Page 136 - The Social Animal

118 The Social Animal

Roman practice of daily bathing was abandoned throughout Europe
and replaced by a once-a-year bath. Eventually, the indoor baths fell
into disrepair and society lost the plumbing skills needed to main-
tain indoor toilets. The chamber pot was born of necessity. It was
centuries later that the “spirit” theory of disease was replaced by our
modern theory based on viruses and bacteria. 2
My point here is not to explore the inner workings of the abnor-
mal mind, nor to describe modern advances in health and hygiene.
Instead, I tell these stories to raise a fundamental question: To what
extent do we moderns behave like the young girl from the mining
town and the users of the medieval chamber pot? How might our fic-
tions guide our behavior and actions? It would not surprise me if the
writer of a social psychology textbook in the 22nd century began her
chapter on social cognition not with a story about chamber pots, but
with a tale of pesticide runoff or deaths due to the AIDS virus. The
story might go something like this.

During the 20th and 21st centuries, millions died of famine—
not from lack of food, but because their food had been poisoned
by years of chemical runoff gradually building up in the food
chain. A great many knowledgeable people suspected this was
happening, but, unaccountably, little or nothing was done to
prevent it.
In addition, more than one hundred fifty million people
died of the AIDS virus because they were unwilling to use con-
doms.The modern reader may be wondering how a culture that
could place men and women on the moon and cure a plethora
of dangerous diseases could behave so foolishly. Well, it seems
that, in those days, many people apparently believed that talk-
ing frankly about the operation of their sexual parts was sinful
and could cause harm. For example, at the turn of the 21st cen-
tury, most parents of teenagers clung to the primitive belief that
distributing condoms in high school would increase sexual
3
promiscuity—in spite of the fact that careful research demon-
strated that this was not the case.
My point in relating these stories is not, however, to point
out how simpleminded most people were in the 20th and 21st
centuries, but to ask a more fundamental question: “How much
are we like those heedless AIDS victims or those farmers who
used pesticides so carelessly?”