The Human Body and the Western World
“The old notion that physical prowess was inseparable from a dull intelligence is completely exploded, and happily so, seeing that it was about the most harmful notion which has ever been entertained by man.”
- George Hackenschmidt – The Way to Live
The Western world did not completely ignore the body for the two or so millennia between the Greco-Roman world’s adoration and the birth of Physical Culture. Interest in the classical Greco-Roman idealized form reignited during the Renaissance, and periodically thereafter, right up to Sandow’s time. Ideals of masculine strength always find their way into society, and such ideals found an increased swell with the rise of the nation-state in the 19th century. Nationalism, with its idea of a united people and character, blossomed in Europe, and with it a collective ideology of inferior and superior citizens. One of the most prominent ways this ideology was expressed was in the virility of the people’s soldiers. Although these movements and ideas may be considered as precursors, modern Physical Culture’s perfect timing began with Sandow’s era.
Modern Physical Culture did not catch on during those pre-modern eras for two major reasons: It was not a necessity in the same degree that it became in the late 19th Century, and the necessary receptive mass audience did not exist. Physical Culture relies upon a displaced and disassociated mass audience, and the media to disseminate its seed. Both of these factors boomed during Sandow’s era.
For a moment, imagine the changes that the mid-to late-19th century brought to your lifestyle. Before industrialization and urbanization, you grew up in your somewhat isolated location – perhaps a town, a village or nearby farm. You lived in an area as a community very much adapted to, and in a deep relationship with, your location and lifestyle. Your immediate environment, both the human and extra-human environments, taught you an enormous amount of knowledge regarding the life you would live. In your pre-industrial milieu, you knew what to eat because your village ate it. You knew how to keep healthy and strong because health flowed from your lifestyle. Without an ignorant mass audience needing instruction, Physical Culture could not have become a mass movement.
source: ezinearticles.com
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