“If not for sex, much of what is flamboyant and beautiful in nature would not exist. Plants would not bloom. Birds would not sing. Deer would not sprout antlers. Hearts would not beat so fast. But ask an assortment of creatures, what is sex? and they will give you very different answers.”

Olivia Judson
Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice To All Creation

In the belly of the furnace of creativity is a sexual fire; the flames twine about each other in fear and delight.  The same sort of coiling, at a cooler, slower pace, is what the life of this planet looks like.  The enormous spirals of typhoons, the twists and turns of mountain ranges and gorges, the waves and the deep ocean currents – a dragonlike writhing.

Gary Snyder A Place in Space

Don’t worry, it only seems kinky the first time.

Unknown

If you ever make it up to the Pacific Northwest with an interest in getting back to the fundamentals of primal living, be sure to look up a character called the Barefoot Sensei. The Sensei is a powerful and authentic teacher, a visionary of body, land and foot.

The first time I heard the Sensei speak around a campfire, I became entranced as he delivered an intriguing set of stories, opinions and visions, most of them crafted around the themes of bare feet, land, earth, training and activism. The conversation danced like the flames of the fire. Light faded and stars appeared as the tribe gathered around. Stories came and went, but Sensei held center stage.

After a string of compelling and often hilarious narrative, Sensei became philosophical and began to speak of his personal dream and life trajectory. He promised us that someday soon, he’d be “going back, deep into the wild.”

We waited for more and passed the bottle around, anticipating the explanation that was sure to come.

“I’m headed out,” he told us, “back into the wild. I’ve got everything I need. I’m going to foot the path into the wilderness and have an orgasm with the earth.”

Suddenly, my attention jumped to a whole new level. Never having heard this expression before, my curiosity exploded. “Wait!” I nearly shouted. “What are you getting at? How can you have an orgasm with the earth? And more importantly, how can I have one?”

getting down

Some will dismiss the Sensei’s phrase as a bit of hippie hyperbole, a wild-man fantasy with an erotic twist. But it’s not. The Sensei has done it before and he fully intends to do it again. I have no doubt that this experience is real for him and for others as well. But still, we need to–excuse the language–go deeper and find out what this idea is all about. Undoubtedly, some of us will need an explanation and/or an instruction manual.

So the question before us: what is an “orgasm with the earth?” What is this “earth lust?” Is it sex with the biosphere, our bioregion, this land, this habitat? Is it natural? Is it normal? How do we do it? And most importantly of all, is it hot?

What’s that you say? You’ve never had an orgasm with the earth? You’re kidding, right? Surely you must have at least done some heavy petting with the goddess. You must have done a backpack trip into the mountains or a day hike to a high peak. You must have felt the summer breeze on your skin, the glow in your flesh and the intoxication of your spirit. If not, this is something that you must do, and soon.

If this sounds preposterous to you, think again. When you get right down to it, sex with people and sex with the earth aren’t really all that different. There’s the romance, the anticipation, the first touch, the arousal and the immersion. There’s the sensual contact and the virtuous circle of touching and being touched. There’s a sense of safety and comfort, danger and exhilaration. The physical body rises, bringing forth deep primal memories and unification with all of life itself. If you can do one kind of sex, you can do the other.

my first time

For my part, I can vividly recall a number of earth-shattering earth-orgasms, mostly from my days as a climber in the mountains of California. Climbing, like many outdoor sports, is all about getting your body into intimate contact with the natural, tactile world. Exposure promotes vivid sensation, anticipation and engagement. Gravity provides focus and sharpens attention to the here and now. Tactile awareness deepens as fingers and toes probe for subtle variations in form and texture. Skin becomes alert and aware. Every sense comes alive, passionate, desiring ever more. Long summer days of perfect rock, perfect weather, powerful physicality and the sweet caress of a gentle breeze.

There was usually a climax of course, when we reached the safety and panorama of the summit, but this was but a single orgasmic moment surrounded by hours of caress and erotic pleasure. Even the moonlight descent, with our bodies scraped, bruised and fatigued by our efforts, was sensual magic, a feast for eyes, ears and spirit. Only when we reached the highway would the spell be broken.

Later, I began to realize that climbing, for all its intensity and exposure, wasn’t really necessary to achieve an earth orgasm. In fact, simply walking through the high country of Yosemite usually gave me a similar result. The intoxicating air of summer, the gently erotic curves of the granite domes, the sweet, fresh water that coursed down creek beds into soft inviting meadows, the subtle and revealing light that played across the alpine vistas: there was enough arousal here for anyone with sensation and attention. My skin, my senses and my spirit would always quicken in anticipation. All I cared about was deeper engagement.

John Muir knew it all along of course, this sensual passion for the natural world, especially the Sierras. How else shall we describe his prose?

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

for the love of life

For many, the popular archetype of Earth is female, and some might suppose that it’s only men who would be lured into her arms. But when speaking of earth lust, there’s no need to discriminate by gender, one way or the other. All people, of any sexual persuasion, can find erotic love in nature’s body. Male or female, straight or gay, all can become passionate about the charms of the biosphere, the land and habitat. Many call her “the goddess Gaia” and assume her to be female, but we can use any gender label we like. The biophilic impulse is really pan-sexual. We can all find pleasure here, no matter which pronoun we happen to choose.

Of course, you might want to dismiss this entire line of inquiry as the lunatic raving of hippie philosophers gone mad. But no less a figure than E.O. Wilson has championed a similar, slightly less erotic idea, one he calls biophilia. Wilson is no hippie or pornographer. In fact, he is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. As of 2007, he was the Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. Wilson is not a person given to rash, impulsive carnal speculation.

When all dressed up in asexual academic language, the term biophilia (literally “love of life”) refers our “innate tendency to affiliate with other living creatures and processes.” Of course, Wilson wasn’t explicitly erotic about his biophilia. (given his views on sociobiology, he attracted enough controversy as it was.) But my guess is that if we could get him around the campfire in the company of a few friends and under the influence of the right libations, he would confess to knowing exactly what we’re talking about.

