some preconceived notions but Mecca has always been incredibly hot, you can’t just rewrite history to suit the message you want to send.
Mecca has always been incredibly hot
What even is the difference between 40°C and 50°C? They’re both “incredibly hot” aren’t they? Quit your complaining.
Then the religion should adapt to the climate.
Climate change is caused by religion, specifically capitalism
Yeah and all the communist states are super ecologically friendly, oh no you don’t belive they are communist do you? Handy.
But let’s imagine a perfectly communist society, are workers all able to heat their house? Able to travel freely? Enjoy hobbies? If you answered yes to these then your either going to need magic or energy.
You can’t just pretend capitalism is responsible for everything bad, unchecked consumption can happen in any system as can over production, ecological destruction, and all sorts of potential problems. I would love to transition to a decent type of communism but I’m not going to pretend it’ll fix the climate on its own.
Yeah and all the communist states are super ecologically friendly
Historically, planned economies have had a better track record preserving ecologies and building sustainable infrastructure. That’s largely because the economic planners deal with long-term timelines (five year plans being the standard) rather than quarterly business cycles.
When you’re running a logging company and you have to ask where you’re going to get your next batch of trees in five years or fifty years, you engage in more sustainable harvesting practices than a for-profit fly-by-night that only cares about growing the number of trees chopped down after every round of investment is depleted.
You can’t just pretend capitalism is responsible for everything bad
Capitalists do a much better job of scaling up industrial infrastructure rapidly, because they do fixate on the short term much more narrowly. Profit-driven practices have rapidly converted our coal-based electricity economy to a natural gas economy. And private speculation has created a booming industry for new technologies - from batteries to cryptocurrencies to LLMs.
But when you run up against the limits of your natural resource supplies, that rapid growth isn’t an economic advantage anymore. You generate far more waste than your communist peers. You spark lots of international conflicts attempting to increase your rate of extraction. And you end up with a very top-heavy unprofessional administrative state, as power consolidates into the hands of financialized aristocrats with little real expertise in the businesses they administer.
In the modern moment, that produces a lot of problems directly attributable to capitalist business practices.
I would love to transition to a decent type of communism but I’m not going to pretend it’ll fix the climate on its own.
If the US were to adopt more Communist-championed energy, housing, and transportation policies, it would immediately benefit the global climate.
