WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Flyover Features: Is Working Out Far Right?

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Emma and Sophia discuss dubious claims that working out increases one's likelihood of falling into far-right ideologies.

This is Flyver Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma Verini, and I'm here with Sophia Mance. And today we're going to be talking about an article entitled, Getting Fit is Great, but it could turn you into a right-wing jerk. So this article was written by Zoe Williams, a writer for the Guardian. It's quite a short article, just about a page. But basically, her thesis here is, the more self-actualized you become, the higher you are on self-righteousness, blaming other people's problems on their failure to be as healthy as you.

So we're going to read through some of the graphs in this article and just discuss it. And sort of then share our opinion on what we think about it and maybe bring some other studies into this discussion. So right off the bat, let's just get into what this article talks about without, you know, sharing our opinions or anything. Just what is the point that Williams is trying to make here? The point is definitely something that would be made in a Guardian article. I can tell you that. Yes, it does sound like it would be a Guardian article. Yes. Yeah. So that's, that's true. basically she says that there's a dark side to wellness which i had never thought of before yeah wellness is dark it has dark energies that are expressed uh in the pagan underground when you

decide to work out sure i actually it actually doesn't i think it's spiritually good for you i'm just saying i think some people probably believe that somewhere at some time Some people think that working out is like a practice for the spiritually unwell, which is, you know, draw your own conclusions. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't think that, but some people think that. The other thing that she mentioned is Ein Rand. And it's kind of funny because I think the point that she's trying to get at here is if you work out and if you take care of yourself, then you're basically going to be more likely to endorse the idea that people can pull themselves up. their bootstraps and get along in life if they just do what it takes to do so.

You know, I actually like, there's a book by Rand I read. It's called Anthem. And I really like that book. So I kind of like Rand. What would you say that book, how would you say that book sort of relates to the idea of simply advocating for yourself and, I guess, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps? Well, General, I mean, I'm not going to say I fully agree with her philosophy, but I enjoyed that book because it's a dystopian world. Never heard of that before, I know.

But anyway, where even the word I no longer exists, sovereign refers to themselves as we. And it's like a collective world that they live in. And then the main character rediscovers an ancient technology or invention. I think it's electricity. And he presents it to the council. and they reject him so he's cast aside and then he discovers the sacred word which is I and individualism and he kind of leaves this world with a woman he chose to love and forms his own life but it's it's kind of I don't know I mean I find it kind of inspiring and cool not going to lie I probably

shouldn't shouldn't like him so much or something the everyone tells me I should hate Rand but it's kind of hard to not hate. I mean, it's kind of hard to hate characters that are just so powerful or something. I don't know. I'm kind of drawn to that, if I'm being honest. But I guess not everyone is. So she also goes on to say, I think this is related. She says fitness has a capitalist logic.

And then she says, in fitness, basically, that nothing is never enough. So you're never going to be satisfied with the, progress you've made if you get into fitness. So you're going to start out, you're going to start out counting your steps, you're going to start out working out every once in a while, and before you know it, you like protein powder, and that's just no good. You know, it's funny because capitalism, you know, if you're really going to take economic systems to that level of interpretation, you can just think, oh yeah, I get to choose my own individual means of production.

I can choose the way my body looks based on how I exercise. Whereas in, you know, the Soviet communism world, their propaganda to be healthy and fit and bear strong children. I don't know. Like I actually think capitalism breeds less of it than communism would.

Because communism would either be one extreme ideal, one way or the other. There's more individual decisions and capitalism. I don't know. I feel like the fact this article's written is a sign of capitalism because it's talking about individual differences. That end, to briefly get back to Rand, it's funny that she has a line where she says,

you can tell this has happened to you when you start inhaling performatively, like the hero of a Rand novel. I don't remember any of the heroes ever inhaling performatively. I can't speak to that, but I mean, what I can say is I do think that the whole thing about exercise being capitalist is a little bit interpretive, like you said. It's kind of hard to draw that conclusion because I think you can draw that conclusion about a lot of things. But this also just seems like a way to get at capitalism for no particular reason. Well, I mean, I don't know. It's just like how people in economics want to apply their economic

systems to understanding literally everything in the entire world or something like that. Like I said, I don't know. I feel like that's probably more extreme in other societies. I mean, well, technically, yeah, because in the communist societies, everyone's thin because they don't have food. That is so true. Everybody is skinny when nobody can eat. Yeah.