When E.O. Wilson talks about biophilia, he’s talking about a deep physical, primal need for contact. Just as social animals have a strong need to maintain contact with their fellows, so too do we have a drive to touch our living environment. What our bodies want is contact with plants, animals, rolling terrain and open sky. Our senses crave this stuff. We need to smell the land, touch the dirt with our bare feet, feel the textures of the plants, see the movement of the animals, and feel the wind on our faces.

Massage therapists often speak of the power of touch in human health. We know, for example, that infants who are touched frequently grow larger and healthier, while infants who are touch-deprived fail to develop normally. As social animals, we thrive on physical human contact, but there seems to be an even wider need that goes beyond our species. We need to touch, smell and see living things of all varieties; in a sense, we need to be massaged by the natural world. We need to be massaged by driving rain, blinding sun, steep terrain and long distances.
health and biophilia

Nature contact is a powerful driver of human health. Hospital studies show that patients with a window view of trees in a natural setting had shorter post-operative stays, fewer complications and requested less pain medication than those who had a view of a brick wall. And we have all heard about the beneficial effects of pets on sick human patients. It is obvious that contact with trees, dirt, rocks and animals is good for us.

In The Biophilia Hypothesis, Roger Ulrich reviewed studies of human landscape preference and found that “observers prefer forest settings having some similarities to savanna-like or parklike settings, including visual openness and uniform ground cover associated with large-diameter mature trees and relatively small amounts of slash and downed wood.” Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we seem to prefer landscapes that offer easy bipedal living.

Ulrich also cites studies analyzing the effects of outdoor scenes on stressed individuals. His findings suggest that “viewing unthreatening landscapes tends to produce faster and more complete restoration from stress than does viewing unblighted urban or built environments lacking nature.” Apparently, natural settings tend to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, that branch of the nervous system associated with rejuvenation and tissue repair. One hospital study found that patients exposed to “serene” landscape pictures showed significant reductions in blood pressure. Another study suggested that patients responded more positively to wall art dominated by natural content, but tended to react negatively to abstract painting and prints. A prison study found that inmates with a view towards nearby farms and forests were less likely to report for sick call than those whose cell windows faced the prison yard.

primate’s predicament

Sadly, one thing is obvious: We, as a culture, are just not getting enough earth sex and we aren’t having enough orgasms with the biosphere. I have no way to quantify this claim, but there can be no doubt that modern Americans are suffering an acute earth-sex drought. With millions of people chained to their desks, incarcerated in their cars and stressed to the absolute limit, it seems increasingly unlikely that people are having sex of any variety, much less passionate lust in the arms of the earth.

This may sound like an overstatement, but it actually constitutes a genuine public health emergency. After all, you probably know how it goes when you’re going through a conventional sex drought: anxiety and frustration become acute, distraction becomes constant, health and exuberance begin to suffer. The urge to merge pushes itself into consciousness thousands of times each day. You can’t work, you can’t think and you’re eventually forced into cheap alternatives that are completely without heart or soul. Similar symptoms are certain to arise when we go through an earthsex drought. Just look at modern popular culture.

sex ed

“She will not come to you gliding through the yielding air; the fair one that suits must be sought…”
Ovid

Unfortunately, our culture is suffering from an epidemic of erotic amnesia; we’ve forgotten our primal passion for the natural world. And even among those who have retained the simmering lust, the basic skills are often lacking. Obviously, it’s time for some remedial education; it’s time for earthsex ed. So let’s begin at the beginning; what are the basics?

First of all, you’ll want to begin with the art of foreplay. The earth goddess doesn’t reveal her charms without some seduction and effort. You can’t just show up and start fooling around; you need a time for transition, anticipation and romance.

So set the time aside, away from the regular distractions in your life. Block off your calendar, protect some sacred space. Give this priority. Then, once you’re committed, start your preparation. Wear the right clothes, assemble your provisions and plan your route. Set the mood and pay close attention to your lover. Be quiet and observant of detail.

As the engagement begins, move towards embrace. If you’re going to have an orgasm with the earth, you’ve got to put your body out there. You’ve got to expose yourself. You’ve got to make yourself vulnerable and you’ve got to be, in some sense, naked. This doesn’t necessarily mean stripping off your clothing, although it might. What it really means is getting away from the thickest forms of urban insulation: the comfortable housing, the climate-controlled automobiles and all the electronic mechanisms that stand between our bodies and the body of the earth. Urban insulation, when carried to its logical conclusion, acts as a triple-layer condom, deadening sensation and making orgasm all but impossible.

Good earth sex is highly physical to be sure, but it’s much more than just a physical act. Sure, you can drop into nature in a helicopter or on a cruise ship. You can fly over her gorgeous body in a small airplane or gawk at her wonders from the safety of a Land Rover. But while these methods may in fact give you a quick burst of excitement, they lack commitment and intimacy. There’s little risk, little engagement; they are little more than voyeurism.

In fact, most of our modern attempts to love the earth amount to little more than pathetic phone sex. Lacking time or interest in an authentic act of engagement, we simply cue up a BBC nature special on the DVD player or dial in something on the Discovery Channel. And there we’re treated to the leaping whales, the blood-thirsty predators, the time-lapsed glory of Gaia’s naked flesh, all with remote control in hand. A few minutes of this “action” brings us to a pathetic faux orgasm and a return to the sports network or the refrigerator.

To have a truly meaningful orgasm with the earth, you’ve got to get your feet on the ground and your body into the action. Intimacy means involvement. If you want to really get intimate, you’re going to have to do more than fire off a quick email or click on a couple of links. You have to be here, now. This means physical commitment. And that means time.

Naturally, when it comes to earthsex, position is of supreme importance. The standard choices–deep valleys and high mountain ridges–are excellent of course, but don’t limit yourself. Keep your mind open to terrain, light and landform. It’s all about relationship. Anticipate the changing light, the flow of the clouds and weather, the changes in sound and the movements of animals. If a new position draws you, move towards it strongly, but without force. Keep listening and feeling your lover’s moods; the land may suggest a new position, so be ready to adapt.

No matter the position, go towards your lover with a balanced physicality and spirit: strong-soft, powerful-adaptable, eager-patient. You are intent, you are passionate, you are absorbed. But you are also gentle, kind, compassionate and patient. You can be strong but you can yield, always deepening connection, contact and embrace of the divine. The more balanced your spirit, the more you can give, the more you can receive.

just do it!

