Very seldom, if ever, do you here of someone giving a person a "bottoms up" unless it is referring to booze! But this is not a post about drinking. This is an article about a psychological frame of reference. It is about thinking and perception.
Ever have something blindside you? Every have those situations where you hear a new word for the first time and make note of its meaning only to discover that now that you know the word you are hearing it constantly? Makes you feel really unaware doesn't it? Makes you wonder what other things happening in your world you're not aware of.
Why do we always want to get to the bottom of things? People always start at the top to get to the bottom of things. Why not start at the bottom of things to get to the top. That is the perspective of the Church of the Holy Shitters.
Sometimes it's important to look at things from the bottom up instead of the top down; to look at things downside up. This upside down type of thinking can shed new light on things.
Everybody's always giving a "heads up" on things. "Hello, I just called to give you a heads up on who's going to be at the meeting." "Before you go on that sales call I thought I would give you a heads up on who you'll be meeting with." "Before you buy that new car I thought I would give you a heads up on what the magazine Consumer Reports is saying".
Here at the Church of the Holy Shitters we like to look at things a little differently. We like to give people a bottoms up on things. It's about looking at things in a 180 degree different way. Looking at things from the bottoms up perspective means looking at things from the waste-end. You basically look at waste first and work backwards.
Take for example how we view ourselves. We typically spend very little time thinking about what goes on inside our bottoms when compared to other parts of our bodies. We do, however, spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what goes on inside our heads.
When we sit down to take a dump we don't concentrate on the feces itself. When we're finished we flush and it's thereafter out of sight and out of mind. We view it as unworthy of thought and useless in our lives. But this, in fact, is not the case. John Jeavons in Cultivating Our Garden argues that "Each person's urine and manure contain approximately enough nutrients to produce enough food to feed that person."
Each of us pays good money to have purified water pour into our toilets. We then do our business and flush it into the sewer system. We also pay hard-earned money to carry our excrement away to a sewage treatment plant. Along the way it is mixed in with all kinds of foreign substances including chemicals, solvents and medical waste. At our sewage treatment plants varying energy intensive, expensive processes are utilized to separate out the contamination from the water and return it to its pure state. The value of the remaining sludge, as a result of human excrement being mixed with other sources of contamination, is diminished. It must be further sterilized, with questionable results, before it can be used as a fertilizer. This never-ending, expensive cycle of mishandled waste typifies truly ass-backward logic and indicates just how out of touch we are with our true nature. It also demonstrates what lengths we will go to deny our bodily functions and ignore our relationship and dependence on nature.
It is the same when we consider other areas outside of ourselves. We think much more about the new car in the showroom than the scrap heap in the junkyard. When in the shopping mall we peruse the products for sale thinking of all the benefits of ownership. We give very little consideration to the throw away remains when the product is discarded. Most of us don't spend any time at the dump looking at the selection. What's there is out of sight and out of mind.
Practitioners of our religion train their minds to think in an ass-forward way. This is basically putting waste end considerations first before doing something. When you become skilled in ass-forward thinking it leads to some startling discoveries. It makes you view things in a new light.
Let's work together to turn the light on our bottoms!
Think it over.
The Church of the Holy Shitters will post articles on our holy S.H.I.T. day ( So Happy It's Thursday)
Last week: April 25, 2013: Man's Ego Problem
Next week: MAY 9, 2013: Holy $h*t - A Closer Look
Hoping to add some humor, provoke thought, spark debate, deepen understanding, and shed some light on the fecal side.
Remember: "If we really want to straighten out all this crap we really need to think about shit." ( Shitbit by Poop John the First of the Church of the Holy Shitters)
Church of the Holy Shitters
A secular environmental religion, scientifically based, with a focus on the psychology of it all. Our ego is the culprit when it comes to dealing with climate change. We cannot save the planet. We can only save ourselves. Our current egotistical self-perception makes that prospect a dubious one at best. Meekness, humility and a realization that our shit does stink, guides us on our path to true sustainable living and climate equilibrium.
Cross posted at http://holyshitters.com/