“Of all the machines which civilization has invented for the torture of mankind…there are few which perform their work more pertinaciously, widely, or cruelly than the chair.” Exercised is by Daniel Lieberman. The subtitle is "Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding". The answer, in short, is that humans were shaped by evolution to conserve energy. But we needed to expend energy to obtain the food needed to survive. In other words, it's natural to conserve energy (also known as "being lazy"). But today, food is so easy to obtain that our bodies, which are fine-tuned to expend energy to obtain food, react badly to the low levels of activity that modern Westerners are getting. In fact, we're not any less "lazy" than apes, but apes are evolved for that activity level, while the natural history of humans is a bit more active; as Lieberman notes: "apes and sedentary industrialized people are unusually inactive compared with most mammals, and hunter-gatherers are in-between."
Book Review: Exercised
Book Review: Exercised
Book Review: Exercised
“Of all the machines which civilization has invented for the torture of mankind…there are few which perform their work more pertinaciously, widely, or cruelly than the chair.” Exercised is by Daniel Lieberman. The subtitle is "Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding". The answer, in short, is that humans were shaped by evolution to conserve energy. But we needed to expend energy to obtain the food needed to survive. In other words, it's natural to conserve energy (also known as "being lazy"). But today, food is so easy to obtain that our bodies, which are fine-tuned to expend energy to obtain food, react badly to the low levels of activity that modern Westerners are getting. In fact, we're not any less "lazy" than apes, but apes are evolved for that activity level, while the natural history of humans is a bit more active; as Lieberman notes: "apes and sedentary industrialized people are unusually inactive compared with most mammals, and hunter-gatherers are in-between."