Human shit: the unclean things hidden by civilization

Leviathan Press:

Freud summarized the three elements of civilization, namely cleanliness, order and beauty, and the corresponding civilized behaviors are cleanliness, order and beautification. This also means that behind our so-called civilization is filth, and this "unclean thing" is just hidden by the facilities built by civilization. After all, when the toilet is flushed, people think that the excrement is far away from us.

I think we humans are a bit foolish in our self-evaluation. We either overestimate ourselves or underestimate ourselves, and that alone causes a lot of pain in life.

On the one hand, we often exaggerate our importance as individuals and ignore the fact that there are 8 billion other people living and working on this planet, and billions of them who share the same ideas have leveled out our insignificant "importance."

For example, we may imagine that the period of our existence on this planet is noble and meaningful, but this also blinds us to another indisputable fact: the 80 years of human life are just a drop in the ocean of the 14 billion years of the "age of the universe".

Of course, we also frequently allow low self-esteem to invade us, allowing it to harm our already fragile hearts.

Like the midnight toilet break. We often find ourselves surrounded by walls, in a cavernous space and dimension, frustratedly pondering the purpose of our existence. Once again, we wonder why we are sitting in the toilet reading a dull Monster Box guide while other peers should be having fun in the bar, enjoying their youth, and Western kids are immersing themselves in Stranger Things.

Too much education may only bring a heavy burden.

At the moment of painful defecation in the picturesque wilderness, the only thing ancient humans might have worried about was whether a lion would sneak up and harass them. This can be inferred from animal observations: today's domestic cats still maintain the habit of covering their feces to avoid being tracked by natural enemies[1], and there are also many sloths that disappear after landing on the ground to defecate.

Lloyds Bank turd: This turd, measuring 20cm long and 5cm wide, was found in 1972 by archaeologists from the York Archaeological Trust at the Viking settlement of Jorvik, England. It is believed to be the largest complete fossilized human dung ever found. © Linda Spashett Storye book

Some scientists have even speculated that our ability to control defecation (whether through our nervous system or anal contractions) is so engineered that we can decide where, when, and how we defecate, which is an evolutionary advantage because human feces are rich in bacteria and volatile odors for predators.[2]

Despite this remarkable ability, excretion was as straightforward as the social structure of the time. Generally speaking, the vastness of the land and the dispersion of the population meant that defecation was never a high priority.

But then the agricultural revolution came along, people settled down in dense communities, and excrement must have been a nightmare. Meanwhile, food and wildlife became less of a concern, giving them more time to worry about other problems.

This caused confusion because the whole community had the same need (to defecate). They knew very well that they could not just poop, cover it up, pull up their pants and walk away as they had done in the past. Community life also gave rise to many problems, one of which was "defecation etiquette", which required us to consider the feelings of others when we defecate, and the birth of class discrimination led to the diversification of people's defecation methods.

Challenging this theory is difficult because every detail from history—from human excrement to other more subtle issues—has been eliminated, and we have only very limited information from early settlement. Scientists have proposed that the first toilet was invented by the Mesopotamians around the end of the 4th century BC. However, archaeological evidence shows that many “civilized” humans did defecate in jars or on open ground.[3]

Toilets in view: Ancient Roman public toilets in the ruins of Timgad, Algeria. © Ethel Davies/Robertharding/Getty

Ancient Greece had a more interesting hygiene culture. Huge rooms were used as public toilets, and people sat face to face on the "toilet platform". They "shared" each other's ecstasy moments and even used the same butt-wiping utensils.

Don’t get confused about the privacy issue because at the time, it was a concept that hadn’t yet emerged.

It wasn't until the late 6th century that the Chinese invented something called "toilet paper." Before that watershed, humans literally used whatever they had to wipe their butts, the researchers report. Some civilizations used either shells or shared wipes (similar to the Greeks), which were previously made of moss/leaves and pottery shards. Others used fur, pieces of cloth, leaves, grass, corn cobs, snow, and even... bare hands (washing hands afterward was a must).

The ちゅうぎ (ちゅうぎ) of the Nara period in Japan, also known as toilet sticks, dry shit sticks, and in Cantonese, shit stirring sticks, are thin pieces of bamboo and wood. Ancient people used them to scrape away filth after going to the toilet. The use of toilet sticks has been recorded in ancient India, China, and Japan. © wikipedia

However, the agricultural revolution did also spark class discrimination - some people may have enjoyed so-called "butt-wiping privileges".

Tellingly, a 2,500-year-old glass depicting a man wiping another person's butt was described in the British Medical Journal.

The British royal family hired people to record and assist the king’s defecation activities. Those who held these positions came from the lower nobility and enjoyed generous incomes and privileges, such as the right to own the king’s old clothes and belongings and to live in the palace. It was not until 1901 that Edward VII abolished this indecent title [4] (to this day, the lowest class in Indian society, the untouchables, are still assigned the job of collecting excrement).

The Roman goddess Fortuna (right) was believed to protect toilet users from danger. An inscription on this Pompeii fresco warns toilet users to be careful. © Luigi Spina/Electa/Mondodori/Getty

Frankly speaking: Public toilets at the ancient Roman site of Ostia Antica. © Shutterstock

Reconstruction of a public toilet in Hadrian's Forum in the Roman province of Germania Inferior. © Flickr

In stark contrast to the beautiful cities of the far western United States, the roads were filled with human and horse excrement during the urbanization process. The excrement was so horrible that pigs were used to clean it.

