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Everest: The Longest Line of Selfish Egotists on Earth
In this episode, we delve into the controversial topic of climbing Mount Everest and argue why it is an immoral pursuit. Starting with an interview with Eric Weihenmayer, a blind climber of Everest, we discuss the various arguments against the climb. We explore the significant risks to the Sherpas, who face astronomically high death rates, and lay out the dire environmental impacts, including trash accumulation and body retrievals. The episode makes a strong case that climbing Everest is a selfish, performative act that squanders substantial resources and poses serious ethical concerns.
Speaker 3: [00:00:00] We're going to interview
Speaker 2: Eric Weihenmayer, who climbed the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. But, he's gay. I mean, he's gay, excuse me, he's blind. So we'll hear about that coming up.
Malcolm Collins: Climbing.
Simone Collins: The best, the best piece of news reporting ever done, in my opinion. But,
Malcolm Collins: on the topic of climbing Everest, You have to be a complete garbage dookie soul of a human being to do this.
Speaker 9: You're an emotional f*****g cripple.
Your soul is dog s**t. Every single f*****g thing about you is ugly.
Malcolm Collins: And in this episode, we are going to be laying this out. Only garbage human beings climb Everest. And you could be like, Oh no, this is a direct attack. And yeah, it is a direct attack. If you did this, you're a shitty human being. And, but not for the typical reasons. And here I will post a guy who makes one of the typical arguments against [00:01:00] climbing Everest.
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: which is just Sherpas die and are forced to do this. And that is bad. And then at the end of the video, I will explain why that is a terrible argument. That claiming Everest is immoral.
Speaker: Everest these days, which is the fact that if you climbed Everest in 2023, you essentially local people in order to do so.
The season began with three deaths of Sherpas who were carrying ropes and gear through the Khumbu Icefall. Fixing lines and ladders through the glacier, that is a task that has to be completed each year. If anyone is going to climb the mountain on the regular route, the deceased local workers can expect to receive only about 10, 000 as a payout from life insurance.
Ridiculous. To put that into perspective, 10, 000 is barely enough to cover the rising costs of living for a small family in Nepal. One estimate I read was that 10, 000 is enough to only keep the family [00:02:00] afloat. for about two years. Now, there were seven Nepali deaths on the mountain this year. Six of them were working, all of them Sherpas
Malcolm Collins: because it's not a very good argument when you actually look at the statistics.
It has some credence to it, but pretty, pretty low. For me, the core reason why climbing Everest. is so selfish was elucidated very loudly when I was talking to my dad.,
Simone Collins: We were talking, I think about inherent values or something like that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was talking about like, what do you live for? Like, like what's a good life to you, et cetera. And I was arguing that he focuses a lot on trying to maximize the aesthetics. Of being an erudite person or some sort of aesthetic version of who he is. And when he's making decisions, he is making them based on how they change his internal perspective on himself instead of how they impact the world around him.
[00:03:00] And I view this as a very, very selfish way to live..
Simone Collins: You were like, and I'm doing this research for an episode on how terrible it is to climb Mount Everest.
And I'm lik
Published on 1 year ago