The story so far . . .
After the climactic battle with the evil lord Voldemort, the wizarding world recovered and settled into a peaceful utopian state. Harry married Ginny, Ron married Hermione, and everyone lived happily ever after at least until the nineteen year epilogue-mark, then J. K. Rowling regretted not pairing Harry with Hermione and because it's magic n' shit, the wizarding world adjusted accordingly.
So one day after Ron was getting back from whatever-the-fuck he was doing after the series ended, he stumbles home to find Harry - magical cock in hand - in bed with his wife. Ron tries to give Hermione the business, but because Hermione is an absolutely boss, she tells Ron she's tired of all his drinking and watching magical football (or magical quidditch, which is just regular quidditch I guess). And yeah, he'd tried to clean himself up recently, but it's Harry-fucking-Potter and his magical-fucking-cock vs Ron-ain't-nothin'-but-a-thang-Weasley. Easy choice.
It's all dramatic n' shit, and Harry takes off. After a few days Ron tries to be the bigger man and tracks Harry down to talk . . . and then stuff happens. You know, STUFF stuff. The conversation was something like:
RON: "I don't know about this Harry."
HARRY: "Ron, you're my best friend and I just wanna be close to you."
RON: "Harry! Don't go pullin' your magic bean sprout out of your trousers!"
HARRY: "Oh for fuck's sake, it ain't like you haven't seen it a million times at Hogwarts."
RON: "That was different! We was kids, and . . ."
HARRY: "And?"
RON: ". . ."
HARRY: ". . ."
RON: ". . . can I touch it? I mean . . . just the tip?"
HARRY: "Yeah Ron . . . just the tip."
Were you reading it in your head with an English-accent? Remember, this is all happening in Britain. I'm trying to be authentic here.
And then they had sex. And they continued to have sex for many years. Everyone got divorced and Harry had to have the I'm-sorry-I-had-sex-with-your-brother-and-also-his-wife talk with Ginny, which didn't go over well. Hermione almost killed Ron until he pointed out she had sex with Harry first, and Harry and Ron finally ran off into the sunset together.
Anyway, that was many years ago. Everyone's well into their forties now, embittered with age. Peace allowed everyone to get lazy, and to stave off boredom Harry and Ron started their own detective agency.
This is their story . . .
The grey clouds had polluted the otherwise quaint little town for nigh-on two weeks. It was another utterly unpleasant day, and the threat of rain that just wouldn't come hung heavy on everyone's demeanour. The magic police-tape that sectioned off the small shoe-shop in Diagon Alley was an ill-omen. A considerable crowd had gathered by the time the blue flying car swooped down in front of the store, narrowly missing a reporter snapping magic-photos of the scene.
"Hey! Just 'ho the 'ell do you think you are?!" yelled the reporter in a thick accent.
The door swung open and a grizzled man with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead stepped out. His trench coat bellowed out of the car after him, along with the heavy smell of Irish bourbon. His heavy stubble and the cigarette dangling from his mouth painted a different picture of 'the boy who lived' then the spectators were used to.
"It's Harry Potter!" whispered the crowd.
The passenger door swung open and Ron Weasley, looking more ginger than ever, followed.
"And the fat one!" yelled someone else.
Ron threw a disgusted look at the crowd as his lover walked to his side, gesturing him to the shop entrance.
"Don't pay any attention to them," said Harry. "You've still got a quidditch player's hot body."
"I 'aven't played quidditch in ages," replied Ron, slapping the beer gut that had grown with his bitter resentment after his twenty-fifth birthday. "It wasn't even an injury which did me in."
"I know," replied Harry, putting his hand on Ron's shoulder. "You got old, but . . . come on, I still love ya."
"Don't patronize me!" yelled Ron, hitting Harry's hand away. "You don't have to lie to me anymore."
Ron barged into the shop. Harry glanced back at the mesmerized crowd. He could hear the whispers and rumours that would grow from this single incident, rumours that his new relationship was failing like his first marriage, that 'the boy who lived' was having trouble in paradise.
"I save them all and this is what I get," he muttered to himself. "Come on, Mr. Quackers."
The back door of the car sprang open and a duck dressed in a miniature Sherlock Holmes ensemble waddled out of the backseat. Losing Hedwig had been tough, but Harry had found solace in another winged friend. And the little detective outfit? Well, that just made sense.
The tiny bell over the shop door echoed perilously as Harry and Mr. Quackers entered the store. There were shoes . . . magic shoes all over the place. Like a Payless but with wizards n' shit. Ron was already talking to the store owner, another friend from school - Mrs. Lovegood. Her eccentricities had followed her into middle-age. Harry couldn't remember who she had hooked up with after the final battle with Voldemort; the movies and the books were different, and he couldn't decide which continuity he lived in. He smiled at the wedding-ring on her finger though - at least one of them seemed to be making it work. He glanced down at the empty space on his own finger. Together for years, and yet Ron was still reluctant to make it official.
"Harry!" said Luna as she saw him, rushing over to give him a hug.
"Hi Luna," he replied. "It's good to see you, although not under these circumstances."
"It's unfortunate, yes," she replied, her eyes waving back and forth while staring at the floor, "but perhaps nothing is truly unfortunate that reunites old friends."
"I don't know about that," replied Ron, holding a magical evidence bag with a shoe in it. Harry approached it slowly, unzipped the bag, and removed the shoe.
"It was a strange man who came in here," explained Luna. "Very quiet. He took that shoe into the back of the store, and . . . well . . ."
Harry saw an odd substance caked to the bottom of the shoe. He dabbed it with his finger and touched it to his tongue, tasting it. His eyes went large as he glanced at Ron.
"That's wank!"
"Of course it's fuckin' wank," replied Ron. "Christ, what else was it gonna be?"
(Author's Note: "wank" = British sperm)
"Luna, do you mind if we have a minute to look over the store?" asked Ron. "We'll need some time to use our magic detective skills."
"Of course," she replied, heading for the exit before pausing. "Oh, I should tell you both that I saw Ginny this morning."
Harry and Ron's attention was immediately fixed on their quirky old classmate.
"How was she?" asked Harry.
"It's . . . been a long time since either of us have spoken to her," added Ron.
"She's good," replied Luna, "but . . . she's still mad."
The little bell over the store entrance broke the sad silence as Luna exited the shop, leaving the two embittered lovers to their solitude. They glanced at each other, looking for the love that had been lost between them.
Mr. Quackers let out an awkward duck call before shitting on the floor.
* * *
The apartment was dark except for the faint flicker of light from the television. Ron had taken to his old ways, drinking magic beer while watching old quidditch matches in the dark in his underwear. He sank back into the couch, his gut covered in crumbs and supporting his sixth beer of the evening. The announcer commended another save his younger-self had made as his current-self took a reluctant swig.
"I used to be amazing," he muttered,
"You still are."
Ron quickly turned, the crumbs on his stomach an avalanche falling on the floor. In the doorway to the living room stood Harry in nothing but his magic underwear, his rippling six-pack of abs a constant reminder to the glory which Ron had lost.
"Go away, Harry," said Ron. "I ain't in no mood for snoggin' or buggery tonight."
"Come on," said Harry. "It's been a long day, and that case of the shoe wanker is going to take up our time for the rest of the week. Let's take a night to ourselves before we get deep into the magic detective shit or whatever."
"Not tonight," muttered Ron.
Harry approached the couch slowly, kissing the back of Ron's neck.
"Just the tip?" he whispered.
"NOT TONIGHT!!!" screamed Ron.
Harry stepped back, dejected. There was a passionate fire in his lover's eyes, but it wasn't one that he wanted to see. It was a rage that Harry knew wasn't directed toward him. No, Ron was angry with himself, and all Harry could do was die a little inside as the man who had stuck by him through so many trials sank deeper into self-loathing and a sea of cheap beer and potato chips.
Harry retreated to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed, startling Mr. Quackers who ruffled his wings before settling down again. Harry's mind flashed between his current failing relationship and the case today. What kind of man jerks off into a shoe in public? What kind of man sleeps with his best friend's wife, and then his best friend?
"Am I a monster?" he asked Mr. Quackers.
The duck stared at him with as much sympathy as a duck is capable before taking another shit on the floor.
It was going to be a very long week, and Harry just hoped his relationship could survive the casework that accompanied someone masturbating into a shoe. He sighed and pulled himself to the bedside table, grabbing a cellphone that totally would have been fucking helpful when he had been battling Voldemort instead of relying on fucking owls for all communication.
He slid through his contacts until he settled on one name: Hermione.
He pressed 'dial' and held the phone to his ear.
To be continued . . .
Welcome to Luke's Thought Bubble
Tuesday 11 August 2015
Tuesday 28 July 2015
Understand People to Understand the World
I've been told that I'm one of those people who's good at formulating and articulating complex ideas. I attribute this largely to writing and wanting to be creative; art in all its forms is about trying to express an idea, and the more practiced you are at a medium, the better you get at conveying what you want to say. I'm also one of those assholes who's great at giving advice but can't seem follow any of it myself (I do try . . .) but regardless, I feel like I've developed a good sense of understanding people.
The more you understand the world and the individuals in it, the more sense life tends to make. And while it's hard to boil down the complexity of the unique individual experience on this earth into a blog post, there are certain fundamental notions I've pulled from various experiences over the years that have given me - what I believe - tools to better understand the human condition, and thus give a better understanding of who people are and why we think and act the way we do.
If you'll permit me a moment of your time, I'd like to share some of those notions with you in no particular order.
PEOPLE GENERALLY DO EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT
Before I get into the nitty-gritty of human psychology, take a second and visit this link here. I'm mainly posting it because I want to give credit where it's due, and this is the only article I can distinctly remember that was a direct influence for what I'm about to say.
If you didn't click the link (shame on you) I'll try to summarize: it's an article on Cracked.com by author David Wong, who proposes a game to understand whether you're a filthy liar to yourself. He asks you to write a list of your top five priorities, followed by a list of the top five things you did yesterday in order of how much time you dedicated to them. If the two lists don't sync up, then you're not being honest with yourself. If you say that following your faith is important but you only begrudgingly go to church an hour a week, it's clearly not your top priority and probably shouldn't be on that list. If you say spending time with your kids is important, but you spent more time watching Netflix last night than you did playing with them, what was actually more important to you?
