{"id":53134,"date":"2024-03-07T18:37:34","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T18:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com"},"modified":"2024-05-20T16:49:07","modified_gmt":"2024-05-20T16:49:07","slug":"by-challenging-our-physical-bodies-we-may-heal-our-civic-ones","status":"publish","type":"wpm-article","link":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/by-challenging-our-physical-bodies-we-may-heal-our-civic-ones","title":{"rendered":"By Challenging Our Physical Bodies, We May Heal Our Civic Ones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 1819, philologist and theologian Friedrich Ludwig Jahn was jailed by Prussian authorities. His crime wasn\u2019t suspect theological treatises but teaching gymnastics and calisthenics. Despite his relative obscurity in the annals of history, Jahn invented much of what is regarded today as modern gymnastics, systematizing elements like the vaulting horse, rings and balance beam that grace mainstream television screens every four years during the Olympics. How his instruction of formal exercise became so frightening to local authorities is worth examining in our time.<\/p><div>\n    <iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"noa-web-audio-player\"\n            style=\"border: none\"\n            src=\"https:\/\/embed-player.newsoveraudio.com\/v4?key=n0e13g&#038;id=https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/by-challenging-our-physical-bodies-we-may-heal-our-civic-ones\/&#038;bgColor=F3F3F3&#038;color=6D6D6D&#038;progressBgColor=F7F7F7&#038;progressBorderColor=6D6D6D&#038;playColor=F3F3F3&#038;titleColor=383D3D&#038;timeColor=6D6D6D&#038;speedColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkHighlightColor=039BE5\"\n            width=\"100%\" height=\"110px\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><p>Since the Enlightenment, educational reformers had sought to revive the Greek gymnastic ideal, summarized by the Roman poet Juvenal as <em>mens sana in corpore sano<\/em>&nbsp;(a healthy mind in a healthy body). As a result, European gymnastics had been slowly evolving, vaguely linked with the moral development of the young.<\/p><p>Jahn inherited this tradition, being a secondary school teacher. But since he was also a fervent patriot and veteran, he saw gymnastics as a crucible to forge a sense of solidarity and civic duty in the general population. Brooding on Napoleon\u2019s shattering of Germany into a series of loosely connected states ruled by autocrats, Jahn became obsessed with the notion that Teutonic youth lacked the deep psychophysical reserves necessary to hold their national sovereignty intact.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><p>Like a 19th-century Tyler Durden, he set about creating a series of clubs (<em>turnverein<\/em>) for practicing gymnastics (<em>turnen<\/em>), and became known as the <em>Turnvater<\/em> (literally \u201cFather of the Gymnasts,\u201d partially because of his apparatus and technique innovations, but more so his paternal investment in his students\u2019 moral development).<\/p><p>We don\u2019t have video of how Jahn conducted himself, but he must have been formidably charismatic because calisthenics evolved over the decades to become something of a cult for both the working and middle classes, promoting physical skill and strength, along with tactical virtues like large group organization. Open-air clubs (Turnplatz) were guided by the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oxfordreference.com\/display\/10.1093\/oi\/authority.20110803095836112\">four Fs<\/a>\u201d in German, which translated roughly to \u201chardy, pious, cheerful, free.\u201d The German gymnasts were also unusual for their time, as they&nbsp; eventually encompassed both men and women in their ranks.<\/p><p>A political liberal with nationalistic fervor, Jahn demanded freedom of speech and a unified Germany free from foreign influences such as the control it faced under the First French Empire. His devoted following was overtly political: Jahn framed their physical training as preparation to fight foes foreign or domestic if needs be.<\/p><p>Prussia\u2019s conservative aristocratic regime saw Jahn\u2019s young gymnastic acolytes as a threat; they were bohemian and emphasized the informal\/fraternal \u201cdu\u201d form of address (as opposed to the formal \u201csie\u201d) when speaking German. Worse, they demanded a representational government, a constitution, a unified Germany and universal suffrage (for landowners).<\/p><p>Prussian authorities implemented the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Carlsbad-Decrees\">Carlsbad Decrees<\/a>, which created a police state, censored the press and involved heavy surveillance of oppositional movements. Jahn was arrested, and the regime implemented a ban on gymnastics that remained in place in most of Prussia until it was lifted by Prussia\u2019s King Frederick William IV in 1842.<\/p><p>When Jahn was released six years later, he was forbidden from living anywhere near a secondary school or university. All gymnastics activities were moved indoors to small, more carefully controlled gyms, presumably to break up the rally-like mass meetings and alter the politico-gymnastic culture.<\/p><p>The visionary (and incendiary) elements of Jahn\u2019s nationalistic impulses couldn\u2019t be fully sieved out, however, and gymnasts were disproportionately represented among revolutionaries fighting in the Revolutions of 1848-49, which were broadly concerned with curbing monarchy and uniting Germany under a representative government.<\/p><p>Middle-class acolytes tended to focus on liberal principles such as freedom of the press, while the working class demanded more radical changes to brutal living and working conditions that were made famous in the writings of Marx and Engels. (Both men witnessed and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/sw\/penguin\/revolutions-1848.htm\">wrote extensively<\/a> on the 1848 uprisings.)<\/p><p>Divided by competing class goals, these revolutionaries were ultimately defeated by the aristocratic regime and forced into exile. Many fled to Australia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., where they became known as the Forty-Eighters. The U.S. settlers established themselves from Wisconsin to Texas, where they founded gymnastic clubs called \u201cTurner societies\u201d or <em>Turnverein <\/em>along with many civic-minded institutions such as public libraries, community fire-fighting groups, and labor unions. Many <em>turnen<\/em> became abolitionists in America, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nber.org\/system\/files\/working_papers\/w24656\/revisions\/w24656.rev0.pdf\">fighting<\/a> as Union soldiers in the Civil War and serving as <a href=\"https:\/\/anderson-review.ucla.edu\/german-rebels-who-helped-lincoln-win-the-civil-war\/\">bodyguards<\/a> at Lincoln\u2019s inauguration and his funeral.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;This tendency to understand physical fitness as a personal pursuit, akin to a hobby and unconnected to the civic body, is exceedingly modern, and almost amnesiac.