I find it quite interesting the way we innately are repulsed by the smell of poop. I mean, how does our mind know that it's something yucky? Is it something associated by the nature of it being a waste product? But then, as far back as I can recall, the very smell itself, without knowing what it is (say as a very young child) was always something to go 'Eww' at.
From the outset, sure, the topic itself is something perhaps to 'ew' at. But the reason I am in fact considering it is because, if it's something beyond the logical thought process of concluding that something which is a waste product must be yucky, therefore all qualities associated with it must also be yucky, therefore its smell is yucky, then, well isn't that just so much more interesting?
To wit: that we were actually programmed to be repelled by this waste product. A definitive coding in our system of survival. So, if this is something we're born with, some pre-installed app in our brains to know what is yuck and what is not, then we can postulate that this goes for quite some very many things that guides us to survive.
Poopy smells? Yuck. Smelly burps? Yuck. Burning tar on the roof? Yuck. But why have we been programmed to even discriminate in what we find appealling or not? Pretty much, these things are toxic to us, and therefore we have no need to associate with it, and get rid of it or get as far as it as possible.
So, could we then hypothesize that our other senses also come equipped with similar GPS systems? Not just our sense of smell. Our sense of taste for example. Maybe our sense of sight.
And if our sense of sight, does this somehow provide explanation to why we find certain people attractive, and others not? And then, not just our sense of sight, but our sense of....feeling. Perception. That intangible sense of gauging another person, not by physical sight but by cognitive sight.
Reasonably we recognize that we somehow are repelled by one person and are attracted to another. We acknowledge that there might be toxic qualities about a person, so that we try to avoid them. But attraction - we find ourselves drawn to certain features, and more so, to certain sensibilities in personality.
So we stay away from poop because we instinctively know that poop stinks. But alternatively maybe somewhere inside us we have that one smell that is tailored to be perfect to our minds. The smell of fresh baked bread, the smell of vanilla, the smell of spring or impending summer rain.
Is there some pre-installed app, some programmed system or GPS signal that's telling us that what our destination is meant to look like? Or not what, but who?
