Published by sou
on Jan 11, 2007 at 9:59 PM. 
another one of those
herd behaviors all of us follow but never question.
liquids we love:
liquids we hate:
- pee
- mucus (from all orifices)
- impure water
- tears (..i think.. maybe some men hate them.. dunno)
- blood
why do we so easily accept the distaste for things handed down by other generations? pee is not really sooo unhygenic..
some people drink it.. they're doing perfectly fine! mucus is yucky.. but why? is it just the viscosity? ok impure water = illness.. so it is kinda justified but again just because water looks muddy we readily label it impure and blindly accept water that "looks" clean (go see
erin brockovich or any other movie that'll clarify why this is not true). tears.. well.. we all know how they can bring relief.. if you don't know ask a female near you to explain. blood.. ok we fear it coz it reminds us of our mortality.. but it isn't something that should disgust us.. why does it turn us off? is our fear of mortality really so great?!
if you are wondering, "is there is a point to this post"..
Well, certain statistics show that blood drinking is quite common in some realms, especially sexual ones. The same with urine. But you're right, it is strange that blood would be one of the things that grosses many people out as it has often been synonymous with life itself. I'm not sure of the hygeine of it, but it is odd. And urine, regardless of the taste is actually sterile once it leaves your body. Good points to bring up there.
Maybe blood disgusts us because it can carry so many diseases. But I think the disgust for blood goes beyond that. Yes, as Yang reminds us, it is synonymous with life itself. However, when blood is synonymous with life, it is contained within our bodies - we do not see it. Only when we see blood does it indicate a threat to life - via injury or the like. One might argue about menstrual flow - women bleed all the time but still live. But even in that sense, it is just a sign that life was not conceived, and the home for life that does not get to welcome a fertilized egg. I think SaraS-P could speak to that very well, given her current struggles with her fertility.
Other than that, you do pose a very good question - why do we just accept what is handed to us? I believe that it has to have some sort of evolutionarily adaptive quality to it. Through vicarious learning we are able to quickly grasp information that is important to our sustained life. Yet, though, sometimes this mechanism is NOT to our benefit, even though it is by & large an adaptive one.
i really liked the way the first link was structured..
rotten.com... bodily-functions... pissing.. drinking-pee... wow.. thats amazing way to structure information.
your post reminds me of dr. strangelove and all the dialogues about precious bodily fluids.. :)
few reasons are because we can and we can afford to. step out of the cities and towns and into the countryside. 'dirty' water is just water and u WILL drink it. :)
about pee, the general consensus is that our body throws it out as waste. so why consume it. the people who drink it are like sugarcanejuice sellers. reuse it again and again :)
ok...first am posting a smile...cos it is funny...and this is my first smiled for the day...yea..took some time and some really...umm...interesting stuff from ur post to bring it on....and second...why bother about it...drink whatever,hate or love whatever...just let it be...
oh..i forgot the smile...:)....and plz ignore the grammatical errors...
autogato - that's an excellent way of summarizing what i was trying to say evolutionary adaptive quality.. vicarious learning that is actually not so great for ALL things
kid - yeah i tried finding some good quotes from that but din find very relevant ones
jedi - good point but some ppl in the name of "i can afford to" have just taken the damn thing too far..
plush - good.. keep smiling
I object me lord! "tears.. well.. we all know how they can bring relief.. if you don't know ask a female near you to explain." Common do u even want me to argue? :)What you don't think men understand tears or in the very least cant explain it or the relief it offers? God have you seen a mans tear, have you seen the brutality of that one drop as it ravages through years of repressed emotions? Bad sou! :)
no no no.. mcx i know plenty men who aren't ashamed to cry.. but i also know many who just really don't understand the emotional relief one gets from crying.. really, godpromiss.
hehe.."godpromiss"...
Thanks, Sou! I think a good example of this would be that of prejudice & racism. OVer the thousands of years of human existance, it has been very adaptive for us to quickly categorize & pre-judge things. It has helped us to stay alive. But now, in modern life, there are so many negative consequences associated with this for so many people.
taking it too far is easy when u can afford it :D