Healthy Skepticism?

[Gene03 0]

Skepticism for Health and Fitness
by Frank Forencich
Everyone knows that the modern human body has a big problem. Scarcely a day goes by without another news story about obesity, diabetes or heart disease. Even the most distracted observer has recognized the predicament; our bodies are in real trouble.
Conventional analysis holds that the problem is simply an excess of calories combined with a deficiency of movement. Medical experts tell us that it's an energy imbalance, not an infectious disease. Sedentary living and obesity aren't conditions that we "catch." The condition is not like malaria, AIDS, smallpox or ebola. It's not due to proliferating viruses, bacteria or prions. It isn't spread by people who cough in crowded places or by people who fail to wash their hands.
But what if this standard analysis is wrong? Maybe our conventional thinking is completely misguided. Maybe sedentary living is something that we do "catch." Activity levels are contagious after all. Sedentary behaviors can spread through imitation and mimicry. If most of the people that you know are living on the couch, you may very well decide to join them. If your culture deems it normal that people spend endless hours indoors in front of TV and movie screens, you may choose that behavior for yourself, as well.
In this sense, sedentary behavior might actually be classified as a communicable disease. Obesity may actually have less to do with energy imbalance and more to do with social psychology. We can tweak caloric numbers all we want, but unless we treat the root causes of communicable apathy and atrophy, we aren't going to get very far.
It's All About Memes
When we look at inactivity as a communicable disease, we see that the main threat to our health comes, not from viruses and bacteria, but from pathological memes that infect our minds and distort our behavior. Memes, as you may know, are simply ideas that are capable of replication. The word was first coined by Richard Dawkins as an analogy with the word gene. (Dawkins is the author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and other works on science.) For Dawkins, a meme is a replicating idea, image or icon that circulates through our culture. Memes can be powerful agents that colonize individual minds and replicate in conversation and commerce.
Just as we are surrounded by microorganisms, we are also surrounded by memes. They appear in obvious places
PLAY AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT like libraries, bookstores, TV, radio and magazines, but they also lurk in supermarket checkout lines, product displays and clothing styles. And of course, they are carried in millions of conversations across the world every day. Just as it is impossible to live a sterile life that is free from microorganisms, it is also impossible to live a life that is free from memes. Even the Amish live with and by a set of memes.
Pathogenic Memes
Just as microorganisms can be beneficial or pathological to our tissue, memes can promote or destroy healthy attitudes and behaviors. They can wield profound influence over our inclinations towards movement and physicality. Naturally, there will be lots of individual variation here; a meme that promotes vigorous physical living in one person may have the opposite effect in someone else. Nevertheless, we can make some general statements about individual memes. For our purposes, we're going to identify pathological memes as those that promote sedentary living, body loathing, movement avoidance and aphysical living.
The Cosmetic Meme
The cosmetic meme holds that physical appearance is the defining human trait and that beauty is possible for anyone who is willing to spend the time and money. This meme is promoted on millions of magazine covers each month, where exceptional bodies and faces are digitally manipulated into flawless perfection. Research has shown that such images of physical perfection cause viewers to feel anxiety about their bodies and to rate their own appearance less favorably. This, of course, is exactly the point of such advertising; anxiety tends to promote consumption. By putting form before function, this meme sets people up for frustration and failure. Exclusive attention to visual form distracts us from the substantial joys and health benefits that come from vigorous functional movement.
The Workaholic Meme
The workaholic meme holds that labor is the ultimate measure of individual value and that rest is something to be ashamed of. This meme leads us to brag about our crushing work schedules and the fact that we have no free time for anything. Closely related is the workout meme, one that places supreme emphasis on the quantity of labor in physical experience. This meme completely ignores the fact that, for the vast majority of human history, people did no work or workouts whatsoever and yet remained generally healthy and vigorous. Unfortunately, the workout meme tends to drive out play and the pleasure that goes with it.
The Magic Bullet Meme
Also known as the something-for-nothing meme, the magic bullet meme suggests that some substances and methods will produce profound and lasting changes to the human body without effort. This meme has probably been around for thousands of years, but it received a big boost with the invention of penicillin, the first authentically effective pharmaceutical medicine. Ironically, the invention of vaccines and antibiotics - spectacular victories for scientific medicine - also gave power to the hucksters and quacks. After all, if a pill can cure a life-threatening infection, it's not much of a stretch to suppose that a similar-looking pill can cure cancer, build muscle strength or promote endurance. This meme continues to be relentlessly flogged by health quacks and con men around the world.
The Consumption Meme
This meme tells us that relentless consumption is the key to happiness. It encourages us to eat more food, drink more soft-drinks and buy more cars. Obviously, this leads us down the road to obesity and diabetes, but it also deprives us of health and fitness in a more subtle way. If you purchase a lot of products and merchandise that you don't really need, you'll have to work harder to pay for it and, in turn, play less. You'll have more stuff in your garage, but you'll have less time and vigor to actually enjoy it.
Intellectual Immunity
Just as our bodies are under frequent assault by pathogenic microorganisms, our minds are under regular assault by pathogenic memes. If we want to maintain our health and fitness, it is imperative that we develop some sort of defense against memes that would sap our physical strength and lead us into lives of sloth, apathy and atrophy. In other words, we need some sort of intellectual immunity.
