Rotten meat is yucky. Boils are repugnant. Gangrene needs to stay in the medieval time. Still, why we feel this way might go deeper than just because of evolution: that disgust might have created our morality.
Valerie Curtis, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, argues that disgust evolved for the much same reasons that fear did. Disgust keeps us away from threats that can’t be seen, in the same simplified way that fear can keep us alive. Curtis tells us that the theory that the capacity for disgust was at the foundations of our modern conception of morality:
“If I go around leaving poo in your front lawn or spitting in your cups or making nasty smells in public transport or if I go to church in my pajamas, I’m threatening you with my bodily fluids. These are manners, but they’re also the precursor of moral behavior. That’s at least one of the ways that morality could have evolved in society: simple rules about not getting other people sick with your emanations. If you sit people in a room with bad smells, they punish more severely. Your sense of disgust for people’s bad behavior is tied together with your organic system.”
So, what can we take away from this research? A scientist saying “poo” is hilarious.