JIBRAN KHAN: ‘Raw Water’ Makes a Mockery of Human Suffering.

Tacitus and Ibn Khaldun wrote of decadent civilizations drinking themselves to death, but for our new leaders, that is passé. Instead, they have decided to rebel all the way and simply drink death in the name of health. Startups have rushed to feed this pathetic desire for novelty, each trying to outdo the other in ignorance. One of their leaders, Christopher Sanborn, has changed his name to Mukhande Singh, the better to grant his dirty water the legitimacy of exotic culture. His customers might be surprised to know that the ancient Indians practiced water treatment — using dreaded “chemicals,” no less. Likewise, Greek, Sanskrit, and Ancient Egyptian writings demonstrate that water purification was a public-health concern for classical civilizations, long before modern germ theory, and that methods of filtration and chemical treatment were commonplace in their time.

To put this absurdity in perspective, consider that in the world’s “Middle Income Countries,” per capita income ranges from just under $3 to $34 a day, and that “raw water” bottles in the US cost $36.99 each. Or, put another way, in order to ingest “raw water,” the cause of 20 percent of child deaths worldwide, rich Americans have taken to spending more than most people in the world earn in a week. In doing so, not only are they rejecting millennia of widely understood science, but they are putting their lives and the lives of those around them at risk, in order to indulge in a patronizing play-act of poverty that puts even so-called slum tourism to shame.

Not to be too cynical, but I’m guessing patronization is the thrill of it all.