The Stigma Against Improvement

Once one has the knowledge of the technology of improvement, one naturally expects that there would not be resistance to implementing that knowledge but rather, the joyful embrace of those possibilities. But that's not the way it usually works -- because a large part of people's bad conditioning, is the resistance to change.

That is really at the base of their dysfunction -- the resistance or inability to change, because the neuro-muscularity of the body, is what brings about change. It is already there in everyone already; what has to be cultivated is one's ability to tap those resources -- effectively, at will.

While people who like to fragment and compartmentalize experience and understanding insist that nothing can be related to anything else, and good health has nothing to do with good appearance, functioning, and performance, the truth of the matter is that those aspects invariably confirm each other.

Often, people will deride improvement efforts and the desire to change -- to justify their own futility and despair -- as a hopeless vanity for everyone. "One should resign oneself to the hand one has been dealt" -- they will knowingly advise, as though they knew. If one persists in the belief that another outcome and fate is possible, the defenders of the status quo, will enlist ever higher authorities to discourage them and undermine their every effort.

So the technology (know-how) is not only necessary -- but also the right cultural and supportive environment. Usually they evolve together -- over time. The exception is when new or foreign ideas are imported into a culture -- rather than evolved in it. That kind of dissonant development disappears in a modern, as opposed to traditional, cultures.

The traditional is the belief that the past must be repeated unquestionably -- and not changed, or challenged. In the traditional worldview, change is the greatest crime against society -- and God, whom "they" invariably speak for. Who made them spokespersons for God? Why, they themselves, of course.

In the earliest days of American history, such a closed worldview was recognized as the Puritan impulse. The other extreme is the unrestrained narcissism of Hollywood and the media -- in which shamelessness now becomes a virtue, if not the highest striving of civilization.

So while it is now possible for anybody to become famous -- one should ask themselves, “famous for what?” For everyone, that would be actualizing the greatest possibilities of who they really are and can be. That is the justification for fitness activities -- the manifesting of it in real life challenges, and not just one's ability to operate a treadmill tirelessly, mindlessly.