Better Than Walking

There is a YouTube video out that shows Steve Jobs explaining the value and impact of the personal computer -- in one of his earlier presentations to popularize the concept. He points out that a study comparing the efficiency of the locomotion of all the species of animals in the world, placed the humans woefully last -- but with the invention and allowance for the use of a bicycle, humans then become first by "no comparison," to all the other species. And in the next progression of his illustration, the personal computer is a "bicycle for the mind."

Yet many people who supposedly advise people on the best exercise for humans -- still think that walking (or running) is the best exercise for people -- because they claim it is the oldest and most rudimentary, without even questioning those presumptions. Long before the human baby begins to walk, let alone run, it performs many other movements (expressions) that already begin to characterize their uniqueness. Walking is just a universal benchmark that is already culturally influenced. Some cultures try to defer it for as long as possible -- in the wisdom that they want their children to be as matured as possible, before they go out wandering off into the wilderness or dangers.

Safer cultures don't think it is a disadvantage to foster such independence as early as possible. Those same concerns determine when some children learn to walk anywhere on their own -- while others won't be allowed to until well into their teen years, if then -- because even mobility entails risk, so that on the opposite end of the spectrum, many elderly are no longer allowed to walk anywhere on their own also. And certain genders in certain cultures also have these strict prohibitions against their movement at will.

So for one to believe, let alone prescribe that "walking is the best exercise," is not as innocuous and self-apparent as it may seem, but is already an indoctrination and expression of what the possibilities of movement is -- and what is inherently "natural" and the "best" activities humans can be engaged in -- much less to perfect. In fact, implied in walking as what humans best ought to do, is the restriction that they should "march" together -- as though that was the ultimate objective in being able to walk at all, and dismissing the wisdom that one should ever wonder or dare to take an untrodden path -- as surely, all kinds of terrible consequences would assuredly assail them.

That was the warning to every trail blazer and pioneer in every field -- and they should not go where others have not gone before them, and only the long dead, were given that permission to go there. And the chosen ones were not a designation one could just take upon themselves if they felt up to the challenge, but only what the self-appointed, self-designated powers that be -- who always wished to remain so, had a right to determine for everybody else, as long as they were alive.

So usually it required a violent overthrow of the established order (hierarchy), for any society to move forward into the unknown and undiscovered -- unless a society had the foresight to anticipate and plan for change and progress. That is the rationale and wisdom of constitutions stating the underlying principles that guide the way -- especially at the most trying times when they are on the verge of losing their way and vision.

Many people's idea of the best exercise therefore, is that which burns the most energy to do anything -- if anything is even an objective at all. That should obviously be a poor way to condition a human to do anything -- because it makes doing anything irrelevant. A more intelligent approach would be to first consider, what needs most importantly (critically) to be done -- and structure human activity, meaning and purpose around those objectives -- which would then be, to think as clearly as possible, and to function as efficiently as possible -- and not just to prevail and persevere in a fog of understanding that is invariably dictated to them by other people they acknowledge as the predetermined masters of knowledge and authority.