The Body

Sunday mornings find me in bed reading. It is a mixture of subjects. This past Sunday, it began with the ruins of Carthage, and ended with the human body.

The human body; there’s a subject we can all relate to.

The two body articles I read went from one extreme, to the other. The first bemoaned the return of the emaciated model, the so called “heroin look.” The other suggested that overweight is the new normal; that 50% of the world’s population will be considered obese in another 12 years.

That word, obese, is the new normal for fat. The word is considered, what? Insensitive? To say someone is fat means they are overweight. Obese is a medical term. When many of us think someone is obese, we mean “really fat.” The medical team will weigh you on the scale, but when they are serious about your obesity, they take your body measurements. Mostly, it is your waistline measurement they are concerned with. Individuals who carry their fat around their waste, are more susceptible to heart attacks.   Or so the medicals think. However, as we have seen, not all rules apply to everyone.

Succinctly put, it is an indication, not a rule. Plus, we probably pay too much attention to the longevity factor and not enough attention to how the human body is meant to function. As in, exactly what is the pile of bones for?

For my class, Dressing for the Ages, I had to compile hundreds of images to illustrate the history of humans, along with their clothing. Humans began wearing clothing early on in our existence. Homo erectus wore a skirt. A leather skirt that a woman today would pay good money for. Both men and women wore the same style of garments. They wore them for both protection and privacy. During this study of humans and their clothing, the side issue was their bodies. H. erectus, H. sapiens Neanderthal, and h. sapiens, Sapiens, had different body types. Both erectus and sapiens, Sapiens are tallish, lanky. Neanderthal is chunky, big boned, muscular. All three had to endure hardships. All three were hunter-gatherers. Only Sapiens built permanent structures and then civilizations.Only Sapiens survived.

Hunter-gatherers were nomads, so they kept moving, and working. When everything must be made by hand, tools, clothing, housing, the individual doesn’t have time to sit all day. There is no such thing as obesity. The exercise, and the diet, keep a body healthy.

My aunt Gerry used to say, the body is meant to move. Aunt Gerry was right. However, and this comes as no surprise to anyone, modern life minimizes movement. We sleep in comfy beds, sit down to abundant breakfasts that we may not have made with our hands, go sit in a car to drive to work, sit at a desk, get back into the car, more sitting, and then go home to continue our arduous sitting. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out where such a lifestyle is headed.

Millions join gyms. Many in those gym are obese, trying to work off those pounds by lifting weights. All they accomplish is to become a stronger fat person.

Yes, I know, I am not supposed to use that word, “fat.” The word is too insensitive. I suggest that being “ sensitive to others” is a part of the issue. We are so busy being kind and caring, we never motivate anyone to look squarely at their issue. At this point, grab on to your heart, as I will use another word the sensitive/kind crowd don’t want to hear: lazy. Or is it better to say, “Many are not interested in their own health?”

To be healthy is a choice. Not so in the old days. There were no choices, and there was no laziness. If you wanted to eat, and be sheltered, you contributed to the group. Because, as humans, you had to live with others. Humans need community, both for physical reasons, and inner, or psychological reason. Mental health requires relationships with others.

Once humans passed out of their primitive phase, they settled down to farming. Next came the building of towns into cities. The rules didn’t change much. It was an all hands on deck world. Once the wheel came along, and people figured out how to use oxen, asses and horses to pull wagons and plows, long distances could be traveled with some comfort. The fields could be plowed faster. This gave humans more leisure time, nonetheless, walking remained the first mode of transportation.

Humans became quite inventive with the wheeled things. Leisure time grew. Until we now use walking as our leisure time, and sitting has become the main activity of our days. And the struggle against weight is so common that it has become a huge industry. Billions are made from the results of our lethargic habits. Starvation is rare. Food is too easy to come by.  And prepared foods mean on one has to involve themselves in cooking. Fast hamburgers and microwaved dinners is the MO. Even “healthy” food can have added sugars and an overabundance of salt. Vegan does not equal health.

It is not just about food. It is about being fit overall. Hunter-gatherers had to be fit, or die. It was fit men who could bring down a Wooly Mammoth so that the group could eat and survive. It was fit women who could hunt the other food stuff, from rabbits to fruits to grains. They had the babies, and then nursed those babies, up to the time they could eat on their own. The early farming communities also required that individuals be fit.

