Shit is something we all produce, but yet we don’t really talk about it. Before taking this class, I never really had a conversation on “shit” or even thought of “shit”. But now that I am thinking of it, I believe that since we were kids, we were told it is disgusting, shameful, something to be flushed down and forgotten. Still, the more I think about it, the more I believe that shit really says a lot, not just about our bodies but also about societies, economies, and even about our values.
The thought of someone hearing or smelling one thing or another may feel (strangely) humiliating to some individuals, even though we all know that everyone around us does the same thing. But why does something so natural carry so much stigma? That discomfort isn’t just personal-it’s cultural. We strive by all means possible in contemporary society to alienate ourselves from that which makes us biological beings: packaging and sanitizing it, hiding the evidence of human waste as if this were something not of us, but outside of us.
However, excrement was not always regarded in such a way as we discussed in class with the readings. For example, human waste played an economic role until industrialization changed how we think about resources. That we treat shit today as worthless says much about how we define value: if something is not immediately profitable or aesthetically pleasing, we reject it. But what if, rather than treating it as the final stage of a cycle, we viewed waste as an ongoing part of a larger system? We might then reconsider not only how we handle excrement but also the broader tendency to discard things without thought.