My Species Is Broken

[ladysprite]

Every once in a while, as I'm getting into my workout clothes and heading down to the gym to go jogging on the indoor track, I wonder what pre-20th-century cultures and civilizations would think about the fact that we as a society have progressed to the point where, in order to stay healthy, we need to spend a half hour three times a week or so running in circles for no other reason and to no other purpose.

Don't get me wrong. I love working out. I need and crave that activity in order to stay sane, let alone healthy, and I look forward to it with an enthusiasm that chubby, sedentary, teenage me would have shuddered to think of. But at the same time, I acknowledge that it's rather ludicrous, purposeless activity, instead of the naturally-integrated activity that animal bodies and metabolisms were designed to both provide and utlitize. And, as such, it's a pretty impressive sign that our current culture and lifestyle are so far from what is natural for us as biological organisms that they're not even in the same solar system. We are physical beings as much as intellectual beings, and our current way of life, at least here and in most other first-world countries, no longer functionally takes that into consideration.

Unfortunately, in order to fix this we're either going to need a major overhaul of everything in our day-to-day life, or a major overhaul of our entire metabolism at the level of every system, organ, and cell. And I don't see either of those happening in the foreseeable future, or in anything like a pleasant way.

So until then, I'll go run in my circles, and jump up and down in place, and lift things I don't need to lift, and contemplate the definition of 'progress.....'

Comments

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

That would actually be a great question for a time-traveling historian. When, exactly, does a civilization hit the point that the thought of having special exercise facilities might seem weird? I think hunters and gatherers would probably think it was perfectly fine. "Yeah, I reckon if you only had to walk for 20 minutes to get meat and berries and greens, you'd get antsy for a chance to do some running, or practice fighting or... okay, that picking up heavy things and putting them down sounds pretty silly. And those people wrestling those - what did you call 'em? Nautilus machines? I'm not sure how that would help them if a wildcat came by, but, whatever."

At some point, the idea of ever decreasing need for activity might seem more normal, especially in the industrial age.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

One wonders if the Greek's love of sports and calisthenics was a response to a decrease in physical activity.