We are studying poop. Nothing else.

Hah... thank ya'll for the craptacular mind dumps and seeing where the drain leads.

Originally posted by Wandering Scribe
There's plenty you can learn about a thing from its poop though: diet, health, types of diseases it suffers from, even by the absence of particular things you can learn what it absorbs in order to maintain health and wellness.

Indeed. When operating from the perspective of "all is mind"... and the systems of organizing the "thoughts" of the mind... a logical requirement seemed to emerge quickly. Something we all do naturally but don't give much thought to what it would look like if we were to anthro"poo"morphize the systems... we "flush" our "negative" thoughts quite frequently. More to the point, we somehow seek to transmute those thoughts into something productive or useful.

Now imagine if the human mind/consciousness... disconnected from the rest of the universal mind... is where the universal mind sends all of its crappiest most destructive thoughts. Our jobs... are basically giant thought toilets. We aren't negative ourselves, our nature is in fact so powerful that we're in general capable of taking within our minds the worst thoughts the universe has... and over time... transmuting them and turning them into something productive or useful. Or at the very least converting them into a benign non-active form. Some "filters" wind up with too much crap in their system and break down though and are unable to process any further. But this isn't a problem from the universal perspective, no more than when a pore in a water filter becomes clogged... the filter as a whole continues to function.

Anyways...

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
So, basically, it's a really crappy world out there. We're just very intelligent turds in the bowl and are endlessly fascinated with studying and working with all the crap around us.

We do seem particularly good at being fascinated with crap. Or at least convinced to pay a lot of attention to crap.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
Something we all do. Output. Poop is beautiful—although the images that notion conjures are not.

Maybe we long to much for the toilet, and not to release ourselves within it...never mind, it's difficult to appear profound here.

Genius thoughts, my friend.

Your aim toward profundity is not lost here... though it does require some goggles for protection.

Danke for demonstrating the beauty.

Originally posted by LexiconV

Originally posted by 3NL1GHT3N3D1
So do we eat poop too?

Thanks for the visual.

You may regret asking that question because the answer is Yes, in a roundabout way we do..
..
We can't live without this symbiotic union, and the bacterial digestive byproducts...

Originally posted by LittleBlackEagle
i honestly had this thread figured for talking about the fed govt, after all our everything goes into the govt. but we get nothing but their poop in return.

It's interesting to me the indirect relationship between these two.

As above, so below.

Originally posted by filledcup
...and a fully developed spirit emerges which no longer requires its old body.

I completely understand the intent and meaning of your post.

However... do you not still see the poop? Removing the negative connotation of poop as "waste"... and simply "output"... akin to how oxygen is not waste, we need it, but it is "output" by certain organisms. The spirit in your description is still "developed" and "output" once the time in the "bowl" (body) is complete.

Originally posted by Itisnowagain
There is only energy and energy is constantly reforming.
In order for there to a perceivable change - that which perceives never changes.

The perception changes. The perception is the output. If the perceiver is perceiving itself as the perceived...

Originally posted by HUMBLEONE
“Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship.”
Ernest Becker quote

Or as the late, great Tony Saprano said, "It's all friggin bullsh$t.". The latter's context was his commentary on the nature of our current paradigms.

Dear OP, By George I think you're onto something here!

We can also run with George Carlin's idea... "Perhaps the world just wants plastic"... in the way we want "plant poop" via oxygen. We're a momentary staging ground for a most incredible form of plastic organic symbiosis.

Originally posted by TheomExperience
Ahhh so this is why it feels like i am always trying to polish a turd lol
It also could explain why sh!t is my favorite word. All i will ever do is talk sh!t

Poop said backwards is still poop.
May the poop be with us all...at least once a day to be regular.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised by the fundamental building block looking the same forward as backward?

Originally posted by poet1b
Nice concept really. Everything is processed from something, even the rocks may have been the poop of the stars or other larger heavenly bodies.

I think dirt is the perfect stuff, really. The plants grow out of the richness of the dirt, and create such magnificent stuff. Dirt is really bug poop, insects and bacteria, which consume the dying and dead plants, herbivores, carnivores, their poop, and even the parasites.

I don't know if we can call trees poop. Plants consume the death and poop of all things, and create such magnificent stuff. Nor do I think you can call animals poop, but they subsist on the transformation of poop into such amazing things.

Circle of life and all that.