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/53134\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"This tendency to understand physical fitness as a personal pursuit, akin to a hobby and unconnected to the civic body, is exceedingly modern, and almost amnesiac.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Today, gymnastics is characterized by its attention to precision, clean form and military decorum.<strong> <\/strong>One might never suspect its colorful, revolutionary history. In fact, we have moved so far from Jahn\u2019s reality over the past two centuries that the regime\u2019s response to his activities seems almost farcical. This tendency to understand physical fitness as a personal pursuit, akin to a hobby and unconnected to the civic body, is exceedingly modern, and almost amnesiac.<\/p><p>Jahn may have systemized calisthenics for a modern era, but as far back as the ancient Greeks, gymnastics was practiced as a discipline and understood not only as a physical system of conditioning but one of moral education and even ethical dedication to the state.<\/p><p>This <em>ethical training<\/em> dimension of gymnastics is why it was promoted by social reformers at Harvard University, notably the scholar Charles Beck, who was a disciple and translator of Jahn\u2019s gymnastic treatise. (Upon arriving from Germany to Massachusetts, Beck became the first physical education teacher in America and taught the nation\u2019s first gymnastics classes at the Round Hill School in Northampton in 1825. Although it was a short-lived experimental school, the idea of educating the <em>whole person<\/em> via movement training made a profound impression on the New England elite.) The concept of superior athletic discipline equating to civilizational superiority would later take hold in the Cold War competition for Olympic medals between the Soviets and the West.<\/p><p>Over recent decades, this concept has lost what purchase it once had on the public imagination. Since the military draft was phased out in 1973, the percentage of Americans with a personal or family connection to the military has steadily shrunk, particularly among the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/social-trends\/2011\/11\/23\/the-military-civilian-gap-fewer-family-connections\/\">young<\/a>.&nbsp; Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Olympic contests, including in gymnastics, lost much of their political charge (although there remains a chilly edge to gymnastic competitions along ideological lines). Generations, especially in many Western nations like the United States, have grown up without the expectation that they will be called to defend their country in a large-scale war.<\/p><p>This may now be changing. With Russia and possibly China moving to expand their borders and the race for A.I. supremacy instilling an atmosphere of deep uncertainty, messaging from top military personnel in the west has shifted dramatically from its long post-war slumber to something more like pre-war prep. Fitness, in the sense of readiness for real physical challenge and hardship, may once again become a necessity for citizens of the industrialized world.&nbsp;<\/p><p>This winter, British Gen. Patrick Sanders <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/uk-war-army-patrick-sanders-citizens-should-be-ready-fight\/\">suggested<\/a> that all citizens of the United Kingdom, not just those in its military service, should be prepared for the possibility of a land war in the coming years: \u201cUkraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.\u201d Also referring to Russian aggression, Dutch Adm. Rob Bauer, the NATO military committee chief, publicly noted that in the event of a land war, \u201cit is the whole of society that will get involved, whether we like it or not.\u201d<\/p><p>Some readers may bristle at these warnings, considering them alarmism or jingoist rhetoric from western military leaders. But the renewed threat of war (whether with China, Russia, Iran or forces unknown) should remind us of a fundamental question: What is worth protecting? Here George Orwell, in his \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.orwellfoundation.com\/the-orwell-foundation\/orwell\/essays-and-other-works\/notes-on-nationalism\/#:~:text=By%20'patriotism'%20I%20mean%20devotion,defensive%2C%20both%20militarily%20and%20culturally.\">Notes on Nationalism<\/a>,\u201d creates a vital distinction:<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><em>Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.<\/em>&nbsp;Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must distinguish between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By \u2018patriotism\u2019 I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote><p>With typical acidity, Orwell adds:&nbsp;<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>In societies such as ours, it is unusual for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion \u2014 that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware \u2014 will not allow him to do so.&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Civic pride, in Orwell\u2019s estimation, is not seen as morally sophisticated. Yet Orwell, whose left-wing bona fides are robust, was willing to aver his own civic pride and love of country.&nbsp; Perhaps his concept of \u201cdefensive patriotism\u201d can be the starting point for a consideration of whether our 21st-century populace, used to physical and material comfort, has retained a willingness for civic sacrifice to support what Sanders <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/hold-uk-army-chief-calls-on-government-to-mobilize-the-nation-if-theres-a-war-with-russia\/\">called<\/a> \u201ca whole-of-nation undertaking\u201d requiring bodily fitness.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;As far back as the ancient Greeks, gymnastics was practiced as a discipline and understood not only as a physical system of conditioning but one of moral education and even ethical dedication to the state.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/53134\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"As far back as the ancient Greeks, gymnastics was practiced as a discipline and understood not only as a physical system of conditioning but one of moral education and even ethical dedication to the state.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-socrates-and-street-workout-culture\"><strong>Socrates And Street Workout Culture<\/strong><\/h2><p>Over the last few decades, a new competitive form of calisthenics, sometimes called a \u201cstreet workout,\u201d has burgeoned globally, especially in Eastern and Western Europe and North America. It even has its own <a href=\"https:\/\/wswcf.org\/\">governing body<\/a>, established in 2011: the World Street Workout and Calisthenics Federation.<\/p><p>A kind of pared-down version of gymnastics, it is primarily performed in free open-air spaces like public parks, playgrounds or anywhere there are overhead bars to hang from. Participants range in age from young teens to a few \u201cmasters\u201d in their 40s and 50s, and are mostly self-taught, with little to no formal training in the traditional, Olympic-style gymnastics.