In today’s culture, shit is seen as a dirty substance we no longer want in our bodies. Along with no longer wanting it around us in general, by creating indoor plumbing systems that sends our shit away from us so that we never have to deal with it again. There are figures of speech around shit and many jokes made in the media that reflect the ideas many people in society hold around shit. In the farming communities around the world, animal shit is incredibly valuable. Refreshing the fields with new nutrients each time it is put into the soil. Society tells people what they should think, by when it comes to what comes out of our bodies we can’t change that. Everyone poops. It’s true, there is no animal on this planet that doesn’t shit. Through the readings many things came into the light for me, almost all of the first outhouses and bathrooms in the US were absolutely disgusting. The photos shown in Gerling’s article captured a very gross version of what bathrooms used to be like in cities. I would never want to live in today’s day and age without indoor plumbing. I can imagine a perfectly fine world in which I could live without indoor plumbing systems.
Author Archives: Alena Maes-Polan
Reclaiming Waste
From my trash, I have taken out an old iphone charger block. It stopped working two months ago but I didn’t have the nerve to throw it away. It threw it out because in my life it was no longer useful. What I should have done with it is recycled it in an electronics recycling center. To me, I will decide something is trash when something is broken enough to not be used again and I can’t find any other useful perpetual value in it.
The environmental problems that face our world are our own faults. We have created a social environmental foundation that is insane in my mind. We have taken so many resources from this planet and in return have made it less inhabitable to animals. We have made living in cities the majority of where people live because of the accessibility. People really like quick and easy access to anything and everything. The individual impact that we have on the work is small but when multiplied by how many humans live on this earth we then create the problem. The large institutions that make so much waste on a day to day practice get shielded by legislation and political parties that want to stay in power and make money. People love to control and have control over people. It is a fundamental fact about humans. We like power! Such a shame, when the effects of our mistakes are being taken out on the planet we call home.
