Dirt as Rebellion | Let there be dirt

It's the old resentment of the ruling class that we're dealing with: people who don't want or can't comply with the rules of capitalist society on a daily basis—so-called dropouts, tramps, hobos, the homeless—are said to be dirty. Their inability and unwillingness to conform to these requirements has caused them to regress into lazy slobs who have lost all self-respect. The finger is preferably pointed at those brave little minorities who have consciously or unconsciously turned their backs on the constraints and constant terror of the pig system and are trying to lead a kind of right life in a wrong one, devoting their time exclusively to leisure and refusing almost any servitude that is forced upon them.

The usual jokes are then often made: jokes that come from above and are meant to hit home. For example, about sausage-haired Jens, who, after stocking up on dope for the coming week, shuffles barefoot through puddles "because shoes are made from animal corpses." Or about the Kottbusser Tor dropout who trudges along behind his shopping cart, smells like half a kilo of foot cheese, and for whom the French kisses he exchanges with his dog don't constitute strange behavior.

As with everything in this social order, you have to be able to afford cleanliness.

It's like everything else in this social order: you have to be able to afford cleanliness. And those who live predominantly on the streets, renounce so-called bourgeois existence, have to plan every night's stay like a military commando, and have to organize every meal with great skill, don't smell of Versace's "Eros Energy," and they don't have a football-field-sized bathroom with a terrazzo floor in which they can indulge in extravagant personal hygiene rituals. Many people in this country still own an apartment, even if quite a few now have to spend two-thirds (or more) of their income on it every month. To take care of their personal hygiene, they can simply go to a bathroom. (Incidentally, intensive work has been underway on the privatization of water for years; for large corporations, clean water will in the future be a more profitable commodity than so-called rare earths. But that's just a side note.)

Dirt is everywhere; you can't escape it. I know this because I recently counted the dust bunnies in my living room with my own hands. (I, too, don't want to conform to the rules of capitalist society, by the way, even though I currently still have an apartment.)

Dirt is omnipresent. Even though we've all been conditioned to live with the blatant lie that it doesn't exist, because it's not on television, in advertisements, or on Philipp Amthor's Van Laack shirt.

Dirt is unavoidable. It comes from our bodies, sticks to our skin, and settles on our clothes. It's sweat, skin flakes, hair, blood, urine, vomit, food scraps, used oil and grease, mud, sand, dust, pollen, rust, fungi, bacteria, exhaust fumes, and combustion residues. It comes from exhaust pipes, chimneys, and sewer pipes; it's blown onto us by the wind. Religious people would probably say: Dirt is like God, because he's there even when you can't see him. For example, there's probably more dirt in the head of an average neo-Nazi member of parliament than in all the places just mentioned combined.

The trick is: The dirt of those who make the rules and operate shady business models like capitalism (and, of course, profit from it) is either not visible at first glance or, by the time we look, has already been wiped away and put away by their industrious subordinates. Because dirt is bad for business.

I don't want to claim anything false. It's quite possible, for example, that Mr. Amthor (CDU) washes and irons his own shirts, which are sticky with the sweat of his brain, Mr. Merz personally picks the hair, which has become a foul-smelling, wet clog, out of the drain of his shower tray in the Chancellery, and Matthias Döpfner personally scrubs away the particularly stubborn crusts in his toilet bowl, but: I don't believe that. I believe that for this and similar tasks, so-called personnel are being ordered to the dirty front. They haven't yet had the opportunity to turn their backs on the constraints of the system and currently don't have much of a chance to refuse the servitude imposed on them.

I am not sure whether, in a better future, the public's focus should not be on the dirty dealings of those who let others do the dirty work, rather than on the dirt on the skin and clothes of those who do not spend their lives doing dirty business.

One thing is certain: “The dirt of the body cannot harm a pure soul.” (Khalil Gibran)