For many years, I've joked about writing a cookbook entitled "Origin of the Feces". As a biochemist and as a philosopher, I know the relationship between ends and means, and I know that what comes out depends very much on what goes in at the beginning. Imagine my surprise to read today about how fecal material is related to the health of the ecosystem. At the very least, it's an important part of our ecosystem, and it's something important to remember.
People don't like to talk about feces, but it figures into civilization. While hiking last weekend, one of the people with whom I went pointed out collections of droppings, thinking they were rabbit when they were really deer. However, when I found a human shirt near some human feces, nobody wanted to hear about that. We're totally grossed out usually by our own excrement, and deservedly so. Modern sewers are actually a very modern and recent development, leading to the establishment of massive metropolitan collections of people unheard of and almost impossible in antiquity. Without waste management, disease epidemics wiped out population centers. They say we are what we eat, and most of us to be quite frank don't eat very well.
Human feces is actually really bad for pretty much everything. One reason my garden took as long as it did to get started was because I needed manure for fertilizer. Despite having a dog and being capable of defecation myself, I looked to other species for help in that department. For some reason, domesticated animals tend to have very unhealthy manure. Even when we turn to cultured livestock, you must wait some time before it's actually ready for planting; get in a rush and get steer manure wet, and it stinks to high heaven! Humans are pretty good about leaching everything useful out whether we need it or not, and so our feces has little value but high risk. I stay as far away from it as possible when the chance arises.
Humans aren't very good about monitoring what goes into their feces. Top it all off, some of the places that tout themselves as healthy sources of food do not bear the burden of scrutiny on the john. I stopped last weekend at a popular and national eatery for a special salad, but the following morning despite having all sorts of healthy, natural, and wholesome ingredients the smell and texture of my feces told me that my meal contained a secret ingredient that wasn't as good as the things they advertise. By contrast, I can get a cheaper salad at Wendy's that doesn't bother me besides giving me hiccups from the apples it contains and produces far better fecal material. It's obviously not simple, and it's obviously not related to the claims of the eateries. It's the food. It's you. It's about the people between the garden and the table. It's dangerous out there, and sometimes the food you eat actually eats you.
For this reason among others, I wanted to provide some of my own food from my own yard and by my own hand. I tell my students that the shorter the distance from garden to table the better and safer and more nutritious the food can be. You know how it was grown, to what it was exposed, and that it was actually ready when you picked it. People who talk about how the ends justify the means ignore the fact that crappy ingredients can only make a crappy final product. Maybe my garden won't produce enough, and maybe it won't look all that appetizing, but if errors arise I know I caused them. Nothing irks me more than paying someone else to cause me problems. Our calamity is heightened by realization that we furnish the means by which we suffer! I know it seems a small thing, but it really feels good to have a productive and relieving trip to the bathroom. I know that I've put good things into me, and it gives me confidence that good things will come out of the ingredients of my life eventually. Virtuous means lead eventually to virtuous ends.
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