It is palpable. You can feel it in the air and see it in many people’s eyes. Big shifts are imminent. They are overdue. Something has to give.
Are you ready?
[WATCH the video podcast or keep reading. There’s a separate RANT video at the end of the article]
The world is changing at an exponential rate. Just in my lifetime I have seen the shift from being restricted to watching a few channels of black and white TV on a cumbersome box and making calls on a corded rotary phone to the virtually endless supply of live, recorded and instantly searchable high definition content on a device I can hold in my hand. And less than 200 years ago we were just beginning to harness the power of electricity.
In the late 1960s, Terence McKenna - writer, philosopher, and psychonaut - started expounding on his Novelty Theory. Simply put, McKenna’s theory describes the increasing exponential rate of change - and the novelty that accompanies it - advancing until it reaches an omega point of infinite novelty, where anything and everything conceivable to the human imagination will occur simultaneously. This would be the End of History.
There’s more to it, but for our purposes, that’s enough. Rather, let’s look at a less esoteric and more grounded notion of novelty, time, and evolution from evolutionary biologists, Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein.
Most people would agree that our species is facing significant consequences from a variety of potential threats. Many might disagree which ones are more real and which are alarmist, but the fact that a civilization altering event or cascade of events could occur is fairly universally accepted.
Heying and Weinstein argue that the problem is clear: our world has become so hyper novel that the pace of change has outstripped our ability to keep up. Humans are an evolutionary phenomenon, and while we are designed to adapt to change, it took hundreds of millions of years for humans to reach our modern configuration. We live in a modern world, but our brains, bodies and social systems are ancient. We are perpetually in a mismatch with our modern environment. This breeds sickness — physically, psychologically, socially, and environmentally. If we don’t figure out how to manage the problem of accelerating novelty, humanity might go extinct or at least be diminished by mass suffering, disease and death. You could say we would become a victim of our own ‘success’.
I don’t claim that I know how to slow down novelty or speed up human evolutionary adaptions, but I think building strength will almost definitely increase one’s chances of surviving and thriving.
The strength I am talking about is not just physical strength, though that is an important aspect. The strength we would do well to strive towards is a full-spectrum strength that fortifies us inside and out.
So, let’s get to it.
7 Types of Strength to Resist the Reset
Physical Strength
If you need to take down a drone that is surveilling you and scale a fence when you are attempting to escape your 15-minute city, physical strength is going to be important.
If you need to tend to your garden so you can have real vegetables instead of lab grown food-like stuff or ze bugz, physical strength will help.
If you need to carry your gear beyond the perimeter and hoist your friends and family up to safety, physical strength will be crucial.
Arguably, physical strength is the foundation for all others. If our vessel is weak, navigating and being stable is much harder. Physical strength is usually a good indication of physical health. When we don’t have our health, everything else seems less important.
Regardless of one’s attitude towards the gym and big muscles, strength is one of the most functional, protective, and valuable assets a human could have. Building strength and muscle has been shown to significantly affect longevity, disease prevention, cognitive acuity, reduce injuries, and improve mental health.
While you do not need to deadlift 500 pounds, having functional muscle will enable you to better withstand both acute and chronic threats to your physical well-being. More and more studies have shown that aging itself is not what detracts from vitality but rather the continuous neglect in one’s lifestyle. When it comes to muscle, use it or lose it is definitely a true aphorism. That being said, it is never too late to start lifting.
One study took a group of institutionalized 90-year olds and put them on an 8-week leg training program. Many of the participants were either using walkers, canes or in wheel chairs. After 8 weeks, they showed muscle growth, strength increases, speed increases and many were able to shed their assistive devices.
Here’s a quick summary:
Have you seen some of the architect of the 2030 agenda? If you have some strength, Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Yuval Noah Harari, Justin Trudeau, and their ilk, will be no match for you physically. Get strong! The rest will follow.
The current medical recommendations are 90 minutes of resistance training a week in 2 or 3 sessions. That’s going to go a long way to improving bone density, minimizing age-related sarcopenia, improving insulin sensitivity, protecting against diabetes, dementia, and slip and fall injuries, amongst many other benefits.
The process of getting physical stronger is inexorably linked to strength in other areas as well. For one, by moving through discomfort and that voice in your head saying “I want to quit”, you build strength mentally and emotionally as well.
This is going to help you tolerate the pain and discomfort of listening to our leaders contradict themselves, virtue signal, and evade responsibility.
WHY DO WE TRAIN? FOR LIFE. Life is often not easy. It can require grinding it out and persevering. Sometimes we want to quit. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like we are going to make it. That’s perhaps when we are tested the most. That’s when we benefit from leaning on our past experiences of enduring. That’s when we need to find a mental and emotional fortitude that strengthens our spirit to keep going. That’s when an established practice of discipline gives us a recognizable behaviour and thought pattern that equips us to face the challenge. Resistance training is such a discipline. Done properly and with focus, it creates a certain acceptance in the presence of struggle and pain. It makes discomfort more comfortable. This transfers to so much of life. Join me in exploring this path to better physical, cognitive, emotional, and social wellbeing.
If you are looking for a customized resistance training program with a nutrition plan and/or coaching, I am taking a few new clients. I combine my research at the behavioral medicine lab with my certifications in nutrition, and strength and conditioning into programs that blend physical transformation with health psychology and habit formation techniques.
