Saturday, December 13, 2008

on gyming it up 4

heres part 3

A further residual trace of the Enlightenment, which has accompanied human cultures domination of nature at sundry times throughout history, is the elevation of the human subject to the ultimate apotheosis of existence. With God dead, according to Nietzsche[1], someone or something needed to step up and fill the meaning void that this cosmic event left in its wake. Humanism, for better or worse, attempted to do exactly that. As the brainchild of the Enlightenment, Humanism collected all the principles that we have already discussed (rationality, human worth, equality etc.) and in the process an ideology was born. There is a direct connection between health promoting pursuits and humans beings seeing themselves as the new gold standard of creation (or of the big bang/accident). Working out at a gym can be a symptom of these two complimentary aspects: the new value of human status and the perceived power of humanity to reshape nature[2].

We now begin to move closer to what this all means in terms of visual culture, for men who interest themselves in gymnastic endeavours. Healthy living encompasses many aspects: food intake, proper medical care, and physical activity. There are certain behaviours that can signal that we practice a healthy lifestyle. When it comes down to it there are certain results that reveal unequivocally upon inspection that we are in fact healthy. Our behaviours do not accompany us where ever we go but our bodies do. If a society were to favour certain sense modalities above others certain bits of our sensations would be privileged above others. It is reasonable to assert that our visual experience takes precedence over other sensory data that we take in[3]. Intuitively this makes sense, an examination of present day culture (not to mention the past) shows us that visual markers are pre-eminent[4]. In such a culture it would be easy for appearance to become more important than substance. How we look may say more than what we do.

box squat (29cm) 60*5,80*5,100*5,120*5,130*3
power C&J 100 (missed jerk)
power snatch 60/2*3
power C&j 100 (missed jerk again)

volume: 2750kgs
[1] Nietzsche: The gay science, p 125
[2] Baldwin: Introducing Cultural Studies, p 365.
[3] Baldwin: Introducing Cultural Studies, p 365.
[4] Think about branding, video games, TV, billboards, art, architecture etc.

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