<\/p><p>Fueled by online videos of increasingly impressive physical exploits, this calisthenics community has set about establishing its own training methodology, rules and competitive categories. The internet, with its forums for research and discussion on best practices for technique, nutrition, sleep and other factors, has fueled a dramatic rate of athletic innovation.<\/p><p>Moves that once seemed impossible have become standard in a handful of years, and this without much in the way of top-down organization or monetary investment. Speaking personally, I have long been fascinated and inspired by this sudden sport \u2014 especially, by its minimalism. It can sprout up anywhere, with few requirements in terms of equipment or environment.<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p><p>Perhaps as a cultural holdover from the Soviet era\u2019s focus on gymnastics, former Soviet bloc countries tend to produce especially impressive amateur calisthenic athletes; among these nations, Ukraine has stood out as producing some of the best. (Google \u201cUkrainian Street Workout\u201d to see what I mean.)<\/p><p>Before the Russian invasion in 2022, I routinely bored my wife with YouTube videos of Ukrainian calisthenic virtuosity. \u201cIt must be something in the drinking water over there,\u201d I joked. After Russia\u2019s invasion, the Ukrainian commitment to general physical preparedness riveted the world\u2019s attention in a new and sobering way. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/01\/19\/1073792421\/ukraine-russia-attack-military\">photographs<\/a> of Ukrainian civilians receiving crash-course training in handling firearms appeared on the pages of American newspapers, I was not alone in my awe.<\/p><p>Here was a people, confronted with the starkest physical realities imaginable, rising to meet the moment. Exercise for me is a deeply personal pleasure, and in those Ukrainian street workout videos I\u2019d always seen people taking a similar pleasure in not just moving but also improving themselves.&nbsp; Now, I saw something else.<\/p><p>In Xenophon\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0208\">Memorabilia<\/a>,\u201d Socrates admonishes a young man, Epigenes, to get in shape. Epigenes shrugs off Socrates\u2019 advice to strengthen himself on the grounds that he, Epigenes, is not an athlete. Socrates lets him have it:<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>It is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit. But you cannot see that, if you are careless; for it will not come of its own accord.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>The ancient Greeks, much like modern Ukrainians, had compelling reason to build outdoor training areas and promote a gymnastic culture of strength and competition: The wolves were always at their door, the calamity of invasion ever-present. Socrates\u2019 advice to Epigenes starts out with this pragmatic consideration: Just because the state doesn\u2019t force you to train doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t do it. If conflict breaks out, fitter specimens have a better chance of survival \u2014 and, incidentally, of helping their comrades.<\/p><p>This, you might say, is the most basic, most primal rationale to stay sharp and conditioned. Soft people get crushed in an emergency. Socrates adds another layer, a plea to intellectual ambition: If you want to be good at <em>thinking<\/em>,<em> <\/em>you\u2019d do well to condition your body. But it\u2019s his final admonition, quoted above, about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Xen.+Mem.+3.12&amp;fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0208\">seeing<\/a> \u201cwhat manner of man you may become\u201d if you challenge yourself physically, that captures my imagination most, because it applies to almost everyone today.<\/p><p>No matter our age, sex or station in life, what might any of us become if we set our own contests with the physical world on our own terms and pursued them rigorously? Following from that, what would our greater civic body look and feel like if most citizens were on such a curious quest as Socrates implores Epigenes to embrace?<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;No matter our age, sex or station in life, what might any of us become if we set our own contests with the physical world on our own terms and pursued them rigorously?&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/53134\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"No matter our age, sex or station in life, what might any of us become if we set our own contests with the physical world on our own terms and pursued them rigorously?\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-ethics-of-physical-literacy\"><strong>The Ethics Of Physical Literacy<\/strong><\/h2><p>The moment one links <em>duty to the state<\/em> with physical culture, of course, the red flags begin to wave. Jahn was a virulent anti-Semite, and it\u2019s hard not to hear echoes of his ethnonationalism in the sinister concept of Hitler\u2019s Aryan athletic ideal paraded to the world in the propaganda of Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H3LOPhRq3Es\">Olympia<\/a>.\u201d In contemporary America, Christopher Mulvey <a href=\"https:\/\/culanth.org\/fieldsights\/gym-fascism\">writes<\/a> about doing anthropology fieldwork at Barbell Strength Tribe, which he claims:<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u2026smashes fascist politics and the body together by relentlessly linking bodily strength to human worth. Most pronounced was the hatred of \u201cbeta\u201d males, who, untrained or incorrectly trained, and lured into crippling dependencies by the creature comforts and conveniences of modern society, fail to meet the gym\u2019s standard for white men. Denouncing the \u201cweakness\u201d emblematized by contemporary man buns and yoga pants, the Tribe laments the degeneracy of these \u201cbeta\u201d males. The health and well-being championed by functional fitness mean little when put up against the \u201creal\u201d reasons for proper athletic effort: strengthening the body to meet the threats of the current world, and creating the possibility of a \u201cnew\u201d United States, founded on renewed masculine strength. On this view, a fascist orientation to the world makes sense: if white masculinity is in danger of dilution, all available methods must be undertaken to save it, beginning with the process of steeling the body from contaminating weakness.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at the American University, where she heads the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL), also makes<a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/opinion\/msnbc-opinion\/pandemic-fitness-trends-have-gone-extreme-literally-n1292463\"> this connection<\/a> between the trained body and ideological purification:<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Physical fitness has always been central to the far right. In &#8220;Mein Kampf,&#8221; Hitler fixated on boxing and jujitsu, believing they could help him create an army of millions whose aggressive spirit and impeccably trained bodies, combined with \u201cfanatical love of the fatherland,\u201d would do more for the German nation than any \u201cmediocre\u201d tactical weapons training.