Good Morning Friends,

Did you know that there is more than one way to make a toilet?

No? Well there is. I refer to talk that Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek gave at Google. You can see the lecture at Authors@Google and type in his name. He talked about many things concerning the nature of belief, of course.

But one of the things I honed in on was the bit about toilets. It's vulgar, as he, himself, pointed out but consider the following. Not being a world traveler, I had no idea that toilets were made in different ways beside the "standard," American.

According to Zizek, in France the toilets are made with the inner hole at the back. This is so that excrement drops straight down, to the back, and immediately out of sight. Remember that.

In Germany (at the time he gave the talk he said that fifty percent of the toilets are still made this way) the inner hole is actually in the front. The matter travels under your nose on its way to oblivion. In other words, one is actually confronted with it.

In America, as Zizek says, "it doesn't matter where the hole is," because matter floats before it is flushed away. If I understood Slavoj Zizek correctly, German and French toilets don't have water in them. I have to say, as an American, I do, even now, find this a bit of a start. This goes to show how we can take things for granted.

In these three types of toilets we have three different means of waste disposal. He claims that we are literally confronted with ideology (which I think of as a subset of the broadly defined study of philosophy) every time we flush the toilet, we manifest ideology.

Zizek asked informed people concerned with such matters, why toilets are made in this way. The respondents always advanced utilitarian answers, as though it was a matter of "common sense." But obviously it cannot be since others also believe their way is "common sense." There really is the question of who is right when we talk that way.

These answers were unsatisfactory to Zizek, who asked himself: In what other context had he heard of such a trinity?

About two hundred years ago - early 1800s, somewhere in there - there existed a popular idea that there were three defining paradigms that epitomize and symbolize European civilization as a whole.

1) France
politically: leftist, revolutionary actually
preferred sphere of action: politics

2) Germany
politically: conservative
preferred sphere of action: literature, arts, philosophy, etc. - culture

3) British/later American
politically: centrist or center-left, pragmatic
preferred sphere of action: economics

Friends, therein lies the connection. France has a radical, revolutionary tradition and so it is only natural, then, that that country would make their objects, including toilets in such a way to reflect this. Excrement is immediately "liquidated," removed from sight at once.

Germany has the conservative, reflective tradition, as we have noted. So their toilets were made that way. The matter passes right under one's nose on its way to oblivion.

I don't know if he was kidding or not, but Zizek said that it was a part of German hygienic practice to periodically examine one's stool as an indication of health.

The British and American paradigm is more pragmatic, hence the matter neither goes forward or backward (one might say right or left depending on your perspective relative to the toilet bowl), and thus the matter floats in water cutting down on the smell and then it is flushed and the waste drops straight down the center.

Slavoj Zizek says that when he presented this analysis to, presumably, informed people concerned with such matters, that they admitted that as "crazy as it sounds," it is the only way to describe the different ways of building a vulgar structure such as a toilet.

Ideology (philosophy) influences all of us whether we are aware of it or not. This fact - and I consider it a fact - can be good, bad, and indifferent but is always real. This is so not only in the "abstract," our behavior, our belief system, and the like. This is also so in the down-to-earth matters of everyday concern.

Philosophy (ideology) informed whoever invented the modern toilet in these three places. And the builders and installers of these toilets mold ideology itself as much as the porcelin in making the toilet and fitting it to the plumbing apparatus and fitting it within this or that particular house - architecture: most of us more readily understand how architecture manifests ideology.

I have said before and will probably say again, as I say now - that everyone alive right now and who has ever been is/was either a philosopher of one kind or another, either theoretical or applied, even if they are not aware of it. You are all aware of the example I like to use of the bodybuilder, who may actually be a professional academic philosopher as well as bodybuilder; but the activity of bodybuilding is one of applied philosophy, as I have described it before.

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