As most people now realize, conventional sex is a powerfully health-positive experience. Even the most conservative medical publications tell us that sex relieves stress, boosts immunity, burns calories, improves cardiovascular health, boosts self-esteem and reduces pain.

The prescription is clear; sex is good for your health. It’s even better if you do it with people you love. It’ll lower your blood pressure, normalize your stress response, activate your parasympathetic nervous system and help you sleep. For these reasons, physicians now routinely advocate more sex for their patients.

Of course, most physicians are prescribing conventional “sex with people” and have yet to take it to the logical next level. But that may change. As more and more experts begin to understand the dramatically health-positive effects of biophilia and nature contact, they may very well expand their recommendations. They may just start telling their patients to spend more time in natural settings, getting their bodies into intimate contact with wild habitat, dirt, plants, animals, rocks and water.

It won’t be long before they’re writing prescriptions that say “Go outside and have an orgasm with the earth.”

“And call me in the morning. I want to hear how it went.”

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.
Andy Rooney

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
Sydney J. Harris

You are my creator, but I am your master.
Frankenstein
Mary Shelly

You may be surprised to hear this, but I hate my Mac.
I hate everything about it.
It has all the things I loathe in a computer. It’s fast, it has a huge memory capacity and it runs all the major applications smoothly and efficiently. It hardly ever crashes and I can take it everywhere I go. The battery lasts a long time and I can plug it in and get the Internet just about anywhere. The OS is sleek and easy to operate.
“So what’s to hate?” you’re sure to ask. “Isn’t this precisely what people are looking for in a computer?”
Actually, the “success” of my computer is precisely what I dislike about it. Not only does it perform the essential functions that I need to make my way in the modern world, it also performs thousands of non-essential functions that I can just as well do without. But it’s all so easy, my laptop sucks me into projects that don’t really need to be done and lures me into tasks that don’t really need to be addressed. It keeps my vision centered on a single point in space and keeps my posture in a static position. Worst of all, it keeps me indoors and destroys my relationship with the natural world. Slowly but surely, my Mac is killing me, sapping my vitality and distorting my relationship with the real world.
The first Macintosh was introduced in January, 1984, the first commercially viable personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface. But now, as we look back, we find that the bright and shining promise of the digital age is turning out to be a delusion and the dark side is becoming more apparent with every passing day. Some of us are now beginning to realize the truth–that the only thing worse that a slow computer is a fast computer. The only thing worse than Windows is Snow Leopard. The only thing worse than Snow Leopard is Word Press. And the only thing worse than Word Press is the iPhone. And the only thing worse than the iPhone is Facebook. And the only thing worse than Facebook is Twitter. It’s all distraction, diversion and delusion.

labor generation

Back at the dawn of the digital age, “visionaries” claimed that the computer would be a highly effective labor-saving device that would free us from untold hours of drudgery. No longer would we be shackled to our desks, writing down numbers and words by hand until the middle of the night. We’d be granted a wide open vista of easy living, free to pursue our favorite leisures, hobbies and fascinations.
Boy, were they off the mark. If the computer is anything, it’s a labor-generating device, a labor multiplier. By virtue of its multi-function capability, it actually gives us more work to do than we would otherwise have. All computers have done for us is to replace one kind of drudgery with another, less physical form. Surely some of us have been freed from some types of repetitive labor, but for every case of technological liberation, we’ve created a hundred cases of technological enslavement. As computing technology has invaded every last corner of human activity, even the smallest acts of physicality have been stolen from our lives.
Techno entrepreneurs like to call this “innovation,” but its really more of “technological incarceration.” In fact, we can be sure that the felons in the big house actually go out to the exercise yard once a day, while the rest of us stay glued to our screens for weeks, months, years and decades.
Computers remove the body from almost every creative process. I could take notes by hand, but the machine is more efficient. I could make a sketch to illustrate what I’m trying to say, but the machine is faster. I could walk down the hall and have an actual conversation with a real person, but it’s easier to simply text. Little by little, our bodies are removed from every process and every profession. As physicality becomes increasingly irrelevant, we become disembodied brains. In the process, our health and vitality disappear. In the end, the “digital lifestyle” is turning out to be more of a “deathstyle.”
The disembodying effect of computers becomes ever more powerful as the technology becomes easier to use. Direct mental control of the cursor is only a few years away and then where will we be? No need to even push the mouse; just direct your concentration at the pixels in question. The “innovators” will tell us that this will make our lives “easier” but why should we accept this claim? This “innovation” will be yet one more nail in the coffin of the human body and the human spirit.

amusing ourselves to death

It would be one thing if we had the discipline to use our computers strictly as labor-saving tools. It would be one thing if we used them to streamline our lives and free us to live some authentic dream of true experience. But no, we use our digital devices, not as tools to free ourselves, but as a place to go when the outside world becomes unpleasant, onerous or confusing. Like drunks seeking comfort in the bottom of a bottle, we compulsively lunge for our keyboards, ready to escape whatever it is that ails us. Once logged in, we are free to loose ourselves in a bottomless world of visual distraction.
Ultimately, we find ourselves on a path towards addiction and denial of the world around us. As amusement machines, computers pave the way for decreased engagement with the natural world as they distract us from matters of genuine importance. This is a trend forshadowed most notably by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932), but also by media pundit Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985).
Sitting at the computer has become the default position for “work,” or more correctly, the “apparent work.” For those who don’t know what to do with their time but who want to appear busy, the computer is the perfect hide-out. As long as you keep looking at your display, you’re safe. No one can call you a slacker if your eyeballs are glued to the screen and your hand is on the mouse. How many millions of people hide out in front of the keyboard each day? How many hours are wasted in digital posing? Is the computer the new ostrich hole for the overwhelmed and stressed-out modern?

opportunity costs

Computers are bad enough in what they do to us directly, but they also extract a toll by displacing vital, health-giving life experience. Like junk food that displaces genuine nutrition, computers displace essential human experience and engagement with land, animals and people. Even if computers were entirely neutral in their effect (they are not), they would still harm us by taking us away from our bodies, the natural world and face-to-face interactions with real people.
In the world of economics, opportunity cost is the value of the next best alternative that is forgone as the result of making a decision. If, for example, you spend time and money going to a movie, you cannot spend that time at home reading a book. If your next-best alternative to seeing the movie is reading the book, then the opportunity cost of seeing the movie is the money spent plus the pleasure you forgo by not reading the book. All decisions have opportunity costs, computer use included.

