Socially Defined Context of Smell

It’s often funny how much of our world is defined by socially learned context of smell. 👃🏽 A lot of babies eat poop, they aren’t all horrified by smell of their own poop — at least until they’re yelled out by the mom and told gross.

Non-farm people think honeywagons spreading manure really stink, 💩 mainly because their parents told them poop is nasty, and hydrogen sulfide tickles their nose in the wrong way. Farm people might instead joke, it’s the smell of money — maybe pungent but it’s the best stuff to make the crops grow really well and provide the chance of passing a profit or at least surviving. After a while, manure becomes almost unnoticeable or at least not very pungent to those who live out in the country.

Smell is very much part of our lives, 🌽 and so much of it is based on what we think is good or bad. Silage smells wonderful to farmers, as they know it will make for healthy cows and livestock that produce a lot of milk and meat. As does fresh cut hay and other crops. Non-farm people might smell the same thing and either have a negative impression or a neutral impression.

Whether it’s sewage treatment plant, the landfill, the barnyard, 🐄 so much of it based on our context and our experience. When you learn that smell isn’t natural but based on the context you give to things, it will give you a totally different way of looking at things — not based on whether or not something is pungent but what the real impacts of human activity are.