Archeologists have noted that the first flushing toilet was discovered in ancient China, but who can really know, certainly the Romans had a relatively sophisticated set-up using sluices and gravity to channel the bodies outpourings away from their owner, but it stands to reason that such facilities would only be for the use of the exceptionally privileged. Today, in the wealthsome corners of our world, such technologies have become ubiquitous; the ever-present toilet as we recognise it, with its sophisticated flush plumbing, was a Victorian invention; the night commode, an extrapolation of earlier models with built in bed pans, that necessitated upon the vast Victorian sewer building projects. Once more, such devices began as the sole preserve of a relative aristocracy, and prior to the pull and slosh of such a flush, would have been the servant, to whisk it all away.
In older pasts, humans made little of mess and waste that could not be readily re-sorted into the environmental matrix, nothing that could seriously pollute, or not be eaten by something or other. Bones, cunningly shaped stones and footprints, were typically the only things we could leave in our wake, and humanure would be squat into existence a little ways from camp, perhaps in a hole, but as such, it was always there to confront us. With the advent of the flushing toilet, all of this changed, the foul botherings of our bowels could be removed from sight and being, with but a jaunty tug, and a porcelain gurgle. Therefore it can be seen that the advent of the flushing toilet is to blame for all of our current problems of pollution.
Obviously I’m being facetious, the problems of waste and pollution are extremely complex, yet on a simple psychological level, the enabling facilty of removing one’s waste from one’s sight, and by doing so escaping the consequences of having to deal with it, is profound. In more recents pasts, humans have conjured with their ingenuity all kinds of infrastructures and industries for removing and hiding waste, and in parallel, increasingly sophisticated and insidious pollutions. The commode can therefore be seen as a metaphor for all blasé waste disposal, in that washing powders, shampoos, toothpastes, micturated pharmaceutical metabolites and other glorious effluents now flow down the drains with your poo, removed from sight and cognisance.
The problem of pollution has to a certain extent crept up on us while we sleep-walked, being that most historical waste was readily degraded by nature, unfortunately modern pollutions are not always so easily disposed of. In the last hundred years or so, with advancements in science and technology, we have seen the appearance of plastics and other petrochemical derivatives, complex novel chemistries previously unknown to the biosphere. Some of these chemistries have been released into the ecosystem of Earth with very little cognisance of their consequence, caution was not erred. The environment however is not a laboratory and unexpected or unintended consequences are still consequences. Some familiar examples include PCB’s and DDT and the endocrine disruptors of more recent renown.
We can trace this recklessness back into the past, to when the world was vast and consequences were slight and fevered dieties reigned. With the advent of agriculture, came domesticity, ironically that which had bound man to the land was also to drive a wedge between them; cities separated people from the soil, both physically and psychologically, even though these cities relied on agriculture to sustain them. A limen of perception manifested in the urban dwellers, nature became increasingly exteriorised and distant, the division catalysed by anthropocentric religions and philosophies. More and more the veil became opaque, the plasticised limen thickened; street lights blotted out stars, shrinking context, and food appeared by magick in plastic packets, convenient wrappings which also conveniently disconnected us from its origin. Reality increasingly became a life vicarious, through screens and devices, direct ‘experience’ becoming another novel product. Meanwhile, all of the cities’ waste was carried away by technological minons.
We do have a problem here, both psychologically and physically, I am no luddite, but the plastic limen is now manifesting serious repurcussions; polluted water-systems, whales needing to be dispossed of as toxic waste because of high concentrations of volatile organic compounds; seas filled with plastic bottles; shrinking and collapsing habitats, abandoned to the vicissitudes of necessity and frivolity, etc. etc. On a local level we have littered streets and countryside, abused animals, toxins in our foods and water, all of which exist alongside and operate in a vicious cycle, upon an entrenched, unwholesome culture of ignorance and disrespect (occasionally enforced and glorified) towards both each other and our environ. The common lack of direct felt presence of the wild, of living systems and things, I believe has made us miserable, for it feeds our imagination and enriches our experience, simply because it is beautiful, and to be occluded from it, is a huge social and spirtual loss.