“smart phones” aren’t

Of course, no diatribe against computers would be complete without a shot at the so-called “smart phone” industry. Supposedly, these devices “liberate” us from our desks and the need to be “tied down” to any particular place.
But connection to place has been an integral part of human experience for the vast majority of our time on earth. Every primal culture has embedded itself in land and habitat with sensation, action, narrative, song and culture. Separating ourselves from the land is a radical act, an experiment, a shot in the dark. We simply have no idea what “freeing ourselves” from the land will do to body and spirit. Epidemics of attention problems suggest we are making a big mistake.
We can observe the dislocating effects of “smart phones” by watching the spectacular inattentiveness of pedestrians on the street. Cell phone users become nearly blind to their surroundings, oblivious to danger, sight and ambient sound. Public health officials have now documented an increasing number of cases in which pedestrians have been involved in auto accidents, their spatial and situational awareness blinded by the cell phone.
Just as the desktop computer sucks the life out of our muscles, “smart phones” suck the life out of our senses, our awareness of place and our ability to interact with other people in face-to-face settings. The actual damage may seem insignificant, but the displacement costs are immense. Every hour on the “smart phone” means one hour less in conversation or engagement with the real world. It means one hour less experience in realms that have defined human life for millions of years. And in this respect, these digital devices steal our humanity and our lives.

warning labels

The time has come to re-classify the computer industry and label it for what it really is. Some nutritional activists have advanced the notion that high-fructose corn syrup and trans-fats are “the new tobacco.” Maybe so. But it’s time to realize that computers belong in the same category. Apple, Google and Microsoft are wrecking our bodies just as efficiently as RJR Reynolds and Coke. Maybe we need to start talking about “digital tobacco.” Instead of worshipping Apple, Google and Microsoft as our saviors, maybe we should start talking about the hazards of “Big Digital.” And yes, maybe it’s time to start organizing a class action suit against corporations who peddles these products to consumers, with harsh penalties for those who promote “the digital lifestyle” to kids.
This is not hyperbole. This is not satire. It is no exaggeration to say that computers constitute a genuine public health hazard. And so, the comparison becomes inevitable: All computer products–hardware and software alike–ought to come with warning labels: “Long-term use of this product will cause sedentary behavior and will contribute to a host of lifestyle diseases including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and physical apathy. Use sparingly.” You think I’m kidding? The day will come.

computer ed reconsidered

When we take a hard look at the pathological effects of computers, we begin to realize that our educational institutions are completely missing the point. That is, most schools and colleges now operate under the unquestioned assumption that it is essential to “teach students how to use computers.” And so we see entire curriculums built around digital “how-to.” No one doubts this sort of educational offering; every institution now boasts dozens of computer classes at every level.
But given what we know about the health-negative effects of sitting for weeks, months and years in front of a keyboard, our educational objective really ought to be reversed. In other words, our goal should be to “Teach students how to not use computers.” In other words, we ought to teach students the intelligent use of digital devices. Students must learn to ask the right questions: What are computers good for? When is it appropriate to use a computer? What are the drawbacks? When is it better to use traditional materials? When is it better to simply turn away?

triage

Of course, this whole discussion poses a nasty conundrum. Computers, for all their body-sucking, health-destroying qualities, are not going away any time soon. Our culture has become so infected with digititis that escape now seems nearly impossible. If we want to get anything done in this world, we have to sit down and drive the mouse; even the most committed Luddite must spend some time at the keyboard if he is to have any chance of relevance.
And so, it’s time to make some hard decisions about what we’re going to do with all those digital tools in our lives. Shall we be the masters or the slaves?
The problem is difficult, but not unsolvable. There are things that we can and must do:
First, look to eliminate all the trivial and optional amusements that are now possible on the computer. Start by abandoning the “fake work” that is so popular in modern homes and offices. This includes all the optional tasks that really don’t need to be done: downloading cute icons, fine-tuning your screen saver and over-clocking your processor are things that can wait.
Just as obviously, the games have got to go. There’s simply no justifiable reason to be playing a computer game when there’s so many other kinds of games that we could be playing. Computer games not only wreck our bodies, they steal the very soul of human imagination.
Next, eliminate those projects that, however valuable, will become sink holes of time and effort. Sure, you could launch a new website with lots of engaging content, like videos of your cat. But that will take hundreds of hours and worse yet, the “success” of your site will only serve to suck your readers deeper into their own digital morass.
Instead, reserve your computer time for those projects and tasks that hold some prospect for genuine advancement of your essential interests. Treat your time on the computer as if it were costly. What if you had to pay $100 per hour for time on the keyboard? Wouldn’t that bring a little focus to your efforts?
When it comes to allocating computer time, it pays to be ruthless. Ask yourself:
Do I really need to be sitting here at this machine?
Am I sitting at the keyboard to advance some essential task that will enhance the quality of my life?
Or am I trying to look busy?
Am I making some kind of difference in the world or am I simply avoiding some difficult challenge?
Finally, when you’ve run out of options and are forced to push the mouse, make your screen time as short as possible. Do this by learning the programs and polishing your skills. Learn the key strokes. Find the work-arounds. Buy whatever code you need to make it go smoother, but triage that too. Don’t spend 5 hours learning a program that will save you 3 mouse clicks. It just isn’t worth it.
And one more thing: think twice about heaping digital work on your friends and colleagues. Sure, it’s easy to send out links to bottomless web pages and interminable YouTube videos, but what kind of favor is that? All you’ve done is instill a sense of obligation for your friends to remain locked onto the screen. If you really want to do your friends and colleagues a favor, let them get back to some kind of authentic human experience.

computers aren’t us

Triage, skill and discretion are essential, but these are only steps in the right direction. What we really need is to change our basic relationship with the digital realm. Most importantly, we have to stop identifying with computers, operating systems, digital devices or for that matter, any consumer product or corporation. To say, “I’m a Mac guy” is just as perverse as saying “I’m a Windows guy.”
Stand up for your humanity. You are an animal, not an OS. You are a flesh and blood creature, not a brain on a chip. You are a wild and creative spirit, not a batch of code to be run on command.
Get your identity straight.
The computer is a mere tool and a dangerous one at that.
Save yourself.
Stand up for your life.
Step away from the machine.

