Some problems are seemingly forever problems. Like healthy eating and exercise. To some of us the solutions are fairly simple. But they do require time. And thought. And for many of us, a lot of effort. The links between chronic disease and a sedentry life coupled with an unhealthy diet are pretty well established narratives in popular culture. Why do most fail to take heed? Becasue we are immersed in a world of abundance, comfort and ease. We are part of the modern world. And the modern world provides cheap food and cheap comfort. We can’t, en masse, outthink these physical (absence of) constraints.
Can we solve this problem individually, one person at a time? Probably not.
Perhaps we need an intervention.
When was the last time you though about how you went to the toilet? What was your strategy for not getting cholera or typhoid? Can we even give an accurate description of these diseases? We don’t need to think about sanitation at all. Its been taken care of because we benefit from that greatest of inventions: the flushing toilet.
Before the toilet, there was quite literally shit in the streets. In London the Victorians built a huge sewer system and encouraged some inventors to solve the problem of efficiently depositing human waste into it.
The first flushing toilets came out in the late 19th century. Today we don’t have to think for a second how we are going to spend a penny. Imagine being so complacent when it came to our eating and moving.
Technology solved the shitting. Could it also solve the eating?
Conversations With Quotations 