Hmm. To what category of values does the value “toughness framed as the will triumphing over the body” belongs to ?
Since I got a lot of these kinds of stuff from my father, my first instinct was “masculine values” but on the other hand, actually enjoying physical challenges is a part of the very same set of values, too, and in fact he spent much of his youth pursuing whatever shiny sport happened to strike his fancy—kayaking, long-distance biking, basketball and skating amongst them. So if I categorize it this way, I get some contradictions.
Maybe “puritanical values” ? Although my upbringing has little if ever to do with Protestantism, it was a fairly big relevation for me to learn a thing or two about Taoism and Buddhism, starting with The Tao of Pooh, the kind of teachings that doing things in an effortless way, being “fluid” may be a good idea at least sometimes. This sounds like the opposite extreme from Puritanism. And if it was such a new thing for me, maybe I was raised a bit puritan in a non-obvious way, clearly no influence from Calvin.
I remember an experiment I did at maybe 16? when I have learned a bit about these Tao-stuff. We were at the Mediterrean sea holidaying and I was lying at the inner edge of the water on the beach and toying with trying to resist the meter-high waves to not throw me out nor to move me. I did i the usual way, flexing all the muscles. Didn’ work. Remembered wu-wei, and tryed to relax completely and submit, give me over to it, not resist and become one with the force of the waves, and to my surprise, it worked, it actually could not move me, because I somehow counter-acted the force with micro-movements or something. A bit later I was biking up some hill and my thigh was burning and my usual reaction was to double down hard, flex that thigh harder and grit my teeth and push, and instead I relaxed my thigh and tried to make the movement fluid, as if I was not exerting force but the pedal itself moving my leg or more like my leg being one with the pedal, and that worked, too.
These are very surprising things for me. Apparently the blog you linked also discusses similar stuff, thanks.
I am probably the most religion-friendly atheist here with an interest in its history, so I have to challenge this :)
Basically mind-body dualism was invented by Descartes and the Catholic Church always believed and AFAIK still does in Aristotelean hylomorphic dualism, where everything consists of matter and substantial form, basically information. So in this view, very roughly a plant consists of matter and DNA, an animal of matter, DNA and info stored in the brain, and so on. It is the substantial form or the information that was called originally “soul”. The reason for the general misunderstanding is that Catholics also argued that part of the human substantial form, substantial form is supernatural, because human cognition can see abstractions, not only specific things, like it can see trianglehood not only triangual objects. For this reason they think a small part of the soul, the abstract thinking part which we may call Little Mathemathician survives death and links up after death with the Big Mathemathician, which is called beatific vision. But as this is not really fun in the longer run, to be a purely abstract thinking agent without emotions and memories and everything that died with the brain, that is why they also teach the resurrection of the body later on. But this not mind-body dualism, this is a small—if superior—part of the mind vs. everything else dualism. BTW, if not obvious, why is it wrong: because abstractions are invented, made, abstracted away, modelled, not discovered, they have a map-terrain problem here.
However, it is also true that they teach that for every being a good life means living according to his nature and for a human being this abstract thinking part is a unique part of our nature, the only thing other animals don’t have, and thus living according to it means overriding our instincts with abstract, general principles, like ethics or laws.
So, practically yes, but not in the Cartesian dualism sense, and it is more like the abstract thinking, general-principles part of the mind ruling the other parts mind. But since both Catholics and atheists agree in the other parts of the mind being natural and biological (obviously, in reality the abstract part too, because abstractions are made, not discovered, hence they do not require a supernatural organ for their discovery), obviously we may as well call natural, biological minds as well bodies, so literally speaking you are right, and I don’t even know what I am objecting about really. I just wanted an excuse to tell it because I think Scholasticism is one of the best fantasy worlds ever made, as long as you don’t take it as something that wants to be true (unfortuantely they want to take it so), it is fairly cool, way more logically consistent than Middle-Earth for example.
Tentative theory: the Puritan (or possibly Protestant work ethic) thing never went away, but at some point it got mated with gaining status through self-expression, and with gaining status through your clothes getting to seem too easy, which is why people shifted to high-maintenance bodies.. That’s why running ultramarathons on multiple continents seems cool rather than weird and extravagant.
This isn’t about philosophy, exactly, though you may be able to deduce a plausible philosophy to explain what people are doing. It’s about cultural shifts.
Reverse correlation between fitness vs. dressy fashion? Kinda-sorta of true for Europe (Sweden: fitness, France, Italy: dressy fashion), can someone compare the muscle-beaches of California and Rio de Janeiro to NY fashion?
Hmm. To what category of values does the value “toughness framed as the will triumphing over the body” belongs to ?
