I think the three things exercise was designed for people who routinely say "I hate my body"/"I hate the way I look".
I used to feel that exercise for its own sake was taking up time that could be better spent doing something else, but then I figured out that I could read on a treadmill, and got over that hump, and now I feel a bit down or anxious if I don't devote some time every week to exercising. Whether it's going to the gym or just going for a long walk a few times a week.
I do think that our attitude to our body is very instrumental in how we behave with regard to keeping ourselves healthy, and to food and exercise especially. Whether that's because we find our own bodies aesthetically pleasing, or the take we have on the mind body relation. I'm a very intellectual person in the sense that a lot of my identity is caught up in mostly intellectual activities. Yet it's through this thinking activity that I become more an more convinced that consciousness is primarily determined by embodiment, that is, that how we mentally interact with the world is intrinsically related to the body that we have (i.e. human, and not a pig or an ant).
Margaret Atwood once wrote, or had a character say, that the gap we feel between mind, or rather head and body wouldn't be so pronounced if we didn't have a neck. So that if we couldn't look down at ourselves, at our body (but not our face), we wouldn't feel that it was something separate. I sometimes think that proximity of our sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth) is also responsible for a distinction that we make between what 'I' am, i.e. the person who does the sense, and my body, which is something that I can see etc. Of course this is to ignore touch and proprioception, and also movement. Which is probably how I ended up at this point in response to what you wrote.
Lastly, about people perceiving your habits as a condemnation of their own, there are many body and food puritans out there, and sometimes they do, consciously or otherwise, make moral judgments about what people eat and etc. Mostly, though,I think that many of us have idealized notions of what we should be doing, and when we meet someone who actually does something which we constantly put off, it can be discomforting.
I think the three things exercise was designed for people who routinely say "I hate my body"/"I hate the way I look".
I sincerely hope so, but that's not the impression I got from reading all the comments on mrissa's post. Or alternatively, hate is the normal, default attitude towards one's body.
I'm a very intellectual person in the sense that a lot of my identity is caught up in mostly intellectual activities. Yet it's through this thinking activity that I become more an more convinced that consciousness is primarily determined by embodiment, that is, that how we mentally interact with the world is intrinsically related to the body that we have (i.e. human, and not a pig or an ant).
This is the kind of thing I was waving at, except for me, it required the actual physical experience of regular exercise for myself to be able to make all those intellectual connections, and thoughts about embodiment.
I read a short called something like "why I don't have a head", which makes the same point Margaret Atwood is making, I think. I'm very aware of this myself and in some ways it feels like a problem that I am so very much stuck behind my eyes, and I guess part of what I'm doing is trying to move that I around my body at least sometimes.
Lastly, about people perceiving your habits as a condemnation of their own, there are many body and food puritans out there, and sometimes they do, consciously or otherwise, make moral judgments about what people eat and etc. Mostly, though,I think that many of us have idealized notions of what we should be doing, and when we meet someone who actually does something which we constantly put off, it can be discomforting.
Well, I meet people all the time who are managing things that my idealized notion of myself would have me doing. There just doesn't seem enough time to fit all those ideal activities in, so I'm not going to judge other people for not making the same choices I do. That's not to say there aren't other people who do make judgements like that, of course.
Thanks for your very thoughtful and thought-provoking comments.
I felt that the comments at mrissa's were a combination of people saying "it's hard to think of 3 good things" and of people saying, "well, I kinda like a lot about my body, really".
It's convenient to speak of something called a mind, it's that bit of the self that thinks and observes. My somewhat considered philosophical position on this is that in order to consider the the way we experience ourselves as being comprised of mind and body, or of having mental and physical faculties, we need to use that part of ourselves which we label 'mind', and so we tend to privilege that faculty in the process. But just because we can make the distinction, and it can be very useful to do so, it doesn't mean that my mind is more 'me' than my body. I do often feel that 'I' am occupying some space behind my eyes, or between my ears, but my eyes are also part of my body, and remembering that helps to give a new perspective.