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Wherever a threat of ideological recruitment into genuine ethno-state fascism exists, it must be taken seriously. The danger of this dynamic arising in<strong> <\/strong>martial arts and strength training should be continually alive to us. But that can\u2019t be an excuse to ignore the far more pervasive danger (and the inarguable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2016\/07\/160727194354.htm\">cost<\/a>) of sedentary living.<br><br>By and large, the clearly established health risks of <em>not moving enough<\/em> are downplayed out of what we might call politeness. Perhaps inevitably, the multi-billion-dollar \u201cfitness industry\u201d which exploits our self-critical impulses without delivering much demonstrable improvement in actual fitness has generated a backlash.<\/p><p>The \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.medicalnewstoday.com\/articles\/body-positivity\">body positivity\u201d movement<\/a>, at its best, is an antidote to the endless demand that we all participate in a perpetual low-grade beauty parade; we can instead accept who we are, it avers, and maybe even learn to love ourselves. But in the hands of certain extremists, the moral imperative to empathize with struggles of self-esteem becomes a cudgel.<\/p><p>To some, any statement affirming the value of a balanced diet or regular exercise is insensitive \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.self.com\/story\/healthism\">healthism<\/a>.\u201d&nbsp;In such a situation, Epigenes can simply turn and berate Socrates for body-shaming him. Why should he explore what he\u2019s capable of? Why can\u2019t he just accept and love what he is?<br><br>What\u2019s most offensive about commercial fitness messaging, I\u2019d contend, is its fixation on vanity and self-regard; it encourages us to compare ourselves to models, celebrities and professional athletes, with inevitably discouraging results. Public health messaging, meanwhile, tends to glaze eyeballs with its blandness (I know I\u2019ll stave off heart disease if I watch less Netflix \u2014 so what?). Socrates\u2019 fitness-as-duty has the advantage of being both community-minded and exciting. <strong><br><\/strong><br>Or at least, it has the potential to be exciting if we are not put off by the aesthetics of words like \u201cduty.\u201d In Chuck Klosterman\u2019s collection of essays, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonandschuster.com\/books\/Sex-Drugs-and-Cocoa-Puffs\/Chuck-Klosterman\/9780743236010\">Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs<\/a>,\u201d<em> <\/em>he poses a hypothetical question to his friends: Faced with a choice between dating a person who was attractive and successful, or another person who was equally attractive and successful but also <em>extremely patriotic, <\/em>which would you choose? Overwhelmingly, his friends preferred option A. Why, Klosterman wondered in the essay, should categorical love of country be a deal-breaker to his college-educated, urban, left-leaning friends?<\/p><p>\u201cPatriotism,\u201d too often, conjures \u201ctribal\u201d associations (i.e., what Orwell considers the ugly us\/them logic of \u201cnationalism\u201d). There\u2019s something unsophisticated to a lot of urbane people about the patriotic \u2014 they\u2019re parochial, un-cosmopolitan, deeply uncool. But the events of the last several years have spurred awareness of how quickly things can break down at any moment.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;There\u2019s something unsophisticated to a lot of urbane people about the patriotic \u2014 they\u2019re parochial, un-cosmopolitan, deeply uncool.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/53134\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"There\u2019s something unsophisticated to a lot of urbane people about the patriotic \u2014 they\u2019re parochial, un-cosmopolitan, deeply uncool.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Supply chains are vulnerable. Public order is more fragile than we often suppose. Whether we have the luxury of dismissing patriotism on the knee-jerk grounds we might have invoked when Klosterman\u2019s book was published almost two decades ago is far from clear. And in a fragmented public, one roiling with ideological divisions and subsumed by competing (and increasingly incoherent) notions of \u201cidentity,\u201d reaffirming our allegiance to a greater civic body might just be the boring, unsexy reintegration we sorely need.<\/p><p>Here, the advice of Socrates \u2014 to find out what might be possible if only one got sufficiently curious about one\u2019s psychophysical limits \u2014 may align with the self-respect that comes, paradoxically, from putting away self-concern and aiming to contribute to the well-being of the state. Not everyone can, or should, commit to becoming a cop, firefighter or emergency responder, much less a soldier.\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n            \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Read Noema in print.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        <\/p><p>For reasons ranging from the pragmatic to the personal, most people are not cut out for physically heroic action. But our culture presumes that everyone is cut out for basic literacy. To be illiterate is, effectively, to be cut out of so many aspects of social life and robbed of potential intellectual freedom to such a degree that it\u2019s considered an injustice.<\/p><p>In a similar, but arguably more fundamental way, our (increasingly sedentary) citizenry needs to learn how to use their bodies well from an early age. This entails developing a curiosity about and pleasure from our capacity for complex movement. There is a quiet form of excellence waiting to be recognized by becoming curious about what you can do when you select your own challenges (versus demanding that no external forces <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1bhkQng58Os\">demand<\/a> anything of you).&nbsp;<\/p><p>And while it\u2019s a fraught subject, I\u2019d argue this is even more true for those with physical disability. The general human goal must surely be to improve from your starting position, whatever that may be. Paralympics and the various provisions made for wheelchair athletes in marathons are a good start. Real physical education means learning to optimize movement capacity for each specific and unique human body, with its various strengths and inevitable limitations.<\/p><p>Nils Posse, another calisthenics and gymnastics instructor who, along with Jahn\u2019s acolytes, influenced the Boston health reform movement in the 1800s, made the argument for what might be called a form of physical literacy that, like academic literacy, was a fundamental right, albeit one that required some initial discipline to acquire.<\/p><p>In his book, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/collections.nlm.nih.gov\/catalog\/nlm:nlmuid-61440620R-bk?_gl=1*uj52dc*_ga*NjMyMzI1ODgyLjE2OTQ1MzY1NjU.*_ga_7147EPK006*MTcwOTQ3ODg5NC4xLjAuMTcwOTQ3ODg5NC4wLjAuMA..*_ga_P1FPTH9PL4*MTcwOTQ3ODg5NC4xLjAuMTcwOTQ3ODg5NC4wLjAuMA..