What Human Fitness Means in the 21st Century

Running is never something you'll do with any consistency if you allow dread and cultural stereotypes to anticipate your workouts. And that’s a fairly easy thing to do. Step one: grow up in a household with multiple game consoles and more than one television. Step two: allow popular opinions to permeate your daily thoughts. Step three: listen to what a doctor has to say regarding the specifics of your athletic career. After that, it’s just a matter of buying an unnecessarily cushioned, overpriced pair of sweatshop-produced, sparkly white running shoes to stare at behind a mound of Power Bars and you’ll be well on your way to never taking a step out the door.

Staying in shape gets a bad rap, infested as the world is with Neo-healthnazis, organic grocers, and 24 hour fitness plans. That’s certainly understandable. Infomercials showcasing abdominal belts that “do the work for you,” en-route to “giving you the body you only dreamed of” should never be considered anything less than nauseating. In these commercials, in advertisements for the whole spectrum of liquid vegetables and proteins in pill form, the end goal always seems to be the same: improve your image. Make others jealous. Change your self-respect. Always they focus on the negative; always there is the underlying assumption that you are disturbed by your own image, that you harbor jealousy towards your peers, that you no longer care for yourself. They rarely take aim at the hot core of the issue, and thus they have not succeeded in lowering America’s world leading ratio of a 64% overweight populace.

The time has come to look these health schemes in the eye and tell them, on no uncertain terms, that they have failed.

They have failed, and they have failed in the worst way: by continuing to fail again and again, and reeling in easily duped customers, again and again. Always the world continues to do things the same way and yet still expects different results. Einstein said that was basic definition of insanity, and I don’t think it’s wise at this point not to trust old Al.

The first mistake of these advertisers and health planners and Neo-healthnazis is their general attitude. Always they start things on the lie that has predicated billions in annual revenue: “it’s as easy as…” The thing is, no, it’s not as easy as…nor will it ever be. And no one should endeavor to spend time or money on something that is based on a lie. The truth of the matter is, taking a body accustomed to all of the luxuries of 21^st century mechanical wonders, and transforming it into the rippling, powerful collection of flesh that it should be, will never be an easy thing. It could be the hardest thing you ever do - but that does not mean it won’t be enjoyable. One of the popular opinions that permeates the daily thoughts of the masses runs something along the lines of: “working out is so hard, and I’m really gonna hate it.” Well, if you had any chance of taking something positive from one of the most riveting emotions we as humans can experience – taking our bodies to the limit – you probably just blew it.

The best things in life are always hard to attain. Try and imagine the last thing you truly enjoyed that you didn’t really earn. It’s a cliché, but we still overlook the message it entails. Everyone can convince themselves that they have gained much from doing little, if for a short period of time. But living an entire life based on such shallow experiences? Diving into an icy cool river on a summer afternoon loses its appeal if you spend the day on your laptop within the air-conditioned confines of your office or home.

It is not just our population that is unfit – and we should not blame our individuals. It is our society which is unfit, in every way. We not only encourage a love of idleness and a hatred of physical effort, we have built a world which thrives on it. Popular conceptions of athletes are as jocks, while serious academic pursuit, or serious anything out there in the skyscraper world, has come to be viewed as directly opposed to sport. Everyone says, and it is generally agreed, that “it’s only a game” – but that statement never took into account the human motives behind and beyond the game.

I used to think, a very long time ago, that I was strange for enjoying running so much. I suspected some mystery behind my enjoyment, something beyond the fanfare of simply winning an arbitrary race. It had always been more than just athletic glory. I cared about winning races, but I cared more about something I couldn’t define as a 10 year old. I cared about the instinctual urge to explode through the wilderness, to chase down some phantom of my or my teammates’ imagination, to rip through the wild heart of the woods with a ferocity which no amount of fame or trophies could ever inspire within me.