That's a good point, yeah. And so just getting back to the article here, there's this graph at the end. And basically she says, in the fullness of time, I realize it's not really a question of an unwitting slide into fascism hastened by a treadmill. It's more that there is a fixed amount of excellence in any self. And the more you spend on your biceps, the less you have for your personality. So wellness could turn you into a bit of a jerk, I'm saying. So basically the idea here is that these two concepts of your personality and your wellness are opposed to each other. And if you spend enough time on one, then you won't be able to spend enough time on the other. What do you think about that? Technically, I think that's true,

but the vast majority of people are not exercising too much. How does one spend time on their personality. I don't think they do. It just, if you feel like you have to spend time on your personality, you, you might have a bad personality.

Yeah, or you just are not very connected to your soul. Yeah. You just aren't able to live in the eternal now and be constantly focused on things around you. That and, you know, something, I actually did.

go on the treadmill for a good deal yesterday. And I definitely fell into hardcore fascist philosophy because I was walking on the treadmill. Did you feel your personality just getting worse by the second? Yes. I wanted to become a hardcore nationalist. In fact, I wanted to make America a rad-trad Catholic theocracy. I definitely felt that. The longer I walked on the treadmill,

which is itself a technological invention in the basement of mock. I was becoming a dictator before your very eyes. I absolutely felt that. I don't know about that. When I was in the gym yesterday, I didn't really feel myself becoming any more far right or any more of a jerk. In fact, I was working out with one of my friends

and I was having a pretty good time. Yeah, actually, I obviously didn't feel that either if no one could tell that was sarcasm. I just was reading the technological society by Jacques Alul while I was walking on the treadmill. So it was a fun time. So I was reading about how, you know, more societies, like, kind of in a terrible place. But I also wasn't about all that fascism, especially because Zulul was, like, very much against government control. So, you know.

So long story short, you did not feel yourself. becoming a fascist as you were Rex or exercising. No, I felt good. I felt happy to be walking. I was thinking happy thoughts too of just walking, although I was sad, it was raining outside. So as much as we are sort of bashing this article, I think we have to admit that there is a little bit of truth to it.

And while working out might not make you a full-on fascist or something like that, there is some truth to the fact that if you actually, exercise, you are more likely to hold certain political beliefs. And before we get into some of the evidence for that, I just want to talk about, I mean, what do you think of that? Do you think that it seems true that people who are more likely to exercise are also more likely to hold certain beliefs or politics? You know, I don't know if I fully agree with that because I think it's an annoying consequence of the world seeming to become more politicized. I don't think that would

have been necessarily true 50, 60 years ago. Oh, I agree. But I think exercise has been, which I find annoying. I mean, obviously I think exercise is a good thing, so it should be promoted in general. But I find it annoying that, like, exercise has legitimately become politicized. I mean, I've definitely seen right-wing stuff online kind of making it a political thing. But, I mean, I don't think innately, well, maybe innately certain sorts of right-wing thought could be encourage exercise but right i feel like the same if we're really getting obsessively

niche like niche about it you could say the same for certain left wing points of you that might have those kind of strange perspectives but i mean i don't know i feel like just merely exercising isn't going to make you a right wing jerk it would probably actually make you a more pleasant person hopefully right um so i actually have a couple of articles here. So they actually, both of them have somewhat of a different thesis. So the first one is from the week and the headline is, right and left wingers are more physically active than centrists.

People in the mushy middle are, ooh, it cuts off. They're just more likely to probably not exercise as much given the title. And so basically there is a study from the British Medical Journal and it was conducted on different participants and all these participants had different political orientations. And basically what they found is that the two most extreme groups, so people who were on what was considered the far left and the far right were more likely to be physically fit, which is interesting because I don't know what it is about people who are centrist.

Maybe just they're indifferent or something like that, but these people are just less active. And so the way that they did this was the people who were participating in the study just listed how many or how often they work out and the intensity of their activity. And, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the centrists don't care as much. This is Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I'm Sophia Mant speaking with Emma Verini. We've got another article.