Send me a message here for more information. My website is under construction.
Rant on Fit Shaming
Not only do we live in precarious times, we live in very strange times as well. The things we see in the media can often feel like Orwellian inversions, where:
“War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.”
Headlines can seem ludicrous. What is published in traditionally credible outlets seem like satire. It can feel like they have joined Monty Python, The Onion, or The Babylon Bee. Ironically, these sources of humorous entertainment can seem more real than the actual ‘serious’ journalism.
If it doesn’t seem like Orwell or satire, the current cultural climate often feels like the Twilight Zone.
Being fit is never a bad thing. Never. However, these days it can be used as a smear like in this example:
Deep breath. Here. We. Go.
“Do you boast about your fitness?”
First, determining if something is boasting is a little subjective. There is nothing wrong about being proud of one’s hard work and discipline. It can inspire others and help to sustain motivation.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, in health psychology, the evidence from a meta-analysis of motivational behaviour change techniques studies show that one of the most effective ways to maintain healthy habits - including fitness - is to share your goals and achievements.
In a behavioral medicine lab study that examined how exercise intentions are most adhered to and turned into sustainable habits a key finding was to:
Place “active person” on your list of identities and make this known through photos, self and social declarations. Embracing a physical activity identity leads to a life shaped by that identity - especially if we make it a higher identity on our list than activities that serve less value in our lives.
Zoe is out of her depth here and seems to be projecting her own insecurities about sharing her accomplishments. In my opinion, celebrating your wins is important. Doing so gives others permission to shine as well.
2. “Watch out - you’ll unavoidably become rightwing.”
Well, well, well, someone has a partisan stance. Regardless of whether you are right, left, center, or Martian, equating fitness achievements with those you think are ‘deplorable’ because of their political leanings is itself pretty deplorable. I am nonpartisan and I find this petty.
Is Zoe claiming all leftwing people are not sharing the fitness success? That’s nonsense. It is a ridiculous statement that I am confident has no evidence to back it up. It should actually be embarrassing for Zoe, but I doubt it is.
She continues to further embarrass herself by using the word “unavoidably”. This explicitly means that there is no way to not become rightwing if you “boast” about fitness. It is as guaranteed as getting in the ocean naked and becoming wet.
This is vapid media sensationalism at its finest. Yes, Zoe! You got my attention… but not respect.
Speaking of respect, she admits that she is “not sure what exercise does for your body…”
Is she really comfortable saying this out loud? Getting it published?? Wow. Just wow! Most elementary school kids can tell you some of the things exercise does to your body. Perhaps she should go back to Physical Health and Education class. Really she probably shouldn’t be discussing fitness and exercise at all if she is unaware of the effects it has.
The cherry on top is “…but [she does] know what it does to your personality”.
I doubt it. She cannot grasp the physiological impact of exercise in any basic way but she is making brazen statements about her certainty around its seismic changes to personality. I guess she analyzed the canon of psychology to become an expert on personality theory and then extrapolate this knowledge into the new field of exercise-induced personality change. Incredible! Seminal! Perhaps a Nobel Prize is in order.
Thanks, Zoe. I think you should go for a long workout, sharing it, and maybe then your personality will change in positive ways.
Enough about Zoe and fitness being used to indoctrinate people into rightwing circles. Let’s look at another example of how fitness is being hijacked by a blend of Idiocracy, WALL-E, and 1984.
For instance:
Don’t get me wrong. If these cover models are working out and eating healthy, they are on the right track, but I can almost guarantee you that their lab work will be showing concerning values. If they continue to live with this much extra adiposity, they will surely encounter early mortality and a host of morbidity along the way. They are probably already noticing negative effects to their health and well-being.
Encouraging them to love themselves is great but not encouraging them to lose some weight is neglectful, bordering on abusive. If we care about the well-being of these people, we would support them in their journey to actually being fit and healthy.
The very word “fit” is the root of the word that is the cornerstone of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. That’s right. Darwin describes how natural selection occurs through “survival of the fittest”. Those who are fittest pass on their genes and sustain their species. Those who are not fit end up having their lineage cut off. This is how a species continues to get stronger.
Yes, this has to do with more than physical strength. It importantly includes adaptability, survivability, and reproducibility. However, it is physical strength is a key component in fitness which increases the aforementioned.
The more we pretend that health and fitness do not appear in certain physically observable parameters, the more we do a disservice to those struggle with it and to our species.
Do we want our children who are already plagued by a modern environment and culture that promotes sedentary lifestyles and convenient overeating to be deceived into thinking they can live this way without any consequences?
If people want to be overweight and obese, that’s their choice. But to parade the notion around that it doesn’t have consequences and it is on par with being a medically appropriate weight is harmful.
It is misinformation. It is disinformation. It contributes to the weakening, sickening, and dependency of the population.
It creates victims and perpetuates victim mentality.
It makes people easier to rule.
It makes people generate more profit for the pharmaceutical industry.
It makes people more ripe for commoditization, and less capable of being independent, strong forces that can withstand the storms ahead and create their own solutions.
This is not something which is subjective. If you were in a survival situation and needed to cooperate to accomplish physically demanding tasks, who would you want with you?
Think about it.
Speaking of thinking about it, we’ll continue with the other 6 types of strength needed to resist the Reset next time, where we’ll lead off with mental strength.
To be continued…