JULY 6 — There’s a lot going for society today, with technology being a ubiquitous part of nearly every single thing that we do.

Advances in the automotive world help drivers minimise the risk of getting into accidents, even if they lack the requisite skills to keep a tight line at high speed.

You can dump in kilogrammes of laundry into your washing machine and do something else with your time, secure in the knowledge that you’ll have a batch of clean clothes at the end of the wash cycle.

It has become so much easier to conduct business across borders and time zones with the advent of the internet, ripping the proverbial door off the hinges and providing opportunities to anyone with half a brain and a truckload of initiative.

And then there are the downsides.

Suddenly you’re inundated with emails from African princes and long-lost eastern European relatives, offering you unclaimed millions as long as you bank in a “token” sum of several thousand dollars to process the funds.

Motorists begin to think they’re Formula One drivers and think the ABS and EBD loaded up in their vehicles make it impossible for them to end up in a fatal accident.

And suddenly hotels and shopping malls think the public are incapable of flushing after themselves.

In what is probably the most ridiculous acknowledgement to abject laziness, a toilet system was designed to run tens of litres of clean water down the crap hole for you.

This is despite the fact that billions of people the world over routinely turn a lever to unleash a water catchment to drag floaties (or sinkers, depending on your diet) down a pipeline and into a complex sanitation system that spares you the trouble of dealing with your own, well, excrement.

Of course there is an argument for automation, which is proven to have provided consistency and cost savings for economies of scale.

But the only thing that the autoflush mechanism has consistently provided me is annoyance.

I’m still not done on the crapper, and the slightest movement forward triggers the flush and releases a spray as a result of the flushing motion that invariably leaves an uncomfortably moist behind.

You sigh, and sit back to continue your business, only to forget about the overly eager sensors and trigger the flush yet again.

And then when you’re done, every swipe of the tissue again signals the damned toilet to release another torrent of water down the hole, because obviously you’d need to lean forward to clean yourself.

The bottom line here is—I CAN’T POOP IN PEACE.

In the fast-paced urban landscape, the toilet is one of the few bastions of solitude where you are allowed to engage in a perfectly normal biological function without judgement, even if for just a short while.

I have now been deprived of that, by a bunch of developers and toilet bowl manufacturers and marketeers trying to convince the masses that utopia involves having some mechanism flush down your crap for you.

It is by the judgement of these faceless creatures that I must now choose whether I am to be subjected to the whims of a maddeningly wasteful logical system, or hold it in till I get home.

That judgement is no different from expectations from today’s public, who demand immediate results to every single issue at hand—from turning the tide on a deteriorating education system to reclaiming billions allegedly siphoned off by so-called corrupt leaders, despite knowing full well that the voters themselves are complicit in such acts by their decades of support for said leaders.

They are ever ready to pass judgement on those perceived to be in the wrong, while keeping their waste locked up tight in a bid to show that they are above natural human impulses.

No wonder we’re all full of shit.

* This is a personal opinion of the columnist.