I agree that using your body in new ways can shift hat focus. I did a lot of yoga and the occasional dance lesson in my early 20s, and that helped me appreciate my physicality and the way I occupied space and moved in it. I also had whiplash a couple fo times, and have residual back problems, and pain can be a very convincing means of realising that I am physical and embodied. Although for some people poor health means they see their body as a burden, as something that exists only to interrupt their intellectual pursuits.
Again, I've babbled at length. You've rekindled a long term interest of mine. I added you to reflexionen, which is where I occasionally post rough philosophical musings, I haven't been using it much this year, but some of the earlier entries are concerned with how we experience ourselves as thinking, so may be of some interest.
Very interesting babbling, thanks. And your ideas seem fairly close to mine; it's reassuring that I'm not just randomly making up stuff :-). I'll keep an eye on reflexionen for sure.
I sometimes think that proximity of our sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth) is also responsible for a distinction that we make between what 'I' am, i.e. the person who does the sense, and my body, which is something that I can see etc. Of course this is to ignore touch and proprioception, and also movement.
I think it's interesting that you talk about touch and movement as if they were separate from the other senses.
Perhaps because I'm a singer, and my instrument is my entire body, I perceive my mind and body as intimately connected, and I can't imagine how I would go about figuring out what thoughts, impressions, actions, etc. come from just mind or just body, or if there is such as a thing as mind without body.
I think we often use our sense touch and movement to sense ourselves and our own states, whereas we use our eyes and ears to sense things which are outside and somehow 'over there' - it's a less immediate relation.
I'm actually a very tactile person, but the literature on perception so often focuses on sight that it becomes the default example, and yet sight perhaps more than any other of our senses is that which can make the world seem somehow at a remove from ourselves.
Mostly, though, we tend to think in words or images, so that when we're thinking we experience our thoughts as occurring inside our heads, I think verbally and audibly, to myself, so I hear my thoughts as coming from between my ears, even though I understand this to be due to subvocalaliztion.
'Mind' for me is convenient shorthand for our conscious experience, and particularly for those aspects of human experience that are occupied with reflecting on things. I don't think of minds as something separate from bodies, but we do have all these subjective experiences so it's convenient to be able to discuss them.
What immediately springs to mind here is I think it's called propioception: the awareness of where your limbs are in space. I don't think it's coincidence that it was totally ignored for much longer than the other (known?) senses, because I think it's intuitive, like gravity. And yet, when people don't have it, they can barely function.
Yes, proprioception is very important. It's interesting that people aren't so familar with it, we still talk about 5 senses when ther are a lot more than that.
Sometimes it seems to me that this area is intrisically biased: it strikes me that people who are very good at explaining and talking verbally about what's going on with them, are also very good at ignoring their bodies and pretending that mind is more interesting and separate.
I'd include myself in that to some extent, I feel that I've become accomplished (to the extent I am) at using words by living somewhat without body, and that I'm in a relatively unusual position, reconnecting with my body, but also with the desire to talk about it.
I used to feel that exercise for its own sake was taking up time that could be better spent doing something else, but then I figured out that I could read on a treadmill, and got over that hump, and now I feel a bit down or anxious if I don't devote some time every week to exercising. Whether it's going to the gym or just going for a long walk a few times a week.
I do think that our attitude to our body is very instrumental in how we behave with regard to keeping ourselves healthy, and to food and exercise especially. Whether that's because we find our own bodies aesthetically pleasing, or the take we have on the mind body relation. I'm a very intellectual person in the sense that a lot of my identity is caught up in mostly intellectual activities. Yet it's through this thinking activity that I become more an more convinced that consciousness is primarily determined by embodiment, that is, that how we mentally interact with the world is intrinsically related to the body that we have (i.e. human, and not a pig or an ant).
Margaret Atwood once wrote, or had a character say, that the gap we feel between mind, or rather head and body wouldn't be so pronounced if we didn't have a neck. So that if we couldn't look down at ourselves, at our body (but not our face), we wouldn't feel that it was something separate. I sometimes think that proximity of our sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, mouth) is also responsible for a distinction that we make between what 'I' am, i.e. the person who does the sense, and my body, which is something that I can see etc. Of course this is to ignore touch and proprioception, and also movement. Which is probably how I ended up at this point in response to what you wrote.