\">The Swedish System of Educational Gymnastics<\/a>,\u201d Posse argued that discipline should not be restricted to the military, but rather required of everyone to demonstrate the virtue of self-control. This could be done without, as he put it, \u201cany encroachment upon the pupil\u2019s \u2018rights as a free citizen of a free country,\u2019\u201d for \u201c[o]nly those who know what restriction means can truly appreciate liberty, and make good use of it.\u201d&nbsp; This is a common insight from Socrates to Jahn to Posse: The freedom that comes from education is a right to pursue, but it\u2019s also a duty to acquire.&nbsp;<\/p><p>President John F. Kennedy took up this refrain when he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jfklibrary.org\/learn\/about-jfk\/historic-speeches\/inaugural-address\">said<\/a>: \u201cAsk not what your country can do for you \u2014 ask what you can do for your country.\u201d Kennedy was not advocating for a mindless patriotism, but pointing to a profound relationship between rights and responsibility: Civic systems that serve us improve primarily through people investing their personal efforts.<\/p><p>In the pages of Sports Illustrated<em> <\/em>in 1960, around the peak of the Red Scare, Kennedy wrote \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/theleanberets.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/1960-JFK-The-Soft-American-SI-VAULT.pdf\">The Soft American<\/a>,\u201d an article that outlined a general anxiety over European children radically outperforming their American counterparts in calisthenics. Strikingly, he reiterates what Xenophon\u2019s Socrates says about the relation of the state to the physically engaged citizen:<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>But no matter how vigorous the leadership of government, we can fully restore the physical soundness of our nation only if every American is willing to assume responsibility for his own fitness and the fitness of his children. We do not live in a regimented society where men are forced to live their lives in the interest of the state. [Note: The draft was in place at this time but it was limited in scope.] We are, all of us, as free to direct the activities of our bodies as we are to pursue the objects of our thought. But if we are to retain this freedom, for ourselves and for generations to come, then we must also be willing to work for the physical toughness on which the courage and intelligence and skill of man so largely depend.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>The upshot of this general anxiety around the lack of physical competence was Eisenhower\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2015\/4\/24\/8489501\/presidential-fitness-test\">Presidential Fitness Test<\/a>. Initiated in 1957, it was a set of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/Fat_Land\/5wLwG-2CmTIC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=softball\">benchmarks<\/a> that measured schoolchildren\u2019s upper and lower body strength and endurance through basic exercises: pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, shuttle run, broad jump and a softball throw for distance.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;There is a quiet form of excellence waiting to be recognized by becoming curious about what you can do when you select your own challenges.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/53134\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"There is a quiet form of excellence waiting to be recognized by becoming curious about what you can do when you select your own challenges.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Ultimately discontinued by President Obama, the test was not without its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2022\/04\/hampton-liu-working-out-pe-exercise\/629696\/\">critics<\/a>; many people harbored a lifelong anxiety around the fitness test. The takeaway consensus seems to be that the nation\u2019s gym teachers were not properly trained to produce the desired changes in aerobic capacity or core strength that the test was designed to measure.<\/p><p>I didn\u2019t grow up in America, but I too have vivid memories, dating to my boyhood in Ireland, of the sinking feeling prompted by the mere word \u201cgym.\u201d Gym class didn\u2019t feel like an education so much as a simple sorting of the physically competent <em>haves<\/em> (think the Kennedys tossing the football around their Hyannis compound on Cape Cod) versus the <em>have-nots<\/em>, who live in urban areas with little-to-no green or dedicated outdoor recreation space. It was the opposite of empowering.<\/p><p>I didn\u2019t want to go through life clumsy and weak, and so, with my mother\u2019s blessing, I took a year out of school at 16, joined a gymnastics club and finally learned how to use my body effectively. The result of that decision and investment in my physical self, was a lifetime fascination with exploratory physical play, one that continues to pay dividends into my 40s.<\/p><p>I know that not everyone has the time or resources to make such a dramatic commitment to physical education. However, when I think of Jahn\u2019s gymnastics cult, with their motto of \u201chardy, pious, cheerful, free,\u201d I\u2019m struck by how many contemporary Americans \u2014 perhaps those in their prime most of all \u2014 seem to feel the opposite: fragile, nihilistic, depressed, trapped.<\/p><p>To be clear, our economy can place serious demands on people to be highly sedentary \u2014 office workers and truck drivers, for example, don\u2019t have a lot of leeway. Low-income citizens living in food deserts often <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ers.usda.gov\/data-products\/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials\/food-security-and-nutrition-assistance\/\">struggle<\/a> to afford a diet not composed primarily of processed food. Add to this that the state needs to make access to training grounds, physical education and quality nutrition far better than it currently is for many citizens.<\/p><p>This is to say nothing of improving environmental laws to protect us from having our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/newsreleases\/apache-corporation-pay-4-million-and-reduce-unlawful-air-pollution-oil-and-gas-wells\">air<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/01\/21\/new-jersey-toxic-drinking-water-527621\">water<\/a> outright poisoned by corporate bad actors. Apart from all of the above, being sedentary and consuming unhealthy food and drink are, certainly, as Kennedy wrote, within one\u2019s rights in a free country.<br><br>Nevertheless, the state and the citizen form a circuit; one cannot improve without the help of the other. Consider the ballooning costs of healthcare: The state has a duty to us, no doubt, but \u2014 except for the chronically ill or dying \u2014 the responsibility works both ways. If we saw a complete apathy about physical conditioning as a <em>dereliction of duty to the collective body<\/em>, might this not alter at least some of our choices?