This comment is a tangent, and I haven’t decided yet if it’s relevant to my main points or just incidental, but—
… beating people up is like...totally not the point of physical strength.
… isn’t it?
I mean, from an evolutionary perspective, yeah, actually, that pretty much is the point. Of course I’m not suggesting that evolution’s goals should be your goals, but where then do we go from there? Are you merely saying that for you, beating people up isn’t the goal? Well, fair enough, but then it seems strange to say that those who made the sorts of comments you cite are somehow missing something. It seems to me like they are, correctly, judging that the default purpose (i.e. the evolution-instilled purpose) of physical strength is indeed violence; and (again, correctly) noting that for many people, that default purpose is in fact their actual purpose.
I mean—what else are you going to use your muscles for, if not to beat people up (or, more plausibly, simply to have and credibly display the ability to beat people up)? Lifting and carrying heavy objects? Are you a construction worker? “You’re trying to become stronger and more muscular, so you goal must be to develop a greater capacity for violence” is, it seems to me, far from an implausible or “willfully blind” conclusion! (Which is not at all to say that your actual (stated) reason—health and fitness and so on—is implausible either. But it’s hardly the obvious, or only possible, reason!)
This comment is a tangent, and I haven’t decided yet if it’s relevant to my main points or just incidental, but—
… isn’t it?
I mean, from an evolutionary perspective, yeah, actually, that pretty much is the point. Of course I’m not suggesting that evolution’s goals should be your goals, but where then do we go from there? Are you merely saying that for you, beating people up isn’t the goal? Well, fair enough, but then it seems strange to say that those who made the sorts of comments you cite are somehow missing something. It seems to me like they are, correctly, judging that the default purpose (i.e. the evolution-instilled purpose) of physical strength is indeed violence; and (again, correctly) noting that for many people, that default purpose is in fact their actual purpose.
I mean—what else are you going to use your muscles for, if not to beat people up (or, more plausibly, simply to have and credibly display the ability to beat people up)? Lifting and carrying heavy objects? Are you a construction worker? “You’re trying to become stronger and more muscular, so you goal must be to develop a greater capacity for violence” is, it seems to me, far from an implausible or “willfully blind” conclusion! (Which is not at all to say that your actual (stated) reason—health and fitness and so on—is implausible either. But it’s hardly the obvious, or only possible, reason!)