Since I got a lot of these kinds of stuff from my father, my first instinct was “masculine values” but on the other hand, actually enjoying physical challenges is a part of the very same set of values, too, and in fact he spent much of his youth pursuing whatever shiny sport happened to strike his fancy—kayaking, long-distance biking, basketball and skating amongst them. So if I categorize it this way, I get some contradictions.
Maybe “puritanical values” ? Although my upbringing has little if ever to do with Protestantism, it was a fairly big relevation for me to learn a thing or two about Taoism and Buddhism, starting with The Tao of Pooh, the kind of teachings that doing things in an effortless way, being “fluid” may be a good idea at least sometimes. This sounds like the opposite extreme from Puritanism. And if it was such a new thing for me, maybe I was raised a bit puritan in a non-obvious way, clearly no influence from Calvin.
I remember an experiment I did at maybe 16? when I have learned a bit about these Tao-stuff. We were at the Mediterrean sea holidaying and I was lying at the inner edge of the water on the beach and toying with trying to resist the meter-high waves to not throw me out nor to move me. I did i the usual way, flexing all the muscles. Didn’ work. Remembered wu-wei, and tryed to relax completely and submit, give me over to it, not resist and become one with the force of the waves, and to my surprise, it worked, it actually could not move me, because I somehow counter-acted the force with micro-movements or something. A bit later I was biking up some hill and my thigh was burning and my usual reaction was to double down hard, flex that thigh harder and grit my teeth and push, and instead I relaxed my thigh and tried to make the movement fluid, as if I was not exerting force but the pedal itself moving my leg or more like my leg being one with the pedal, and that worked, too.
These are very surprising things for me. Apparently the blog you linked also discusses similar stuff, thanks.
Christian :-) It’s the typical Western mind-body dualism with the goal of the (superior) mind triumphing over the (beast-like) body.
Hmm. Is it possible at least certain kinds of socialism inherited that? Since religion had such a little influence on my upbringing...
Well, Christian ideas formed much of Western culture and Marxism is certainly a Western-culture phenomenon.
Also, socialism wanted cogs in a machine and it was useful for cogs to be physically fit and overcome physical hardship through love of .
I am probably the most religion-friendly atheist here with an interest in its history, so I have to challenge this :)
Basically mind-body dualism was invented by Descartes and the Catholic Church always believed and AFAIK still does in Aristotelean hylomorphic dualism, where everything consists of matter and substantial form, basically information. So in this view, very roughly a plant consists of matter and DNA, an animal of matter, DNA and info stored in the brain, and so on. It is the substantial form or the information that was called originally “soul”. The reason for the general misunderstanding is that Catholics also argued that part of the human substantial form, substantial form is supernatural, because human cognition can see abstractions, not only specific things, like it can see trianglehood not only triangual objects. For this reason they think a small part of the soul, the abstract thinking part which we may call Little Mathemathician survives death and links up after death with the Big Mathemathician, which is called beatific vision. But as this is not really fun in the longer run, to be a purely abstract thinking agent without emotions and memories and everything that died with the brain, that is why they also teach the resurrection of the body later on. But this not mind-body dualism, this is a small—if superior—part of the mind vs. everything else dualism. BTW, if not obvious, why is it wrong: because abstractions are invented, made, abstracted away, modelled, not discovered, they have a map-terrain problem here.
However, it is also true that they teach that for every being a good life means living according to his nature and for a human being this abstract thinking part is a unique part of our nature, the only thing other animals don’t have, and thus living according to it means overriding our instincts with abstract, general principles, like ethics or laws.
So, practically yes, but not in the Cartesian dualism sense, and it is more like the abstract thinking, general-principles part of the mind ruling the other parts mind. But since both Catholics and atheists agree in the other parts of the mind being natural and biological (obviously, in reality the abstract part too, because abstractions are made, not discovered, hence they do not require a supernatural organ for their discovery), obviously we may as well call natural, biological minds as well bodies, so literally speaking you are right, and I don’t even know what I am objecting about really. I just wanted an excuse to tell it because I think Scholasticism is one of the best fantasy worlds ever made, as long as you don’t take it as something that wants to be true (unfortuantely they want to take it so), it is fairly cool, way more logically consistent than Middle-Earth for example.
Tentative theory: the Puritan (or possibly Protestant work ethic) thing never went away, but at some point it got mated with gaining status through self-expression, and with gaining status through your clothes getting to seem too easy, which is why people shifted to high-maintenance bodies.. That’s why running ultramarathons on multiple continents seems cool rather than weird and extravagant.
This isn’t about philosophy, exactly, though you may be able to deduce a plausible philosophy to explain what people are doing. It’s about cultural shifts.
Reverse correlation between fitness vs. dressy fashion? Kinda-sorta of true for Europe (Sweden: fitness, France, Italy: dressy fashion), can someone compare the muscle-beaches of California and Rio de Janeiro to NY fashion?