My wife started to read an article called, “Why We Need to Bring Back the Art of Communal Bathing” but soon ran out of patience with it. “Are there people who just sit around dreaming up this [bleep]?” she cried.
But really–haven’t you ever caught yourself wide-awake at 2 a.m. and agonizing over the “eclipse” of communal bathing in “the Anglosphere”, which I think means people where we live aren’t doing it anymore? Why must we insist on privacy, just to take a bath? (“Aha! Here’s what’s wrong with us! Why didn’t somebody think of this sooner…?”)
This is a cultural shortcoming, a black eye for all of us, a psychic disaster… which troubles virtually nobody.
We are told we need to bring back the art of communal bathing because it’ll keep us from going crazy; but we are not told in what sense it is an “art.” Well, not in the part of the article that I read. I skipped some of it. Oh, all right, I skipped most of it!
But what if not doing communal bathing is the source of all our troubles?
I’m willing to take the risk that it isn’t. Are you?
Meanwhile, some of you have not done your part in dreaming up new problems to worry about. Here you have an open forum. If you think our culture sucks because we don’t spend anywhere near enough time on stilts or pogo sticks–speak, and ye shall be heard.