One of the more significant issues when dealing with subjects is the naming of them. While there appears, at least according to linguists, no universal sound laws across language that influence what words are designated by what sounds, thus making the words chosen arbitrary, within languages themselves there are issues of both connotation and denotation when one looks at the definition of terms. In this work we will be discussing a particular philosophical view called Poopism, and it is therefore worth examining at least briefly at the outset why this name is more suitable than alternatives. This is a work by an English-speaking author, and so this analysis looks at the English language and issues of connotation to point out what precisely is being meant. It is hoped that those who read this material from other language traditions will be able to understand at least some of the nuance involved in these choices and to select words appropriately in a target language that capture, as much as possible, the same semantic domain as “poop” does in English.

When we look at Poopism as an expression of a philosophical view on the messiness of life as it is experienced by people universally, it is worthwhile to consider why poop is appropriate to use for this purpose when there are other words available. While writers are not always transparent about the choices that are in mind, this writer at least believes it is important to spell out the reasoning process in more detail, as that reasoning process bears on the nature of what is being said and what is being communicated by the expression Poopism. Let us therefore consider poop among its alternatives as a way to describe the same thing. Poop is a term that is perhaps most often used to discuss the excrement of babies, who are veritable poop machines (more on that later). When we see a crying baby, one of the questions we ask is: has the baby pooped their diaper, which needs to be changed, to determine one of the major possibilities as to what is wrong with a crying and unhappy infant too young to express itself any other way than wailing at the unhappy feeling of a full diaper. Poop has precisely the right semantic domain for the discussion we will be involved with in this work as a whole: it is a natural, indeed almost inevitable, process; it has negative associations; it is related most of all to babies and generally to youthful human beings who have not been toilet trained yet. As we will see, this domain offers the right sort of connections to understanding why life is so poopy to so many people. None of the other words we have for this process are quite so appropriate for the task of describing the nature of existence for human beings (and, if we want to avoid being species-specific, to other beings as well insofar as they are capable of relating to the world around them and possessed of a mental and emotional world within them).

What are some of the alternatives to poop to describe this, and why are they not as appropriate to our task? We defined poop as excrement, but excrement is far too clinical of a word to describe our purposes. The very antiseptic nature of the term distances our intellectual knowledge of excrement from the physical, tactile, and emotional resonance of poop. Excrement is a word that people use when they want to distance themselves from the organic reality of poop, and to that extent, it is a euphemistic expression. We want to avoid euphemism, because capturing the emotional resonance of poop, and the distress it brings to us, is essential to dealing with the more troublesome but also entirely natural aspects of our existence that bring us distress but are themselves an inevitable byproduct of our existence. In order to properly understand why our existence brings us such distress, we need to face it head on, without any words that distance us from the discomfort that we feel. Excrement fails to meet that test of being a word that contains the necessary emotional resonance. We may briefly comment (more will be said about it later) about similar expressions that also serve as euphemisms, such as the way that old people incessantly talk about their bowel movements and whether they are loose or constipated, as a means of determining whether a day for them will be good based on their morning constitutional to and from the bathroom. It is not surprising that people would seek to use euphemistic language to avoid dealing with the full impact of what they are saying, but while we do not wish to express our thoughts crudely, we do need to process them honestly, without shame or dissembling, and these expressions do not meet the task.

There are other words that fail to meet our task for different reasons. We may speak of words like manure and dung, as they relate to animals, but these do not serve our purposes nearly as well as poop does. For one, they represent an emotional distance that often exists between human beings and other creatures. I once read about the case of a chimp who wore a diaper and was treated by its owner as something like an unruly child, one who eventually attacked a guest to the house and did massive damage. We may assume, from the diaper, that the owner viewed the chimp as being something sufficiently close to human to poop. On the other hand, when we think of dung beetles, we are seeking to describe the way an insect lives without feeling somehow unclean by doing so, again, seeking some kind of emotional distance by viewing a dung beetle’s living conditions in a way that would horrify ourselves to think of. Manure carries with it a different sense. I grew up in a farming family, and manure for us was a way of thinking of the productive uses of poop from the dairy cows we raised and took care of in order to fertilize our crops. For me, at least, I view manure as a word that emphasizes the productive and profitable uses of poop, especially for animals, and not the way that we tend to view our own poop as being, in general, not very profitable. This matter, though, is worthy of deeper analysis.

We now come to an expression that is likely to have crossed the mind of many readers but which may be viewed by some of these readers at least as being too impolite to discuss. Committed as we are, though, to as honest and complete account as possible, though, it must be mentioned now. Why is it that words like shit (which can be found in just about any language) are unsuitable for our task, as opposed to poop. Strange as it may seem, the biggest problem with using shit to describe the state of life is that it too, like the other terms we have rejected, suggests a sense of distance that is inappropriate for our task. It is also, because of its particular semantic domain, inappropriate for our discussion. It may not be a surprise, because shit (in whatever language one uses it) tends to describe not only excrement itself in a crude way, but also to describe a viscerally negative reaction to something bad that happens in our lives. Our visceral and intense negative reaction is often an attempt to distance ourselves from any sort of responsibility for the negative situation. It is not only the crudity of the term that makes it inappropriate for our use, but also its intensity and its use to deflect our own part in the debacles of our existence. When we curse to express the irritation of being pulled over by cops, we are less than sensitive as to the risks of speeding and running through red lights with an expired tag, all of which may increase our odds that a police officer will be interested in having a polite tete-a-tete with us on the side of the road that may very well end up in a costly fine and a stern order to correct the deficiencies in our vehicle (like a front taillight that is out). Our visceral sense of negativity against the interaction and its costs often seeks to shield us from a realization as to our own responsibility for setting up conditions that would increase the odds that a police officer would want to speak to us as to our near-future expenses. We want to express the naturalness of some aspects of negative experience that are natural consequences of our own behavior, or our own identity, and poop is a far superior word to deal with the naturalness as well as the negativity of such matters.

While perhaps it may be seen as somewhat unusual that a work of philosophy as this one is would deal so intimately with the quotidian aspects of reality, there is nothing so ordinary and so regular (we hope) as poop in our lives. Indeed, when it is not regular, that is itself a considerable problem. This problem will, of course, be discussed in more detail when it is appropriate to do so. Poopism is an expression of the natural way that life is universally experienced. We want to face this experience honestly, without shame and without polite fictions, without emotional distance, without attempts to deflect the blame to others, as openly as possible. In order to do so we must discuss things that other people might view as being crude or unseemly, but which we view as being entirely natural to our existence. Now that it has been explained why poop is so appropriate for this task and why competing words are not (by extension and implication including words we did not specifically discuss), let us now turn to a discussion of the scope of this examination of the poopy nature of our existence.