“We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talent.”
Mark Twain

I never thought it would come to this. As a child I was active, healthy and fit as anyone, but somehow I let my body get away from me. It must have started back in college. All those late lights filled with endless rounds of pizza and beer, those long hours in front of the computer, the movies, the road trips, the sedentary living. There was always an excuse to avoid exercise; miles and miles of homework, papers, tests to study for, people to talk to, parties to attend. Somehow, I lost my fitness. Time caught up with me.
So there I was, poised on the brink of my 30th birthday, a poster-child for sloth and gluttony. No exercise in months, scarcely a physical memory to draw upon. The last time I broke a sweat was with…what was her name? In the back of my SUV… Well, it didn’t matter, there I was, fat, out of shape, lazy and lethargic. My clothes didn’t fit and my girlfriend left me, said I just wasn’t very exciting anymore. Not only that, but my doctor told me I had better get my ass down to the gym. My numbers were borderline, he said. It was time to rally, time to get my body back.
And so I signed up at the local gym. I bought the pro membership, the new workout clothes and enough supplements to feed an elephant for a year. I loaded up my iPod with high-energy rock and charged through the door. I was amped and ready to move.
Unfortunately, things went downhill pretty fast. After the first week, I was so sore I could hardly get out of bed. My trainer adjusted my sets and reps, gave me a new protein shake and some words of encouragement, but that was about it.
In the weeks that followed I tried everything to get on track. I adjusted my program, tried some new machines, tweaked my spreadsheet every which way. I read all the magazines, all the websites and followed every Facebook suggestion.
No results: all I had to show for it was a bad attitude.
Somehow I endured the frustration for a couple of months, and then one day, everything took a turn. The day started like any other– my robotic, comatose trip to the gym, my grim determination to gut out another session, like it or not, and my usual excuses for a lackluster performance.
As usual, I pushed myself through a warmup on the treadmill and staggered over to the bench and grabbed a couple of dumbbells. Lying down, I took a big breath, dreading the effort to come. Lamely, I pushed the weight up towards the ceiling, but my heart just wasn’t in it. The looming mass wobbled above my head, threatening collapse and traumatic head injury. Muscle failure came early this day and I failed to complete the reps that I had done just one week before. I sat up on the bench, racked the weights and sat back down. Depressed, I hung my head, hoping for a way out of this doldrums.
“Frustrated?”
Curious and ready for any distraction, I sat up and looked towards the voice.
Before me stood a figure of incomparable athletic stature, a chiseled marvel of muscle dressed in black pants and a tight fitting red shirt. He looked like a cross between George Clooney and Michael Jordan. His body was part decathlete, part bodybuilder, but with an unmistakable air of royalty. His posture was superb. His body fat must have been less than 1%. He had a full head of hair and a sparkle in his eye.
He was flanked on his right by a woman of strikingly improbable beauty. She looked like an Olympic figure skater, but was pleasantly buff in all the right places; she must have stepped right off the cover of a magazine.
I had noticed him before, of course. His powers in the gym were legendary. He always went to the heavy end of the dumbbell rack and hoisted the big units without grimace or grunt. Most remarkable of all, he never seemed to break a sweat, no matter how outrageous his physical achievement. Even in the midst of summer, sprinting stadium stairs at high noon. While every other trainer staggered on the verge of heat exhaustion, he just smiled with a glint of moisture on his forehead.
“So tell me, how’s your training going?” he asked. “Seems like you could use some help.”
“Yeah, you know, I just can’t take this, this body anymore. This fat, this weakness. I just hate myself. I’d do anything to get back on track.”
“Have you tried adjusting your diet? Your training program?
“Oh yeah,” I replied. “Every protein shake in the book, every periodized combination, every machine, every trainer. None of it seems to make any difference. “I’d give anything to get in shape…”
“Oh really? Anything?”
“Oh yeah,” I nodded. “The time has come to make a change.”
“You’re sure about this? You’re really willing to do whatever it takes?”
“Yes, absolutely, I’m ready. Whatever I need to do, that’s what I’m going to do.”
He leaned in closer to me now, locking his eyes onto mine and extending his hand. “Deal,” he said. “It’s all yours.”
I stared at his hand, unable to comprehend his intent. Was this guy a kook or what?
Without really knowing why, I offered my hand and shook, but instantly regretted it. His grasp was not just firm, it was crushing. I could feel my carpal bones fusing and at the same moment, a wave of nausea swept through my body as I broke into a cold sweat. My body went weak and I thought I might pass out. I struggled to withdraw my hand, but he maintained the grip, even increasing its strength before finally releasing it with a grand and glorious smile. His brilliant, perfect teeth gleamed at me and he winked.
Shaken, I excused myself awkwardly and headed for the showers. That was enough for today, I thought. Maybe I just needed a rest day.
That night, I slept peacefully and the next morning, I woke up early feeling not just refreshed, but completely rejuvenated. And inexplicably, I felt a compelling urge to head directly back to the gym. No morning stupor, no lassitude–I felt curiously strong and couldn’t wait to hit the weights and the cardio.
That morning I hit it harder than I ever had. I achieved personal bests across the board, in both strength and endurance. It seemed that I had made a quantum leap in performance, almost without trying. My body was energized and my mind was hungry for new challenges. After three hours in the gym I headed home, but I could have done more.
Over the next few weeks, I watched in amazement as my body inexplicably transformed itself. I lost pounds and inches almost every day and then started to add muscle to my frame. I could almost see the changes overnight.
My body was changing so fast, I was forced to go shopping for new clothes almost every week. At the beginning it was new pants with narrower waists, but eventually I had to have all my clothes custom made. My shoulders were getting too big for any off-the-rank clothing.
It wasn’t long before I became the talk of the gym. Even the most powerful lifters and cardio extremists began to comment on my spectacular progress. Formerly a certifiable nobody, I was regularly consulted for training tips and motivational nuggets. Even the big dogs began coming to me for advice.
And then there were the women, the gorgeous vixens that began to stalk me everywhere I went. Formerly a social lightweight, I could scarcely keep them away from me. They called at all hours of the day and night, showed up at my apartment and delighted me with every sort of pleasure imaginable.
Not surprisingly, the gym manager was all over me as well. Delighted with my meteoric rise to fitness success, he hired me into his sales department and signed me up to do endorsements. Easy work. All I had to do was show up, pose for some pictures, and head back to the weights. I was rolling.
About the same time, my phone started ringing off the hook. Every equipment manufacturer wanted me to be a centerpiece in their marketing and promotion campaign. Their favorite machine was something called “the placebotron.” I had no idea what it was or why it was supposed to be so great, but I looked great next to it and the machine sold in record numbers.