<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-patriotism-vs-nationalism\"><strong>Patriotism Vs Nationalism<\/strong><\/h2><p>Perhaps \u201cthe collective body,\u201d as a phrase and an idea, offers the possibility of conceptualizing patriotism in a positive sense for those who, like Klosterman\u2019s friends, don\u2019t welcome the word. Or consider the distinction writer George Packer, echoing Orwell, drew between it and nationalism in a New Yorker<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/q-and-a\/the-collapse-of-american-identity\"> interview<\/a>:<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Nationalism is a word I avoid as a positive. I think nationalism is destructive. It has an aggressive quality. \u2026 We are not just different but better, and in some ways we must crush you. Patriotism, to me, is closer to what I\u2019m trying to describe because it\u2019s like loyalty. \u2026 Just as you\u2019re more loyal to your family than to people you don\u2019t know. I feel the same about our country. And I know that that\u2019s a tricky and maybe dangerous thing for some Americans, but the first thing I\u2019d say is, if you suppress that in yourself, or if you refuse to acknowledge it in others, you will ensure [sic] that the worst versions of it \u2026 will have the field, because most people still feel that. And, if they don\u2019t hear it from the side that wants equality and inclusiveness, then they\u2019re going to hear it from the side that wants hierarchy and exclusion.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>We live in a world of increasingly selfish motivation \u2014 <em>atomized effort<\/em>, let\u2019s call it \u2014 where fitness is little more than another luxury or social status device. In this scenario, training doesn\u2019t weave you into the larger civic body but pulls you further from it. Humans are not simply animals, but it\u2019s difficult not to call to mind the notorious rodent studies for the National Institute of Mental Health by John Calhoun from 1954 to 1984.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;If we saw a complete apathy about physical conditioning as a dereliction of duty to the collective body, might this not alter at least some of our choices?&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/53134\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"If we saw a complete apathy about physical conditioning as a dereliction of duty to the collective body, might this not alter at least some of our choices?\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>The 25th iteration of his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC1644264\/pdf\/procrsmed00338-0007.pdf\">mouse experiment<\/a> \u2014 \u201cuniverse 25\u201d \u2014 involved a massive set of mouse apartments and an exponentially increasing rodent population. The population peaked at 2,200 mice, resulting in aberrant behavior including asexuality and actions such as&nbsp; eating each other\u2019s tails. A group of what Calhoun termed the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c\">beautiful ones<\/a>\u201d isolated themselves, refused to engage in breeding or socializing, and set about grooming themselves all day long.<br><br>Among the so-called fitness community, one sees a lot of Beautiful Ones. This is weirdly mirrored by those who argue fitness doesn\u2019t, or \u201cshouldn\u2019t,\u201d matter, who are also divorced from the realness of community and the realness of the world and the demands it makes of you. Both groups superficially oppose each other, but both represent a form of <em>grooming in isolation<\/em>.<\/p><p>Maybe I\u2019m being na\u00efve, but I can imagine a wellspring of loyalty \u2014 what Packer calls patriotism \u2014 capable of salving America\u2019s 21st-century polarization. I return to Socrates\u2019 dual prong with which he prods Epigenes: it is a sense of calling \u2014 of duty<strong> <\/strong>paired with curiosity. <em>How excellent might you become if you experimented with challenging yourself?<\/em><\/p><p>That\u2019s Socrates\u2019 question, and it opens up a larger set of questions \u2014 questions about excellence, about merit, about <a href=\"https:\/\/heterodoxacademy.org\/blog\/is-the-college-essay-an-artifact-of-white-supremacy\/\">standards<\/a> in any field \u2014 that many of us have grown reluctant to grapple with. While there are legitimate concerns about meritocracy, in general, such as those voiced by philosopher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/the-dark-side-of-meritocracy\/\">Michael Sandel<\/a>, I suspect that a large-scale dismissal of the ethical drive toward excellence would be devastating. &nbsp;<strong><br><br><\/strong>\u201cExcellence\u201d as an abstraction becomes suspect when we hear undertones of judgment and discrimination. Yet what if \u201cexcellence\u201d could be conceived of not as a menacing height, but as an inviting possibility? In 1957, at an otherwise ordinary high school in southern California, physical education coach and World War II veteran Stan Leprotti began a \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/motivationmovie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/7-1966-LPEPE-STUDENT-HANDBOOK.pdf\">physical literacy program<\/a>\u201d that has become the stuff of legend.<\/p><p>The program required all students at La Sierra High School to participate in a demanding, five-day-a-week calisthenics regimen and used colorful shorts as a ranking system to harness their natural competitive energies. White shorts were for rookies, with special attention to exercise technique given to children who significantly lagged in one or more fitness metrics. <\/p><p>One could rise to red, then blue, then purple and then gold by mastering progressively more difficult skills. A vanishingly small percentage of students managed to earn the ultimate rank: navy blue shorts. This required, among other things, that students be able to do 50 handstand press-ups, 52 dips, 34 pull-ups, and two consecutive trips up and down a 20-foot rope using only their hands.<\/p><p>The program ran from 1957 to 1983, when the high school closed. Over that time, only 21 students earned the navy trunks; nevertheless, pursuing a pinnacle of excellence seemed to have inspired children across the board. In an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EkuccH_0yI4\">interview<\/a> from that time, a young man going through the program notes:&nbsp;<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>At first you wonder if you\u2019re going to be able to keep up and do what\u2019s expected of you. Then when you discover that you can, you start to get excited by the possibilities. There\u2019s always another challenge \u2014 a higher level \u2014 to try to reach. I think that\u2019s what kids are looking for today.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Like Turnvater Jahn more than a hundred years earlier, Leprotti had captured the students\u2019 imagination with ideas of what they <em>might become<\/em> through focused effort.<br><br>Some readers might be concerned here about the potential for deleterious effects on the morale of students who struggled to distinguish themselves in such an intense program. For his physical education doctoral dissertation in 1975, entitled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/search.worldcat.org\/title\/2183572\">Self-concept and Physical Achievement,<\/a>\u201d physical education coach Richard Chester Tucker studied schools like La Sierra.