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Judging a Sewer by its Cover
Occasionally while walking around our
neighborhood, I smell that distinctive odor -̶ the amalgam of human
waste from many households (commonly referred to as sewer gas) -̶
and am surprised because as I scan the area to see where it's coming from,
I fail to find any obvious source. Sometimes I do find a probable
sewer cover, and I'll think, "Aha, there it is." But often I can't
find anything, and I have no idea whether my eyes are telling the truth,
or my nose is telling the truth. My sight (observing an apparently
pristine neighborhood) and smell (detecting the clear presence of a sewer
line) conflict, and I struggle to reconcile them. I experience a
jarring clash of senses. Do I really smell raw sewage right here and
now, or is that odor just a nasal leftover after cleaning out my basement
from the last city sewer backup? Or am I just imagining it very
clearly, as I have sometimes done with pleasant aromas from my childhood?
Or weirder, could it be like my Rolfer, who, during a structural
integration, "smelled burning wood" as he treated my chin, correctly
identifying my ten-year-old woodworking accident? What is correct
and what is incorrect?
I experienced a slightly different sensory
clash recently when an apparently Asian bartender confirmed my Guinness
and Smithwick's order with a thick Irish accent. I was in Ireland at
the time, so the Irish accent wasn't out of place, but it seemed out of
place coming from him. Sight conflicted with
sound for me as I stereotyped, initially believing I saw,
an Asian bartender. It took me a few moments to realize, with a bit
more sensitivity, that the bartender was probably not Asian, but
Asian-Irish, or just Irish, depending on how long his extended family had
lived in the country. What I saw (Asian) and what I heard (Irish)
seemed inconsistent, and for a moment I wasn't sure whether my eyes were
telling the truth, or my ears were telling the truth.
I am often troubled by these sensory
conflicts; they confuse and disturb me. But I should embrace them. And so
should you. These inconsistent sensory messages are a useful part of our
lives, and are clearly a positive aspect of our evolutionary and cultural
development. They help us to discern truth from fiction, reality
from hallucinations, and hucksters from honest souls. Had I been
blind (or not paying attention) while ordering beer in Ireland, I would
have had no inconsistency; if I had seen no one, simply hearing another
Irish accent in Ireland would have been a non-event. But it would have
been incomplete. It’s like the “body parts” Halloween game where we
willingly don blindfolds and stick our hands in bowls of slimy food; when
we limit our sensory input, we can more easily convince ourselves of what
we want to believe. Do peeled grapes really feel like eyeballs? When
we use only one sense, or allow one of our senses to dominate, our
judgment is clouded and we experience “blind spots” that result in
less-than-perfect decisions. If we allow only our sense of smell to
unilaterally dictate what we consume, for example, we may end up eating
peppermint elementary school paste, chewing on potpourri, and drinking
bubble bath.
When we use more than one sense, we are able
to reach a greater level of certainty in our pursuit of truth. Do we
hear what we expect? Do we taste what we expect? Do we smell
what we expect? Do we touch what we expect? When we’re buying
a car that appears to be a Corvette, but sounds like a Yugo, we suspect
something and we look under the hood. When an email message looks
like it’s from my sister, but I don’t “hear” her tone and style in the
writing, I scan it for viruses. Roasting coffee is like this.
Many times I think that the roast must be complete based on the appearance
of the beans in the roaster, but then realize that the smell isn’t quite
right, or it sounds like the beans haven’t reached the “second crack” of
full-city+ roast. When I pay attention to all three senses, I end up
with better coffee.
Interviewers are experts at analyzing sensory
clashes. They look at you (making that first visual judgment), and
they shake your hand (touch), deciding if they think you’re a wimp,
insecure, a freak, or normal. Then they seek to confirm or challenge
their initial impression by listening to your answers to their questions.
You might not realize it, but they even smell you. If you’re dressed well,
but smell like you haven’t bathed recently (or like you dropped a bottle
of perfume on your blouse), it’s a sensory clash, and it is an indication
that something isn’t right with you.
Although these clearly appear to be useful, our sensory experiences are,
at the deepest level, merely rudimentary clues about the fundamental
nature of reality, and the inevitable jarring inconsistencies remind us
that we have only a vague idea of what is really out there, even in our
own neighborhood. Our senses are simply tools with degrees of
sophistication and precision that provide hints of varying accuracy about
our world. Maybe I smell human waste, and maybe I don’t; I can
consider the consistency of additional sensory information and argue
several philosophical alternatives, and I may even then continue to
ruminate on its potential truth. But when my daughter looks at me in
our kitchen and exclaims “who farted?!”, I’ll still throw myself down the
stairs to see if the city sewer has emptied itself into my basement again.
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