General Musings

The Composting Toilet

I seem to learn quite a lot from each and every person I interact with. The composting toilet is a matter of personal responsibility. I don’t want to turn it into a morality litmus test, but one person has seen it as the hill to die on (possibly he was just being manipulative, too soon to tell), and this brings up something deeper.

Yes, the materials must (caps?) be recycled. One of the huge crimes of our time involves throwing both our waste (detergents, etc.) into the waterways, but also squandering our resources (soil nutrients). While we throw away all of the phosphorus we eat, we also import non-renewable phosphates from Western Sahara. This is the quintessential non-sustainable act. But there is a personal awareness issue here too. “Set it and forget it,” is damned convenient. But it abdicates personal responsibility. Having to be aware of something can be quite enlightening. Our reliance on convenience is why hand washing, as a habit, is so hard to teach. Few adults would deny hand washing is better than not. Having to deal with human waste makes us aware of human waste.

An adjunct argument could be made for the value of getting past the gross factor, something we each had to be taught by the way. Animal manure must be dealt with no matter how Herculean the task may feel. The composting toilet also uses organic matter (chopped straw, hay, or corn husks, etc.) in the same way stables use straw. It absorbs the liquid and makes the semi-solids vastly less unpleasant to handle. But the balance is important. Too much straw is a waste and makes the chore of emptying the toilet happen too often; too little makes for a smelly, hard to manage mess. When the girls lived here neither one of them ever had to deal with removal, but I did, and I made observations about straw volume adjustments. (I thought the system worked well, but you could ask their opinions.)

I often use the light switch as a metaphor for set it and forget it. SIAFI is the primary mark of civilization (trace out why the switch causes light, and how many people were involved in the entire process). This is unfortunate as it is a distraction from what things are probably vastly more important about the human experience. It is a class awareness too; all of the first indoor toilets were in rich houses, and manned by peasants (who still had to empty their own chamber-pots). On the division of labor side, night soil workers took on the worst part of the urban poop problem, but chamber pots still had to be washed, the filthy wash water dealt with. Now, of course, we know to wash our hands afterwards.

Protestant Work Ethic

Foraging versus harvesting came up with my grape harvest (foraging for survival rather than entertainment is not a consideration here, but should be discussed somewhere. The kids I hired have foraged (perhaps gleaned would be a more appropriate word) their whole lives, but their style of foraging is “a lark.” Pick the best, ignore the difficult, play while you work, wander off for anything that catches your attention. (Is the goal eternal childhood? Is this the goal of the wealthy too? Self indulgence certainly.)

But I digress. The welfare issue in this country is that while the working class recognize that they pay the taxes (without, apparently realizing that the representatives they voted in work to allow the wealthy to avoid taxes) they want to pick and choose how much of that money should go to others, and which others should be helped, and which should be abandonded. This lack of compassion is also childish and self centered, and done without any real analysis. I feel my pain, but not yours. Making sure others aren’t freeloading is a big deal. My foragers, living mostly off disability support and food stamps, piss their (jealous?) neighbors off.

So, Rings (apologies to Dante):

No one expects the new baby to “pull its weight” as insignificant as that weight may be. We make allowances for inability (although we expect that child to grow into a productive person eventually), so we must admit that we draw lines around those we are willing to “float.” The line around “family” is common, with mostly only sociopaths failing to recognize that comittment (Hamlet, and his class, however, springs to mind). My foragers have a hard, thick line around immediate blood kin; everyone else is pointedly on the other side of that internal/external dividing line. Most people fall in love, usually with someone outside that initial circle. In some cultures the loved one is absorbed into one family or the other, gender and resource management usually being the determining factor. In our culture, a new family ring may be developed. Close friends are another ring, but one often, eventually, broken up by the love ring ("I just can't stand her new boyfriend") . Here things get looser. One’s work, especially if it is a calling, creates another ring, one with more permeable borders. Still, you are all connected. You are all insiders and warrant care, aid, and concern. Who do you call to help move a piano? Who do you call when your car breaks down? These are the concentric rings I’m talking about, levels of support.

Fund raisers are all about finding common ground with outsiders for support, creating a connection, or at least the illusion of one. Welfare is supposed to be our SIAFI for aid to those who need it. Johnson fought a war on poverty; Reagan instead gave us the myth of the Welfare Queen, and we could no longer forget the system we had set up. It was unconscionably cruel, but he spoke for the conservatives. He told them that recipient's hands were in your pockets (actually, it is the wealthy’s hand they feel rooting around in there). Reagan and his supporters twisted the war on poverty into a war on the truly poor. I use this as an example of redrawing a line to exclude someone who had been included before. (Conservatives tend to like exclusionary clubs.)

But I digress again.

Who deserves help, and who does not, and why not, are major social issues today, and as the climate collapses the problems people run into will explode. [Theocracies and Plantations will be the go to solutions for some. We are trying something different here. Well, maybe this is a like Plantation in the sense that it houses more than just a nuclear family, but a democratic and socialist one.] Being an American is one circle we need to think about more. Being a human, being an earthling are important circles also.

Here this manifests itself as resentment about “others” (always a dangerous but necessary word) doing less than “I” do, less than “their share.” One simple solution is to map out what exactly “their share” is, for everyone. As in any family, this is complicated because we expect different things from each other. I am old. My body is really quite worn out. That I spent my body, and my youth and middle age, building this all (for all of us) must count for something, but my lack of ability to pull my weight in daily chores is still an emotional, and therefore a practical, issue. Were I Laird ‘O the Land, the issue would be moot for hierarchical excuses/reasons, but that is a social degeneration (I could have set that scenario up instead of this - “hired” migrants and immigrants). So, allowances for the very young and the very old, and the obviously disabled (but still family) must be made. Beyond there it gets way more tricky.

I don’t have an answer, but, like the composting toilet, we need to think this through. We need to be aware. My youngest, when about five, was asked why he didn’t feel the need to participate in household chores. He understood his role in the family and answered, “I play.” His status was changing in our eyes, not necessarily in his. Mine is now.