<\/p><p>He found that far from the bullying or ridicule some might assume would naturally follow from a ranking system based on different colored shorts, Tucker found the opposite: the kids worked as a team to improve, encouraging each other to rise up the ranks. This was a non-zero-sum competition against one\u2019s own limitations \u2014 group morale vs any individual failure.&nbsp;<\/p><p>The Greeks placed a lot of emphasis on the concept of aret\u1e17 or excellence. It was the whole <em>raison d\u2019etre<\/em> of the original Olympic Games: to see what the gods could inspire mere mortals to achieve. But while it\u2019s easy to grasp what \u201cexcellence\u201d means in the limited context of a javelin-throwing contest, it\u2019s harder to grasp what is excellent (or dutiful) about athleticism in a world where modern warfare is conducted in places like Ukraine with American-supplied Javelin missiles.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;The concept of &#8216;food deserts&#8217; has caught on, but what about being &#8216;movement-starved&#8217;? Can we collectively learn to move again, and in more compelling ways?&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/53134\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"The concept of 'food deserts' has caught on, but what about being 'movement-starved'? Can we collectively learn to move again, and in more compelling ways?\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Here, too, the concept of \u201cduty\u201d helps to illuminate the ethical position of any person capable of improving themselves, whether they are required to or not. One man who, like Jahn, had an outsized impact on the physical culture of his contemporaries was <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Georges_H%C3%A9bert\">Georges H\u00e9bert<\/a> (1875-1957). During his time as a French naval officer, there was a volcanic eruption near the town of St. Pierre in Martinique. Aiding in the rescue operation, H\u00e9bert was deeply impressed by the experience. In particular, he observed how keenly humans needed both physical preparedness and radical altruism in the face of such situations. His motto became: \u201c\u00catre fort pour \u00eatre utile\u201d (\u201cBe strong to be useful\u201d).<\/p><p>Again, like Jahn, H\u00e9bert focused on youth education and designed a carefully monitored set of progressions to promote what he called \u201cnatural movement.\u201d The protocol prefigures the one Leprotti established in La Sierra, with climbing, jumping, throwing, swimming and some martial arts. There was also a focus on altruism and the spirit of collective effort.<\/p><p>H\u00e9bert favored exciting challenges that tested every level of athletic ability and developed obstacle courses (<em>le parcours<\/em>) that influenced 21st-century Parkour. His designs helped inspire the modern \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/rope-park.com\/en\/rope-park\/\">adventure playground<\/a>,\u201d with their heights and other managed risks and the presence of playworkers, who, like park rangers, maintain and facilitate the play space but don\u2019t intrude on the children\u2019s work of self-challenge and discovery.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Core to H\u00e9bert\u2019s ethos was the democratization of physical activity, the conviction that it should belong not to an elite few, but to all. He made a high-profile break with Baron de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, when he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.redalyc.org\/journal\/3993\/399362349057\/html\/\">rejected<\/a> the concept of the Games and the professionalization of sport in general. The world was becoming a spectator-oriented reality, he believed, instead of a participant-oriented one. His 1925 book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.babelio.com\/livres\/Hebert-Le-sport-contre-leducation-physique\/850111\">Sport Versus Physical Education<\/a>,\u201d argued that money, merchandising and spectacle would foster arrogance among athletes, promote passivity in non-athletes, and corrupt the spirit of self-challenge, altruism and civic-mindedness.<\/p><p>It\u2019s hard to dispute H\u00e9bert\u2019s prescience. I don\u2019t claim some idyll of ubiquitous athleticism existed in H\u00e9bert\u2019s time, or any other. But I do put stock in his vision: that aspirational concept of robustness twinned with selflessness, that impressed itself on him in a reeling town in Martinique.<\/p><p>The world has seen something of that awesome power of unity demonstrated in Ukraine. Perhaps it may seem grotesque, or glib, to compare that horrific and bloody conflict to an issue as diffuse as sedentary living. Yet in the United States, a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.medrxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2022.07.15.22277693v1\">shocking study<\/a> found that more than half the population worries another Civil War will erupt in the next decade. From the study:&nbsp;<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Among 6,768 respondents who considered violence to be at least sometimes justified to achieve \u2026 specific political objectives, 12.2% were willing to commit political violence themselves \u2018to threaten or intimidate a person,\u2019 10.4% \u2018to injure a person,\u2019 and 7.1% \u2018to kill a person.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote><p>We are as much in need of social cohesion as we are in need of better physical health. What if, per H\u00e9bert\u2019s dream, the two fed each other?<br><br>The United States is further from that dream than many nations. Despite exorbitant spending on expensive collegiate sports facilities, top-level coaching for elite athletes and Olympic medal hauls, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/fastats\/exercise.htm\">found<\/a> that only 24% of the general U.S. population meets the basic standards for combined aerobic and strength conditioning; it <a href=\"https:\/\/globalwellnessinstitute.org\/press-room\/press-releases\/us-leads-overall-spend-in-828-billion-physical-activity-market\/\">ranks<\/a> 20th in engagement with physical exercise, far behind global leaders like Australia, Taiwan, Norway and New Zealand.<\/p><p>One theory for why these particular countries are so much more successful is their cultures that place an emphasis on time spent outdoors (especially true in Australia, New Zealand and <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/922865\/people-in-nordic-countries-exercise-more-than-anyone-in-europe\">Scandinavia<\/a>). <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/well.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/02\/21\/the-benefits-of-exercising-outdoors\/?_r=0\">Studies<\/a> suggest that people who exercise outdoors tend to do so for longer, and this matches with Jahn\u2019s preference for free outdoor calisthenics.<\/p><p>One analyst <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/why-did-number-gyms-taiwan-increase-406-between-2013-2020-ryan#:~:text=In%20the%20past%2C%20Taiwanese%20thought,in%20parks%20or%20public%20areas.