On rainy days, the West was often described in epic terms: " Men laid wooden boards on the sticky mud, and at regular intervals, when they stepped on the boards, a strange black-green slime would gush out from the cracks... The sewers were so full of excrement that even the pigs wrinkled their noses at the unbearable stench. "[5]

Given the rapid urbanization of the 19th century, poor waste disposal was indeed a precursor to ongoing outbreaks of cholera and dysentery. Public latrines in Europe were infested with rodents and were probably the main source of plague outbreaks. Generally, people didn’t care. Even the smartest scholars claimed that the disaster must have come from the “poisonous air” stirred up by crowded cities (because they were just as dismissive of germs, even if they were the cause of unsanitary conditions).

One of the earliest known flush toilets is located in the palace of Knossos, Crete. © UNC Department of Classics

Chicago's first underground sewer system bore the brunt of this long-term unsanitary situation. Nevertheless, such a system discharged these unsanitary wastes directly into the river. Soon after, as the rivers were damaged (considering that they were the main source of domestic water), epidemics "returned". It was not until people used calcium chloride as a water filtration element that the situation improved slightly.

© Water Simulation

Yet the so-called “stinky” nightmare remains prevalent in cramped and poorly planned cities and slums.

The World Health Organization reports that more than 2 billion people have never had access to their own bathroom, and many end up dying from infectious diseases as a result.[6] You might learn more about these places by taking a field trip or by poring over historical photos of old Hong Kong apartments.

Defecation, despite being natural and uninteresting (even somewhat redundant in the modern world), has very strict requirements that often annoy us. Typically, we prioritize the space and infrastructure for such activities to ensure that it barely intrudes on any other life activities - such as eating, sleeping or working.

Not only does it disgust us every time we recall having a bowel movement (because we are wired to hate things that could be dangerous), but it does carry serious risks (e.g., stomach aches during exams and work, experiencing bowel-related problems, or damaging the environment).

But should we just leave it – and to some extent our own biological instincts – behind?

The third section of the old Kawamoto family's "Paper-based Hungry Ghost Painting" "Dung-eating Hungry Ghost Picture" depicts humans defecating in the alleys of the Heian-kyo area, and the dung-eating ghosts wandering outside because they want to eat human feces. © wikipedia

The advent of such a complex society has not only turned defecation into a macro problem, but also provided a panacea, because defecation requires "sacrifice" in the process. We seem to have come very close to the spiritual life advocated by modern society, thus staying as far away from those annoying biological instinct activities as possible.

People often forgo eating, sleeping, and even bowel movements because they upset them, take up their precious time, and interfere with other daily activities.

Worse, we reject other hard-wired instincts, such as sadness, depression, anger, procrastination, and despair, which are either seen as futile or counterproductive because they run counter to social demands, even though they are primitive and instinctive.

We have no way of knowing whether the biological emotions about feces or other negative ones will be taken away later because they make us uncomfortable and cause trouble. Of course, we also don’t know whether everything is still as happy and “alive” as it was at that moment when we sat on the toilet in the middle of the night and pondered existential questions?

Nowadays, the development of science has solved most of the poop problems, making them a minor problem that we don't need to worry about. We now have more time to deal with other things, such as studying how ancient people peed, how to deal with astronauts' feces, and fecal implants in medicine. Even using excrement to make art.

Similar to the aforementioned “defecation class discrimination”, the dawn of cutting-edge technology still does not solve all the fundamental problems. Because human society is not yet optimally structured, even though millions of dollars have been invested in technology to help astronauts defecate, there are still more than 2 billion people who do not have access to toilets. Many people die as a result.

© Slash Film

The fault is not with the astronauts, scientists, politicians, rich people or ordinary people. If we find fault and blame someone, then all the faults must be our own. Given the many inherent complex factors behind this problem, why should we blame each other?

Why do we waste our precious time blaming others while secretly feeling relieved that we are not victims, instead of solving the problem and sharing the heavy burden of a tragic life?

After all, given that our lives are short, just as the life of the universe is long, our existence is not meaningless. There is clearly somewhere you belong, somewhere that is eager for your generous helping hand.

Once we feel the urge to defecate, nothing else matters anymore, just consider it as a sign of your vitality, wash your hands and continue your adventure.

References:

[1]www.livescience.com/33147-why-do-cats-bury-their-poop.html

[2]link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10151-013-1037-4

[3]www.nature.com/articles/533456a[4]www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Groom-of-the-Stool/[5]www.penguinr andomhouse.com/books/316142/how-we-got-to-now-by-steven-johnson/[6]www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/sanitation

By Tran Tien

Translation/tin

Proofreading/Rabbit's Light Footsteps

Original article/mbpedia.com/en/articles/scrutinizing-feces-to-spell-out-the-worlds-development-patterns

This article is based on the Creative Commons License (BY-NC) and is published by tim on Leviathan

The article only reflects the author's views and does not necessarily represent the position of Leviathan