OUR celebrated modern technology, with all its civilized comforts seems to be creating in everyday life a condition comparable to weightlessness in space.
Modern technology today has left a large number of people with less and less physical work to do. Today, children to the average adult wouldn’t move a muscle if they can avoid it.
Instead of walking, people jump into their car, take the elevator instead of the stairs; instead of playing games, children like to tap their gadgets, or the average adult watches professionals perform on TV even as automatic machines and power tools take arduous physical labour out of farming, forestry, constructions, and a host of other occupations, including housework.
A high percentage of the labor force today follows service or white collar trades that are largely sedentary. We seem to almost lose the use of our legs, even when out for fresh air and exercise we ride around a golf course on an electric cart. We put a remote control on the TV so that we don’t have to get up from our soft chairs or bed to change channels.
It may seem an easy life, but if our muscles could talk, they would grieve the incapacitating life we force them to lead. Laziness ultimately destroys the body, literally puts it out of commission. Health deteriorates from inactivity which may take longer than years, but its results may be inevitably disastrous like its effects on the cardiovascular system, poor circulation and impaired heart are particularly dangerous.
The dismal fact is that people today are physically in a sad shape, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, because it is only under a doctor’s scrutiny, that we begin to look and act. People might always say that flabbiness is caused by overeating and under exercise; this may be just a polite way of saying that we are a bunch of fat slobs. Or should we just say that our bodies become soft, weak, and vulnerable to disease through a general acceptance of physical inactivity as a happy condition of life. Mr. Flab may reason out this way, but suffers a national epidemic.
