Thursday, October 07, 2004

Of the Epistemology of Toilets

Today I started reading The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch. In the course of his meandering commentary on life and death from the perspective of an undertaker, Lynch makes the interesting observation that at the same time the advent of the automobile was ushering birth, childhood, courtship, marriage, sex, old age, and death out of the modern home and into the hospitals, daycares, cinemas, wedding chapels, hotels, nursing homes, and funeral parlors (respectively) of the outside world, the advent of the flush toilet was bringing urination and defecation inside. What a tradeoff.

He also points out that the tidy disposal of human waste made available by these same flush toilets has left us moderns with no regular, tangible reminder of death and corruption. As a result we are unaccustomed to unpleasantness on any real level, and are therefore generally unprepared to address death or any of its lesser cousins when they invariably confront us.

So I guess my having been a nurse aide makes me more prepared for death than most of the general populace.

posted by Jeremy at 10:00 PM

1 Marginalia:

I think the Cold War was a metaphor for my life.

Your Friend,

Joshua Gibbs

By  Anonymous, at 12:45 PM  

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