Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Archives for September 2017

Classifying What Speech is Free

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In an NYT piece, Lisa Barrett argued that:

By all means, we should have open conversations and vigorous debate about controversial or offensive topics. But we must also halt speech that bullies and torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of violence.

But I would suspect that most people who accept her argument also tend to accept that freedom of expression applies to art, public demonstration, flag burning, and anti-Christian rhetoric of the sort utilized by atheists and hard-line feminists.

For instance, I would suspect that ‘from the perspective of our brain cells’ people who love their spouses being told that they are a part of an oppressive and regressive system called the patriarchy fell attacked. I also suspect that people who vote republican being called ‘Nazis,’ with the implication that they are morally reprehensible and ought to be destroyed causes them distress ‘from the perspective of their brain cells.’ 

 

Why is Covetousness Idolatry?

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In Colossians 3:5, Paul equates covetousness with idolatry:

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5)

Why?

Well, in Genesis 1:29, man is given explicit permission to eat any plant.

In Genesis 2:16-17, God forbids consuming one fruit (incidentally, the eating of animals is not prohibited, not is their use for sacrifices).

So in the whole field of potential possessions, man is limited. Why? Because to limit man’s desires implies that they are not meant to receive total fulfillment in created things (Ecclesiastes 2:9-10). Man’s desires are functionally infinite (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The created order is simply not suited to the vastness of human desire.

Covetousness is the notion that created things are the primary point of human desire. It arises from the attempt, whether implicit or not, to fill the infinite void in the human soul with the limited field of creation.

When God placed limits on consumption in the garden, the lesson was, apparently, that humanity cannot possess all of creation and the attempt to do so results in futility and meaninglessness.

And so coveting, by replacing God with created things, is idolatry in a way that other sins besides actual idol worship are not.

Thoughts on Strength Training For Women

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A friend recently asked if I could help her design a strength training program (and I just finished). And while I made one for my wife and made jump/chin-up/and general strength programs for clients in the past, I still just felt the need to look more into the research on women’s health issues and the relationship between those issues and strength training. Of course, the general benefits of the iron pill still apply.

Here’s the basic formula:

Perfect form + reasonable exercise choice + progressive resistance + rest and calories = strength gains. 

But many weight lifters, male or female, don’t want strength per se. Men will want bigger arms, women bigger glutes or “toned arms.” 

While trainers should take these considerations into account in program design, general human improvement is the goal of any training program. I would say that personal trainers ought to follow something like ‘help people be happy‘ as a first principle.

Here are some difficulties faced by women:

  1. 40% of women in the United States are obese. Obesity is associated a host of mental and physical health problems. It is associated with social issues as well, specifically perceived attractiveness to both men and women. Weight gain happens so frequently in college, that it has the nick name, “the freshman 15.” That period of weight gain frequently continues through middle age. Equally dangerous is being thin but having a high bodyfat percentage. This is known as being skinny-fat.
  2. Roughly 25% of American women use prescription medication for depression, anxiety, and other psychological problems. Women disproportionately struggle with depression for a host of reasons, one of which may be physical weakness. In fact, women are twice as likely as men to be depressed.
  3. Women disproportionately develop osteoporosis.
  4. Women can become pregnant, which is physiologically and psychologically stressful. Not only so, but a large percentage of women simultaneously want to become pregnant at some point but delay pregnancy into their thirties or are obese, both of which decrease one’s chances at becoming pregnant.   

