This was not an easy book to read. I did, at times, consider going and reading something else, because it is distressing. Very...
The book is about human waste, poo/shit in particular, although urine is also addressed.
There are more than 7 billion humans on the planet. An adult human produces some 250 gms of faeces a day - children somewhat less - let's say 200 gms of poo on average.
That means 7 billion x 200 gms - about 1400 million kilos of poo per day. Multiply that by 365 days per year... and yes, you can imagine. We are drowning in shit.
Shit is full of bacteria and parasites. Billions of people in the world have NO toilet, no, not a pit, not a latrine, they have no toilet facilities whatsoever. This means that their waste goes into the local fields and wasteland - where the flies have a field day - before flying off to walk all over any nearby food, and the effluent seeps into the water tables. Or they shit in the street, not because they want to, but because they have nowhere else to go. When the rains come, so does cholera.
In some parts of Africa the 'helicopter toilet' is common. Shit in a plastic bag, whirl it around your head, let go...
The charities and politicians are interested in clean water, because it is high profile, acceptable, but you can't have clean water if there is no safe disposal of effluent. Toilets provided are often pit latrines, with no way of emptying them. Once full, or without maintenance, they are pointless, and people go back to the traditional open air methods.
Even the so called 'civilised' west, where we have flushing toilets... where does that go? Into the rivers or the sea, or the 'sludge' is treated, and then spread onto farmland. This sounds like a good idea, get the nutrients back into the soil, but it isn't. Vast quantities of chemicals, some toxic, are also fed into the sewage system, these cannot be detoxified, they are also spread onto our land, where our food grows.
Did you know, that the thing that terrifies London sewage workers most is FOG? Fat, Oil and Grease. It clogs the sewers of London, building into thick, hard layers. They aren't allowed to use jack hammers on it any more, but it still needs to be removed. Where does it come from? Restaurants disposing of excess fats down the sinks and toilets. The Leicester Square areas is supposed to be particularly bad.
The whole topic is, quite simply, disgusting. But I don't actually know what we can do about it.
I started this book having read quite a lot of books about how we think and why - I'd just finished reading "the Heretics", which followed on from similar books. At first I felt that "Born Liars" was just too much like the previous books, and that I should have changed tack. However, I did get drawn in, I did find new information, and I did find it enlightening.
Why do we lie? It looks like it is a necessary part of being human. It may well be why our brains developed so much. The process of keeping track of a large number of social relationships and how they all relate to each other may well have been a key trigger in our brain development. How did early humans keep track of others in the group, who was allied to whom, who owed what favour? Our early ancestors needed to be aware of what others were thinking, without being too obvious about their own thoughts.
How do children learn to lie, and how do they learn that it is wrong? Interestingly, not by punishing them for lying, which seems to just teach them how to lie better. Most children learn not to lie as a matter of course, although for a small percentage, where lying serves a different purpose (eg: a fantasy world that they hope will impress others), if they haven't ceased habitually lying by about 7, then they are probably never going to stop. I know that I have certainly come across older students who will that what you just saw didn't happen. These people know the morals of lying, they just don't care.
There are interesting issues of philosophy - is it ever OK to lie? What about lying to the 'murderer at the door'? What about 'white lies'? Can you actually avoid lying?
There are cultural differences in attitudes to lying - with clear differences in the 'seriousness' of a lie, depending upon what it is about, between different cultures.
Linking into my earlier reading about Shakespeare I also liked the idea that the best playwrights are adept at showing the real thoughts of their characters, contrasted with their actual behaviour. The techniques used by Shakespeare and others were developed at a time when the ability to dissemble could be a life saver in the fraught political and religious milieu of the Tudor court.
I found casuistry, the Jesuit
concept of 'mental reservation', at least in the examples given, morally
repugnant. This is lying verbally, while adding a mental addendum to
the contrary. For example: "He's not here" ("...to you").
Personally I think that there are times when lies of various types are
necessary, but the examples given, where this was used to deceive
legitimate enquiry into the behaviour of the church, disturbed me.
Overall, despite my early reservations, an absorbing book. But something very different next time, I think.
8/10.
I became aware while reading 'the Heretics', of occasional irritation. Niggling discomfort with some of the ways that he portrayed people, or Storr's presentation of of an idea. I felt uncomfortable about the way that he was presenting groups of people that I identify with, or a nagging fear that people I respect would be shown to have feet of clay.
And that is important. Because it's how we handle ideas, particularly those that do not fit in with our world-view, that is central to this book.
Storr says that contrary to our deeply held beliefs about ourselves we do not make a balanced assessment of all of the evidence. When we find our thoughts in conflict (cognitive dissonance) we look for evidence that supports what we already believe. Once we find something that fits, that makes some sense, we stop investigating, we stop thinking, and we give ourselves a mental pat on the back that we have 'proved' our beliefs.
I've come across these ideas before, but Storr presents them well. He travels around the world interviewing various 'Heretics', whose ideas do not fit the mainstream, and considers why they can continue to believe things that quite simply do not fit in with reality. In doing so he exposes his own poorly thought out beliefs, which I found made me increasingly suspicious of my own.
We do not tend to change our beliefs very much, or very fast. When people have a major change of heart it is noteworthy. Pastors that become atheists, atheist philosophers who espouse the concept of god, politicians that switch sides of the house. These people are both lauded by the side that they have switched to, vilified by those they have 'deserted', and regarded suspiciously by many.
We have to have assumptions about the world, without them we would find making the simplest decision impossible, but once those assumptions have been made, we support them by any flimsy evidence that can be shoehorned into fitting with what we already believe to be 'the Truth'.
As an illustration do you know anyone who is as right about how things are as you are? I don't, I know I am right, although I have over the years drifted steadily in my beliefs, with no really big changes (one jump, but not a big one, when I came across new ideas and evidence that pushed me further in the way I was already going). I don't now believe what I did 20 years ago on a number of fronts. But I still think that I am more right about things than anyone else in the world.
Does that strike you as likely? We are all collections of prejudices and half thought through ideas.
Storr investigates how people come to believe what they do, and how they support their beliefs. The people that I felt uncomfortable about his portrayal of come out of it broadly OK in the end, or was that just me, desperately cobbling together a working concept that doesn't tear huge holes in my beliefs?
Overall: good, made me think - a lot: 8.5 out of 10
