When did ‘dirt’ become ‘dirty’?

Education for the Future | Personal Journal & Field Experience | Sept 11, 2008 | 1 hour field work

The 15 month old and I were enjoying the gorgeously sunny day in our front yard. After wandering looking for something to eat, he settled on tomatoes and strawberries. Full from his mini-feast, he settled down on a bed of dirt, legs spread, hands digging deep into the dirt. He shoveled it with his hands from the bed onto the gravel and then back. It fell on his legs, he smeared it all over them. It caked his hands so he dusted it off and continued to dig, dig deep into it all, feeling it all, not just with his hands but with every cell of his body. I sat and watched.

And, as I watched, I came to wonder when it is that we started to think of dirt as dirty? When did life get so sophisticated and our existences so removed that it became dirty to touch the earth, feel it, smell it, dig it, just be with it? Clearly the 15 month old did not think of it as dirty. If anything, he loved it. He loved it so much he wanted to throw it on me. I sort of let him but I couldn't just let him. Because, I did not want to get dirty. Hmmm … where oh, where did I get this notion from?

I think dirt became dirty when working with our hands became lowly. When the classes of blue collar and white collar came into existence. When we started to segregate our world based on what we did for a living. The 'educated' and the 'intellectual' did all the 'important' jobs. Where as the illiterate and stupid, the unworthy did all the dirty jobs that involved using their bodies and not their heads. The head was important and those that used it were important. The body was less important and those that lived by using it were less important. There in started the separation of the rich from the poor, of those that did the jobs that made the world work and those that employed those that made the world work. Really, think about it — if someone did not work in the sewage department and did not pick up my garbage, how could I be sitting here typing away this load of intellectual stuff?

It is amazing how the common place notion of dirt being dirty is tied to such deep biases, values and divisions in our society. I cannot believe the place that my train of thoughts had taken me to. I am glad I reached this place. I will now look at every other common place notion with a new sense of curiosity just like that of the 15 month old.