It all depends on the point of reference along the circle and the terms/concepts used to describe and interact with the dynamics at play. One could say that the animal body is the output of all the *other* systems and cycles at play on the planet. We're what is left over when the plants and minerals are done doing their thing. But just as we are forced ultimately to live with and deal with our output, so too are they left to live with and deal with us.

Originally posted by pstrron
Yep, it's called a giant poop sandwich and we all got to take a bite. That is unless you have a lot of bread then the amount of poop you have to eat is less. No bread...well you get the picture.

Isn't it just wonderful to find out we are all in the loo taking a swim thinking it's a lovely pool full of interesting things.

Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break, every step you take
You'll be breathing poo

Every single day
And every word you say
Every game you play, every night you stay
You'll be breathing poo

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
reply to post by ErgoTheEgo

 

Poop is beautiful—although the images that notion conjures are not.


Genius thoughts, my friend.

You can paint a beautiful picture with poo, it'll just be a s****y color

I get why you wrote this thread, it's an amusing insight - yes, all things are "products" of some unseen process - still, it feels derisive, as if philosophy, science, history and psychology were somehow "less" than they were before you had this insight.

The only similarity between poo and this is that the're both products; that's as far as the analogy goes. A good portion of the food we eat is integrated and metabolized by our bodies. Why not say "all we study is natures metabolism"? You chose to emphasize something negative; for comedic effect, fine; but to really think what were involved is conceptually identical to poo is depressingly nihilistic.

I suppose in a way you are correct. But in my opinion the analogy is still "crappy." And it stinks a little bit. What in the world inspired this thread? I daresay, poop?

Originally posted by JiggyPotamus
I suppose in a way you are correct. But in my opinion the analogy is still "crappy." And it stinks a little bit. What in the world inspired this thread? I daresay, poop?

A genuine understanding and appreciation for what scientific and philosophical inquiry is working with.

Originally posted by Astrocyte
I get why you wrote this thread, it's an amusing insight - yes, all things are "products" of some unseen process - still, it feels derisive, as if philosophy, science, history and psychology were somehow "less" than they were before you had this insight.

The only similarity between poo and this is that the're both products; that's as far as the analogy goes. A good portion of the food we eat is integrated and metabolized by our bodies. Why not say "all we study is natures metabolism"? You chose to emphasize something negative; for comedic effect, fine; but to really think what were involved is conceptually identical to poo is depressingly nihilistic.

edit on 27-7-2013 by Astrocyte because: (no reason given)

Not everyone associates "poop" with the usual label. In fact taking a poop is one of my top five most enjoyable things to do. Some people say poo stinks...some say aftershave does. For some the smell of soap is horrendous. The day i can talk about the size of my poop to an associate without their nose scrawling up would be the day social conditioning releases its final stench.

Originally posted by Astrocyte
I get why you wrote this thread, it's an amusing insight - yes, all things are "products" of some unseen process -

Amusement was the lowest purpose for writing it. The "all things are products" is also merely the most shallow... one that I know most people are already familiar with at least casually.

Nothing I write, especially around here, is for trivial reasons though I'm not above bringing trivial humor along for the ride.

Originally posted by Astrocyte
still, it feels derisive, as if philosophy, science, history and psychology were somehow "less" than they were before you had this insight.

Far from derisive. The insight you noticed... as well as the one that was genuinely being offered... are not new and existed for me years before I began hopping around here (including my previous incarnations). Only the desire to "share this alternative way of describing" was "new" and the prompting for it was provided in the OP.

Originally posted by Astrocyte
The only similarity between poo and this is that the're both products; that's as far as the analogy goes. A good portion of the food we eat is integrated and metabolized by our bodies.

That is in fact the entire purpose of the thread. To bring to light the concept of what might be being "metabolized" in the process that "generates" our universe/existence/reality and thus what is by necessity missing from our observations... as well as what is in abundance but is in fact merely waste for the "generator"... whatever we choose to call it.

That is not a side which is commonly brought into the discussion of the value and reliability of our observations. If we could *only* make observations of the "poop" of an animal, but not the animal itself... the environment... or other creatures within the environment... just what sort of model would be built from such a limited data set?

Originally posted by Astrocyte
Why not say "all we study is natures metabolism"? You chose to emphasize something negative; for comedic effect, fine; but to really think what were involved is conceptually identical to poo is depressingly nihilistic.