All of this to say that generally people will often talk about the things they would like, but actually put time into the things that they genuinely want (and aren't always honest about what those things are). We might say that we want to be fit and exercise regularly, but will take any excuse not to. We may complain endlessly about how we hate the job we're in, but if we're not taking steps to remedy that, then clearly the security of working a shitty job is more important than taking the chance of pursuing something more meaningful. We grow up with an ideal of what we should be doing with our lives, and feel if we can't achieve those aims then we've done something wrong. In my experience, the majority of people have the time and resources to pursue the goals they claim are important to them, but simply aren't honest enough to admit that in actuality those goals aren't their top priority.
To put it in personal context, I enjoy writing and playing music. Someday, I'd love to make a living as a writer, but right now I'm content with just writing stories and not pursuing publishing them. That priority might change in the future, but for the time being I accept that publishing isn't as high a priority as actually writing. Likewise, I play music in a band with my best friend. We don't play as much as we used to and don't write any original songs anymore, and while we sometimes talk about "what might have been" if we'd put more effort into it, we acknowledge that we have no one to blame but ourselves for not being rock stars. We also acknowledge that "blame" isn't a negative word in this scenario, but rather an admission that our success as musicians is entirely dictated by our own efforts, and that we've gained enough satisfaction already not to pursue it beyond what we've already achieved.
The next time you think about how much you want something, ask yourself if you've done everything in your power to achieve it (and of course I'm not talking about breaking the law or hurting anyone - don't be a dick). If you haven't, then ask yourself if that thing is truly important to you.
WE HAVE UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS OF OUR FUTURE SELVES
The human race is unique as a species in that we're the only one on this planet that are cognitively aware of our own existence (except for maybe dolphins, because dolphins are smart as fuck). We're the only species that knows we exist in a place in time, and that in the future we will exist in another place and time. Other animals are only concerned with survival in the here and now, which is why you've never seen your dog listening to Linkin Park and asking "What's the point of it all?" If your dog could talk it'd probably say "What do you mean 'what's the point of it all?' I'm alive, motherfucker! Isn't it amazing that I'm alive?!"
Which is why dogs make better friends than people sometimes.
Anyway, my point is that people are still evolving out of the primordial ooze, and one of the pitfalls that comes with our recent cognitive capabilities is the habit of projecting unrealistic expectations on future versions of ourselves. It's why we say "I'll start my new diet on Monday" and then Monday comes and we're no less motivated to start. Why would Present You worry about starting your diet right now? That's Future You's problem! We live our lives under the assumption that a future version of ourself will somehow be more capable then our present version. What we often fail to recognize is that Future You and Present You are more or less the same person; you're not going to magically gain more motivation or discipline.
It's why I get nervous whenever I see someone in a bad relationship say "I can change!" It's placing an empty promise on a hypothetical future scenario. It's more or less saying "Don't judge me for being an asshole now, just believe that I'll somehow not be an asshole later." People who wish to enact change in their lives don't talk about doing it, they actually do it. Saying that you'll do something in the future is taking a gamble on whether or not a magical interim event will cause a radical shift in your psyche between now and then. With this in mind, you learn to trust facts and history rather than hope for the best, like when Honey Nut Cheerios say they "might help" lower cholesterol - empty promises all around.
Displacing agency from a present version of yourself onto a hypothetical "other" version removes the responsibility for immediate change. Everyone does it, and most of the time, we do it to ourselves.
EVERYONE HAS THE SAME FEAR
Fear is the great binding force for all humanity. It unites us in so many things, and to boil it down to its simplest element, there is one universal fear that almost everyone the whole world over shares.
We fear the unknown.
And this makes sense. We fear things that are different from what we're familiar with because we don't understand what they are and how they might affect us. It's why when we were all primitive apes we were cautious about approaching that massive cat with sharp fangs, or drinking from that unfamiliar watering hole. Those things might eat or poison us, so we grew this collective fear of the unknown as a defense mechanism. Unfortunately, that mechanism has evolved with us and manifested in unforeseen ways.
Our cognitive evolution has gifted us with a brain that can think beyond the capacity of our primitive ancestors, and yet is still locked in the same "fear the unknown" mindset that informed day-to-day survival millions of years ago. When confronted with the unknown in our day-to-day life, our first reaction is almost an immediate threat analysis of "What is this thing and what will it do to me?" And when we cannot obtain those answers, we freak the fuck out. Not knowing the parameters of a potentially threatening situation can be terrifying; it's what Batman bases his whole goddamn philosophy for beating up criminals on.
And it exists at large in society too. Religion is a response to the fear of our own mortality, because it gives an understanding and explanation for what happens to us when we die; staring into the abyss is terrifying, but being told on the other side is a compassionate and loving deity makes the abyss a little less scary.
The root of racism and sexism is a fundamental fear and misunderstanding of one demographic by another. Protests of non-segregated schools didn't occur out of genuine hatred; they occurred because people didn't know how the introduction of another ethnicity would threaten their current, comfortable existence. It's why the predominant mentality against feminism isn't "I'm scared about what women might gain" but rather "I'm scared of what men might lose." And while homosexuality is becoming widely accepted now that people realize it's not some kind of threat to established societal institutions, there's still misunderstanding over bisexuality and transsexualism because there's still a general lack of knowledge in the public consciousness, which fuels caution and ignorance and elicits responses such as "bisexuality is just a phase" and "deep down, you're still a guy, right?"
Most people fear what they don't understand, and in my experience, emotions like hate or love can be the result of a fear over something else. "I hate that person who did better than me on a test . . . because I'm afraid I might not be the smartest anymore" and "I can't imagine living without my girlfriend . . . because I'm terrified of being alone" are scenarios we witness everyday.
WE'RE TERRIFIED OF BEING THE BAD GUYS
People love narratives. Storytelling is an ancient art, and it's our natural tendency to consume it because it's how we learn about life and the world, whether it's learning right from wrong through the stories of the Bible or Grimm's Fairy Tales. Storytelling is a multi-billion dollar industry whether it be books, films, comics, the news, or anything in between. It's a natural tendency to associate with relate-able characters and follow a protagonist through to a satisfactory conclusion, which is why we always feel a bit conflicted about rooting for villains or when good guys don't win.
In the context of our greater understanding of life, we think of ourselves as the hero in our own narrative. One thing we also share, however, is a fear of being the villain.
According to statistics, 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted. If you work in a public environment, look around, but don't look at the women, look at the men. In order for that statistic to be true, there have to be a lot of perpetrators, which means more than a few of the men you work with and see everyday are probably guilty, and some of them might be your friends or maybe even you. If you were to ask, however, I doubt anyone would honestly admit that they've ever sexually assaulted anyone. That means that there are two possibilities: either women have greatly exaggerated their stories of assault (and if you believe that, then you can fuck right off to an M.R.A. website) or the more likely scenario, that most men don't believe they've done anything wrong.
And that, dear readers, is the biggest obstacle to all advocacy.
No one wants to think or admit that they may be responsible for having done something wrong, whether its trying to convince yourself that at least YOU are not a racist after reading about a celebrity getting caught saying a racial slur even though you've probably said much worse (you just didn't get caught) or a college kid trying to convince himself he's not a rapist because he simply "misread" the signals a female friend was giving him before she passed out. Admitting that you've done something wrong - especially if doing so comes with a title that will forever haunt you such as "racist" or "rapist" - is practically a death sentence in polite society.
People will defend themselves to the death if it means never having to acknowledge a problem in a system they're comfortable with. It's why male gamers will scream about how sexism doesn't exist in gaming instead of admitting that their all-boys club has been exclusive for far too long; it's why white people will say racism isn't an issue anymore instead of admitting that their comfortable existence has come at the cost of repressing another ethnicity. It's why advocates will always have an uphill battle, because they often have to convince the general public that a problem exists, and they're the problem. People immediately get defensive when they feel they've been accused of something, regardless of whether they've actually done something wrong, which is why you can't throw around the term "white-privilege" without someone immediately yelling "but my family never owned slaves!"
And that's not to say that people on the other side of the fence are without fault too. I've encountered militant-advocats who are so staunchly entrenched in the notion that they are crusading on the side of the good and just that they resort to the same underhanded tactics and negative actions that they are supposed to be campaigning against. Everyone wants to be right, and the easiest way to assure yourself that you're righteous is to vilify your opposition, which is also the direct root of victim blaming.
Our minds are locked into very rigid constraints for what we think is socially acceptable, and rather than admit fault or acknowledge that we should change, we make excuses, hurl insults, or play mental gymnastics to convince ourselves we're in the right.
A FINAL THOUGHT . . .
These are some of the broader notions I've come to realize when trying to understand how people generally behave and operate. It's a lot easier to comprehend why someone behaves a certain way when you try to fully understand their motivations, priorities, and fears.
Have you ever had a friend who constantly talks about wanting to exercise, but when you show up to take them to the gym, they make any excuse not to? Ask yourself what their real priorities are. Have you ever met someone who makes a bad decision and excuses it by saying "I'm just a bad person"? Ask them whether they truly believe that or if they just want an excuse not to change their behaviour because that's the much tougher course of action.
Just don't take it too far and assume you know someone better than they know themselves and therefore think you know what's best for them, because in spite of everything you've just read, we very rarely can truly understand absolutely everything about another person. Unless you know someone's entire history - all their thoughts, feelings, and the extent of their goals and dreams - the only real life you have full authority over is your own.
We're all still human at the end of the day, however, and a lot of our behaviours and ways of thinking come from the same biological mould.
We're all unique snowflakes, but we're still all made of snow.
The more you understand the world and the individuals in it, the more sense life tends to make. And while it's hard to boil down the complexity of the unique individual experience on this earth into a blog post, there are certain fundamental notions I've pulled from various experiences over the years that have given me - what I believe - tools to better understand the human condition, and thus give a better understanding of who people are and why we think and act the way we do.
If you'll permit me a moment of your time, I'd like to share some of those notions with you in no particular order.
PEOPLE GENERALLY DO EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT
Before I get into the nitty-gritty of human psychology, take a second and visit this link here. I'm mainly posting it because I want to give credit where it's due, and this is the only article I can distinctly remember that was a direct influence for what I'm about to say.
If you didn't click the link (shame on you) I'll try to summarize: it's an article on Cracked.com by author David Wong, who proposes a game to understand whether you're a filthy liar to yourself. He asks you to write a list of your top five priorities, followed by a list of the top five things you did yesterday in order of how much time you dedicated to them. If the two lists don't sync up, then you're not being honest with yourself. If you say that following your faith is important but you only begrudgingly go to church an hour a week, it's clearly not your top priority and probably shouldn't be on that list. If you say spending time with your kids is important, but you spent more time watching Netflix last night than you did playing with them, what was actually more important to you?
