"What makes shit such a universal joke is that it's an unmistakable reminder of our duality, of our soiled nature and of our will to glory. It is the ultimate lèse-majesté".

John Berger's essay begins by describing the experience of burying a year's worth of his household's excrement. What follows is an extended reflection—at once philosophically detached and profoundly engaged with the inescapable stuff of life—on shit as an emblem of what it means to be human: on our simultaneous kinship with and profound difference from all other animals.