Now, here is what some research says about the effect of strength training on these difficulties:

  1. Strength training is a remarkably effective intervention for obesity and body composition. Improvement in body composition is important for those who are obese and those who are ‘skinny-fat.’ In this sense, strength training contributes to cardiovascular health, decreased cancer diagnoses (cancer increases in obese individuals), perceived attractiveness (strength training can decrease waist size and increase hip circumference, thereby moving the Waist Hip Ratio between 0.65-0.75 which is apparently the gold standard in terms of cross-cultural attractiveness and perceived fertility), fertility, and several other markers of general well-being associated with a healthy BMI and body composition. 
  2. Exercise generally both aerobic and resistance training in particular have “a large and significant antidepressant effect in people with depression.” One intriguing theory is that depression evolved as a bargaining tool for resource acquisition during periods of physical weakness. And while I make no recommendations about health or drugs on this blog, in the case of depression
  3. Resistance training improves bone health in young adult and post-menopausal women.
  4. Strength training improves markers of physiological and psychological health in post-partum women. Strength training before and during pregnancy, especially when combined with aerobics  is associated with a host of benefits. These benefits include: decreased time in first stage of labor, decreased back pain, lower incidence of gestational diabetes, healthier weight gain, heavier babies (good or bad?), less time off work for pain, lower incidence of preeclampsia, and increased cardio-respiratory fitness. For obese women, exercise generally, is associated with proper regulation of ovulation, though overtraining can have a negative effect on fertility. Also, progressive resistance training may contribute positively to an total treatment program for PCOS due the association of PCOS with insulin resistance.

Strength training has an almost panaceaic quality for several of the problems faced by women as throughout their lives.

 

 

 

 

Music Monday: When Bastille “Can’t Even!”

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When I heard this song the other day, I thought it was a parody:

How can you think you’re serious?
Do you even know what year it is? 
I can’t believe the scary points you make 
Still living in the currents you create
Still sinking in the pool of your mistakes 
Won’t you stop firing up the crazies? 

 

This reminds me of Paul Graham’s wonderful essay What You Can’t Say. The very idea that ‘what year it is’ should determine what can, can’t, should, or shouldn’t be said is about as unamerican and certainly as illiberal an idea one can imagine. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from his essay:

We may imagine that we are a great deal smarter and more virtuous than past generations, but the more history you read, the less likely this seems. People in past times were much like us. Not heroes, not barbarians. Whatever their ideas were, they were ideas reasonable people could believe.  

Self-Esteem

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A former student sent me a link to a video about self-esteem last week. She asked for my comments. I finally made time to watch it today. Here’s the video:

 

Matt Walsh is certainly correct here. Confidence, defined essentially as known competence in the face of difficulty is superior to self-esteem (see note below). 

But I was asked, why I do not know, for my thoughts. William James defined self-esteem with this equation:

Self-esteem, in this sense, is inevitable. It is impossible to be void of self-reflection to the point that you never compare your level of success to your pretensions. For James self-esteem is your pretension (an ideal vision of yourself) compared to your attainment. Spiritually speaking, this is most fully explained in Romans 7, but Galatians 6:4 puts it most concisely (and more positively):

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. (Galatians 6:3-4)

For the Christian there are two challenges when it comes to self-esteem:

  1. Determining whether our ideal self is a realistic portrayal of our potential based on our understanding of Jesus Christ and our personality, circumstances, and calling.
  2. Making the wise choices necessary to make progress toward our ideal self.

If you confront those challenges and always recall your admiration of Christ and your confidence in his ability to accomplish what he says he will, then I suspect you’ll be in good shape:

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:9-10)

So, “do good things, and you’ll have all the esteem you need.”

Note: What I don’t like about Walsh’s video is that Walsh criticizes a theoretical construct (self-esteem) with a colloquial one (confidence). Note Albert Bandura’s distinction between confidence as a general term (the word Matt uses) with self-efficacy, the definition of which, Matt uses for confidence:

Thoughts on the Trees in Eden

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In Genesis 2:9, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are both “in the midst of the garden.” That’s not a literary happenstance. Proverbs 3 makes a startling connection if you keep Genesis 3:6 in mind (the tree was desirable to make one wise): 

Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed. (Proverbs 3:13-18)

Finding wisdom is a tree of life. 

In terms of what the trees are representations of in our own daily experience I am not quite sure why the trees are in the same place (or are the same tree?). But in Proverbs, wisdom is a tree of life. Maybe something like self-consciousness of death is wisdom but also catastrophic from the point of view of personal experience? I don’t know.