\">posited<\/a> that the Taiwan government\u2019s focus on subsidizing low-cost public gyms while cracking down on private gyms with predatory contracts helped lead to the nation\u2019s 406% boom in gym growth between 2013 and 2020. According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/taiwaninsight.org\/2020\/04\/07\/enhancing-physical-activity-levels-through-government-led-sports-promotion-for-children-a-taiwanese-case\/\">report<\/a> from the University of Nottingham\u2019s Taiwan Research Hub, these and other government policies improved exercise rates by 33%, making the island nation\u2019s efforts a compelling civic model of fitness outreach.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Meanwhile, despite the cultural differences between NATO countries like Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Greece and Austria, they each have a potential template for weaving physical fitness into the civic body along the lines of mandatory national service, whereby young citizens spend a year or more in either military or civilian service. To take the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zivildienst_in_Austria#Types_of_Alternative_Civilian_Service\">Austrian model<\/a> as an example, about 40% of civilian service members work as EMTs, about 25% in social care, and then it breaks down into smaller niches working with refugees, disaster relief, agricultural assistance, and so on.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;If we and our neighbors are ultimately one social and civic body, then surely it is one of our primary duties, and a deep calling, to see what this great body is capable of, when we challenge it properly.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/53134\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"If we and our neighbors are ultimately one social and civic body, then surely it is one of our primary duties, and a deep calling, to see what this great body is capable of, when we challenge it properly.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>What if every Western country instituted a national service and a substantial subset of those serving helped administer physical education and\/or physical games in free public exercise parks? Let\u2019s call it playwork. Alternatively, nonprofit volunteer groups could spearhead the initiative. (There\u2019s no particular reason why this has to be an exclusively public or private enterprise.) The concept of \u201cfood deserts\u201d has caught on, but what about being \u201cmovement-starved\u201d? Can we collectively learn to move again, and in more compelling ways?&nbsp;<\/p><p>National service in the form of coordinating play, or physical recreation, could also give <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11292-022-09536-8\">direction<\/a> to a lot of young men who, divorced from a sense of purpose, are <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/just-71-young-males-2021-180000984.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJYaOXGa1nTp22cYLi5HMNxBDFTt9aqBYgzcLmENugG3tK5qV7UhFKfRAYTMK2V04Q4Iofo46yNbEpxKVy1RnD6nc_buFYfrftnl4U1o0ANHl51rkLBdw1EPfizriqZZidreyoOQhE7ZBNnCX9NWBpfaMUT-L_8I4Ln_0V41TLV4\">dropping out<\/a> of college, the job market and society at large. The routes by which we might approach building a better relationship between individuals and their physical bodies are almost limitless, and the potential obstacles are equally dizzying.<\/p><p>Long before we arrive at questions of what form the transformation would take and how it could be funded, we must acknowledge the near impossibility of forming a consensus on anything in the 21st century. We\u2019re awash in contradictory information on virtually every subject; our political tribes seem almost to perceive different realities. Suggesting we undo this Gordian knot by exercising together is bound to strike many readers as na\u00efve and impossible to implement.<br><br>My purpose here is simply to recount certain specific, limited scenarios in which the vision of a broadly positive, civic-minded physical culture has been achieved, and to pose the question: What fundamental perceptual shifts would be required to realize the same in any given community?<\/p><p>I come back to the particular qualities of gymnastics \u2014 its emphasis on individual excellence and clean form, dovetailing with a collectivist team spirit \u2014 and to the idealism of Turnvater Jahn. Around the same time that the Brothers Grimm were collecting folklore, Jahn the philologist coined the term <em>volkstum <\/em>(literally \u201cfolkdom\u201d) which conveyed a sense of community. His aim was to unify a fairly ethnically homogenous people fragmented by a lack of shared nationhood.<\/p><p>The problem facing our own time is the reverse: ethnically and ideologically diverse people yoked together (tenuously) by an abstract notion of citizenhood. Even a single city block can house people with radically different cultural backgrounds and tastes in everything, including athletic modalities.<\/p><p>Still, I suspect that a 21st-century <em>volkstum <\/em>could evolve, divested of the uglier elements of xenophobia and nationalistic tribalism that characterized the fascist movements of the 20th century.<em> <\/em>It would be the physical language of small communities \u2014 people who live near each other, who run or swim together, or who spot each other in calisthenic workouts. Ultimately these neighbors will depend on each other if some physical threat befalls their community. It would be an antidote to the atomization of modern life, where we seal ourselves off into algorithmically tailored, non-physical pockets of comfort.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><p>Patriotism is paradoxical \u2014 it can be used for violent revolt or its opposite: profound societal cohesion across all geographic regions and class layers. More than 175 years after the gymnastics revolutionaries demanded a change to the semi-feudal ruling class in Prussia, we \u2014&nbsp;in the West \u2014&nbsp;are in need of another revolution: again, not just in how we relate to our bodies, but also in how we perceive our social reality. If we and our neighbors are ultimately one social and civic body, then surely it is one of our primary duties, and a deep calling, to see what this great body is capable of, when we challenge it properly.<\/p>\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n          \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Enjoy the read? Subscribe to get the best of Noema.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5622,"featured_media":53135,"template":"","wpm-article-type":[3],"wpm-article-topic":[19,23],"wpm-article-tag":[],"class_list":["post-53134","wpm-article","type-wpm-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","wpm-article-type-essay","wpm-article-topic-future-of-democracy","wpm-article-topic-philosophy-culture"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.0 (Yoast SEO v25.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Political Discourse Of Fitness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Do we have a patriotic duty to get off our couches and exercise?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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