Jesus's apostle Paul writes in the New Testament, "For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live" (Romans 8:13). Like many biblical quotes, the intended meaning of these words is open to interpretation. But the notion that the body and its functions are somehow separate from the spirit is deeply imbedded in Western Judeo-Christian cultural sensibilities.
Although it can be argued that the essence of the early Christian philosopher Augustine has been misinterpreted, his notion of Original Sin as the basis of Man's confusion and suffering is fundamental to traditional Western sensibilities. Augustine believed that unbaptized infants were destined to end up in hell upon death because the corrupted inheritance of Adam and Eve's bad decision was integral to their very souls, and that only the forgiveness of that sinful nature through priestly intervention could erase this «stain».
That the temptations and habits of the body are gateways to sinful indulgence has made it sometimes into an enemy, a barrier to what we wish to become. This outlook has informed a pervasive and reflexive attitude toward our bodies in many cases. The body is still often seen as separate from the soul, that upon death the spirit is «freed» from the body, which is a corrupted and earthly impediment.
Beyond the obvious examples like the medieval practice of «The Mortification of the Flesh», in which people actually harmed their physical bodies as a means of enlivening the spirit, this pejorative attitude toward the body shows up in subtle ways in our contemporary culture. We are still focused on fixing or improving our bodies. Much of modern medical treatment is disease-oriented. Although the pursuit of physical health through exercise and diet are important and worthwhile, there is often an undercurrent of fixation in the way we pursue this. Our cultural obsessions with physical appearance and how «working out» can bring our bodies closer to the narrow ideal of beauty is well known. But these physical ideals are highly conceptual, based in how we think others prefer to perceive us, based in avoiding or fixing some aspect of ourselves that we see to be wrong.
It is interesting to learn that anthopologists have identified culturally specific psycological disorders dealing with profound anxieties or warped perceptions regarding the body. An example in our own culture is Anorexia Nervosa, an addictive behavior in which a perceived lack of control over one's life situation is channeled into obsessive self-starvation. The disorder is believed to be fed by ideals of thinness that are propagated by popular culture. Although complex and difficult to overcome, a simple description of Anorexia is that the sufferer is making war on his/her own body.
We citizens of the scientific age are «results driven», we are conditioned in many ways to strive for tangeable outcomes with expedience. Often process exists only in service of outcome. Surely "getting in shape" or "being healthy" is sometimes an ambitious pursuit like many others- make money, find a mate, die rich. Go to any gym and look at the faces of people churning away on the machines, grimacing and squinting at the bank of televisions, enduring sessions of self-imposed discomfort and boredom to shed a few pounds or tone certain prized muscle groups.
Our relationship to our bodies is often at the center of our confused and habitual limitations. The glorification of the body by judging ourselves and others based on physical critieria, or the denial of our physical selves through the compulsive pursuit of ascetic "self improvement" disciplines, or even the pervasive ambivalence many modern people have toward their physical well being through sedentary neglect or mindless eating of processed foods and empty calories-- each are simply different styles of expressing the same basic neurosis: a conceptualized and limited relationship with one's physical self.
Physicality is often associated with "lower" social hierarchies. Sedentary jobs pay higher than physically demanding ones. "Work" as it relates to agricultural and industrial process, is seen to be an expenditure of life force, something that wears us down. Certainly the grueling repetition and long hours that manual labor requires can be injurious and burdensome. Few look at photographs of the work gangs who dug the Panama Canal with pick and shovel with nostalgia. I was recently interrupted in a conversation with a fellow urbanite as we opined about the wane of "traditional" agriculture by someone who grew up on a family farm who pointed out "the good old days of working on a farm from dawn til dusk with a plow and mule were no picnic and I'd never want to go back to that."
That we find so little joy in physical activity is perhaps understanding, but also tragic because in our physical selves lies who we truly are. Each mental function, emotion sensation lives in the body. We might inhabit different states of mind, but we never in our lives cease inhabiting this body. "This" body is not some idea or ideal for our bodies, rather it is the very truth of the body in each particular moment.
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