All of this to say that generally people will often talk about the things they would like, but actually put time into the things that they genuinely want (and aren't always honest about what those things are). We might say that we want to be fit and exercise regularly, but will take any excuse not to. We may complain endlessly about how we hate the job we're in, but if we're not taking steps to remedy that, then clearly the security of working a shitty job is more important than taking the chance of pursuing something more meaningful. We grow up with an ideal of what we should be doing with our lives, and feel if we can't achieve those aims then we've done something wrong. In my experience, the majority of people have the time and resources to pursue the goals they claim are important to them, but simply aren't honest enough to admit that in actuality those goals aren't their top priority.
To put it in personal context, I enjoy writing and playing music. Someday, I'd love to make a living as a writer, but right now I'm content with just writing stories and not pursuing publishing them. That priority might change in the future, but for the time being I accept that publishing isn't as high a priority as actually writing. Likewise, I play music in a band with my best friend. We don't play as much as we used to and don't write any original songs anymore, and while we sometimes talk about "what might have been" if we'd put more effort into it, we acknowledge that we have no one to blame but ourselves for not being rock stars. We also acknowledge that "blame" isn't a negative word in this scenario, but rather an admission that our success as musicians is entirely dictated by our own efforts, and that we've gained enough satisfaction already not to pursue it beyond what we've already achieved.
The next time you think about how much you want something, ask yourself if you've done everything in your power to achieve it (and of course I'm not talking about breaking the law or hurting anyone - don't be a dick). If you haven't, then ask yourself if that thing is truly important to you.
WE HAVE UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS OF OUR FUTURE SELVES
The human race is unique as a species in that we're the only one on this planet that are cognitively aware of our own existence (except for maybe dolphins, because dolphins are smart as fuck). We're the only species that knows we exist in a place in time, and that in the future we will exist in another place and time. Other animals are only concerned with survival in the here and now, which is why you've never seen your dog listening to Linkin Park and asking "What's the point of it all?" If your dog could talk it'd probably say "What do you mean 'what's the point of it all?' I'm alive, motherfucker! Isn't it amazing that I'm alive?!"
Which is why dogs make better friends than people sometimes.
Anyway, my point is that people are still evolving out of the primordial ooze, and one of the pitfalls that comes with our recent cognitive capabilities is the habit of projecting unrealistic expectations on future versions of ourselves. It's why we say "I'll start my new diet on Monday" and then Monday comes and we're no less motivated to start. Why would Present You worry about starting your diet right now? That's Future You's problem! We live our lives under the assumption that a future version of ourself will somehow be more capable then our present version. What we often fail to recognize is that Future You and Present You are more or less the same person; you're not going to magically gain more motivation or discipline.
It's why I get nervous whenever I see someone in a bad relationship say "I can change!" It's placing an empty promise on a hypothetical future scenario. It's more or less saying "Don't judge me for being an asshole now, just believe that I'll somehow not be an asshole later." People who wish to enact change in their lives don't talk about doing it, they actually do it. Saying that you'll do something in the future is taking a gamble on whether or not a magical interim event will cause a radical shift in your psyche between now and then. With this in mind, you learn to trust facts and history rather than hope for the best, like when Honey Nut Cheerios say they "might help" lower cholesterol - empty promises all around.
Displacing agency from a present version of yourself onto a hypothetical "other" version removes the responsibility for immediate change. Everyone does it, and most of the time, we do it to ourselves.
EVERYONE HAS THE SAME FEAR
Fear is the great binding force for all humanity. It unites us in so many things, and to boil it down to its simplest element, there is one universal fear that almost everyone the whole world over shares.
We fear the unknown.
And this makes sense. We fear things that are different from what we're familiar with because we don't understand what they are and how they might affect us. It's why when we were all primitive apes we were cautious about approaching that massive cat with sharp fangs, or drinking from that unfamiliar watering hole. Those things might eat or poison us, so we grew this collective fear of the unknown as a defense mechanism. Unfortunately, that mechanism has evolved with us and manifested in unforeseen ways.
Our cognitive evolution has gifted us with a brain that can think beyond the capacity of our primitive ancestors, and yet is still locked in the same "fear the unknown" mindset that informed day-to-day survival millions of years ago. When confronted with the unknown in our day-to-day life, our first reaction is almost an immediate threat analysis of "What is this thing and what will it do to me?" And when we cannot obtain those answers, we freak the fuck out. Not knowing the parameters of a potentially threatening situation can be terrifying; it's what Batman bases his whole goddamn philosophy for beating up criminals on.
And it exists at large in society too. Religion is a response to the fear of our own mortality, because it gives an understanding and explanation for what happens to us when we die; staring into the abyss is terrifying, but being told on the other side is a compassionate and loving deity makes the abyss a little less scary.
The root of racism and sexism is a fundamental fear and misunderstanding of one demographic by another. Protests of non-segregated schools didn't occur out of genuine hatred; they occurred because people didn't know how the introduction of another ethnicity would threaten their current, comfortable existence. It's why the predominant mentality against feminism isn't "I'm scared about what women might gain" but rather "I'm scared of what men might lose." And while homosexuality is becoming widely accepted now that people realize it's not some kind of threat to established societal institutions, there's still misunderstanding over bisexuality and transsexualism because there's still a general lack of knowledge in the public consciousness, which fuels caution and ignorance and elicits responses such as "bisexuality is just a phase" and "deep down, you're still a guy, right?"
Most people fear what they don't understand, and in my experience, emotions like hate or love can be the result of a fear over something else. "I hate that person who did better than me on a test . . . because I'm afraid I might not be the smartest anymore" and "I can't imagine living without my girlfriend . . . because I'm terrified of being alone" are scenarios we witness everyday.
WE'RE TERRIFIED OF BEING THE BAD GUYS
People love narratives. Storytelling is an ancient art, and it's our natural tendency to consume it because it's how we learn about life and the world, whether it's learning right from wrong through the stories of the Bible or Grimm's Fairy Tales. Storytelling is a multi-billion dollar industry whether it be books, films, comics, the news, or anything in between. It's a natural tendency to associate with relate-able characters and follow a protagonist through to a satisfactory conclusion, which is why we always feel a bit conflicted about rooting for villains or when good guys don't win.
In the context of our greater understanding of life, we think of ourselves as the hero in our own narrative. One thing we also share, however, is a fear of being the villain.
According to statistics, 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted. If you work in a public environment, look around, but don't look at the women, look at the men. In order for that statistic to be true, there have to be a lot of perpetrators, which means more than a few of the men you work with and see everyday are probably guilty, and some of them might be your friends or maybe even you. If you were to ask, however, I doubt anyone would honestly admit that they've ever sexually assaulted anyone. That means that there are two possibilities: either women have greatly exaggerated their stories of assault (and if you believe that, then you can fuck right off to an M.R.A. website) or the more likely scenario, that most men don't believe they've done anything wrong.
And that, dear readers, is the biggest obstacle to all advocacy.
No one wants to think or admit that they may be responsible for having done something wrong, whether its trying to convince yourself that at least YOU are not a racist after reading about a celebrity getting caught saying a racial slur even though you've probably said much worse (you just didn't get caught) or a college kid trying to convince himself he's not a rapist because he simply "misread" the signals a female friend was giving him before she passed out. Admitting that you've done something wrong - especially if doing so comes with a title that will forever haunt you such as "racist" or "rapist" - is practically a death sentence in polite society.
People will defend themselves to the death if it means never having to acknowledge a problem in a system they're comfortable with. It's why male gamers will scream about how sexism doesn't exist in gaming instead of admitting that their all-boys club has been exclusive for far too long; it's why white people will say racism isn't an issue anymore instead of admitting that their comfortable existence has come at the cost of repressing another ethnicity. It's why advocates will always have an uphill battle, because they often have to convince the general public that a problem exists, and they're the problem. People immediately get defensive when they feel they've been accused of something, regardless of whether they've actually done something wrong, which is why you can't throw around the term "white-privilege" without someone immediately yelling "but my family never owned slaves!"
And that's not to say that people on the other side of the fence are without fault too. I've encountered militant-advocats who are so staunchly entrenched in the notion that they are crusading on the side of the good and just that they resort to the same underhanded tactics and negative actions that they are supposed to be campaigning against. Everyone wants to be right, and the easiest way to assure yourself that you're righteous is to vilify your opposition, which is also the direct root of victim blaming.
Our minds are locked into very rigid constraints for what we think is socially acceptable, and rather than admit fault or acknowledge that we should change, we make excuses, hurl insults, or play mental gymnastics to convince ourselves we're in the right.
A FINAL THOUGHT . . .
These are some of the broader notions I've come to realize when trying to understand how people generally behave and operate. It's a lot easier to comprehend why someone behaves a certain way when you try to fully understand their motivations, priorities, and fears.
Have you ever had a friend who constantly talks about wanting to exercise, but when you show up to take them to the gym, they make any excuse not to? Ask yourself what their real priorities are. Have you ever met someone who makes a bad decision and excuses it by saying "I'm just a bad person"? Ask them whether they truly believe that or if they just want an excuse not to change their behaviour because that's the much tougher course of action.
Just don't take it too far and assume you know someone better than they know themselves and therefore think you know what's best for them, because in spite of everything you've just read, we very rarely can truly understand absolutely everything about another person. Unless you know someone's entire history - all their thoughts, feelings, and the extent of their goals and dreams - the only real life you have full authority over is your own.
We're all still human at the end of the day, however, and a lot of our behaviours and ways of thinking come from the same biological mould.
We're all unique snowflakes, but we're still all made of snow.
Wednesday 11 March 2015
Chappie: An Existentialist's Nightmare
I'm going to explain the plot now in case you haven't seen it, in which case you probably shouldn't be reading this anyway because I'm going to spoil the shit out of its final act.
It's the near future and Johannesberg is having great success with its shiny new robotic police force created by young scientist Deon (Dev Patel) who works for a manufacturing company under Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver). He has to deal with the scrutiny of Vincent (Hugh Jackman), a brawny weapons designer whose hulking combat droid the "Moose" is given less favour than Deon's smaller, cuter kin. Cut to bumbling criminals Ninja and Yolandi (played by South African rap-rave group Die Antwoord playing themselves [?] in a weird bit of meta-casting) and Yankie (Jose Pablo Cantillo) as they are thwarted by the robotic police force and later threatened for a large sum of money by a brute of a criminal whose English is so bad it requires subtitles for the whole film. They decide they need a way to bypass the robot police and kidnap Deon just as he's nearing a breakthrough on sentient A.I. and BAM! Chappie (Shartlo Copley) is born into a wild and crazy new world where he must grow, learn, and think for himself.