Conventional health and fitness publications are thick with suggestions about how we can improve our somatic immunity - with herbs and relaxation for example - but have little to say about protecting ourselves against dangerous ideas. This is a tremendous oversight because in the long run, a vigorous intellectual immunity may be just as important to our health as somatic immunity. You might
be capable of fighting off an aggressive microbe, but what about the aggressive pitch of a magazine cover or the infectious persuasion of a lavishly produced TV commercial? The former might lay you down for a few days, but the latter might compromise your intelligence and your relationship with your body for decades.
The Mind's Role
In many circles, an open mind is promoted as an admirable personal quality, an ideal that everyone ought to aspire to. Under this value system, we are encouraged to accept every proposition as if all may be equally valid. We evaluate each on its merits, and then we make a considered choice about whether to accept or reject each proposition.
However some may take the open mind concept one step too far and unintentionally develop a gullible mind. The gullible mind is extremely vulnerable to infection by pathogenic memes and may represent a serious liability to its owner. In a sense, a gullible mind is very much like an open wound - each is vulnerable to assault by infectious, self-replicating pathogens than can penetrate deeply into the body of the organism. But like the flesh, the mind needs a defense. A mind that can protect itself against pathogenic memes is more likely to live a wild, independent and physical lifestyle. A defenseless, gullible mind is more likely to be colonized, trapped and enslaved.
Primary Defenses
Doubt, skepticism and rigorous questioning are the mac-rophages, antibodies and killer T-cells of the intellect, our primary weapons against infectious pathological memes. When encountering new memes or reflecting on old ones, begin with skepticism, then ask these questions: Who created this meme? Did it appear spontaneously as an authentic creative act or was it premeditated and produced? What are the authors of this meme trying to do? Are they seeking to entertain? Inform? Manipulate? Who is paying to proliferate this meme? Who's benefiting? Use the scientific method to examine memes and the assumptions that go with them. Does this meme have any evidence to support it? Is it grounded in reality? Can the claims of this meme be tested? Can the results be reproduced? Are the claims of this meme consistent with verified and established knowledge? Did the researchers control for the placebo effect? Was the trial big enough to have real validity?
Limit Your Exposure
Obviously, we will have less contact with pathogenic memes if we limit our exposure to sources. Just as we try to stay away from dirty public restrooms and malaria-infested swamps in the tropics, so should we also avoid sources of pathogenic memes. This is a matter of basic preventive health care. Of course, TV, magazines, radio and the Internet are major sources of memes, many of them pathological. Intelligence suggests that we exercise a vigorous immunity when coming in contact with these sources.
In a more general sense, the primary source of pathological memes is today's marketing and advertising industry. This is an industry that pays no regard to the health consequences of the memes that it spreads. Indeed, many of the memes that it creates are intentionally pathological to the human body and spirit. "You need our products to be healthy and happy. You need our machines, pills, powders and potions. You cannot succeed without us." Such memes disempower us as they steal our independence and physicality. Consequently, it is best to approach the entire industry as you would any third-world public restroom- with extreme caution.
You're On Your Own
Unfortunately, popular health and fitness publications are unlikely to offer advice on "ways to boost your intellectual immunity." This, after all, implies skepticism, questioning and a thorough review of claims. Advertisers simply won't stand for this sort of content. Consumer culture depends on the unquestioning acceptance of memes. In fact, the meta-objective of modern-day marketing is not to sell products to consumers, but rather to produce consumers without intellectual immunity, people who will readily accept the influence of infectious, consumeristic marketing. (As Adbusters magazine puts it, "The product is you.") To the extent that marketers succeed, today's consumer is little more than a meme replicating organism, a passive vector through which advertisers can proliferate their messages and values.
Obviously, marketers will continue to craft pathological memes and spread them throughout our culture. With vigilance and skepticism, we can avoid the worst of them. The good news is that if obesity, apathy and sedentary behaviors are something that we "catch," then vigorous physicality and joyous movement are something that we can also "catch." If disease and atrophy are communicable, so too is a robust sense of physicality.
With this in mind, seek out memes for physical living and movement. Affiliate yourself with people, organizations and publications that carry memes for active, vigorous and joyous living. Look for empowering images and ideas. Put yourself in contact with animals, children and adults who enjoy movement and have a passion for living. Their enthusiasm will be infectious.

“The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec quotes (Polish writer, poet and satirist 1906-1966)

[warpedskydiver 0]

Gene this may require too much THINKING for some of the readers

[kallend 2,150]

Quote

Gene this may require too much THINKING for some of the readers

More likely too much READING.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[warpedskydiver 0]

that too John...that too

[pirana 0]

That's a really, really, really, really, really, reallly, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, long way of saying that free will is alive and kicking and you should never stop asking why. Usually you have to ask many times (5 is the average) to get to the bottom line. Accept no substitutes for clear, deliberate, critical thinking; and treat with extreme suspicion those that resent being questioned.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[Tink1717 2]

Which demonstrates the part about "open mental wounds are breeding ground for meme infection..." or words to that effect.

Skydivers don't knock on Death's door. They ring the bell and runaway... It really pisses him off.
-The World Famous Tink. (I never heard of you either!!)
AA #2069 ASA#33 POPS#8808 Swooo 1717