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The replies are fascinatingly deeply engaged with the topic. There’s no bigger modern religion than personal fitness/bodyastempleism (somaticism?). Usually when I ask questions in poll-form, few bother to elaborate or offer ‘other’ options in replies. Here, there are many.
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Poll: If you’re targeting 150 minutes of break-a-sweat exercise a week, what would you consider the ideal breakdown, regardless of practicality?
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I’ve never been into somaticism as a religion. Like most people I’m in the mediocre middle between the extremes of body-as-temple and body-as-trash-can. Which means phoning-it-in is the most sustainable mode for me, over either a rigorous regimen or letting the body go derelict.
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Somaticism is body-nerdery. It’s weird to see extremely earnest nerdy/geeky dispositions manifest in Greek god/goddess bodies these days. Body-culture as an anti-intellectual jock-cheerleader thing is getting disrupted by some sort of Straussian scholar-warrior-dancer subculture.
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There have always been not-very-bright “science says/research shows” uncritical students of body-knowledge of course. This is not that. This a new critical breed of autodidact that has more spiritual affinity to Unix neckbeards than to Olympic athletes or pro-sports/modeling.
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The old breed was indiscriminate and uncritical consumers of body-ideas; people who would unironically quote a study on insulin in one breath and something about chakras in the next, seemingly unaware of galloping across epistemic boundaries. Bullshit consumers.
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Aside: bullshit needs a companion consumption concept. If bullshitting is talking or writing without regard to truth or falsity, what is listening/reading without regard to truth or falsity? (Usually confirmation/validation seeking, or just unconscious “vibing”). Shit-eating?
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I’d argue this *is* new, fueled by the explosion of online information. In the past “nerdy jock” was hard: if you had access to serious body knowledge, chances were you were naturally talented enough to get on sports teams and stuff where pro/institutional support was available.
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Replying to @vgr
You have the mood right, but profoundly mis-understand the different kinds of people who go to the Olympics, and mistake this for new.
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Amateur nerdery without a team of coaches, doctors, physiotherapists, and nutritionists attending to you has on,y recently become truly possible. Before, the best the untalented could do was read a book or two, get into some fad, and hope for a mentor.
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2010: old-fashioned jocks/cheerleaders in institutional body-culture settings (sports, modeling, military) 2014: crackpot fringe of nerds 2016: broscience quantified self n=1 sketchiness 2020: genuine amateur science nerdery based but with strong religious overtones
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