The running trend
Régis Debray, during a conference given in early 2016, offers elements for a scathing critique of the The trend towards running . He begins by asking what we might have expected from the sedentary lifestyle linked to rapid global urbanization and the democratization of the automobile. Immobility, the decline of the lower limbs? That's what early 20th-century futurists predicted, envisioning city dwellers confined to their small, mobile metal boxes: cars. On the contrary, urbanites run in all directions, and sometimes even in place, if we observe them on the treadmills of gyms that attract an ever-growing clientele. The media theorist even speaks of a "jogging effect" to understand the recessionary forces at work in history: "Since city dwellers walk less, they run much more."
Running and alienation
It is therefore possible to criticize the erratic speed of our modernity. But one can also extrapolate in the direction of a form of alienation linked to submission to various demands that are difficult to meet and therefore anxiety-inducing. Those related to Current aesthetic standards , which value youth and sometimes extreme thinness, and of course those linked to work values such as efficiency, speed, fluidity, and mobility, thus perpetuate the modern worker even in his leisure time, concerned with himself as an efficient cog in a society and/or seeking to conform to standards that are sometimes absurd and dictated from the outside.
Guillaume Leblanc, “Running: a physical mediation”
The thoughts of Guillaume Leblanc, marathon-running philosopher, author of Running: Physical Mediations helps to address this criticism. According to him , running It wouldn't be about speed, since it's about finding one's own rhythm. Neither fast nor slow, but the rhythm that suits us, our own rhythm. On the contrary, it's a way of escaping an externally imposed and therefore alienating cadence, the one linked to the condition of modern man.
Running and pushing your limits
But then why wanting to surpass oneself , To increase performance ? To push the limits of Her body? Is this necessarily also a way of giving in to external demands? Those imposed by the performances of others?
Not necessarily. On the one hand, everyone can forge their own path without trying to conform to standards in terms of time and distances covered. And on the other hand, even those who constantly seek to push back their own limits, passing From marathons to trail running, then to ultra trail Mountain races lasting several days can enter into a different framework of understanding: testing one's limits means feeling alive and experiencing one's skin, the wind in one's hair, one's own breath, one's heartbeat more acutely. The skin is a boundary: it is the limit of our body; thus, testing one's limits means existing as a body, without this body being separate from any spiritual principle. Running in nature also fills the mind with the beauty perceived by an awakened aesthetic sense; running in nature also means becoming part of the natural system again, which evokes mixed feelings of admiration, harmony, and humility.
These feelings contribute to well-being ; they satisfy us and make us more serene.
Long-distance running: a return to its origins?
A recent evolutionary hypothesis even suggests that the long-distance running corresponds eminently to a return to origins: the anthropologist Niobe Thompson postulates that we were made for Running for long periods . Our skin, our numerous sweat glands—in short, our ability to perspire profusely—allows us to regulate our body temperature, even during significant and prolonged exertion, with remarkable efficiency, especially compared to other animals that must stop to pant and thus become vulnerable to predators; unlike the gazelle, for example, which can run very fast…but not for very long. Thus, this "running to exhaustion" may have been a great help in obtaining food for humans: after a few dozen minutes, the gazelle, while faster, collapses, exhausted, and its valuable proteins allow us to significantly increase the size of our brains. This adaptive advantage would therefore show that we are indeed made for run for a long time !
To live more intensely , to test our limits and to feel comfortable in our own skin as men, recharge By reconnecting with an ancestral activity, this would therefore correspond to a search for well-being and to a genuine concern for oneself, far removed from modern dictates linked to speed and efficiency.
But isn't caring about oneself and one's own well-being a little selfish?
The answer will be revealed in the next episode!