The money from equipment sales was good, but the real action was in the world of supplements, and I was the newest star. My mug started showing up on posters, brochures and catalogs around the world. I began hocking the newest miracle weight-loss formula, a completely inert formula made from the pollen of gender-neutralized Amazonian tree fungus, endangered of course.
Then I got into the diet plans. I endorsed a formula that alternated high-carbohydrate and low-carbohydrate on Mondays and Wednesdays, with high-protein and low-fat diets on Tuesday and Thursdays. It was impossible to track of course, but fortunately, I was also selling the software package that made the whole thing comprehensible.
About the same time, I started endorsing another weight-loss formula. The stuff supposedly was made from goat livers from Tajikistan or someplace. As we pitched it, these goats were known for their ability to eat absolutely anything and still remain rail-thin. I had no idea if the stuff actually worked, but I could have cared less. The stuff sold like crazy and I was rolling in profit.
Not wanting to hang with the little people down at the club anymore, I had my own personal gym built for me by a exercise equipment manufacturer. It had everything, complete state-of-the-art machines, climate controls and cardio-theatre. Not that I ever used it much. What would be the point? Go and work out for nothing? How boring is that?
Along the way, I “authored” a series of health and fitness books, which is to say, my name appeared on the cover. I never actually wrote anything, but my publisher made it all possible; I spoke with my ghostwriter on the phone a couple of times and the next thing I knew, there it was on the NYT Bestseller list: Look at Me! physical perfection with zero effort. Reviewers fawned over my elegant prose and trainers adopted my methods without question.
And then of course, there was Oprah. As everyone knows, she had finally had enough of her regular trainer and her ballooning body. She wanted action and I was the inspiration. She had me on the show and pushed my book. Before the hour was out, I was a literary superstar.
In the months that followed, my life became a whirlwind of appearances, talk shows, keynote speeches and promotional events. I didn’t even have time to go to the gym anymore. Not that it mattered. I soon discovered that training was completely unnecessary for fitness, or health for that matter. I could go for months without a workout and my body continued to glow and grow.
Even more astounding, I found that I could eat and drink whatever I wanted, as much or as little as I liked. Self-discipline became completely unnecessary and I began to chow doughnuts, cheesecake, beer and wine with abandon. Huge meals, day or night. Fast food became a standard. I even began to smoke.
My doctor was astounded and my fans were mystified. Photos and video began to circulate around the Web. There I was, playing pool in the local bar, drinking pitchers of brew and looking like a million bucks. There I was, playing blackjack in Vegas, knocking back platters of refried bacon, chased with whisky shots, surrounded by babes. Critics complained about my status as a lame role model, but who could argue with my results? After all, my lifestyle only made me stronger.
By this time I was living in a gorgeous 10 bedroom crib up in the hills and driving a Hummer and flying the world in a Gulfstream. My body just wouldn’t fit anything else. I had no time for anyone who wasn’t in the game, anyone who couldn’t amuse me with something new. I had some old friends get in touch from time to time, but I let my agent take care of them.
My body was now at the peak of its power. I weighed in at 250 pounds and body fat was nearly immeasurable. I was off the chart on all standard medical measures of health. And on those few occasions when I bothered to show up in the gym, I set new records for whatever event I wanted. I could squat a thousand and run a sub-4 mile. My resting heart rate hovered about 30 beats per minute. My marathon time was around 2 hours and I would have done better if I hadn’t stopped at the pub. According to my doctor, I was officially 50 years old, but I lived in the body of a 20 year old. I showed no signs of aging or degeneration.
The pinnacle of my success came when I was invited to Stockholm to receive the newly-created Nobel prize for physical fitness. I could scarcely be bothered with such trivialities, but my agent insisted that I go. It was a crushing bore, with all the royalty, ceremonial dinners and the like: the King of Sweden was such a fag, I could hardly wait to get away.
When I returned to the US, I was gripped by a strange sense of malaise. I found myself bored and restless. My amusements were failing me and I began to wonder about the old days and my former self.
I’m not sure what inspired me, but I wandered down to my gym, flipped on the lights and wandered up and down the aisles. Posters, mirrors and trophies lined the hall, reminding me of the early days and my struggles with my body.
Suddenly I was shocked out of my reverie by a presence in the room. A figure stepped out of a corner and faced me directly. I was taken aback, but stammered “Who are you? What are…how did you get in here?”
Security was supposed to be tight in my compound, or so I had been told. I grabbed for my phone, only to find it dead in my hand.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
He seemed so calm, not like a criminal trespasser at all, not like a burglar caught in the act. The way he behaved, it was almost as if he felt he owned the place.
I moved towards him, ready to punch or grab, but something stopped me. This was too odd, too curious. I had to know.
“You mean you don’t recognize me?” the man asked, incredulous.
I stared, taken aback and speechless.
There was something familiar about him: his perfectly tailored suit of clothes, his full head of hair and his physique, similar in form to my own.
Just then, the memory flooded back to me in a shockwave. It was the man in my old gym, the athlete with the perfect body and the cold handshake. It was him! But how could that be? That was thirty years ago! And he looks exactly the same, not a day older and in perfect health.
I was lost for words. I opened my mouth, but was speechless.
The man was obviously amused by my state of confusion.
He laughed at my befuddlement, then shook his head.
“Why the surprise, my friend? Surely you knew that I’d be back one day to collect.”
“To collect?” I replied, not understanding what he was talking about.
“You know,” he explained. “The anything. You said that you’d give anything to be strong and fit and healthy. Surely you remember the deal?”
“Well, yeah, sure, but…”
“So, there you have it.”
He walked to the nearby squat rack and racked up some iron on the bar. His movements were swift and he handled the plates as if they were made of cardboard. He racked a few on each side, then gestured to me.
“Go ahead, please show me your form.”
Normally, such a weight would have been trivial in the extreme, less than a warm up for me.
“Go ahead” he insisted.
Furious at this insult to my dignity, I walked over, set my feet into position and reached for the bar. But just as my fingers wrapped around the cold steel, I felt an excruciating pain in my lower back. Racked, I fell to the floor, writhing like a harpooned shark. My breath came in ragged gasps as I struggled to control the pain. After a few moments I pushed myself to my feet and gasped once again as I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My body was no longer recognizable as my own: My figure was fat, lumpy and weak. My skin was wrinkled and my hair was almost completely gone. I groaned in pain and anguish.
The man merely laughed at my predicament. “Normally, when I conduct these sorts of transactions, there’s a lingering sense of dignity that I can collect on,” he said stepping in close to me.
“I came for your soul, but I can see that you’ve already given it away…Best of luck with your eternal damnation.”
And with that, he was gone.