The film deals with the typical artificial intelligence questions of what makes us human and how do you quantify a soul, and it succeeds largely on those fronts. But then the ending happens, and that's where I could tell most of the audience started to tilt their head and look at the screen funny. In short, it takes a rather daring and fantastical turn.
Spoiler Warning . . .
Chappie is living on a short time frame; his battery has been fused to his chest cavity meaning it can't be replaced and once it runs out, he dies. Grasping with the concept of imminent death the way most people would, he desperately searches for a way to insert his consciousness into another robotic body. While arguing with Deon at the facility where he was created, Chappie steals the neural helmet used to up-link a human brain to Vincent's skulking war machine, even though Deon insists it's impossible to transfer an actual consciousness. As Deon also says earlier in the film, however, any organism with the mind of a human and the processing power of a computer would be able to learn and think faster than any human could ever dream. A few trips to the Internet later and Chappie finds a way to use the helmet to map his neural consciousness.
Shit inevitably goes down into a climax that involves a massive firefight between Ninja and his gang, the crime lord threatening them, and Vincent's "Moose" robot with poor Deon caught in the middle. Yankie and Yolandi (who has been a surrogate mother to Chappie) are killed, Deon takes a bullet to the gut, and Chappie wrecks the Moose before beating the shit out of Hugh Jackman. In a desperate bid to save Deon's life, Chappie uses his new-found wisdom and neuro-link helmet to transfer Deon's consciousness into the body of a robot, who then quickly transfers Chappie into a newer body. It's also revealed at the end of the film that Chappie had made a backup of Yolandi's consciousness while testing his helmet, and they begin creation of a robot body to "rebirth" her as well.
The issue I imagine most people will have with the ending is that it seems too fantastical and it happens too fast. The whole premise of the film is based around creating a computer program that perfectly mimics the human brain so as to develop its own personality and character. Science fiction has dealt with that idea for decades so it's not a foreign concept (Spike Jonze's Her presented it in a wickedly touching way), but the notion of transferring the human mind into a machine is a little more tricky. It's a difficult concept to grasp - reading and then "copying" the entirety of what makes a person a person and somehow transforming it digitally - and Chappie glosses over the technical difficulties rather quickly (it takes Chappie all of five minutes and a montage to accomplish it). The audience is asked to suspend disbelief to believe this robot has the mind of a person, and then within the last ten minutes of the film asked to suspend disbelief even further to believe a human mind - a very ethereal and intangible thing - can be transferred into the body of a robot.
I think it makes people a little uncomfortable to think of a human mind in the body of something that isn't human - like a perversion of nature, far different from creating a mind from the ground up to exist in a mechanical body. It brings about feelings of claustrophobia and isolation, of being trapped in something foreign. It asks too much of the audience. There have been other movies that have toyed with the idea, but the less fantastical and more rooted the reality of the film's world, the more difficult it is to grasp the prospect (Wally Pfister's Transcendence didn't connect well with audiences, whereas no one blinked at Zola in Captain America: The Winter Soldier because it was based on a comic book). Chappie, like the rest of Blomkamp's films, is heavily rooted in reality, so the leap from grounded to fantastical is rather severe.
But the more I think about it, the more appropriate it seems. I would even go so far as to suggest it might be the only inevitable ending the film could have.
The film begins as the story of how a man created a machine with the mind of a human, and ends with a robot creating a human with the body of a machine (I leave it to you to ponder whether or not they're the same thing). When you think of it in comparable terms, it suddenly doesn't sound as far fetched. The film makes the point (as does every science fiction film involving robots) that artificial intelligence would no doubt develop in leaps and bounds just because of the computing power machines are capable of. Deon even says while describing the program he's developed for artificial intelligence that whatever mind is created as a result will be vastly smarter than any human in history and will be capable of learning and retaining information at an exponential rate. By the simple nature of robotics, it therefore makes sense that although it took mankind an unfathomably long time to evolve to the point of being capable of replicating the mind digitally, it would only take a robotic mind that has access to all the information in the world hours to accomplish the same feat in reverse.
And that is what I believe the true point of the film is. It's not a story about a robot that gains consciousness, but rather the story of the end of humanity. Deon is the result of millions of years of human evolution who creates a robotic human mind thanks to the communal intelligence, research, and innovation of the entire human race and scientific community that came before him (because science doesn't occur in a vacuum, it's built on the foundation of the accomplishments of everyone that existed prior). Chappie, the infinitely intelligent result of this impossible accomplishment, achieves the next "impossible" feat - transferring human consciousness into a robotic body - within a few days of his inception. Chappie then uses his breakthrough to save Deon's life by removing his maker's mortal flesh and replacing it with immortal metal. In essence, Chappie removes the fear of death from Deon by making his human body obsolete, thereby removing part of his humanity; he also goes about using the "backup" of Yolandi's consciousness to effectively raise her from the dead as well. Chappie has ushered in a world where death doesn't exist, and thus has changed the very essence of what it means to be human and the course of human history.
It's a wide open ending, and Blomkamp has said he created the film as a potential first chapter in its own trilogy, so I can only imagine where its sequels might go. While the attempt to create a robot version of Yolandi may seem a tad much, I personally think it's a great addition to the finale on top of Deon's own transformation. Whereas Deon is saved in the nick of time, Yolandi is clearly dead. Her consciousness is merely a "backup" copy. It raises the question of whether the robotic Deon has his literal human mind or whether it's simply a copy as well.
These are questions that don't necessarily have answers, and I believe most people will be taken aback by Chappie's ending because it throws these subconsciously existential questions at the audience in rapid-fire succession right after the climax of the film. I think it's going to end up being one of those endings that most people don't like but can't explain why, because it hits them on an almost primal level, questioning the very nature of identity.
There are plenty of philosophers that have questioned the nature of human existence, pondering what we as a species are truly meant for. Are we a disease that is meant to consume the planet and endlessly destroy itself, or are we simply an organism undergoing an awkward transitional phase before we collectively evolve into another form of being, such as robotic organisms that have shaken off the mortal coil of flesh and bone? Will we ultimately escape death, and if so, what will the cost of that be to our humanity? Is there really such a thing as a "soul" or is it simply a word meant to encapsulate all of the mysteries of the human consciousness that we haven't been able to quantify and solve?
Chappie makes us question all of this, and the fact that I'm still thinking about suggests that I must have really enjoyed it as a film. It's interesting to think that humanity will end not with a nuclear bomb or some horrible disease or terrible world war, but rather with a simple keystroke.
Wednesday 25 February 2015
The Root of Victim Blaming
Why does victim blaming exist? It's as rampant as ever, but when you stop and think about it, it's hopelessly illogical. And yet it swirls around the murky comment sections of almost every online debate regarding sexual harassment or rape.
For those unfamiliar with the term, "victim blaming" is exactly what it sounds like - blaming the victim in any instance of a crime or violation. "If you didn't want to get mugged, you shouldn't have walked down that alley" is a good example. Currently, the term is almost synonymous with instances of rape and sexual assault. "She was asking for it wearing that skirt" or "if she didn't want to have sex she shouldn't have been so flirty" are tame versions of some of the comments you might hear when such cases crop up, with the worst going so far as something like "she secretly wanted it because everyone knows she's a slut."
All of these are horrible, but why do they exist? What constructive purpose does victim blaming serve? Are there really so many awful people willing to condemn someone who has just undergone something traumatic? Personally I don't think so, so I would like to propose a possible explanation that is far less nefarious.
I believe it's simple. I think it all boils down to fear.
I think people are scared. I think people are afraid to admit that something like rape happens on a horrifyingly regular basis, because admitting it would be admitting that the world by extension can be a rather horrible and scary place. That's something a lot of people frankly aren't ready to accept just yet (if ever) because it would be admitting that they themselves might not be safe.
There's a wonderful speech at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (correct me if I'm wrong on this, I sometimes get the movies confused) where Dumbledore is talking to Harry in his dorm room just after a climactic battle with Voldemort. Dumbledore says to Harry, "There will soon come a time where people will have to decide between what is right . . . and what is easy." In the case of victim blaming in rape cases, what is right is admitting that sometimes terrible things happen to good people and that the world isn't always safe, especially if you're a girl; what is easy is to deny that the world can be terrible and scary by denying such things happen, and the easiest way to deny an accusation is to discredit the accuser.
When I was in elementary school, we had a presentation about the dangers of drunk driving. We watched a video that had interviews with a woman who had been hit by a drunk driver. The resulting accident trapped her in her car, which caught fire. At the risk of sounding insensitive, the physical damage as a result of her burns was horrifying. It left me deeply disturbed, and my mind's initial reaction was to say that such things weren't possible. I tried to convince myself it was all a show, that it was all makeup and special effects for the sake of making a very effective PSA, but that was just my mind playing mental gymnastics for one purpose: I didn't want to admit that something so horrible could happen to someone.
It goes beyond simply admitting that bad things happen, unfortunately, especially when further implications arise. The startlingly high statistics of rape and harassment towards women are symptoms of a predominantly patriarchal society with misogynistic tendencies, but a lot of people are very comfortable with current society, and would therefore fear anything that threatens established norms (one only needs to look at the GamerGate incident to see this in microcosm). Admitting that things are bad also means admitting that things should change, which I would say the majority of people are very adverse to, especially if it requires any degree of work on their part. The easy solution therefore becomes to deny such problems exist, and by extension, deny any evidence of a problem.
As Dumbledore indicates to young Harry, it's easier for people to deny that evil exists (exemplified by the fact that Voldemort for the first half of the series is referred to as "He Who Must Not Be Named") because admitting it also means recognition that it must be subsequently fought, which is a frightening prospect. Likewise, it is especially difficult to admit that celebrities or people in positions of power are guilty of crimes (be it sexual assault or otherwise) because it means acknowledging that a figure that some might have idolized was not the beacon of light once thought. It was easier to deny Bill Cosby was a rapist (until the evidence became too overwhelming) because otherwise we would be destroying a fixture of American pop culture that many people grew up with, in the same way it's difficult to admit that John Lennon was an abusive man because it would taint the legacy of his music.