That's up to personal interpretation. Furthermore... we can't be sure we're studying nature's metabolism because we can't be sure we're getting the entire process to view. That's the entire perspective being offered for consideration.

I assure you I had no negativity in mind. However I am completely comfortable with accepting your negativity into the conversation. One man's depressing nihilism is another man's treasure.

Curious: What if you did find out we're literally a toilet bowl for the universe and you are the equivalent of an air freshener? Would you throw everything you and others have done down the drain?

reply to post by TheomExperience


umm, right.

You think our dislike of poo is a result of "social conditioning" and not basic primal instinct? Poo DOES smell bad. if you take a poll of what smells worse: poo or aftershave, the poll will undoubtedly weigh heavier on the side of poo.

It is instinct to retract from that smell; it is thus also instinct to see "poo" as negative of some sort.

Stars poop. They poop planets. Finely smelted planets of poop that aren't even solid until they get away from the star. Globs of metallic poop that eventually get round and hard after spinning in space like soft turd rolling down a hill in the winter time.

I had a dream that a nephew of mine walked up to me and said "pooping star hug"

The cosmos is fascinating to the point of terrified nausea.

Not to change the subject but what we see in the center of our galaxy... that junk isn't there anymore. All that happened a very long time ago and our star is on the outer edge still going over fifty thousand miles an hour and we can't even tell because of how small we our in this immense explosion in a sea of the most flammable elements we know about.

Originally posted by Astrocyte
it is thus also instinct to see "poo" as negative of some sort.

Negativity is a context sensitive concept. Drinking too much water kills you... we have an "instinct" to not drink too much water. We do not however *inherently* consider water negative.

Feces is not inherently negative. Eating or other ingestion of your own feces will sometimes have a negative effect and we have an instinct to avoid re-ingestion of it in general. Though not all creatures do... rabbits and some other animals are basically built to re-ingest their own feces as part of digestion.

It can be compared to plugging the exhaust pipe of a car to the gas tank will have a negative effect, so we have a "revulsion" against such an action. Keeping a plant in a sealed container with only the gases it expels will have a negative effect thus we tend to not do that... but we don't consider those things in and of themselves inherently negative. Well some consider the car exhaust... but that would include the gas tanks sooo...

The outright "revulsion" to the point of some people being unable to poop in public is absolutely a social conditioning. It is one which causes us to treat virtually all waste products in a manner that is ultimately more destructive in the long run... as well as blinds us as a broad culture from taking rational looks and inquiry into what the world *really* is like and what we're really studying.

reply to post by ErgoTheEgo

we can't be sure we're studying nature's metabolism because we can't be sure we're getting the entire process to view.

In the end, we have what we have. We have the end product; "shallow", I don't know - since everything, as you just said - is merely the product of a litany of stages that came before it.

You can amuse yourself with the analogy of $hit all you'd like; I mentioned metabolism because what we take in - the food - becomes absorbed into the system. So, even though we observe and our involved in an endless process called nature - we too our a part of that process; were metabolized, infused with natures goodness, and expel whatever is useless.

By emphasizing poo, it's as if you were saying the world we observe is the "waste" of something more interesting and important; as if there weren't something intrinsically meaningful and beautiful in the here and now. The sciences we study, the philosophies we develop, the psychology we infer, and the histories we devise, are all a noble effort to better understand our place in this universe.

One man's depressing nihilism is another man's treasure.

It's depressing only if you prefer to see this process in such ugly terms. And "depressing", not so much from my perspective, but as a basic psychological fact. Maybe to you - someone absorbed in philosophical ideas that take you out of the real world (your mention of reincarnation being an example of that) poo and sour keys are the same thing. But, in fact, we can tell the difference; all things have their own particular flavor, taste, and value. Thought experiment: which would you prefer to eat? Poo or Sour keys? Poo will make you sick - a bad thing; sour keys will titillate your sour taste buds - an enjoyable thing.

So, your position that regarding the world as "poo" doesn't mean you actually mean it in a negative way, is quirky; and it is only acceptable when meant as a joke (to me, anyway). But when meant literally, it's strike one as a gnostic twist of reality; seeing up as down and down as up "just because" it fancies your philosophical interests.

Curious: What if you did find out we're literally a toilet bowl for the universe and you are the equivalent of an air freshener?

That is too inane a question to even bother thinking. Though, now I can see more clearly that you are living in the 1st century CE.