Unfit came with settling in cities. Our ancestors were not all physically fit once they could afford to sit for long stretches at a time. They did know the benefits of exercise. However, the food they ate was not prepared for them in factories. That came with the industrial revolution, and the machines, and now everyone can sit on their arse. Sometimes, we pay people to not move, to not have ambition. We do not punish the overweight population. There is no reason to not eat and sit. Even the vanity of the thin has eroded with our sensitivity police praising the unfit. The unfit have become yet another protected class of people.

When fashion began, and it began early on, there were very few fat folk. That does not mean all were thin. The emaciated look so many models have, is also a part of our skewered, modern view of the body. The emaciated body is also unfit for life on this planet.

Back in the day, the body was looked upon as an indication of wealth and prosperity. Emaciated announced a lack of prosperity. Fat was seen as prosperous. The Venus miniatures, small sculptures of quite rotund women, is the only indication of fat individuals from the era of pre-recorded history. What exactly they stood for is unknown to us. My personal theory is that they represent abundance. Nonetheless, to carve these women meant someone, somewhere, was that obese. Once the Greeks began their journey to change humanity with their myths, Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology) became the goddess of love and beauty.  However, she remained the goddess of procreation, of all living things. To procreate well, the body must move; during sexual intercourse, and when planting the fields. Procreation of humans and food, are not the occupations of the leisure class.

The concern of the over abundance of the obese is that they can overwhelm the various health systems. Because of our modern proclivity to try and save everyone from death, those that live an unhealthy lifestyle will take up the time and efforts of these health systems. We saw it during the Covid madness, that the obese are vulnerable to the disease. They died in greater number, second only to the elderly.

What to do with this issue will take much hard thinking, and some unpleasant choices. National health care schemes go bankrupt because when everyone has a “right” to receive healthcare, whether or not they can pay for it, very few are motivated to adhere to a healthy lifestyle. The easy lifestyle is probably original sin, because its comfort gives a false sense of security. Like mask wearing in a time of disease, people still get the disease, but the mask wearer thinks they are protected.

Disease is one thing, however, the need for the fit body is more about the vagaries of life itself. Because there are no guarantees that comfort won’t by interrupted, we need to prepare ourselves both mentally, and physically. The hard fact is that survival belongs to the fit, and the under 40 crowd. Think of the recent earthquake in Turkey, where many, who were comfortable in their beds at night, were jarred awake with a killer rumble. Many did not wake up at all, and many were trapped in the rubble. The fit had more of a chance of survival, and it was the fit who began to dig, and rescue survivors.

It is my view of life that one must always be prepared for the different shit on the same day. I, too, was once jarred out of a sound sleep by a roaring temblor that killed some of my neighbors and made rubble of once steady buildings.

I was prepared. Then and now.

The best way to prepare is to channel those ancients, to never allow total comfort in, to understand down to the gut, that danger is always around the corner. The body, connected to the mind, knows this. That is why we have those chemical reactions when confronted with scary stuff, like huge earthquakes. Or traffic accidents. Or that guy with a gun intent on violence. You’ve heard the phrase; fight or flight. We have to be prepared for one or the other. Our body needs to be prepared to deal with it beyond being healthy.  The operative word is survive. Our ancestors were only too familiar with the need for weapons, plus the ability to run, with a child in the arms. Those who carry excess weight have a limited chance of surviving a traumatic event.

Go ask the Spartans.

Among Christians, the body is supposed to be a temple. I quote, 1 Corinthians, 6: 19-20. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

Honor yourselves with a body that is able to carry out the terms of life. Even though an individual may have been born with less than perfect limbs or conditions that make it more of a challenge to be fit, there are other ways to meet the eventualities of the mean stuff life can throw at you. We all know of individuals who take on basketball, marathons, and fencing, whilst in a wheelchair. Excuses are rare for not conditioning the body.

As FDR said all those years ago, “We having nothing to fear, but fear itself,” I will repurpose that phrase. We have nothing to fear but our lethargy. Indeed, if you fear anything, fear the possibility you won’t survive because you are not prepared to dig your way out, or run fast enough, or react with strength. Civilization is a construct. In a moment it can come tumbling down. Life, and death, are real. Live that way.