We build mental templates for ourselves to make us feel safe, and these templates have very rigid specifications that must be met before many of us are willing to recognize something for what it is. We have an idea of what an abusive relationship is so that if the one we're in becomes abusive or unhealthy, we can compare it to our template and say "it might not be great, but at least it's not that." We do the same for words. The word "rape" conjures up so many negative things - feelings of betrayal, violence, devastation, trauma - that unless something fits with the exact criteria we design in our heads, we just deny it. Most people think of rape as something that happens in a dark alley at knife-point, not something that happens in a dorm room after a girl has drank too much to properly say "no." People don't want to admit that something that we associate such horrible things with could happen easily and often. Even worse, no one wants to think that they could be a criminal, and so the boy in the dorm room makes excuses, saying "she wanted it" or "why would she drink so much if she didn't know what could happen?" because the fear of admitting they are a rapist is too terrifying.
And so this fear manifests as denial. We find excuses so we don't have to admit that the university we went to has a sexual harassment problem; we make excuses so we don't have to admit a high school football star is actually a criminal; we make excuses so we don't have to admit a celebrity who was a big part of our childhood was secretly a monster.
It's easier to discredit the victim, because at the end of the day, everyone is more afraid for themselves.
For those unfamiliar with the term, "victim blaming" is exactly what it sounds like - blaming the victim in any instance of a crime or violation. "If you didn't want to get mugged, you shouldn't have walked down that alley" is a good example. Currently, the term is almost synonymous with instances of rape and sexual assault. "She was asking for it wearing that skirt" or "if she didn't want to have sex she shouldn't have been so flirty" are tame versions of some of the comments you might hear when such cases crop up, with the worst going so far as something like "she secretly wanted it because everyone knows she's a slut."
All of these are horrible, but why do they exist? What constructive purpose does victim blaming serve? Are there really so many awful people willing to condemn someone who has just undergone something traumatic? Personally I don't think so, so I would like to propose a possible explanation that is far less nefarious.
I believe it's simple. I think it all boils down to fear.
I think people are scared. I think people are afraid to admit that something like rape happens on a horrifyingly regular basis, because admitting it would be admitting that the world by extension can be a rather horrible and scary place. That's something a lot of people frankly aren't ready to accept just yet (if ever) because it would be admitting that they themselves might not be safe.
There's a wonderful speech at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (correct me if I'm wrong on this, I sometimes get the movies confused) where Dumbledore is talking to Harry in his dorm room just after a climactic battle with Voldemort. Dumbledore says to Harry, "There will soon come a time where people will have to decide between what is right . . . and what is easy." In the case of victim blaming in rape cases, what is right is admitting that sometimes terrible things happen to good people and that the world isn't always safe, especially if you're a girl; what is easy is to deny that the world can be terrible and scary by denying such things happen, and the easiest way to deny an accusation is to discredit the accuser.
When I was in elementary school, we had a presentation about the dangers of drunk driving. We watched a video that had interviews with a woman who had been hit by a drunk driver. The resulting accident trapped her in her car, which caught fire. At the risk of sounding insensitive, the physical damage as a result of her burns was horrifying. It left me deeply disturbed, and my mind's initial reaction was to say that such things weren't possible. I tried to convince myself it was all a show, that it was all makeup and special effects for the sake of making a very effective PSA, but that was just my mind playing mental gymnastics for one purpose: I didn't want to admit that something so horrible could happen to someone.
It goes beyond simply admitting that bad things happen, unfortunately, especially when further implications arise. The startlingly high statistics of rape and harassment towards women are symptoms of a predominantly patriarchal society with misogynistic tendencies, but a lot of people are very comfortable with current society, and would therefore fear anything that threatens established norms (one only needs to look at the GamerGate incident to see this in microcosm). Admitting that things are bad also means admitting that things should change, which I would say the majority of people are very adverse to, especially if it requires any degree of work on their part. The easy solution therefore becomes to deny such problems exist, and by extension, deny any evidence of a problem.
As Dumbledore indicates to young Harry, it's easier for people to deny that evil exists (exemplified by the fact that Voldemort for the first half of the series is referred to as "He Who Must Not Be Named") because admitting it also means recognition that it must be subsequently fought, which is a frightening prospect. Likewise, it is especially difficult to admit that celebrities or people in positions of power are guilty of crimes (be it sexual assault or otherwise) because it means acknowledging that a figure that some might have idolized was not the beacon of light once thought. It was easier to deny Bill Cosby was a rapist (until the evidence became too overwhelming) because otherwise we would be destroying a fixture of American pop culture that many people grew up with, in the same way it's difficult to admit that John Lennon was an abusive man because it would taint the legacy of his music.
We build mental templates for ourselves to make us feel safe, and these templates have very rigid specifications that must be met before many of us are willing to recognize something for what it is. We have an idea of what an abusive relationship is so that if the one we're in becomes abusive or unhealthy, we can compare it to our template and say "it might not be great, but at least it's not that." We do the same for words. The word "rape" conjures up so many negative things - feelings of betrayal, violence, devastation, trauma - that unless something fits with the exact criteria we design in our heads, we just deny it. Most people think of rape as something that happens in a dark alley at knife-point, not something that happens in a dorm room after a girl has drank too much to properly say "no." People don't want to admit that something that we associate such horrible things with could happen easily and often. Even worse, no one wants to think that they could be a criminal, and so the boy in the dorm room makes excuses, saying "she wanted it" or "why would she drink so much if she didn't know what could happen?" because the fear of admitting they are a rapist is too terrifying.
And so this fear manifests as denial. We find excuses so we don't have to admit that the university we went to has a sexual harassment problem; we make excuses so we don't have to admit a high school football star is actually a criminal; we make excuses so we don't have to admit a celebrity who was a big part of our childhood was secretly a monster.
It's easier to discredit the victim, because at the end of the day, everyone is more afraid for themselves.
Thursday 12 February 2015
Advocacy and Anger: A Dangerous Mix
Social media is a wonderful tool for anyone with a cause to preach; no longer is someone striving for social justice relegated to an underground forum, doing their best to raise awareness through demonstrations, marches, or whatever else people did in the fifties. The world is instantly accessible, and the Internet has become one of the best tools for any advocate or social justice warrior.
There is, however, a big obstacle that advocacy soldiers need to overcome: anger.
Their own, to be precise.
I was lightly involved in advocacy work back in my more youthful days, mostly as just a volunteer. Most of my work centered around feminist campaigns, and overall it was a very eye-opening experience that I'm glad I was a part of. That's not to say it was all smiles and sunshine, however, and to say there were clashes with some of the people I was involved with would be a massive understatement (which is why I tend not to be very involved these days).
Those "clashes" tended to crop up around the more elitist of advocates that I encountered, the sort of people who would condemn me for having a private discussion with friends in which an off-color joke was uttered. Frankly, it became too off-putting to deal with. I was all for helping a cause, but when the people I was involved with started playing Thought Police to my personal Facebook page, that's when it transformed from passionate cause to stressful burden. I was fully supportive of the ideals and notions these people were advocating, but it was the people themselves that grew too difficult to deal with. And since most of the work I was involved with revolved around feminism (which is becoming quite the buzzword these days) we might as well start there.
Feminism is such a basic and primordial idea that it's even bizarre to think we live in a world where we still have to campaign for it. Feminism is simply the idea that women should be treated as equally as men in all matters of life. That's it. Ask almost anyone if they believe in this and they'll agree, but ask if they're a feminist, and good luck keeping track of the responses you get. "Feminism" is still a bit of a dirty word, and is full of negative associations (like "angry feminist" or "femi-Nazis"). But why did these associates crop up in the first place?
Well, the first thing I think we need to understand is that feminists are people too, and the thing about people is that they can be very angry and egocentric. And on the other side of the fence, people often correlate unrelated things and make unwarranted associations, which is why encountering one angry advocate could turn you off their cause, even if their cause is still a valid and worthy one.
Let me explain it better with a story . . .
Many, many months ago, I was pursuing online dating. During that time I began speaking with someone whom we'll call "Girl-X" for the sake of this article. Girl-X was a very outspoken feminist, and she was excited when I told her that I had dabbled in a bit of advocacy work in years past. We talked for a little while, and it became obvious that she was very emboldened and passionate, which I respected. Then she shared something which threw up many red flags.
You see, Girl-X was also very angry (which anyone who's dealt with misogyny has every right to be) and she'd also encountered a guy online who self-identified as a "women-hater." Girl-X concocted a plan to create a fake online profile, get close to this man, learn his identity and his secrets, then expose him. She shared this information with me because she wanted to be honest with me, and then asked if I thought she was crazy. This is when I had to have a very real talk with her . . .
I told her that because of my experience with advocacy, I understood that she was just angry. Unequal pay, cat calls, sexual objectification - these are things women have to deal with regularly, and so her anger was justified. She wanted someone to pay, and this guy seemed like a ripe target. She thought she would be doing the world a favour by outing him. That's perfectly understandable . . . to someone like me who has experience with her cause. But to anyone else who isn't familiar, like say, the general population, it would come across as certifiably bat-shit insane. I convinced her to stop with her elaborate plan based on one irrefutable fact:
Anger solves nothing. And in the case of advocacy, it hurts it.
To me, she was just an angry girl. To someone else, she might be a "crazy feminist" and therefore justification to ignore the entire cause. There's a very important rule when it comes to advocacy that I think some advocates ignore: advocacy supports an idea, usually in an attempt to fix a problem . . . but the average person doesn't realize there's even a problem in the first place (or in the worst cases, don't want to admit there's a problem). Feminism is particularly hard fought because unless you've dealt with misogyny first hand, you're probably not going to believe it's an issue worth fighting over, and because most men never have to deal with it, that means that female feminists have to convince the very people responsible for the problem that there is one. This certainly explains why there's such opposition to feminist crusaders (take a look at what happened to poor Anita Sarkeesian) because no one wants to believe that they're secretly responsible for having done something bad.
It thus becomes a heavy burden for advocates because they have to not only attempt to fix a problem, but they need to justify and explain why there's a need to fix it in the first place. The only way you can do this is through education, but when you're so angry at having suffered under a problem (patriarchy, misogyny . . . take your pick) then patience and understanding can go out the window, and suddenly you're just this person that to the general population is attempting to fix a problem no one knew existed.
