Health Beyond Civilization

Fitness is defined in evolutionary biology as the “fit” between organism and environment, and is ostensibly about the physical body, physical health, and the organism’s ability to survive physically in the natural environment. But modern humans no longer have to adapt their bodies to survive physically in the natural environment; instead, they adapt the environment to fit them. Thus the survival and evolutionary pressures are eased, and cultural pressures take greater precedence. High heels rather than sensible footwear. Thin bellies rather than a good layer of fat to insulate against freezing temperatures. Huge biceps rather than functional strength.

It’s artificial, of course, a graft onto the natural. It could be argued that this is only an extension of what’s been done in indigenous cultures—after all, natives pierced and tattooed themselves, wore jewelry, rubbed themselves with oil, wore face and body paint, had outrageous hairstyles—just like modern humans. But they still had to answer to survival pressures. We don’t.

So here’s the dilemma. If fitness is “blending with what is,” but “what is” is not what has been or what should be, and moreover, “what is” does not practically lead somewhere useful, then what do we do? How do we find a context, a reason, a motivation for doing things with my body that does not need to be done? How, in other words, do we avoid the trap of modern fitness, which is to train for purposes that have been invented?

I don’t believe it’s possible.

That is, even if I were to voluntarily give up my cushy life and go vaulting into the woods to live the wild life, that life would still not be one of necessity, but one of choice. I can never “pretend” that it’s absolutely necessary to hunt and fish and forage all of my own food. Mind you, someone could do it because they love doing it, or because their family or tribe does it, or for some other reason, but they wouldn’t be doing it because they absolutely, physically had to or else they’d die.

And, the wild life being optional, it’s therefore also optional to subject myself to the types of evolutionary pressures that made indigenous humans fast, powerful, strong, and versatile. Sadly, even MovNat is an attempt to show us how to do what none of us need to do. Even these forms of primal fitness describe what and how, but not why. The why has been eliminated with modern technology.

Now, it’s interesting to me that the exceptions and objections I can think of all fall into the same category. You love to be out hiking or hunting. Your family a history of foraging, or your tribe has traditions. You just feel free and alive moving and living wild.

These are no longer a matter of bleak survival. This is about feelings, and conceptualizations. It’s about philosophy. It’s about culture.

And, come to think of it, it’s always been about culture. The Inuit and the Vikings at one point coexisted on Greenland; the Vikings eventually starved to death because they focused on agriculture and cattle, while the Inuit continued to thrive on their sea-based diet. A land shapes people similarly, so I’m sure these groups had similarities; but their behaviors shaped them too, and I bet their bodies were also quite different in the ways adapted to their activities. And of course, it was not the strongest, fastest, or prettiest that won—it was the smartest, the culture best adapted to the environment.

That’s fitness.

I see now that physical fitness as a separate entity, bereft of context, is more or less a modern invention. Obviously not entirely, but never to the same degree as in modern industrial civilization. After all, even the laziest in any age up to the recent past had to walk somewhere or ride—and if you don’t think riding a horse works some muscles, just try it! In every age and every people, regardless of your specific place in life, the minimum amount of physical activity you had to engage in to maintain survival had a common basis in the culture. Whether you were prince or slave in medieval times, you still had to contend with the lack of motorized transportation and air travel.

So I argue that we are at a unique point in the history of the body, that so much can be done with so little. And I speak from personal experience, sad to say!

This is why modern fitness is so celebrated in all sorts of magazines and books. It’s necessarily artificial! When you don’t have a basic level of functional fitness adapted to your daily activities, because you don’t have to do much more than drive a car, type at a computer, watch TV, microwave dinner, and climb into bed, what drives the organism? Not very much; after all, it’s driven by basic instincts like hunger, thirst, self-preservation. If you’re fed and watered and no one’s threatening your life, why bother running, jumping, or swimming?

Because you enjoy it. Or because you’re so fat OMG!

Most people opt for the latter, i.e. cultural injunctions that appear in place of functional ones, that serve to fill a void.

Culture, therefore, is by far the determinant of modern fitness, unrooted in practical needs. But culture is also an important element in premodern fitness as well, as we see in the Inuit vs. Viking example.

Thus, to be fit, we must determine what that means, and what that means refers not merely to the the needs of physical survival (in modern terms, it refers not at all to the needs of physical survival), but to the demands of culture.

Which culture determines which “you.”

Bodybuilding, marathon running, martial arts. Fireman, policeman, solider. Dancer, singer, short-order cook. Being any of these will shape your body in very different ways. But you have to choose it.

But. I still feel like I’m missing something. What is it? Oh yeah. All of these I just listed can be done without connection back to our natural roots. And, all of these are specialties, as in, the vast majority of people are not these things. They are notable by virtue of their uniqueness.

So how do I find or create a culture that sets fitness firmly in natural roots, where fitness as a physical training method and fitness as the natural relationship of organism to environment are one and the same? And, a culture that does not have to speak to a particular specialty or thin slice of society?

Culture is the key, but what culture?