To exercise is who we are instinctually are as human beings – and to run long distances is the best equivalent of that in 2009 America. John L. Parker says in the cult classic Once a Runner that the deepest hidden yearning of the runner is to “fly naked through the primal forest, run through the jungle.” Quenton Cassidy winning an Olympic silver medal may have been a key part of the story, but the climax of that book is when he runs sixty quarter-miles in training, taking his body to a place that allowed him to discover something about himself that few people ever have the privilege to know. It was what allowed him to complete the transformation from the comfortably jogging product of the healthnazis, a “pussycat stretching lazily on the carpet” to a “puma prowling the jungle for fresh red meat.”

The puma is the Plutonic ideal of cat – in the same way that the fit man is the complete version of humankind. It is not a statement meant to insult or intimidate; everyone has the capacity to be fit, barring serious health issues. We need to start by recognizing athletics as something more than athletics, and not “just a game.” Sports reflect our more primal past – a past that has been largely lost, at least in the popular sense, to the advents of modern technology and a social attitude which prizes ease over all else.

Always, the “reward” of work is leisure. Yet more and more often we are finding that what we call work – a pastime that, in Native cultures, had once been healthy for the growth of both man and culture – has become something like slave-labor. We have earned our leisure only in name. And that is the fault of a world which has become a collection of pussycats, run like robots, by our institutions. Our society of healthnazis, which will try to guilt you into exercising for the sake of their products, for the sake of easy leisure, has helped to sacrifice the individual. We never willingly parted with our healthy, primal, puma-natures. They were stripped away when it became more convenient to step away from that ideal of man – referred to by Ralph Waldo Emerson as “Man Thinking” – and become nothing more than the “parrot of other men’s thinking.” When we start to lose our original, independent thought, we lose everything that is best about us as human beings. And these days, it is almost impossible to preserve the beauty and innocence of original thought, seen occasionally in children who haven’t been taught “better” yet, and seen elsewhere like lightning, powerful but rare, in the remainder of our sadly content society.

Becoming physically fit is a shortcut past all of these problems. The process alone – aside from being the most emotional and riveting thing a person can ever do, if they only allow themselves the opportunity – will help our population reconnect with their inner spirit, with their more human natures. I want a revolution - but this time, it’s not for the sake of the evils of capitalism, or the goods of socialism, or the merits or downfalls of any world political system. It is simply for you. You as a human being. You as a living breathing thing that is not taking full advantage of life.

Academics, scholars, politicians, businessmen, may think they are excused or somehow exempt on the pretext that they already live meaningful lives. They may spend countless hours a year working a job that provides for their family and that may just contribute positively to society. But as Emerson said in his American Scholar address, “character is higher than intellect.” What we do when we live trumps what we do when we think. “Thinking is the function,” he said. “Living is the functionary.” It is the ultimate clarion call for fitness: for work over leisure, for hard over easy, for willingly throwing yourself into a fiery hell of aching legs and burning chests and spasming joints – because in no institutionally constructed, leisure-based replacement for life will you ever even catch a glimpse of that glittering orb inside you which we often think to call our true selves.

Song of the Day: 'Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear. Part Pink Floyd, part Revolver-era Beatles, part entirely unique 21st century indie rock, Grizzly Bear's new album is a landmark achievement of modern music. Veckatimest is a collection of anthems that have undoubtedly contributed to the face of a new generation of sound. The opening "Southern Point", a psychedelic-experimental cross of rhythms, sets the theme of an almost pre-apocalyptic alienation from the established world. "Our haven on/The southern point/Is calling us", reflects a draw to nature, yet the song at the same time bemoans a lost love - "You'll never find me now." Early on there is a cultural split established: one side has human touch, but also everything they seem to want to escape from, while the other side is the necessary step to safety they must take for the sake of this "haven." The remainder of the album follows in this vein, telling the story of a group on the brink of departing for the 'southern point', encouraging a final remembrance of a life past; a life that will soon fade away into the slipstream of time, into the echoing, mournful moans and powerful reverberations speaking of nostalgia for a passing world. Highlights include "Two Weeks" and "All We Ask" - but the album does not truly have a weak point, and makes a serious artistic effort from start to finish.

The version here, from the Jools Holland show, is an absolutely flawless live performance, and I think indicates that 'Grizzly Bear' will only continue to improve as they age.