A perfect analogy is bullying. If you go to a high school and ask someone from a popular crowd if bullying is a problem at their school, they'll probably say no because they've never experienced it personally; it's not a part of their life and therefore they have no reason to believe it's an issue. But if you ask someone who gets the shit beaten out of them daily, the answer will be much different. If you show evidence to the popular person that there's indeed someone getting bullied and thus it is in fact a problem, then you've properly educated them. If, however, you simply run up to them and start saying they need to fix a problem that they don't know exists, you're going to get a lukewarm response. And if you get angry when they fail to accept your campaign because of their ignorance, you've effectively scared them away forever.
You could also say the same about racism. A white person isn't going to have much experience dealing with that sort of prejudice, so if an advocate starts condemning them and preaching about white privilege, then nothing gets solved, and all that's been accomplished is you've deterred a potential supporter away from your cause.
It can be difficult to accept that change is a slow process and that people are often resistant to it. We're a culture obsessed with quick fixes, so our instinct is to push and pull and scream until we accomplish something or get our way; we did it when we were kids, and it's a go-to tactic when we're angry and frustrated. In the grand scheme, however, this only sets us back as a society. It's easy to make associations where they shouldn't be, so if the most vocal member of a cause or movement comes across as angry or furious, then the bridge to the average person just got a whole lot scarier for them to cross.
It's a shitty situation, make no doubt about it. It puts all the pressure for change on the shoulders of victims and people that have suffered enough; you're telling someone seeking justice that they need to be patient and understanding with people who are ignorant and blissfully unaware of the injustices they've faced.
So to all those passionate advocates out there, I implore you to keep your hearts open and accept that fear and ignorance don't equal opposition. And to everyone else, I encourage you to keep your ears and minds open to the experiences of those who have lived a life outside of your own.
There is, however, a big obstacle that advocacy soldiers need to overcome: anger.
Their own, to be precise.
I was lightly involved in advocacy work back in my more youthful days, mostly as just a volunteer. Most of my work centered around feminist campaigns, and overall it was a very eye-opening experience that I'm glad I was a part of. That's not to say it was all smiles and sunshine, however, and to say there were clashes with some of the people I was involved with would be a massive understatement (which is why I tend not to be very involved these days).
Those "clashes" tended to crop up around the more elitist of advocates that I encountered, the sort of people who would condemn me for having a private discussion with friends in which an off-color joke was uttered. Frankly, it became too off-putting to deal with. I was all for helping a cause, but when the people I was involved with started playing Thought Police to my personal Facebook page, that's when it transformed from passionate cause to stressful burden. I was fully supportive of the ideals and notions these people were advocating, but it was the people themselves that grew too difficult to deal with. And since most of the work I was involved with revolved around feminism (which is becoming quite the buzzword these days) we might as well start there.
Feminism is such a basic and primordial idea that it's even bizarre to think we live in a world where we still have to campaign for it. Feminism is simply the idea that women should be treated as equally as men in all matters of life. That's it. Ask almost anyone if they believe in this and they'll agree, but ask if they're a feminist, and good luck keeping track of the responses you get. "Feminism" is still a bit of a dirty word, and is full of negative associations (like "angry feminist" or "femi-Nazis"). But why did these associates crop up in the first place?
Well, the first thing I think we need to understand is that feminists are people too, and the thing about people is that they can be very angry and egocentric. And on the other side of the fence, people often correlate unrelated things and make unwarranted associations, which is why encountering one angry advocate could turn you off their cause, even if their cause is still a valid and worthy one.
Let me explain it better with a story . . .
Many, many months ago, I was pursuing online dating. During that time I began speaking with someone whom we'll call "Girl-X" for the sake of this article. Girl-X was a very outspoken feminist, and she was excited when I told her that I had dabbled in a bit of advocacy work in years past. We talked for a little while, and it became obvious that she was very emboldened and passionate, which I respected. Then she shared something which threw up many red flags.
You see, Girl-X was also very angry (which anyone who's dealt with misogyny has every right to be) and she'd also encountered a guy online who self-identified as a "women-hater." Girl-X concocted a plan to create a fake online profile, get close to this man, learn his identity and his secrets, then expose him. She shared this information with me because she wanted to be honest with me, and then asked if I thought she was crazy. This is when I had to have a very real talk with her . . .
I told her that because of my experience with advocacy, I understood that she was just angry. Unequal pay, cat calls, sexual objectification - these are things women have to deal with regularly, and so her anger was justified. She wanted someone to pay, and this guy seemed like a ripe target. She thought she would be doing the world a favour by outing him. That's perfectly understandable . . . to someone like me who has experience with her cause. But to anyone else who isn't familiar, like say, the general population, it would come across as certifiably bat-shit insane. I convinced her to stop with her elaborate plan based on one irrefutable fact:
Anger solves nothing. And in the case of advocacy, it hurts it.
To me, she was just an angry girl. To someone else, she might be a "crazy feminist" and therefore justification to ignore the entire cause. There's a very important rule when it comes to advocacy that I think some advocates ignore: advocacy supports an idea, usually in an attempt to fix a problem . . . but the average person doesn't realize there's even a problem in the first place (or in the worst cases, don't want to admit there's a problem). Feminism is particularly hard fought because unless you've dealt with misogyny first hand, you're probably not going to believe it's an issue worth fighting over, and because most men never have to deal with it, that means that female feminists have to convince the very people responsible for the problem that there is one. This certainly explains why there's such opposition to feminist crusaders (take a look at what happened to poor Anita Sarkeesian) because no one wants to believe that they're secretly responsible for having done something bad.
It thus becomes a heavy burden for advocates because they have to not only attempt to fix a problem, but they need to justify and explain why there's a need to fix it in the first place. The only way you can do this is through education, but when you're so angry at having suffered under a problem (patriarchy, misogyny . . . take your pick) then patience and understanding can go out the window, and suddenly you're just this person that to the general population is attempting to fix a problem no one knew existed.
A perfect analogy is bullying. If you go to a high school and ask someone from a popular crowd if bullying is a problem at their school, they'll probably say no because they've never experienced it personally; it's not a part of their life and therefore they have no reason to believe it's an issue. But if you ask someone who gets the shit beaten out of them daily, the answer will be much different. If you show evidence to the popular person that there's indeed someone getting bullied and thus it is in fact a problem, then you've properly educated them. If, however, you simply run up to them and start saying they need to fix a problem that they don't know exists, you're going to get a lukewarm response. And if you get angry when they fail to accept your campaign because of their ignorance, you've effectively scared them away forever.
You could also say the same about racism. A white person isn't going to have much experience dealing with that sort of prejudice, so if an advocate starts condemning them and preaching about white privilege, then nothing gets solved, and all that's been accomplished is you've deterred a potential supporter away from your cause.
It can be difficult to accept that change is a slow process and that people are often resistant to it. We're a culture obsessed with quick fixes, so our instinct is to push and pull and scream until we accomplish something or get our way; we did it when we were kids, and it's a go-to tactic when we're angry and frustrated. In the grand scheme, however, this only sets us back as a society. It's easy to make associations where they shouldn't be, so if the most vocal member of a cause or movement comes across as angry or furious, then the bridge to the average person just got a whole lot scarier for them to cross.
It's a shitty situation, make no doubt about it. It puts all the pressure for change on the shoulders of victims and people that have suffered enough; you're telling someone seeking justice that they need to be patient and understanding with people who are ignorant and blissfully unaware of the injustices they've faced.
So to all those passionate advocates out there, I implore you to keep your hearts open and accept that fear and ignorance don't equal opposition. And to everyone else, I encourage you to keep your ears and minds open to the experiences of those who have lived a life outside of your own.
Wednesday 7 January 2015
What I Learned About Fitness in 2014
I should also say right now that I am by no means an expert on fitness, nor have I gone to school and studied to any great degree some of the things I'll be talking about. I'm just a guy with a blog who spent a long time reading up and observing things. I'll try and be as concise as possible so as not to waste too much of your day, but this article will probably be pretty long. Give me a break though; it was a long year and if you're at all interested in exercising or living a healthier life, you might learn a thing or two (the last point is kinda the most important in my opinion). And it's got headings, so feel free to skip ahead.
And so, in no particular order . . .
YOU CAN'T OUT-EXERCISE A BAD DIET
Diet is literally the most important element of healthy living. I went from a diet consisting mainly of pizza, hamburgers, chicken strips, chips, soda and chocolate to one that was rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables, low-fat diary, healthy fats, and lean protein. The results were astounding. My energy skyrocketed and my appearance changed quite drastically in a short amount of time. While the biological process is far more complicated than I'm probably making it seem, diet accounts for anywhere between 60-80% of your fitness goals and has a profound impact on your health. You could exercise hours everyday with a shitty diet with no results, while otherwise get great results with a good diet and only a few hours of exercise a week.
Remember, a healthy meal shouldn't be the exception to your day (i.e. "At least I had a salad for lunch!") but the other way around. Eating an apple doesn't cancel out several candy bars.
HAVING SAID THAT, FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON DIET CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE
I have a very obsessive personality, and when I launch myself into something, I usually do it with as much zeal and effort as I'm able to dedicate. Unfortunately, it's more than possible to take something such as a desire to be healthy and have it transition into a very unhealthy frame of mind. I became obsessive about counting calories and macro-nutrient ratios (the percentage of protein, carbohydrates, and fats you consume daily) and overly critical about how I looked, feeling guilty if I had something like pizza or chocolate. I'm not near as bad as I once was, but it's still something I deal with from time to time.
WHAT YOU SEE IN MAGAZINES/MOVIES AREN'T HOW THINGS WORK IN REAL LIFE
Much like how porn has warped the minds of young men into believing sex operates a certain way, movies and magazines often portray fitness in such an incorrect fashion too. Looking as good as models and actors requires months and months of dedication and discipline. It requires sleeping 8-10 hours a night, consuming dangerously excessive and then dangerously limited amounts of food, and six intense days a week in the gym (with one day for rest). Before a photo shoot or a shirtless scene, models/actors will often dehydrate themselves to lose water weight, plus lighting and camera positioning plays a huge role too. Those instances are often built up to; actors rarely maintain such a level of "shreddedness" for an entire film shoot, and they especially don't maintain that level of fitness once shooting is over. That lifestyle is simply too demanding, and it's especially daunting to even try and attempt when you're working a 9-5 office job.
