The Ideology of Purging for the New Year: Toilet Bolls and Jogging

The beginning of a new year is a time when people reflect on purging their past's regrettable moments and come up with means of becoming better versions of themselves. As a result January is a time for ideological fantasies to materialize and things like a dramatic increase of joggers (soon to be absent) and a uniform of weight loss strategies and cleansing/detox diets takeover magazine covers.

But while these wonderful manifestations of ideological purging occur, our everyday bodily purging continues its unnoticed routine: allegedly the average human contributes 2 pounds of excrement a day. Why does this matter? Because we all do it, and because most of us Westerners do it through a technology which, like all technology, is the byproduct of a cultural and ideological bias. If Žižek famously analyzed three types of toilet bolls as informed by the three nineteenth century political ideologies, Virginia Gardiner's two contemporary toilet designs - one made out of manure and a second, part of a sustainable 'system' - might offer a future and more universal way to (unconsciously) ideologically engage in a less spoiled planet.

In the spirit of the new year's hopeful resolutions, then, let's hope Gardiner's toilets and obsession for better waste and sustainable living replace that of our self-indulgence in better measurements, muscles and weight.

I'm pretty certain it wouldn't be useless in making 2011 a better 2010.

Slavoj Žižek on toilets and ideology:

Virginia Gardiner's toilet made of manure: