Let’s Talk About Shit! Our Shit Matters

As more I advance in this life’s journey, I realize that humans, in hand with government and megacorporations, are doing everything wrong. We are so disconnected from Nature and our relationship with her, and her universal laws, that we don’t know how to live and behave accordingly, and, as a result, we cause tremendous damage to everything and everyone on Earth. Can you believe, that we, civilized humans, don’t even know how and where to poop properly? Yes! We don’t know the value of our shit. We poop in the wrong place, and in the wrong way.

I grew up in a small city in a Western country, so, you can guess that I always defecated in a ceramic raised flushing toilet for many decades. Questioning this habit was not something that I thought about, because I had more important things to do, like going to school and doing my homework, making an income, dreaming about a better future, etc. Thinking about the way we shit was just literally a waste of time. Anyway who cares?

One day during my late teenage years, I watched an Indian movie, filmed in India, where I noticed they usually have holes in the ground, with the absence of the raised toilet, requiring people to squat to poop. The scenario of the movie was disgusting, giving the idea of extreme poverty with flies around and the lack of development. Therefore, I felt very sorry for Indian people who couldn’t afford a proper flush toilet to poop decently as most Westerners do.

But later in my life, I traveled to Asia being in some washrooms in Thailand and India, where I had no other option than to squat in those kind of holes. But to my surprise, the experience was quite pleasant! Now with a better understanding of the whys, I learned that squatting during pooping gives the perfect angle to the rectum and intestines for the evacuation of the feces, keeping the weight of the body on the bottom of the feet, allowing the buttocks and anus to relax, while forming a straight line directly to the hole in the ground. All the advantages are lost when we sit down in raised toilets. Yes, the ceramic artifact is not more comfortable, in fact, it’s making it more complicated for our body. Since then, I poop squatting everywhere I go, including in public washrooms.

However, my journey about shitting was not over. In fact, it was just starting. When I met my soul path partner, Michael, I noticed that my lovely man squated when he pooped, but also cleaned his buttock with plain water afterwards, never using toilet paper. That blew my mind! Michael explained to me that once he read, from his mentor and friend, Mango Wodzak, the amazing author of Destination Eden and other wise books, that if someone had some shit on their face, the best way to clean it, is by washing it with water and not with toilet paper. This is because, some shit and smell still remains on their face if they were to only use toilet paper instead. The same principle applies to other parts of the body, including the anus. So, Michael adopted this water ritual for life. That made lot of common sense to me too, also feeling that the water is more gentle to the delicate anus, even compared with the softest toilet paper.

As probably everybody knows, that the main source of toilet paper is wood that comes from the taking down of trees combined with some bleaches and other harmful chemicals. But what many people don’t know, is that according to statistics, about 500 trees are cut down each year, for one single person, to satisfy the demand of toilet paper. So, if we multiple 500 trees for all the people all over the world who rub their asses with toilet paper and the destruction that it causes to Nature, it is just terrifying. With all this awareness, I stopped using killed trees treated with toxic chemicals, bleaches, and perfumes to clean my buttocks. Plus, calculate how much money we can save by not buying toilet paper anymore. The advantages of using just plain water to clean our asses after popping are evidently great in all aspects.

But people are so accustomed to those white toilet paper rolls, that they can not imagine living without them, no matter if the world is ending. I remember during the coronavirus shutdown, the images of people in the shopping malls wearing astronaut suits or plastic containers on their heads, desperately buying mountains of toilet paper fighting between themselves for the precious rolls.

Also, when I was in Venezuela, a country under dictatorship, the scarcity of toilet paper was horrible. People were entitled to receive only four rolls each, and they had to wait early outside in line for hours under the strong sun or heavy rain, for the government personal to distribute the toilet paper to them. Because of the government’s heavy restrictions with toilet paper, the whole family went all together to get the toilet paper they needed, standing for hours to secure the family’s dignity of cleaning their asses. But the worst scenario was, when two armed guys in a motorcycle assaulted a family, stealing their toilet paper after almost the whole day standing in the line. How far have humans got, until the point that they are ready to kill someone for toilet paper. Nothing like that could ever happen, if we just use water, instead of toilet paper.

Over the years, I was progressively changing my life, detaching myself from materialism mostly for environmental reasons, but also because of the exploitation of many humans and animals in the making of many products. I got rid of my car, and, instead, bought a bicycle. I slowly stopped buying and using personal care and beauty products like soaps, shampoos, conditioners, deodorants, lotions, perfumes, makeup, razors, depilatory creams, disposable menstrual pads, hair straightener, nail polish, etc. Also, I stopped buying new clothes and shoes, buying second hand instead. As I became vegan (consuming mostly fruits nowadays), I bought mostly locally, using recycled shipping bags. But one of my greatest understandings, was that shit belongs to the soil and not into a flush toilet.

When we shit in flush toilets, we are clearly disrespecting Mother Nature, polluting the municipal water which is then treated with harmful chemicals, transporting our feces through the pipes of the sewer system which end up in rivers, lakes or oceans. Meanwhile, the soil is deprived of such valuable natural fertilizer which is necessary to produce organic delicious food. It’s no wonder, that the agriculture industry with their chemical products, is growing powerfully, selling artificial toxic fertilizers that damage the environment and our food, thus, harming animals and our health as well. Unfortunately, we are doing it so wrong.

After several years of squatting to poop and some years of not using toilet paper, since 2022, my partner Michael and I acquired a land in the Amazonian tropical jungle to start Peaceful Village Raw Vegan Healing Community, a place in Nature where we can live life according to natural laws, living in harmony with ourselves, Nature, and animals, while eating in a more conscious and healthy way, growing our own food veganically without the use of pesticides, herbicide, fertilizer, and growth hormones, or animal inputs, like manure, but instead, using our humanure, urine and kitchen waste as compost. A lifestyle where we can respect our pristine rivers and streams, shitting, squatting in the soil or in dry toilets, leaving the toilet paper for museums as a human article used in the dark ages of humanity.

Sometimes before we sleep, Michael and I read books from bed, like when parents used to read stories to their kids, but, rather, than fairytails, we read books for the awakening of the consciousness and successful natural living. Then, once we read The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins, we expanded our awareness in this topic, following his tips to make our own dry toilets for our community.

Perhas you are curious about how dry toilets work. Basically, we make a washroom first by a digging hole in the soil as big enough to fit a 5 gallon (18.9271 L) bucket. Beside, we have a sack of dry leaves or sawdust that we freely collect around our land or a neighbors land, or a from a carpenter’s shop. Then every time we use a clean bucket or poop we cover it with a thin layer of leaves or sawdust in it, and then cover the bucket. This works amazingly to keep the toilet and washroom free of flies an bad odors. Once one or two buckets are about 1/2 to 3/4 full each, we throw the contents in the compost bin where we wait until it decompose into a fertil black soil (humus). Later, we use this valuable soil to plant seeds and trees. Sometimes, we just poop directly on the soil, covering it with a thin layer of soil and dry leaves, being rewarded with free fruits like tomatoes and watermelons.

Our shit does matter!

We civilized adults are programmed to live comfortably unaware of the disaster of our daily habits and lifestyles. We need to go back to the simple ways of living life, using our natural instincts like children and animals do. Humans need to shit in the right place, in the right way, for the good of our survival and beautiful living.

Hopefully, sooner than later, humans can make the connection between human and humanure, both terms coming from the same origin, meaning soil or Earth.

Yes, we are made up of the elements of the Earth, and thus, belonging to the soil, and are recycled back again, to continue the flowing of the circle of life and death, the same as our shit.