The gymnasia are closed, as are the sports centres and swimming pools. People are taking exercise in the parks: they are walking, running, cycling, skipping, lifting weights, boxing, dancing, stretching, and playing football and cricket. It is good to see children and adults – of all ages and sizes – trying to keep healthy, in body and mind, by working their muscles and their lungs. The spring and summer months, even in London, are conducive of outdoor activity most days.
We know that “keeping fit” is a good thing to do, in normal as well as abnormal times. Doctors, nutritionists, and many other health advisors advise us that being in good shape physically is important for happiness, good mental health, and longevity. For sure, even the strongest, the supplest, and the sylphidine must eventually succumb to frailty, not even the most energetic can avoid the universal laws of entropy, we all return to dust. Until that day, however, regular exercise can help to improve the quantity and quality of our lives. And, during a time of pandemic, being fit is a sensible protection against the increased physical and psychical risks.
Well, maybe.
Not far from my flat someone has sprayed graffiti on the side of a bridge: a picture of a face, the mouth covered by a mask, and the slogan, “only the weak die”: complete nonsense. When the British Prime Minister was in hospital in April, having contracted the C-19 virus, one of his political colleagues opined that he would pull through “because he is a fighter”: complete nonsense. There are some people taking exercise, building up their physiques, because they believe it will advantage them in the struggle for survival: complete nonsense. In each case, strength is conflated with immunity when, in reality, they are very different.
At the very end of the nineteenth century, H G Wells published The War of the Worlds, a science fiction story that has twice been made into a film and once, famously, a radio broadcast. Wells’ novel imagines the invasion of the earth by creatures from another planet. They are superior in technology, strength, and intellect to humans, superior in fitness to humans. Rapidly they take control of the planet. Their triumph is short lived, however, because they are vulnerable to the very smallest of earthly organisms, the bacteria to which we humans have become largely immune. The invaders fall sick and die. They were fit but they did not fit.
The phrase “survival of the fittest” was first coined by Herbert Spencer, even though today it is most often associated with the work or Charles Darwin. It is a useful phrase, properly understood, but it suffers from a major drawback, namely that the word “fit” in English has several distinct meanings. Nowadays, if we describe someone as “fit” we tend to mean either that they are sporty or sexy or both. I think it should be obvious to today’s readers of Spencer and Darwin that this is not the meaning they had foremost in their minds. Neither the Principles of Biology nor The Origin of Species have much to say about “Baywatch”. However much we might admire the well-tanned, well-toned bodies of young sports stars and lifeguards, there is no reason to think that they have a better chance than anyone else of surviving a pandemic, or the invasion of earth by creatures from another planet.
Another, more important meaning of “fit” is something that is appropriate or well-adapted. The key that fits the lock is the one that has the right shape for the lock mechanism; the shoes that fit are those which are comfortable to wear all day; the picture that fits the room is the one that is the right size, and with the right content, to complement the existing furnishings and wall space. Fitness for humans, in this sense, is not a question of muscle tone or lung capacity, but the possession of features and dispositions that allow us, as a species, to survive and flourish in the earthly environment in which we find ourselves. The fossil record tells us that the dinosaurs became extinct, whereas we survived. Strength is irrelevant, adaptability is more important. As H G Wells noted, immunity to tiny creatures is as important as fleeing from the biggest.
Humans (and ants) have been highly successful at fitting in to the earth’s environment. From a species point of view, we are the winners. (Although, consequent upon our own short-sightedness and stupidity, we humans are about to embark on a troubling experiment in changing the character of our environment dramatically, such that we might no longer be so well-adapted to it.) But, as Darwin was acutely aware, within species are contained important variations, some physical and some cultural. The species might fit its natural environment, but certain individuals find it hard to fit with their social environments. That is, some of us discover that we are not well-adapted, not well disposed to, not at ease with the social world into which we were born.
John Stuart Mill, Darwin’s contemporary, was interested in human character and the features of human personality that allow us to explore and express our individuality. He argued that political liberty meant the freedom for each of us to be different from everyone else, being able to choose a way of living that suited us as individuals. The expression of variation in character and personality make society both more interesting and stronger. For Mill, fitting in socially was a troubling idea, a sign of conformity and intellectual weakness. It was also a source of blindness to the moral failings and social injustices that surround us.
Martin Luther King echoed this idea when he said that he was proud to be maladjusted:
But I say to you, my friends … there are certain things in our nation and in the world about which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, leave millions of God’s children smothering in an air tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence.
In a bad society, the society in which Martin Luther King lived, fitting in was unethical. In the almost sixty years since he made that speech some aspects of American society have improved greatly, others not at all. He was killed for speaking out against the unreflective acceptance of unfairness of his society, and he was not the last to suffer for his stand. And, of course, there are many other countries where the immorality is worse and the silencing of voices of dissent is more systematic.
There is another meaning of the word “fit”, namely a momentary but severe attack of illness, a violent outburst of some kind, or “a paroxysm of lunacy” (OED). To “have a fit” is a sign of sickness or of madness. Or it can be a sign of anger when we speak of a “fit of rage”. This is how I feel, when I hear people confuse the idea of the survival of the fittest with going to the gym. It is also how I feel, when I watch people and governments strike out at those who speak the truth, who choose to live their lives in their own way, determined not to conform to the false, the average, the consensus, and the polite indifference to social harms.
I try to keep my physical and mental health in good shape. I will do what I can to preserve the health of the earth, to maintain the environment to which my species has become so well-adapted. But I am not prepared to make my peace with a social system that tolerates inequality and celebrates greed, that encourages mindless conformity and cultural standardisation, that turns a blind eye to injustice in its many forms. I am determined to continue to undertake experiments in living, even if that means remaining maladjusted. When it comes to our contemporary society norms, I am happy not to fit.
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