Now, this one's a little bit different from the one about centrism and centrist's being more likely to be sedentary. There's another one that says, men who visit the gym are less likely to believe in socioeconomic equality research finds. So socioeconomic equality, I think this all sort of probably relates back to what Williams was talking about in the original article with capitalism and everything like that. So basically what this article talks about is research from Brunel University in London. And it found that men who are physically stronger tend to be more right-wing and are less in favor of social and economic quality. So that is a direct quote from this article. That's a really like good thing to pay money

to research. There are a lot of very strange, very random research topics that I've come across on the internet. Yeah, me too. Why are you looking at this? Well, I could say the same for the picture that Emma couldn't delete from the printed out article of a shirtless man lifting weights. I was trying to get it off and I couldn't without removing the headline. Yeah. So this article says that the researchers found a specific correlation between the number of hours spent in the gym and having less egalitarian socioeconomic beliefs. And so one of the lectures of psychology,

at this university basically said that the men who do this are calibrating their egalitarianism to their own formidability, that men who are less egalitarian strive to be more muscular. So they're just followers of Nietzsche, Ubermensch. Whatever you pronounce it. They're followers of Nietzsche. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I think that there might be something to this, this idea that these people who are, or these men who are healthier tend to be more right wing. Yeah, I guess if I want to find non-socialist men, I should go to, I do work out. I just work out in my dorm because the basement of mock has a, the basement of mock has a surprisingly nice gym.

So, yeah, in case anyone's wondering. So, yeah, later in the article, it basically says, this is a quote, by the way, from the lecture, a key question for future research might be whether certain personality traits such as narcissism or a drive for dominance might be related to both muscles driving and inegalitarianism. And I think that's, I don't know, what do you think? That seems super biased to me. Like if you want to gain muscle, then you might be a narcissist. And basically what it seems like is a lot of these people who think this are trying to paint a picture of fitness as some sort of illness.

And honestly, I'm not entirely convinced. Yeah, I mean, there's a certain group of people that, you know, use steroids and seem overly insecure, perhaps, that go to the gym. but broadly speaking, it's a very good thing for humanity. For, as Socrates once said, it is a shame for man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable. Is that Plato or Socrates? I thought it was Socrates.

Based on what I know about both men, it seems like it would be Plato, obviously. But if it's Socrates, I'll feel vindicated. If it's Sacrates, he's being a hypocrite. Yeah. Socrates was not the most buffed dude in Athens. Who was the most buffed dude in Athens? I'm not sure, but I think that Plato was closer to that ideal than Sacrotees was.

Yeah. But I agree with the quote. I think that that's true. I definitely think that it's a good idea to try to take advantage of your youth while you still can and try to strive for fitness. I want to look as hot as I possibly can while I'm still young. So true. Yeah. And then and then I can just spend more time reading when I'm older and then become like a wise woman or something like that.

Maybe, maybe, I don't know. Yeah, so in closing, I think that there is some truth to this original article that getting fit could turn you right wing. But I don't think that it's going to turn you into a jerk. Yeah. I mean, and if he ain't right wing, then there's no ring. What? I don't know. I heard that once. I heard it used in reference to women.

Like, you know, if she's not trad and conservative, I'm not going to give her the ring or something. Interesting. Yeah, don't take me too seriously on this, folks, but I just remember hearing that. Yeah, so in closing, I definitely think there's truth to the idea that it's good to get in shape. And I think that there definitely is a correlation between being in shape and having more right-wing belief. but I don't think that that's going to turn you into a jerk. No, yeah, I agree. It won't.

In fact, it'll release serotonin and then you'll feel happy. I agree, yeah. You'll be like, woohoo, I'm walking on sunshine, guys. I feel so fit. Look at me. I am going to have like a nice looking body. I'm filled with joy. My life is great.

Very true. That's how I feel. Yeah, definitely. I don't think that it makes you a worse person. And that's definitely, I think that it would definitely be hard to find proof for that. Yeah, yeah. I don't feel like I want to create a Catholic theocracy, although granted I'm not even Catholic, so I don't feel like I want to create a theocracy.

Right. I definitely also think there's true to the fact that if you work out, you're more likely to see that fitness actually, isn't this crazy inaccessible realm of getting super buff. For example, if you are trying to lose weight, that is a relatively simple process. I'm not saying it's easy by any means. If anything, it's certainly uncomfortable, but it's not hard. It's not rocket science. It's calories in, calories out. It's going to the gym.

It's doing cardio, stuff like that. And I think trying to build muscles a little bit more of a difficult task, but it's still not a super challenging idea to grasp if that makes sense. So, I mean, once you've sort of done it yourself, you sort of start to think, okay, this actually is really simple. It's not easy. It doesn't feel good all the time. I mean, hey, my body, my choice. Yeah, I mean, my body, my choice. If you want to work out, you should be able to do that.

My body, my choice. I can choose to get the body I want. Well, I mean, it doesn't exactly work like that. But to some extent, not exactly. You can attempt for a certain ideal. But you should still love your soul. You should still like your body. Yes, yes.

Yes. Well, that's all we have time for today. You're listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma Verini, and this was Sophia Mant. Thank you.