An hour of basketball feels like 15 minutes. An hour on a treadmill feels like a weekend in traffic school.

David Walters

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

Socrates

So you’ve been on the couch for the last couple of decades and one day you wake up, look in the mirror and recoil in disgust. You’re shocked at what you see and disturbed by what you feel. Disgusted with your lumpy, spongy form and its appalling lack of function, you resolve to turn things around, get back on track and whip yourself into shape. Your desperate mind searches for a remedy and quickly seizes upon a solution. That’s right, you’re going to exercise!
Swept up in a fever of enthusiasm, you launch yourself out the door. You buy some new clothes, fill your bag with supplements and sign up for a program at the local gym. You’re ready to seize control of your fate and make a comeback.
But sadly, you’re off on the wrong foot and your mission will almost certainly fail, possibly within days, but definitely within months. If you’re like most people, you’re going to wind up back on the couch before you know it, nursing a beer and crafting a rationalization.
Your problem is that you called the thing by the wrong name. That’s right, you used the word exercise.
If you had thought it through a little more carefully, you might have had a better idea. That is, you might have realized that what you really needed was not exercise as such, but more physical movement.
To some, this may sound like a case of academic hair-splitting, but there’s actually a vital difference here, one that’s lost on most Americans as well as a great many coaches, trainers and PE teachers. Understanding this distinction will take us a long way towards regaining our lost physicality and maybe even improve our relationship with the world at large. By the end of this essay, I hope to convince you to give up on exercise and start getting more movement into your life.

exercise is abnormal

The problem with exercise becomes apparent as soon as we begin to describe it. That is, exercise consists of doing abstracted movements in a stereotyped, repetitive pattern. In essence, exercise is a specialization extracted from a larger whole, an activity taken out of its natural context. Just as white flour is an extract derived from a more complex natural grain, exercise is a behavior that is stripped down and removed from its original setting. In effect, exercise is white movement.
The problem comes into focus when we take the long view of human history. When we stand back, we begin to realize that exercise constitutes only a tiny fraction of the human movement repertoire. The human physical experience includes a vast range of kinetic behavior: locomotion and exploration, play, hunting, gathering, scavenging, climbing, sex, dance, labor, gesturing and expression. Exercise is only a very recent and minor subset of all possible human movements.
Exercise also stands out as a glaring exception in the natural world. Across the entire range of non-human animals, we see no case of anything resembling exercise, especially in the wild. Yes, rodents will run on wheels in their cages, but this is mostly a matter of incarceration and frustration: put a running wheel into a natural, grassy field and rodents will not be lining up to run on it. In wild settings, animals will play, hunt, graze, explore, fight and mate, but never exercise. Even chimps and bonobos, our closest primate relatives, don’t display anything that looks like our version of exercise. They get plenty of action playing, exploring and chasing one another around the forest.

boring

The main problem with exercise is that it’s all about sets, reps and mileage: just keep grinding them out until the clock runs out or your trainer tells you to stop. This, of course, is a recipe for physical monotony. And physical monotony, like any kind of repetitive behavior, tends to be hard on the bodymind and tissue. Keep stressing a joint, tendon or ligament in an identical pattern and you’ll promote inflammation and a lasting relationship with your physical therapist. Even worse, this sensory-motor monotony soon leads to a deeper, more disturbing psychospiritual monotony. Boredom deepens and the spirit becomes depressed. Resignation and apathy soon follow.

can we play?

Exercise also fails because stereotyped reps tends to drive out play. This is why it’s so hard to get kids to exercise. Their bodies are simply too smart to allow it. Treadmills are boredom machines; no healthy child will spend more than a few minutes on one.
The contrast is clear: Exercise is about repetition of known patterns, but play is about exploration and discovery of new patterns. Exercise is about enduring unpleasant sensation while play is about finding delight in diversity. Exercise is about repeating the known, but play is about extending into the unknown. Exercise requires external motivation to maintain participation, but play is inherently rewarding and reinforcing. Exercise is about labor, suffering and denial, but play is about wonder and imagination.

adversarial

Because of its repetitive, predictable and unpleasant nature, exercise ultimately becomes an adversarial experience: it’s us against the experience. Faced with the prospect of mind-body boredom, we start looking for motivation and incentives. Thus, the proliferation of boot camps, TV’s, carrots and sticks that we now bring to the exercise experience. We’ve even taken to programming artificial voices of encouragement into treadmills, stairclimbers and other exercise machines. And so, exercise ultimately makes a perfectly logical companion to that other famously adversarial health experience: dieting.

