Motivational Poop Quotes

I love it; I love how we are all the same, eating, pooping, fucking, and sleeping; yet the way we feel and act is profoundly different from place to place. I’m driven to try and understand the hidden differences in what motivates us, to crack the code. I’m amazed when I experience humans living in different rhythms. They have not yet violated my trust, and I yearn to connect. It seems like anything is possible in a new place. So much potential, like a newborn baby.

I once overheard a Kohlberg-style moral judgment interview being conducted in the bathroom of a McDonald’s restaurant in northern Indiana. The person interviewed—the subject—was a Caucasian male roughly thirty years old. The interviewer was a Caucasian male approximately four years old. The interview began at adjacent urinals: INTERVIEWER: Dad, what would happen if I pooped in here [the urinal]? SUBJECT: It would be yucky. Go ahead and flush. Come on, let’s go wash our hands. [The pair then moved over to the sinks] INTERVIEWER: Dad, what would happen if I pooped in the sink? SUBJECT: The people who work here would get mad at you. INTERVIEWER: What would happen if I pooped in the sink at home? SUBJECT: I’d get mad at you. INTERVIEWER: What would happen if you pooped in the sink at home? SUBJECT: Mom would get mad at me. INTERVIEWER: Well, what would happen if we all pooped in the sink at home? SUBJECT: [pause] I guess we’d all get in trouble. INTERVIEWER: [laughing] Yeah, we’d all get in trouble! SUBJECT: Come on, let’s dry our hands. We have to go. Note the skill and persistence of the interviewer, who probes for a deeper answer by changing the transgression to remove the punisher. Yet even when everyone cooperates in the rule violation so that nobody can play the role of punisher, the subject still clings to a notion of cosmic justice in which, somehow, the whole family would “get in trouble.” Of course, the father is not really trying to demonstrate his best moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is usually done to influence other people (see chapter 4), and what the father is trying to do is get his curious son to feel the right emotions—disgust and fear—to motivate appropriate bathroom behavior.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.