From a conversation with the author of The Big Necessity: the unmentionable world of human waste and why it matters (bolding for emphasis)
QuoteYou found in your research there's no single solution. Why not?
The answer is not that everybody should have a sewer or everyone should have a toilet. That is simply impractical, and most countries can't afford it. Culturally, in sanitation, we're very different around the world. People have different attitudes to hygiene and toilets. Some countries are fecal-phobic and some countries are not. China is quite at home with excrement, and uses it as fertilizer, whereas Indians are not. They're quite averse to any use of human waste.
In Benin, Africa, some very interesting research was done into what would make people buy a latrine. Mothers, who didn't have a latrine, could see that their kids were getting sick every week with diarrhea. They were spending money on medicine, and their kids weren't going to school, but they still wouldn't buy a latrine.
An academic named Mimi Jenkins discovered that the biggest incentive for someone to buy a latrine in Benin was to feel royal, because the royal family had one. It was a question of pride and status, it wasn't about health. Health messages never work, because nobody wants to be nagged, even when they've got the evidence in front of them.
So telling people, "This is where the cholera is coming from," doesn't have as much impact as appealing to their pride?
Exactly. It's what I call the "doctors who smoke" understanding of people. Doctors who smoke know it's bad for them, yet they still do it. What a lot of sanitation activists are saying is that we have to make people want toilets. It has to be something they aspire to and desire.
Isn't part of that incentive making defecating in the outdoors unappealing?
Yeah, and there's a very interesting movement going on in many developing countries, including India, Cambodia and Bangladesh, called Community Led Total Sanitation. It appeals to people's sense of disgust.
A few visitors will go to a village, and the villagers will want to show off their village to the guests. They'll take them around the village, and then at the end of the tour, the visitors will say, "Well, yes, that's nice, but can we see your open defecation grounds?"
Because they're polite, the villagers will take them there. The technique is to make people stand there and confront it, to not be able to turn away from the fact that they're shitting in the open, and that their kids are tramping it back into the village, and that they're all eating it. Someone calculated that people in villages who are doing open defecation are probably ingesting 10 grams of shit a day. That's pretty disgusting.
People will run off and dig latrines. Once the whole village is cleaned up, nobody will want to be the dirty person in the village. And once the village is cleaned up, the clean village will be in competition with the next village, and that village will want to clean up. It's a chain reaction.
Found via Overcoming Bias (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/10/toilets-arent-a.html)
Fucking monkeys. Completely true.
I could not begin to tell you how many educated, intelligent men I have slept with (I prefer to think that I only sleep with such men, but???) who have NOT immediately put on a condom, and who have acted surprised when I asked them to. I think it is the ultimate stupidity to trust a more or less complete stranger to NOT HAVE BEEN SLEEPING WITH A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WITHOUT A CONDOM, but apparently I am one of few? Seriously, WTF?
Quote from: Nigel on October 22, 2008, 09:03:10 AM
Fucking monkeys. Completely true.
I could not begin to tell you how many educated, intelligent men I have slept with (I prefer to think that I only sleep with such men, but???) who have NOT immediately put on a condom, and who have acted surprised when I asked them to. I think it is the ultimate stupidity to trust a more or less complete stranger to NOT HAVE BEEN SLEEPING WITH A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WITHOUT A CONDOM, but apparently I am one of few? Seriously, WTF?
So, via the example from above, how would you appeal to a persons pride in this case?
"What are you, an idiot? Wrap up or get out" works pretty well.
Quote from: Kai on October 22, 2008, 01:04:10 AM
Isn't part of that incentive making defecating in the outdoors unappealing?
Yeah, and there's a very interesting movement going on in many developing countries, including India, Cambodia and Bangladesh...
TELL ME MOAR!
Quote from: Netaungrot on October 24, 2008, 10:08:58 AM
Quote from: Kai on October 22, 2008, 01:04:10 AM
Isn't part of that incentive making defecating in the outdoors unappealing?
Yeah, and there's a very interesting movement going on in many developing countries, including India, Cambodia and Bangladesh...
TELL ME MOAR!
What, about the Community Led Total Sanitation? I guess you'll have to read the book. *shrug* I know as much about it as you do.
Quote from: Kai on October 22, 2008, 12:54:05 PM
Quote from: Nigel on October 22, 2008, 09:03:10 AM
Fucking monkeys. Completely true.
I could not begin to tell you how many educated, intelligent men I have slept with (I prefer to think that I only sleep with such men, but???) who have NOT immediately put on a condom, and who have acted surprised when I asked them to. I think it is the ultimate stupidity to trust a more or less complete stranger to NOT HAVE BEEN SLEEPING WITH A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WITHOUT A CONDOM, but apparently I am one of few? Seriously, WTF?
So, via the example from above, how would you appeal to a persons pride in this case?
"It will look bigger if you add a layer of latex"?
Quote from: Enki-][ on November 12, 2008, 03:24:05 PM
Quote from: Kai on October 22, 2008, 12:54:05 PM
Quote from: Nigel on October 22, 2008, 09:03:10 AM
Fucking monkeys. Completely true.
I could not begin to tell you how many educated, intelligent men I have slept with (I prefer to think that I only sleep with such men, but???) who have NOT immediately put on a condom, and who have acted surprised when I asked them to. I think it is the ultimate stupidity to trust a more or less complete stranger to NOT HAVE BEEN SLEEPING WITH A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WITHOUT A CONDOM, but apparently I am one of few? Seriously, WTF?
So, via the example from above, how would you appeal to a persons pride in this case?
"It will look bigger if you add a layer of latex"?
lmao.
Youd have to create an image of men who dont put on a condom. It would basically go like "Well, if you dont want to put on a condom you are basically saying you have an STD. For anybody who does not have an STD would be scared to catch one."
This would also counter the "I just dont care" response, because this would be just what somebody with AIDS would say.
Directly linking unsafe sex to STDs is the way to go. Ask 100.000 college students on the streets whether they have an STD. If you find me one who admits to it I would be suprised. So the same thinking should be enforced when they are in bed:
"You have any STDs?"
"No."
"Great, here is a condom"
Hate to bump a dead thread, but I'm reading this book right now and I find it fascinating in the sense that it is making me think seriously about something which, as J. Biden would say, is a Big Fucking Deal, but to which I have heretofore been oblivious.
For the first time ever in my life, I felt compelled to go look at my toilet and see what it's make and model is.
I'll post some snippets, comments, and insights later on. But go ahead and note that this book will appeal to those of you who enjoy becoming aware of things that are big and serious and, while largely unacknowledged, are in plain sight.