[Exploring Life] Culture can not only be confining, it can be physically, emotionally, and mentally unhealthy. We live inside a set of cultural assumptions that often remain invisible to us. Sometimes, these subconscious assumptions can cause us to live in extreme circumstances. Revealing and exposing underlying assumptions and providing advice and methods to escape from those assumptions is the mainstay of many authors today.
One of the inevitables in life is that, all things being equal, we will grow older and eventually die. It is a sad story indeed to hear about the individual who after working their entire life in order to retire suddenly dies a short time into retirement. we also assume that our health is something that will gradually decline in our later years. However, is the assumption that the decline of our health during aging a long and gradual process? Is it possible that our level of health can largely be maintained and the gradual decline can be eliminated? If this were the case, our assumptions about our health through old age would be revised.
The book Younger Next Year [YNY] is a book that exposes some assumptions that are the source of inept of not incorrect views of aging, retirement, and human biology. It also retrieves an understanding of aging that is more accurate and offers ideas for enhancing the final third (all things being equal, this means age 60-90) of our lives. My purpose here is not to review the book, but to cull some of the more interesting points it makes, especially as they relate to learning.
Cultural Ineptitude and Glaringly Obvious Realities
It is only too obvious to say that our lifestyles have become more sedentary and the food we eat has become more and more detrimental to our health. It is equally obvious to say that our bodies were meant to move, and we should only eat whole natural food. And another glaringly obvious reality is that to create fitness, or in the negative sense lose weight, we must at the very least exercise on a regular basis and only eat whole natural food.
Culturally, we are in the midst of perhaps a collision of several unhealthy situations and circumstances. Technological development has fostered a cultural of disease and illness. The source of this problem lies within our sedentary lifestyles. Though we consider humankind to be at some imaginary pinnacle of intelligence, our food production systems are clearly inept and ignorant and originate within greed and want more than they do health and well being. Culturally, we are at the height of individual and collective decay, destruction, and virulence.
Retrieving Common Sense
A great deal of “advice” being promoted through the media today seems to constantly be promoted as, “You really need to listen to this advice from our elite panel of experts – it will change your life forever and you will be happy and content until you die.”
It is so-called experts and expertism that has in fact created the current situation we find our selves in. A great deal of modern-day advice is really aimed at removing the immense confusion and deception resulting from years of expert advice.
One of the core assumptions in Younger Next Year is that we must exercise effectively for six days per week. It is obviously good advice, but does it not seem odd that information like this would even constitute “advice?” How is it possible we don’t already know this? After all, do we not know possess more knowledge than any other point in our history?
There are a number of interesting perspectives and insights offered in the book, especially those of Dr. Lodge, around the nature of our biology as we age. Lodge states that a sedentary lifestyle actually triggers ancient and primal biological mechanisms deep within the body to begin the decay process: sedentary lifestyle is equivalent to decay. Exercise triggers the biological mechanisms for further growth.
Another interesting insight relates to the primal areas of the brain, those “out of control” aspects of neural functioning. Our reptilian brain and its mysterious connection to our primal and ancient origins that connects us to the very roots of existence. Our limbic brain and the power of emotions, and its interconnections with the reptilian brain. In other words, there is literally an “animal” dimension deep within the structures of our brain.
Resetting Cultural Assumptions
Dr. Lodge contends that our ancient and primal heritage remains present in our bodies today. Most notable, the fight or flight mode of survival still lies at the essence of our being at the cellular level. In ancient times, stress was exerted in short but intense periods of time, perhaps during a hunt or being by an approaching threat. This kind of intense short-lived stress is a normal experience for the body, and the body is well adapted to it.
Culturally, we have made stress chronic, that is to say, our culture has adopted the norm of chronic stress. Our bodies are not adapted to this, and according to Lodge, evolution will be slow in adapting to it. Chronic stress creates disease and results in death. Since chronic stress is a cherished norm of modern culture, we might conclude that this cultural assumption originates in a desire for pain and suffering.
An intense and thoughtful program of exercise can undo the effects of chronic stress to a large degree. Thus, exercise is actually a requirement for survival in modern society, since that society.
YNY In A Larger Perspective
One of the things that is quite surprising about modern-day society is its addiction to advice. YNY is a reasonably good book, however, if we take a step back and view the larger context, are we not surprised that it even needed to be written? This is not a reflection of the book itself, but where we are as a society. What does it say about the evolution of human civilization that, after thousands of years of “progress” and “knowledge development” that we should need a book that correctly reminds us of glaringly obvious realities.
Unfortunately, YNY offers little cultural insight or sensitivity. There is no attention given to the fundamental problems of why we choose to live the way we do, how we got here, and what should we do about it. This is beyond the scope of the book, but it is the cultural domain where we find the most enduring issues.
I also wonder how many of us read books such as these, and perhaps energetically begin to follow its advice, only to have it fade away and eventually disappear completely from our lives. Modern day society has an addiction to short-term thinking, attention, and presence; our ability to sustain our concentration, discernment and awareness has degraded. Though YNY may offer a good basic entry though relatively narrow entry point into building a meaningful life, the very presence of the book reveals just how mercurial our circumstances have become.
