Listicle: 14 Disgusting Things

…ecologically speaking

Martian potatoes fertilized with… (see #8) Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

If we really loved the earth, nature, and a healthy ecology, we would find the following products of our modern technological culture disgusting.

1. Fossil fuels, Consumerism, Piles and Piles of E-waste. Grouped together because they are just obviously disgusting. ‘Nough said.
2. Automobiles. Obviously. Public transportation, please.
3. Deodorant. Why the need to hide what we really smell like? Cosmetics, too, hiding what we really look like.
4. Toilet paper. Tissues too. We cut down forests so we can wipe our stinkin’ asses and blow our runny noses. What’s wrong with water and a cloth? I was once in a meeting in an industrial building in Japan and I needed to use the bathroom. The “toilets” were a series of holes in the floor and there was no toilet paper. I was told workers carry a cloth in a pocket to serve the purpose. It seemed primitive and foul to me at the time, but now, being more ecologically woke, I rather admire it.
5. Processed foods. One time when I was younger, I read some healthy-eating advice that said, “Do your grocery shopping around the edges, not in the aisles.” It seemed absurd at the time. But now I do find myself shopping primarily the edges, where the fresh food is.
6. Food packaging. If we avoid the processed foods, we avoid a lot of food packaging materials. But even with fresh food, we find bags of salad, containers of nuts, and of course plastic-wrapped meats. Whole Foods (a.k.a. “Whole Paycheck”) has an area where you can bring your own reusable containers to buy bulk nuts, rice, legumes, flour, and so on, but not Safeway.
7. Garbage. The food packaging turns into garbage, or course, once we use the food, but we generate so much other garbage as well. I use a Blue Apron type meal kit delivery service (because it eliminates the worst parts of cooking, namely, meal planning and shopping for ingredermints), but I lament the amount of trash it comes packed in. I do most of my non-grocery shopping with Amazon deliveries, but the amount of cardboard and bags, etc. that wind up in my recycling bin is regrettable.
8. Flushing human feces. We know that animal feces make great natural fertilizer. Human feces would too. (See Matt Damon’s potatoes in The Martian.) Feces are also used to generate electricity. What a waste, that we process it and flush it out to the ocean.
9. Farming. As soon was we began tilling the soil, breeding crops, and domesticating animals, we were working against nature instead of with it.
10. Too much sugar, fat, and salt. Our bodies evolved to crave sugar, fat, and salt because they were hard to get in quantities our bodies need. In modern times, we know how to easily create as much of these foodstuffs as we care to, and we do, and we eat much too much of them. A disgusting amount, which is bad for our bodies. If we truly love our natural bodies, we shouldn’t have so much! If we didn’t domesticate animals, we probably would not have a surfeit of fats. If we didn’t till the soil and breed crops, we probably wouldn’t have a surfeit of sugar. I’m not sure how we get salt (other than from potatoe chips and Morton) so I cannot comment on that.
11. Long lives. What is so great about seeing life expectancy going up, up, up? Why the efforts to try to conquer death itself? Better we should live a natural lifespan and then go. What was the average human lifespan for hundreds of thousands of years? If we eliminate infant mortality from the calculation (in other words, what is the expected lifespan of a 5-year old?), maybe it was perhaps 40 or 50? Maybe going beyond that—not for a specific person, but for the population on average—is unnatural and does not support sustainability. Logan’s Run, anyone?
12. Coffins. Preserving our earthly remains after death is pretty disgusting. Better we should complete the circle of life with a composting burial.
13. Wealth inequality. I’m not saying having a leader is disgusting. Many animals that group in troops or bands or packs have an alpha to lead them. But having social classes: rich and poor, aristocracy and peasant, capitalist and proletariat? That’s humans only, as far as I know. Maybe it is a stretch to include wealth inequality on this list. But I’ll stretch it by observing that it enables the upper classes to use even more fossil fuels, accumulate more consumer junk, and generate even more piles of e-waste.
14. Fences. For the finale, I’m going full Marxist. Private property is disgusting! The idea of “owning” land, or anything else, for that matter, is problematic. It just is.

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don’t fence me in
— Cole Porter

Now I’m not saying we can or should eliminate all of these disgusting things. This the culture we’ve built and that we wallow in. I’m just saying, is it any surprise that doom is just around the corner for this civilisation?

— Lannie Rose, January 2023
preferred pronouns: she/her/hers
Written with NO HELP from ChatGTP or other AI resources