Weaklings

On Weaklings, Moral and Otherwise

By John Taylor; 2006 May 24

 

Activities on the Declaration of the Bab

 

Yesterday for the Holy Day we set out En Famille to visit my mother's grave in Hamilton's Woodlawn Cemetery. It was the first time in some twenty years I had been. Silvie repeated at one point this riddle: What goes up but never comes down? Answer, your age. It is the same with cemeteries, they grow but never shrink. Even if a city's population shrinks, the local cemetery grows all the more. As we drove by the York Street section of the Woodlawn bone yard, Thomas was in awe. "I have never seen such a huge cemetery in all my life!," he declared. When your life is only six years in length, that is not saying much. On the other hand, He is as old as this millennium, so if you put it that way, he seems pretty old.

Overall, I was surprised at how well the kids took this excursion. I had expected protestations of boredom throughout, but they took it as an adventure into the past. Now that I think of it, they were primed for this by watching a cartoon called, "Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat," which lays it on thick about holding due reverence for one's ancestors. Respect for one's forebears is a Chinese value instilled even into cats and bats, it seems, so naturally they were open to this kind of thing.

And it turned out, it really was an adventure and I had little hope of finding the grave I sought among the thousands and thousands of competing memorials, stones and markers. Our family plots are in the vast, wooded Cootes Paradise section overlooking the Burlington Bay and the city. Since I was there, it has grown considerably. I parked close to where I thought it might be and we all waded out into the sea of gravestones. Marie went off and became separated. The Taylor stones are all the harder to find because they are set into the ground and I coached them in how to help look. At one point I prayed to be guided to the spot, and to my surprise, I was, within minutes. We said prayers when Marie arrived at last. Then they left while I recited alone the Tablet of Ahmad. As we drove off, Thomas piously remarked, "Next time we will bring flowers."

His reverence is purer and better than mine. My reasons for coming there were entirely selfish, I wanted my mother to use her pull in the next world to advance my prospects. My goals are such that major miracles will have to take place if I am ever to justify the space I am taking up on this planet. We then drove to Aunt Marguerite in the retirement home, and she was in a good mood. We showed her the photos of the gravesite that we had just taken on the display of our digital camera. She declared that my older brother Bob, before he left the country used to go to this gravesite every Mother's Day and leave flowers there. I was suitably shamed by his piety. Why should my mother in Abe's bosom listen to my plea for assistance when my visits there are spaced by two decades?

Socrates Meets a Ninety Pound Weakling

I continue, slowly, bit by bit, reading through Xenophon's memories of Socrates. These are not the philosophical mix of Plato, they are the less lofty memories of a more earthy thinker. For me, they are all the more valuable for that. I would like to adapt these recollections into a movie, or perhaps a television series. Here there is humor and human interest along with the lessons of history's greatest teacher (outside the holy Manifestations, of course). The following passage struck me hard. It is revolutionary for us today, what with the epidemic of obesity that we are going through. Xenophon, in Book III, Chapter XII of the Memorabilia, recalls the following mini-lesson of Socrates:

Seeing one of those who were with him, a young man feeble of body, named Epigenes, he addressed him.

Soc. You have not the athletic appearance of a youth in training, Epigenes.

And he: That may well be, seeing I am an amateur and not in training.

Soc. As little of an amateur, I take it, as any one who ever entered the lists of Olympia, unless you are prepared to make light of that contest for life and death against the public foe which the Athenians will institute when the day comes, should the chance betide. [translator's note: Is the author thinking of a life-and- death struggle with Thebes?] And yet they are not a few who, owing to a bad habit of body, either perish outright in the perils of war, or are ignobly saved. Many are they who for the self-same cause are taken prisoners, and being taken must, if it so betide, endure the pains of slavery for the rest of their days; or, after falling into dolorous straits, when they have paid to the uttermost farthing of all, or may be more than the worth of all, that they possess, must drag on a miserable existence in want of the barest necessaries until death release them."