IT'S NOT ABOUT BUILDING MUSCLE, IT'S ABOUT LOSING BODY FAT
I, like many others, used to think that the key to a six-pack of abs was an unprecedented number of crunches and situps. My mind was therefore blown when I found out that not only do those two exercises suck for bringing out the ab muscles, but you can get a perfectly decent flat stomach without doing any ab exercises whatsoever. What matters is dropping your body fat to the point that all of your muscles become visible and highly defined (which is most easily achieved through diet). It's an illusion that the fitness industry has capitalized on for decades. Case in point, Brad Pitt - who's body in the film Fight Club was considered the epitome of male fitness for a long time - only weighed around 155 pounds during that film (he's six feet tall). You'll hear it everywhere, but it's true: abs are made in the kitchen.
YOU HAVE TO PRETTY MUCH EAT DRYWALL TO GET SUPER TRIM
The "drywall" bit is a joke Ryan Reynolds made about what he had to eat to get into shape for Blade: Trinity, but anyone who's followed that kind of diet would have to agree. In order to drop body fat you pretty much have to stick to the leanest of proteins and the most nutrient dense of vegetables, which is why chicken and broccoli are such staples of fitness diets.
PEOPLE HAVE A STRANGE DISASSOCIATION FROM THEIR BODY
Sometimes I feel that the majority of people think of their body as some physical entity completely disassociated from their brain, like their mind is a driver and their body a car, and that if the car gets rundown the brain will still be fine. Unfortunately this isn't the case, as the mind and body are BOTH the car, and as one gets rundown so does the other. There's no way to separate the two. Your body is the vessel by which you live, and if you don't keep it in good health, your quality of life will suffer.
IT'S AMAZING WHAT YOU CAN TRAIN YOUR BODY TO DO
The human body is a highly adaptive organism, and it's incredibly efficient at learning and adapting to new movements. The nervous system plays just as much a part in weight training as do muscles. It's often the initial hurdle of becoming familiar with new movements that sets most people back, but as many motivational posters claim, your mind will often quit before your bodies does.
COMPOUND BEFORE ISOLATION EXERCISES & BODY BALANCE
This is more actual training related, but an awful lot of people walk nervously into a gym not entirely sure what exercises they should be performing, and immediately start either bench pressing or doing bicep curls because those are the only exercises they're familiar with. It's important when beginning to exercise (honestly, for the first several years) to focus on big, compound exercises that make you use several muscles at once, instead of worrying about doing isolation exercises like bicep curls that only target one muscle. It's also important to make sure you have proper posture and execute everything with good form, otherwise you're setting yourself up for a nasty injury, and for the love of Christ, never try to lift more weight than you can do comfortably. If you want to see what overreaching and bad posture delivers, go to YouTube and check out any number of "CrossFit Fails" compilations.
The best exercises to focus on are things such as bench-presses, deadlifts, squats, pull-ups, dips, shoulder presses, and anything else that requires natural movement and that works more than one muscle group. Unless you're a bodybuilder, there's no reason to try and follow a bodybuilding style training routine. And it's also important to make sure you're balancing your body properly. If all you do is bench press without worrying about working the opposing muscles groups (in this case the back, which is targeted through movements like rows and pull-ups) you're on a one way trip to muscle imbalance, which isn't pleasant.
CARDIO SUCKS FOR FAT LOSS
That's not to say it's not an important part of an exercise regime, but if you're spending hours on the treadmill or elliptical hoping to burn calories, think again. While it might be great for improving your cardiovascular fitness, it won't put much of a dent (like, at all) in your daily caloric consumption. Studies show lifting weights is actually more effective for weight loss with strict cardio a distant second. If you want to lose weight, you NEED to reign in your diet. There's just no other way.
THE BODY ISN'T A JIGSAW PUZZLE
Having said that, it's also important to realize that the body isn't broken down into separate entities such as when you divide your routine into "cardio" and "strength training." The body functions as a whole, and while it's possible to work different processes through certain methods, ultimately everything works as a cohesive unit.
PEOPLE WANT A QUICK FIX
I used to think that one hour of exercise three days a week was enough to offset whatever poor lifestyle choices I was making, and I realize now that was a very unhealthy notion (in the same way I used to think an hour of yoga a week was enough to fix seven day's worth of bad posture). Similarly, I have a coworker I overheard talking about how they have a very bad back and wanted to pursue surgery, but was furious when their doctor suggested exercising first; my coworker didn't want to think that something that would require that much effort and discipline on their part was the solution to their problem - they wanted the "magic pill" solution.
We've become obsessed with the idea that there's a singular cure for whatever ailment we have. A healthy lifestyle is like any other discipline - you can't do it for a day and expect to see results. It takes a lot of time and hard work to see any progress.
EXERCISE AND PROPER DIET ARE THE MEDICATION NO ONE WANTS TO TAKE
I understand that not everyone enjoys exercising like I do, and I certainly understand that not everyone wants to adjust their diet either. That shit's hard, plain and simple. Unfortunately, being healthy isn't like other hobbies or skills that we can choose to indulge in based on whether we enjoy them or not; our bodies all operate on the same biological processes, and being healthy is literally capable of curing a good percentage of lifestyle-related diseases (of which heart disease, cardiac problems, and a good chunk of cancers fall under). It's a cure that is sitting in front of everyone's face, but few people want to pick up. If there existed a pill with all the benefits of exercise with none of the hard work, it would be the best selling product in all of human history.
REST IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS DIET AND EXERCISE
I've made the mistake of assuming the key to fitness was strictly exercise, but it's actually a holy trinity of exercise, diet and rest, with each part being just as important as the other. Muscle is grown by tearing it so it may build back up, so you actually "grow" muscle when you're not exercising. Six days of hard exercise a week is probably going to keep you from reaching optimal results unless you're eating a dump truck worth of clean food a day to compensate, or at the very least being smart about how you structure your routine.
EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET MORE SLEEP
I truly underestimated the degree to which rest plays in living a healthy lifestyle, and from the looks of a small Facebook poll I took, so does everyone else. I'm lucky if I sleep more than six hours a night, even though it's recommended that everyone should get at least 7-8 on average (more if you exercise vigorously). Hormones released during sleep contribute to everything from stress management to weight loss to muscle growth, and yet I think because it's something free that most people enjoy, it's therefore viewed as an indulgence instead of a necessary element of healthy living.
FITNESS ISN'T ALL ABOUT MUSCLE
There are some fun videos on YouTube showing what happens when professional bodybuilders try rock climbing for the first time and are easily beaten by someone half their size with a third of the muscle. Having big muscles won't help you at all if you aren't performing functional training; if someone steals your wallet and runs off, it won't matter how much you bench-pressed the night before if you can't run thirty seconds without being out of breath. Overall fitness is broken down equally between muscular endurance, flexibility, cardiovascular processes (how well your body utilizes oxygen) and body composition (how much fat to muscle you have).
WEIGHT LOSS IS A FINICKY THING
Weight loss is predominantly related to one's diet, but the details are freakin' hard to nail down. Everyone's body is different, and while there are tons of "calorie calculators" online, finding out what works best for you is going to take a lot of trial and error. Eat too much and you'll be gaining more fat than muscle; eat too little and your body will enter starvation mode and you'll actually gain weight. You can also fluctuate up to ten pounds in a single day based on water-weight alone, so don't rely on fitness magazines and the bathroom scale to tell you how much progress you're making.
SUGAR ADDICTION AND OBESITY ARE WORSE THAN PEOPLE REALIZE
I've always considered myself an extremely disciplined person, and I always thought the threat of obesity was just a matter of people being too lazy . . . until I tried cutting out all processed sugar from my diet. To say it was challenging is an understatement. I still get cravings and have to fight off the desire for sugar (especially chocolate). Studies show the body reacts similarly to sugar in the way it also reacts to hard drugs, and if I had such a hard time breaking it off then I fear for everyone else, because it's in fucking EVERYTHING.
SERIOUSLY, SUGAR IS THE FUCKING DEVIL
The documentary Fed Up is a great film that I highly recommend because it takes a very no-nonsense approach to obesity and the effects of sugar, and if it's good enough to get Kevin Smith to change his diet, it's good enough for everyone else. To sum up the science, the body can only process about six grams of sugar at a time, and eating more will trigger an insulin response in your body that automatically starts converting food to fat. This provides a double whammy because all the nutrients get stored as fat instead of filling you up and giving you energy, so not only are you still hungry, you feel sluggish as well. Therefore, it doesn't matter how few calories you eat; if what you're eating is still high in sugar, you're still converting a lot of what you eat to fat.
Also, take a look at any nutrient label. Notice how sugar is the only item that doesn't list its "Daily %" value. That's because sugar corporations (I hate using the vague term "corporations" but what else do you call them in this situation) lobbied to have that removed, otherwise a can of Coca Cola would say something along the lines of 110% on the label.
A CALORIE ISN'T ALWAYS A CALORIE
This is an old school notion that assumed if you burned more calories than you consumed, you'd lose weight. But because the body isn't a calculator and sugar is a nefarious bastard, science has shown that isn't the case. 200 calories of chocolate and 200 calories of vegetables are not going to have the same nutritional effect on your body.
EVEN IF SOMETHING IS HEALTHY, IT'S STILL POSSIBLE TO GET FAT OFF IT
Almonds are healthy, and there have been some studies that show health benefits to dark chocolate, and yes, even a glass of wine now and then is good, but holy shit, that's not an excuse to shove it down your throat like it's the antidote to a six pack. Almonds and dark chocolate are still high in fat, and any chocolate is still filled with sugar (some types more than others, obviously). Even fruits when eaten in large quantities can be high calorie. Really, vegetables are one of the few types of food that you can pretty much eat with abandon without ever having to worry about their calorie count.
MISLEADING MARKETING IS GOING TO KILL THE MISINFORMED
Fuck fruit juice, and fuck any other thing that claims to be "Gluten Free." There are a lot of old misconceptions about food that marketers capitalize on, and because the majority of the population isn't as informed about nutritional science, the fallout can be rather severe. People may assume the juice from 100% juice is healthy, but without the fiber of the actual fruit to accompany the natural sugars, drinking juice is almost as bad as soda. As for gluten, if you're not actually allergic to it, there's no need to treat it like the devil's food. And don't trust Doctor Oz for your nutritional advice either - the guy was just called out in court because half his claims were proven to be bullshit. I went to a Whole Foods the other day and was really disappointed by how a lot of unhealthy foods were disguised as healthy with overblown prices.
