{"id":38413,"date":"2014-03-13T19:33:04","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T11:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/?p=38413"},"modified":"2014-04-06T06:07:05","modified_gmt":"2014-04-05T22:07:05","slug":"escaping-apathy-trap-qa-smart-air-filters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/escaping-apathy-trap-qa-smart-air-filters\/","title":{"rendered":"Escaping the Apathy Trap: Q&A with Smart Air Filters"},"content":{"rendered":"
With air pollution in Chengdu reaching hazardous levels, it has become harder to look at the hazy skyline and ignore the resemblance to a post-apocalyptic dystopia. The absence of direct sunlight makes the knowledge that we are slowly poisoning ourselves by living here even more discouraging.<\/p>\n
Confronted by a problem so large, it is easy to succumb to a certain nihilistic apathy. It numbs the panicked helpless feeling that comes from the realization that your pulmonary health is out of control. It also turns despair into style. Rather than wallowing in self-pity, it allows us to affect a fashionable disregard for our own mortality. Laughing at death is eternally hip. But beneath our willful denials of the problem lies a human instinct for self-preservation, confounded by our inability to act upon it.<\/p>\n
Even many battle-hardened China hands, after extracting a particularly sooty booger, have investigated the possibility of purchasing an air purifier, confronted the price tag, and found themselves asking, \u201chow much is my health worth to me?\u201d It is a vexing dilemma \u2013 many people cannot afford purifiers, and those that can rarely understand what they are getting in return for the money they spend.<\/p>\n