Socrates is talking about being taken as a slave, a fate rightly considered worse than death by the freeborn of that age. Ancient war, in this respect, was more deadly and bitterly fought than modern wars, in spite of the less formidable armament. Any prisoners were automatically killed or enslaved, and the rich held for ransom. There was no Geneva Convention protecting you. Socrates is appealing to self interest, the personal interest behind state interest that everybody keep as fit as they can. A robust army, then more than now, had to be drawn from a vigorous, healthy youth. But the appeal of Socrates goes beyond fear and protectiveness. Health of body is a precondition of emotional vigor, of moral and intellectual well-being. Here personal and state interests coincide perfectly. Socrates continues,

"Many also are they who gain an evil repute through infirmity of body, being thought to play the coward. Can it be that you despise these penalties affixed to an evil habit? Do you think you could lightly endure them? Far lighter, I imagine, nay, pleasant even by comparison, are the toils which he will undergo who duly cultivates a healthy bodily condition."

"Or do you maintain that the evil habit is healthier, and in general more useful than the good? Do you pour contempt upon those blessings which flow from the healthy state? And yet the very opposite of that which befalls the ill attends the sound condition. Does not the very soundness imply at once health and strength?

Many a man with no other talisman than this has passed safely through the ordeal of war; stepping, not without dignity, through all its horrors unscathed. Many with no other support than this have come to the rescue of friends, or stood forth as benefactors of their fatherland; whereby they were thought worthy of gratitude, and obtained a great renown and received as a recompense the highest honours of the State; to whom is also reserved a happier and brighter passage through what is left to them of life, and at their death they leave to their children the legacy of a fairer starting-point in the race of life.

Because our city does not practise military training in public, that is no reason for neglecting it in private, but rather a reason for making it a foremost care. For be you assured that there is no contest of any sort, nor any transaction, in which you will be the worse off for being well prepared in body; and in fact there is nothing which men do for which the body is not a help."

I am reminded of the so-called Soviet School of Chess, which prepared for the most cerebral of games by a tough regimen of hard physical training. Russian chess players continue to dominate by this apparent contradiction of working on the body in order to have a better mind.

Let there be no mistake. Socrates is talking about a moral imperative to keep fit. Canada has spent millions of dollars in its "Participaction" publicity campaigns to try to persuade Canadians to keep as physically fit; I recall as a child learning from these ads that a 30 year old Canadian is as fit as a 60 year old Swede, and that we should be ashamed. I am almost 50 now, which would make me as fit as a Swedish Centenarian, I suppose. Now, thanks to Socrates, I am even more ashamed.

"In every demand, therefore, which can be laid upon the body it is much better that it should be in the best condition; since, even where you might imagine the claims upon the body to be slightest--in the act of reasoning--who does not know the terrible stumbles which are made through being out of health? It suffices to say that forgetfulness, and despondency, and moroseness, and madness take occasion often of ill-health to visit the intellectual faculties so severely as to expel all knowledge from the brain."

"But he who is in good bodily plight has large security. He runs no risk of incurring any such catastrophe through ill-health at any rate; he may well hope to be insured by his good habit against the evils of doing the opposite evil habit; and surely to this end there is nothing a man in his senses would not undergo. . . . It is a base thing for a man to wax old in careless self-neglect before he has lifted up his eyes and seen what manner of man he was made to be, in the full perfection of bodily strength and beauty. But these glories are withheld from him who is guilty of self-neglect, for they are not wont to blaze forth unbidden."

After reading such passages in Zenophon I can see that attempts like the Participaction Campaign at persuading people to be fit are missing the point by a mile. Socrates is saying that we have a moral duty to keep our body in peak physical condition. An obligation to self and others, and above all to God, who created this magnificent human body. Modern philosophers blather on and get lost in ticklish trivialities like mercy killing when they should be instilling prime moral imperatives like this, plain and simple physical fitness.

Governments are even worse, they talk about the expense involved, a fat and sickly population is a heavy burden on medicare. And here Socrates, over two millennia ago, is talking about good health as a form of insurance! Whatever the case, the job of persuading people to exercise should not be left up to a bunch of dumb publicists without moral or intellectual authority. Our best minds and greatest teachers should be at the forefront, they, along with dieticians and other scientists, should make up a program and set of standards of diet and fitness for all, young, middle aged, and old.

Not long after his above encounter with a weak and sickly fellow who had neglected his body, Socrates ran up against a person who had for one reason or another lost his palate for food.