Lastly, about people perceiving your habits as a condemnation of their own, there are many body and food puritans out there, and sometimes they do, consciously or otherwise, make moral judgments about what people eat and etc. Mostly, though,I think that many of us have idealized notions of what we should be doing, and when we meet someone who actually does something which we constantly put off, it can be discomforting.
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I sincerely hope so, but that's not the impression I got from reading all the comments on mrissa's post. Or alternatively, hate is the normal, default attitude towards one's body.
I'm a very intellectual person in the sense that a lot of my identity is caught up in mostly intellectual activities. Yet it's through this thinking activity that I become more an more convinced that consciousness is primarily determined by embodiment, that is, that how we mentally interact with the world is intrinsically related to the body that we have (i.e. human, and not a pig or an ant).
This is the kind of thing I was waving at, except for me, it required the actual physical experience of regular exercise for myself to be able to make all those intellectual connections, and thoughts about embodiment.
I read a short called something like "why I don't have a head", which makes the same point Margaret Atwood is making, I think. I'm very aware of this myself and in some ways it feels like a problem that I am so very much stuck behind my eyes, and I guess part of what I'm doing is trying to move that I around my body at least sometimes.
Lastly, about people perceiving your habits as a condemnation of their own, there are many body and food puritans out there, and sometimes they do, consciously or otherwise, make moral judgments about what people eat and etc. Mostly, though,I think that many of us have idealized notions of what we should be doing, and when we meet someone who actually does something which we constantly put off, it can be discomforting.
Well, I meet people all the time who are managing things that my idealized notion of myself would have me doing. There just doesn't seem enough time to fit all those ideal activities in, so I'm not going to judge other people for not making the same choices I do. That's not to say there aren't other people who do make judgements like that, of course.
Thanks for your very thoughtful and thought-provoking comments.
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It's convenient to speak of something called a mind, it's that bit of the self that thinks and observes. My somewhat considered philosophical position on this is that in order to consider the the way we experience ourselves as being comprised of mind and body, or of having mental and physical faculties, we need to use that part of ourselves which we label 'mind', and so we tend to privilege that faculty in the process. But just because we can make the distinction, and it can be very useful to do so, it doesn't mean that my mind is more 'me' than my body. I do often feel that 'I' am occupying some space behind my eyes, or between my ears, but my eyes are also part of my body, and remembering that helps to give a new perspective.
I agree that using your body in new ways can shift hat focus. I did a lot of yoga and the occasional dance lesson in my early 20s, and that helped me appreciate my physicality and the way I occupied space and moved in it. I also had whiplash a couple fo times, and have residual back problems, and pain can be a very convincing means of realising that I am physical and embodied. Although for some people poor health means they see their body as a burden, as something that exists only to interrupt their intellectual pursuits.
Again, I've babbled at length. You've rekindled a long term interest of mine. I added you to reflexionen, which is where I occasionally post rough philosophical musings, I haven't been using it much this year, but some of the earlier entries are concerned with how we experience ourselves as thinking, so may be of some interest.
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I think it's interesting that you talk about touch and movement as if they were separate from the other senses.
Perhaps because I'm a singer, and my instrument is my entire body, I perceive my mind and body as intimately connected, and I can't imagine how I would go about figuring out what thoughts, impressions, actions, etc. come from just mind or just body, or if there is such as a thing as mind without body.
Reply
I'm actually a very tactile person, but the literature on perception so often focuses on sight that it becomes the default example, and yet sight perhaps more than any other of our senses is that which can make the world seem somehow at a remove from ourselves.
Mostly, though, we tend to think in words or images, so that when we're thinking we experience our thoughts as occurring inside our heads, I think verbally and audibly, to myself, so I hear my thoughts as coming from between my ears, even though I understand this to be due to subvocalaliztion.
'Mind' for me is convenient shorthand for our conscious experience, and particularly for those aspects of human experience that are occupied with reflecting on things. I don't think of minds as something separate from bodies, but we do have all these subjective experiences so it's convenient to be able to discuss them.
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I'd include myself in that to some extent, I feel that I've become accomplished (to the extent I am) at using words by living somewhat without body, and that I'm in a relatively unusual position, reconnecting with my body, but also with the desire to talk about it.
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