a non-solution

Exercise is commonly promoted as a cure for everything that ails our bodies and our spirits: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression and all the rest. “Just do more exercise” is the common prescription offered by both professionals and lay persons alike.
But if exercise was actually the solution to our public health crisis, wouldn’t we be seeing better results? After all, experts and celebrities have been promoting exercise for decades and the state of the human body continues to deteriorate. In fact, if we looked at the trajectories of  lifestyle disease and exercise promotion, we would find that they track pretty closely with one another. If we looked strictly at correlation, we might even come to the conclusion that exercise promotion causes atrophy, obesity and poor health.
Exercise advocates are quick to point to success stories. We hear about pounds lost, blood sugar normalized, heart disease prevented and bodies transformed. We hear about people who fought mightily against physical apathy and dragged themselves to the gym for weeks, months and years. And yes, they got results.
What we rarely hear about are the multitudes of people who tried exercise, found it to be a dreadful bore and dropped out. In fact, the entire health club business model is built upon the assumption that a substantial proportion of members will stop coming to the club shortly after signing the contract. In other words, failure is assumed, institutionalized and implicitly encouraged.
In short, exercise has been a spectacular public health failure and an immense waste of human potential. The biggest consequence of exercise promotion is that we have managed to make millions of people feel guilty about their failure to do something that is inherently unpleasant.

start a movement movement

So exercise fails. Do we have a better idea?
Yes, in fact we do.
The answer is authentic, joyful, functional movement.
For those who have never seen or experienced it, authentic movement looks and feels nothing like exercise:

• Exercise tends to be single plane; functional movement is multi-joint and multi-plane.
• Exercise is monotonous; movement is engaging.
• Exercise is specialized; movement is diverse.
• Exercise is scripted; movement is authentic and intuitive.
• Exercise is performed according to a program; movement is opportunistic.
• Exercise feels mechanized and forced; movement feels expressive and creative.
• Exercise is a means towards an end; movement is an end in itself.

Movement is better because it’s expansive and offers more options for physical creativity and expression. There’s more possibility and more room for the imagination. It’s more inviting, more engaging. And best of all, it’s less adversarial.

off the couch

So maybe it’s time to go out for a walk and re-think your entire mission statement for the coming year. Your best bet is to give up on exercise right now; you’d be doing that soon enough anyway. Instead, resolve to get some more movement into your life, by any means possible.
Of course, this emphasis on movement over exercise doesn’t get us off the hook: vigorous physical engagement is still essential if we want to improve or maintain our health. Sweat and exertion are still necessary if we want to reap the health and performance rewards. We still need to challenge our tissue and push our personal comfort zones.
So start by diversifying your efforts. Look for movement of all varieties. Be a movement opportunist; look for movement at home, in the workplace, in parks, airports and in the parking lot. But most importantly, look for dance. Dance with terrain, with gravity and with other human bodies. Dance with dumbbells, kettlebells and sticks. Dance with imaginary opponents and shadows on the ground. Dance with water, with bushes and with trees. Dance with finger cracks, faces and alpine ridges. Dance with stairs and sidewalks.
And remember, if it feels monotonous and boring, it probably is monotonous and boring. And if it’s monotonous and boring, stop doing it! There are countless variations, combinations and permutations that are engaging and exhilarating. So mess around, play with the possibilities until you find a combination of movement, speed, resistance and frequency that works for you.
You just might find a lifestyle that’s truly sustainable.

When people hear the word “proprioception,” most dismiss it as yet another body-buzzword and let it go at that. Some consider it an anatomical detail and others find it relevant only in the context of physical therapy and rehab. But muscle (in combination with mechanoreceptors in tendons, ligaments and joint capsules) is just as much a sensory organ as eyes and ears. As the Barefoot Sensei likes to remind us, “Muscle is the biggest sensory organ in the body.” When we move, we sense our world and ourselves. This sensation is vital for performance and our state of well-being.

From this perspective, we begin to appreciate the catastrophic effects of sedentary living on the modern human. To take away movement is to take away sensation and self-knowledge. When we create such a sensory deficit, we begin to feel anxious, uncertain and ungrounded. Our modern epidemics of distorted attention, depression and anxiety all make sense in this context. We can medicate people all we like, but in the end, we have to start moving to remember who we are.

Don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure that this young Kenyan runner never had formal PE instruction or training in “proper biomechanics.” The human body is magnificent, right out of the box. We are wired for graceful movement.

“When we turn our back on physical activity, we turn away from more than just health. We close our eyes to the story we carry within us.”

At long last, someone gets it. Finally, after all the dodging and weaving and primping and profiteering, a courageous writer has stepped up to tell the catastrophic story of the modern human body. Mary Collins, a former athlete who was busted up in a bicycle accident, used her rehab time to take a good hard look at our lost physicality.

Along her journey, she visits the land of North America’s early hunter-gatherers, studies the origins of the bicycle and looks at assembly line work at a potato chip factory. (A particularly ironic story in which factory workers sacrifice their health so as to help other people ruin theirs.) Wisely, she focuses on Frederick Winslow Taylor and his philosophy of “Scientific Management.” (Taylor redefined labor practices across America to become brutally efficient and in the process, increasingly body-hostile.)

Later, she visits the National Zoo in Washinton D.C. to compare movement patterns among a range of animals. She ponders the effects of urban design on movement and health, samples Tai Chi and delves into the mysteries of urban planning.

Collins sees clearly the widening gap between the super-fit and the barely functional: “How have we allowed ourselves to get to this point and why do we expend so much time and technology on the elite few and yet so little on solving the systemic problems that make it such a struggle for the masses?”

This is a refreshing piece of writing that is both both authoritative and personal. Collins digs into facts and data, but also exposes her feelings and opinions about health, personal responsibility and social dilemmas surrounding the body. She also reminds us of the tragic disconnection between our bodies and the natural world.

Through it all, she maintains a firm grip on the magnitude of our public health catastrophe and our steadfast refusal to take it seriously: “Our sedentary culture has the impact of a plague but we treat it like a cold.”

This is a book that should be read by every PE teacher, school administrator, trainer, coach and physician.

This is a little beyond the typical reach of this blog, but it’s simply too good to pass up. David Christian’s legendary course on Big History is on sale at The Teaching Company. In 48 brilliant lectures, Professor Christian lays out “The Big Bang, Life on Earth and the Rise of Humanity.” The clarity of his presentation is stunning and you’ll want to view or listen to it repeatedly. This is university teaching at its finest.