Cognitive Sewage

I love this term: “Cognitive Sewage”. Just has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? I heard it this morning during a discussion on NPR about the shortage of drinking water looming in the near future and the nearly endless supply of treated water from sewer treatment plants. Drinkable water. That no one wants to drink. Why not? The simple answer is the “yuck” factor.
Your brain scores the effluent as “yucky”, relates it to sewage and you refuse to consider drinking it. Even though it may be significantly cleaner than the water in the river or ground that is the source of your current drinking water. Powerful associations in the brain make you recoil at the thought of drinking the stuff.
I remember a conversation I had with a sanitary engineer who was overseeing the installation of a small treatment plant at a trailer park where I lived. This would be around 1969 or so. The small plant, he said, would produce drinkable water at the outflow. The outflow was piped into a sinkhole at the edge of the property. I offered to get him a glass, and he said “no thanks, I’m not thirsty.” Neither was I. The water in the Mississippi river is sewage effluent. Ever been to Nawleans? Yup, you drank sewage effluent.
Think of all the cognitive sewage you have floating around in your brain. Fears, phobias, irrational ideas about certain types of people. Think about it. I put Republicans in that category, and conservative religious nutters. Maybe it’s time to flush the toilet of our minds and start over? For me, that starts in the voting booth.

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