The Logic of Disgust

Content Warning: Contains graphic themes including bodily fluids, moral disgust, and sexual violence (discussed, not described). Maybe don't read over breakfast. I found a book about disgust recently. W.I. Miller’s The Anatomy of Disgust [1]  is a serious academic work about vomit, faeces, and why other people’s smell is always worse than your own. Naturally, I was intrigued. As someone into social psychology, I often encounter discussions about emotions influencing society: how anger can motivate political movements, or how social interactions are regulated by pride and shame. Disgust, meanwhile, is something I've mainly encountered as a biological matter rather than a social one. The book starts with its evolutionary function: recoil from dangerous pathogens and you are more likely to survive. So far, so logical. But then...  Then I met Catherine of Siena. The Stories We SwallowCatherine was a fourteenth-century caretaker tending a woman with a disgusting cancerous wound. The smell made Catherine retch. But rather than keeping her distance, she saw her nausea as a personal failure and was determined to correct it. Basically, she exposure-therapied herself by staying even closer. When the retching persisted, she escalated to an act that defied the logic of stay-alive biology: she collected the pus from the wound into a cup and drank it. At this point I had to set the book aside and focus on my breathing to avoid becoming part of the subject matter in a public library. How could one willingly swallow pus? Well… there's a reasonable chance you've done so yourself today.  Every morning, millions of people pour a white liquid into their coffee, their cereal and their children’s cups. It arrives cold, clean. The smell of the body it came from removed. Processing, distance and language change how we perceive what we consume significantly, allowing us to ignore the roughly one drop of pus per cup of bovine lactation. [2] Catherine drank from a wound and was made a saint;