"To the remark of another who complained that he did not take his food with pleasure, he said: `Acumenus (a well-known physician) has a good prescription for that.' And when the other asked: `And what may that be?' `To stop eating,' he said. `On the score of pleasure, economy, and health, total abstinence has much in its favour."

This idea that someone would live a happier, thriftier, and healthier life if he stopped eating, or at least curtailed it, is anathema in our consumer society. Who makes a profit from that? But it is confirmed by modern research. Half starved rats live longer and are much smarter and more vigorous. The best explanation is that the body kicks into high gear and the brain along with it in order to be able to find those extra few calories that seem to be missing. I have written before about Roy Walford the gerontologist who over the past two decades developed the most successful of all known diets, according to long term studies, against the effects of ageing. So far I have not lost enough weight to even begin his regime, but I am working on it. Baha'u'llah's diet is even simpler: He advised getting up from every meal with a pang of hunger still remaining in your gut. Never sate yourself, in other words. Same advice as Acumenus in Ancient Athens. O God, if only I could obey Him in doing that, just once!

But there is more. Observe carefully the following casual bit of advice by Socrates.

"When some one was apprehending the journey to Olympia, "Why are you afraid of the long distance?" he asked. "Here at home you spend nearly all your day in taking walks. Well, on your road to Olympia you will take a walk and breakfast, and then you will take another walk and dine, and go to bed. Do you not see, if you take and tack together five or six days' length of walks, and stretch them out in one long line, it will soon reach from Athens to Olympia? I would recommend you, however, to set off a day too soon rather than a day too late. To be forced to lengthen the day's journey beyond a reasonable amount may well be a nuisance; but to take one day's journey beyond what is necessary is pure relaxation. Make haste to start, I say, not when promenading there and back on the road."

I remark several things more from this.

Socrates has no sympathy for laziness, he does not say stay to at home and relax, he says to go since you are walking all the time anyway. Motion studies have shown that the average "stay at home" housewife walks long distances each day, albeit back and forth inside the house. But it does not feel like travel because she is alone. But at least she is exercising. Modern travel by car is worse than staying home, not only are you alone, isolated in a bubble from the casual contacts that made travel a broadening experience in Socrates' time, but you are not even bearing your weight on your legs.

But note that the structure of Athens (Acropolis means "high city") made it necessary to walk a great deal just to perform the daily tasks of life. Remember, these are people who have slaves to wait on them hand and foot, and in spite of that they still did what we would consider a great deal of strenuous daily walking uphill and down as part of their routine. A whole school of philosophers, the Peripatetics, grew out of their habit of walking and talking and thinking at the same time. One thing you can be sure will not happen today, there will be no "car driving" school of philosophers cropping up. The automobile seals us off, kills all casual contacts, much less deep conversation, that makes for an examined life. Jane Jacobs calls these seemingly insignificant face to face encounters done while walking the thin strands that make up the strong rope of social cohesion.

Observe too, like `Abdu'l-Baha pacing up and down on the boat from America in order to keep in shape for the trip from Haifa to Akka, these Athenians were walking all the way on their pilgrimage to Olympus and Delphi, and they were not finding it easy in spite of being in better shape than almost any lazy modern. They had donkeys and horses, but they walked all the way, probably for the same ancient, mysterious religious reasons that the Master tacitly accepted when He eschewed donkeys and horses and went to His Father's tomb on foot. The reasons no doubt have as much to do with using your mind and face and tongue as well as your legs as nature indended that they be used. The reasons no doubt have to do with what it means to be truly free.

When some one else remarked "he was utterly prostrated after a long journey," Socrates asked him: "Had he had any baggage to carry?"

"Not I," replied the complainer; "only my cloak."

Soc. Were you travelling alone, or was your man-servant with you?

He. Yes, I had my man.

Soc. Empty-handed, or had he something to carry?

He. Of course; carrying my rugs and other baggage.

Soc. And how did he come off on the journey?

He. Better than I did myself, I take it.

Soc. Well, but now suppose you had had to carry his baggage, what would your condition have been like?

He. Sorry enough, I can tell you; or rather, I could not have carried it at all.

Soc. What a confession! Fancy being capable of so much less toil than a poor slave boy! Does that sound like the perfection of athletic training?

--
John Taylor

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