I have two examples of the strange fetish Americans have about toilets. One is the reaction to new environmental toilets. My friend Sim Van Der Ryn published a book The Toilet Papers with dozens of brilliant toilet designs and examples, many on the market at the time, 1978.
I
used several of the toilets in Sim's book and loved them. My favorite
was a nice 4 watt toilet that could be installed anywhere there was
electricity, no plumbing. It turned all the waste from a family of
four into a cup of dust per week, with no smell. Amazing.
Not one innovative ecological toilet ever developed a market, not even among fanatic enviros.
Two, I have long had a Japanese spray butt-cleaning toilet. I've had dozens of parties over the years and have offered to demonstrate the toilet to hundreds of people. Not one per one-hundred guests has ever used the spray part of the toilet.
So what is the American toilet fetish? The fetish is 'Don't change my toilet, don't change anything about it.'
