Society and Cleanliness Today: Common Sense or Germ Paranoia?

Most people know the importance of personal hygiene. If a person washes his hands after going to the bathroom, the action of using soap decreases the risk of disease and hence getting sick from it. Yet we are also conditioned to a certain extent to believe everything we are told about the much-hazier-than-expected connection between soap and personal health. Case in point is the inevitability that we are one big hotbed of germs, no matter the amount of showers in any given day. In any case, does living a healthy lifestyle really require around-the-clock vigilant cleanliness? Is it crossing the line to wash your hands after every single germy encounter? In short, I doubt that scratching your nose and then eating food will lead to certain death. A lifetime of conditioning ensures we are all obsessively clean, even when germs are needed for survival, too.

Nowadays people take too many showers and wash their hands a little too much, not giving the germs already in or on our bodies a chance to build up natural defenses to them. Antibodies are needed "germs" that make our immune systems stronger. They also help to build natural tolerances so we may continue enjoying a healthier life. When framing cleanliness in a slightly different way, a person should try to imagine that every time he washes his hands, the person is simultaneously blanching his body's chances of building up the necessary immunities as well. Besides, I hear dirt is good for the skin. As an after thought, the recent laundry detergent commercial in which two young boys are playing in the mud without a care in the world makes dirt innocent and fun, instead of "dirty."

Is it possible society over-emphasizes the meaning in cleanliness being next to Godliness? For example, I was watching a sitcom the other day when a man in the men's public bathroom accidentally sneezed on another man standing behind him waiting his turn to wash his hands. The man that got sneezed on freaked out about the sneeze or rather the germs from it. He then proceeded to rinse his mouth with tap water from the faucet in the sink. Clearly, the sneezer was standing in very close proximity to the paranoid man, because the one sneezed on reacted by rubbing his face as if the repetitive action would get rid of the germs. He also freaked out and started screaming to the point his reactions scared the sneezer away. The reaction was a little over-the-top, even though public bathrooms are labeled germ capitals more often than not. Be that as it may, the sitcom over-emphasizing the man's reactions pokes fun at our paranoia of germs.

People cannot escape from germs, for they are everywhere slowly closing in on you and I (play Twilight theme song). Yet overreacting to every little germ works against us, too. The germs are needed to some extent to build up our body's immunities over time. Therefore next time a person runs to the sink to wash his or her hands, think twice and consider that vital germs are also being washed away.