A LOT OF TRAINING MENTALITIES ARE ANTIQUATED
There are a lot of guidelines in the fitness world based on old schools of thought that recent studies have proven to be false, or at the very least, not as concrete as once believed. Protein is a great example. Lots of bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts still cling to the notion that in order to get big you need to be eating 1-2 grams of protein per pound of body weight a day, but recent studies show that the body can really only utilize 0.8 grams per day towards building muscle. The same thing goes for ideas such as you need to eat several small meals a day to keep your metabolism going (it really doesn't make much of a difference) and you should eat something protein heavy within an hour of working out (while it's good to eat something, the "window" for protein synthesis lasts anywhere from 24-48 hours; your body isn't a clock).
A large number of these notions are based on practices that - because they were part of certain successful routines - were just naturally assumed to be right. It's not to say they're all bad (I still follow certain guidelines myself) but there's really not as many magical formulas as people think.
PEOPLE CAN BE VERY MISINFORMED ABOUT HOW THE BODY WORKS
The uprising of fad diets and juice cleanses is very frightening, as is the number of people who read a single article about health and proclaim its content as fact. "Cleanses" are a waste of time because the body is designed to cleanse itself; drinking nothing but juice is only going to make you sluggish and piss yourself silly. The same goes for the demonizing of carbohydrates. There are lots of articles claiming low-carb diets are the secret to weight loss, but it's not limiting the carbs themselves that make you lose weight but the lack of calories you're eating from omitting carbs from your diet. I remember screaming at a weight-loss magazine awhile ago over a similar claim about how you can lose tons of weight drinking only lemon juice a day because they were praising the weight-loss effects of lemon juice instead of acknowledging the weight loss came from not eating anything else.
EVERYONE THINKS THEY'RE AN EXPERT
If you really want to lose your faith in humanity, check out any online fitness forum and count how many insults get hurled at people because their "program" is wrong. This is more just a negative personality trait that many people have, assuming they're an expert on something because of their own personal experience instead of acknowledging that there are many successful practices (and yes, I realize the irony of that statement considering what I've written thus far in this article) and everyone's body responds differently. For added fun, check out how many people claim the cast of the movie 300 were all on steroids because the commenters had been exercising for years without getting those kind of results.
YOU DON'T NEED A GYM MEMBERSHIP
I've been able to achieve a relatively decent level of fitness without having stepped foot in a commercial gym since first year university (almost ten years ago now). There are tons of YouTube channels that show you how to get in a great workout at home with almost no equipment. I myself follow a program that is largely based on calisthenics (body-weight exercises) dumbbells and yoga. If you want to build muscle, you really don't need anything more than a pull-up bar.
LIVING HEALTHY CAN BE EXPENSIVE . . . KINDA
I don't have a gym membership, so I don't have to rely on spending money for my actual workouts. As for food, being smart about what you buy can save you a ton of money in the long run. You don't need to buy everything organic, and avoid anything that's high priced with a bunch of big-print health claims on the packaging. Yes, some foods cost a bit extra, but it's not nearly as bad as you might assume.
IT'S IMPORTANT TO LOVE YOURSELF
At the risk of coming off too narcissistic with this post, I wholeheartedly 100% agree that first and foremost it is important to love and accept your body for what it is. I went through some bad body image issues myself regardless of what people around me were saying, and my excessive compulsive nature only added to the trouble. It's much better to take the Average Joes approach from Dodgeball: you're perfect the way you are, but hey . . . if you want to take a stab at getting a bit healthier, all the power to you. If you don't want to, that's your decision.
. . . BUT ALSO BE REALISTIC
It's one thing to be happy with who you are, but it's another to turn that around and take it too far in the other direction. I think fat shaming is a horrible thing, but to grab hold of the "it's okay to be big" movement and take it all the way to "fuck skinny people" kinda misses the point. Fitness models are just as insecure about their bodies as everyone else (one could argue more so, because their actual livelihood is dependent on it) so it doesn't help anyone to go up to a skinny person eating a slice of pizza and guilt them by saying "I wish I could eat that and still look like you" (which happens quite often, whether it's meant to be scornful or not). If you forgo eating healthy and not wanting to exercise, more power to you, but don't try to convince others that it's a superior way to live, in the same way you shouldn't shame others if they enjoy indulging in less-than-healthy alternatives.
THERE IS A GENETIC LIMIT TO HOW FIT YOU CAN REALISTICALLY GET
I didn't realize just how prominent steroid abuse was in the world of bodybuilding until I looked into it. It's sorta startling, actually, so much so that there's actually contests referred to as "Natural Bodybuilding Competitions" which means it's actually expected that you'll take steroids in your typical bodybuilding contest (but that's not to say they're all that way). The reason for this is that there's actually only so much muscle you can build naturally, depending on your genetics and your body type. Some people are just naturally gifted (like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) while others can achieve a pretty good body with strict dedication (such as skinny-man Adrien Brody's transformation in Predators) but there really is a limit. The average weigh in during "Natural Bodybuilding" contests is actually somewhere in the 170 pound range (and that's at a very low body fat percentage, mind) so if you're looking at someone whose abs look like paving slabs the size of your face, it's safe to assume they may be getting some assistance from steroids.
IT TAKES A LONG TIME TO BUILD MUSCLE
Following that line of thought, it actually takes a very long time to build muscle. Like, years and years. I've been exercising for well over a decade, and while I may have gained some new muscle when I fixed my diet, I also plateaued pretty fast (I'm still pretty skinny). Again, look at movie stars who literally have all the time and money in the world to get fit. Henry Cavill went from being incredibly ripped in Immortals to being still incredibly ripped but with about ten extra pounds of muscle in Man of Steel. The kicker? It took him a year to do it, training three hours in gruelingly intense sessions six days a week, eating five thousand calories per day. Brad Pitt was at his fittest in Troy, which took almost a year to train from how fit he already was. It takes a lot of time and effort, which is why you're not going to look like Stallone overnight.
There are also a lot of women who are afraid to lift weights because they fear getting bulky like some women you see in bodybuilding contests. Women possess about 1/10 the testosterone levels of men (a key ingredient of building muscle) so that woman who looks unnaturally bulky is either a genetic abnormality or getting help from steroids. So ladies, if you want to get "toned," get off the treadmill and start lifting some heavy barbells.
THE HIPPIES WERE RIGHT
A great many ailments of the modern age are a result of us moving away from nature. Our bodies adapted and evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to get used to certain functions and food. Processed food and sedentary lifestyles only developed in the last hundred years or so, and frankly, it shows. Our bodies haven't had the time to adapt to a high-sugar, high-caloric diet, just as they haven't adapted to spending most of our days sitting on our asses. For many thousands of years people exercised by climbing and moving heavy shit, not by dedicating an hour a day to bench pressing; they ate mostly fruits and vegetables and occasionally meat, not two quarter-pounders a day with a gallon of coke and a bag of chips. Honestly, the best way to get fit is to embrace the mentality that evolution forged us a certain way, and if something fits in line with evolution, it's probably good for you to do. This is why activities like sprinting, rock climbing, and gymnastics are extremely effective for getting fit, because they embrace natural movements of the body.
WALKING IS GREAT, BUT YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO A BIT MORE
Walking is a fantastic exercise. It gets your blood flowing, helps improve your cardiovascular system, and is a great overall functional exercise. But if that's the only thing you're doing and you're still waiting for the pounds to melt off, you're going to have to try a bit harder. Walking isn't particularly physical stressful (i.e. it won't stimulate an insane amount of muscle growth) and it doesn't burn an awful lot of calories. At best it's a supplement to a proper exercise program, but it shouldn't be the anchor by which you plan your weight loss strategy.
MARTIAL ARTS AND GYMNASTICS ARE TOTALLY BAD-ASS
Gymnastics and martial arts are probably two of the things I've gained the most respect for in the last year. I have a close friend who is heavily involved in martial arts who was a big inspiration for my fitness endeavors this past year, and learning about how intense martial arts can be was really eye-opening. The same applies to gymnastics, which many dismiss as a "sissy sport" when in fact you'll probably find some of the fittest athletes in the world partaking in such activities. It's one of the reasons I've taken such a huge interest in calisthenics. For anyone who doesn't think you can get strong doing body weight exercises, I challenge you to try your hand at ring dips, one-arm push-ups/pull-ups, headstand push-ups, single-leg squats, dragonflies, or the human flag.
That shit is downright inspiring.
IT'S AMAZING HOW MANY PEOPLE SAY "I CAN'T" WHEN THEY SHOULD REALLY BE SAYING "I DON'T WANT TO"
This is probably one of the most important psychological lessons I've learned about people in general this past year. Everyone wants to be fit; everyone knows they should exercise (every doctor in the world wouldn't recommend it if it wasn't an essential part of living a long and healthy life) and yet an awful lot of people will seek out excuses not to. I can understand not enjoying exercise, but I am also intimately aware of the mental gymnastics people often do to convince themselves that something is beyond their control. I have many friends and family who cannot understand my vigorous enthusiasm for exercise, and that's fine. I know I'm a bit more hardcore than I should be, but I enjoy it, and I recognize not everyone does. What kills me, however, is when I hear people say "I want/wish I could do that too, but I can't because . . ." and then follow it up with a very poor excuse, such as not having time or not having a gym membership.
I think it's important to be honest with yourself. If you're unable to replace "I can't" with "I'm physically incapable because . . ." then you're probably just making an excuse, and that's fine, but at least admit it. If you tell yourself that you can't exercise because you don't have the time, genuinely sit down and look at your schedule. If you're spending two hours a night watching reality TV, then it's not a matter of "You can't" but rather "You don't want to."
Exercise isn't easy. It's not suppose to be. It's supposed to hurt, because if you're not sore than you're not challenging your body enough to stimulate growth. People hate being put outside their comfort zone. It's going to be a challenge, especially if you're new to exercise - your body is finally moving in ways it hasn't been forced to move in years (if not decades). Your joints and muscles are probably going to be sore in the beginning (although please note there's a difference between "sore" and "painful" - I'm not encouraging people to hurt themselves) but the body is incredibly adaptive if you give it enough credit and patience. It's one thing to not want to squat because you have a previous injury and are physically incapable, but it's another to tell yourself you have bad knees and just can't do it (especially since after that initial hurdle of getting used to the movement, most exercises are extremely beneficial for your joints). Just be honest with yourself; do as much or as little as you want, and if you don't want to do anything at all, that's fine too, but acknowledge that it's a personal choice you're making and not something dependent on anyone else.
And that's it, folks. That's probably my longest article by far, but what can I say - it was a hell of a year.
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