It seems like everyone I know is on a constant quest to improve themselves, in a somewhat superficial manner:

It seems like everyone I know is on a constant quest to improve themselves, in a somewhat superficial manner:

>Exercise, yoga, meditation
>Reading self-help, productivity apps, "brain training" products
>Good nutrition, supplements, vitamins
>Optimizing sleep with gadgets such as the "FitBit"

What philosophical way of life does this fall under?

What do you think of this lifestyle?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=KwUh-yVBV_Q
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wessel_Zapffe#Philosophy
health.harvard.edu/family-health-guide/red-meat-and-colon-cancer
youtube.com/watch?v=WwGjkuFW0cY
youtube.com/watch?v=LCfz-VbM5eI
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23251943
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20363650
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

normal life.

Capitalism

I don't think two or three generations ago people were obsessing over trace element intake and sleep cycles down to the minute.

It's basically streamlining, making oneself maximally compatible with their surroundings instead of undergoing organic and sometimes painful growth.

You could call them victims of black magick insofar as everything they are trying to make themselves compatible with represents the will of a small number of moneyed and powerful individuals.

because two or three generations is not normal.

It all seems to beyond the point of diminishing returns though. Nothing wrong with good health but this borders obsessions that provides marginal improvements, and I guarantee there's a psychological or social explanation for this sudden health-conscious mentality.

>what do you think about improving yourself?
i think life is boring as shit otherwise

A third of Americans are fucking obese. Can you believe that a hundred million people have eaten and eaten until they can barely move, and are now trying to make it acceptable by claiming shit like 'healthy at every size'?

I can't believe no one has said utilitarianism yet. Don't we see time as something to spend and value?

This. It's simply businesses exploiting people by selling them products they don't need that don't really do anything despite marketers claiming otherwise and maybe nullifying it with small disclaimers no one reads.

is this Diogenes

The elites haven't been this different from the masses in centuries. They're trying to catch up

Yes. Is it not obvious?

Meditation is probably the only thing on that list that will actually help you.

This, everyone should meditate.

It's called keeping yourself healthy so you won't get ass cancer and die at 40

New age nu-males have arrived

fuck off. no i shouldnt

what's wrong with taking care of yourself? what else is there to do in life besides being productive

Bingo. It's just consumer society in the Internet age where you can draft a whole new lifestyle for tomorrow while still testing the utility of that which you decided on yesterday. The logical conclusion of existentialism and wireless internet.

You should watch the recently released documentary 'Supernormalisation'. The director addresses this philosophy head on - characterising it as a kind of superficial 'retreat' into oneself when faced with an unmanageable chaotic and essentially mendacious 'external reality'.

>essentially mendacious
what is wrong with you

What? That came to me easier than 'actually false' or 'fundamentally unreal'. You know what it means - if you don't, look it up.

i know what it means jackass

I hope you see the irony of getting your knowledge of superficiality from a documentary

Well then the phrase did just fine, didn't it? Quit your whining.

>New Age

Meditation has been a thing for thousands of years you zombie.

Have you seen the documentary? Can you offer up an alternative - in any medium - which more directly addresses the question which the OP phrased?

I tell you what, go watch it, then get back to me with a specific text, philosophy, or term, and then we'll see who's basing their ideas of superficial grounds.

>Exercise
>Good nutrition
>Meditation

it's called being a functional person you fat fuck

Sorry, but I don't watch movies

HyperNormalisation?

So has astrology, crystals, and magic

Meditation doesn't have to go with all that bullshit even though New Age types like to lump it in. It's just sitting around and clearing your mind for a bit, which is good for anyone.

Shame - I guarantee you would find it mesmerising. Adam Curtis doesn't just make pseudo-intellectual fodder for people too lazy to read. His work has real substance.

This 'trailer' doesn't do it justice. The full documentary is over three hours long.

youtube.com/watch?v=KwUh-yVBV_Q

what sort of people do you know? I want to know them too. Everyone I know is killing themselves in all sorts of ways. count yourself lucky OP

you got btfo. enjoy your cold pressed juice

Ah, yes, sorry! Non-native speaker, still prone to errors with superlatives.

>>Exercise, yoga, meditation
>>Reading self-help, productivity apps, "brain training" products
>>Good nutrition, supplements, vitamins
>>Optimizing sleep with gadgets such as the "FitBit"
How does all of that fall under "superficial?"

This.

>What is False
>shot of Trump
WHOA

I was thinking the same.

OP how does one authentically improve themselves? Self mutilation?

>clearing your mind for a bit
This is what sleep for, retard

Read, lift weights and eat meat and vegetables. Nothing else required.

Yes

>taking that hack Curtis seriously.

Wew

there's nothing intrinsically wrong with most of those stuff
it's the way people use them as fashion objects/self advertising that annoys you

all is vanity though
kill me

yes

If you think betterment is not intricately entangled with physical health, you are mistaken.

this mostly.

No it isn't you ideologue.

these

t. mindfulness practising zero waste vegan minimalist yogi beauty vlogger

"I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.
Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last man, and blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest.
'We have invented happiness,'say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth...
One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
'Formerly, all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink...
One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health.
'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink."

It's just one way to cope with being a vulnerable little fleshbot in a malignantly indifferent universe.

A coping mechanism to replace religion. See:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wessel_Zapffe#Philosophy

>meat
enjoy your cancer

be unproductive

Stop reading the health section of Womens magazines. Being at a low bodyfat and muscular drastically lowers your chance of cancer. I do everything in the post you replied to. If I wasn't an alcoholic I would be healthy as fuck

This.

>Womens magazines

health.harvard.edu/family-health-guide/red-meat-and-colon-cancer

Your vanity exercise of bodybuilding has nothing to do with health, user. You're as superficial as the yoga sluts, but self-destructive while you're at it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the lifestyle. There is certainly exploitation involved in it though. You don't need to spend money on physical activity, meditation, good food or getting a better night's sleep.

in itself, improvement is a natural tendency of the human being, and it is good.

The problem is that the loss of belief in God has made all of this futile. In the old times people perfected themselves because it made them closer to God. Today it is just a way of inflating the ego and alimentating a consumistic society.

>Here is the crux of Han’s thesis. “Yes We Can” sounds like an empowering slogan, indicating our freedom and limitless potential. But according to Han, this is an illusory freedom because the message enclosed within “Yes We Can” is “Yes We Should”. Instead of living in a Disziplinargesellschaft(disciplinary society) of the past where our behavior was clearly regulated by societal prohibitions and commandments, we now live in a Leistungsgesellschaft (achievement society) in which we voluntarily succumb to the pressure of achieving. The Leistungsgesellschaft is no less restrictive than the Disziplinargesellschaft. We are no longer subject to exogenous prohibitions but we have internalized the mandates of achievement, always striving to do more. We have become slaves to the culture of positivity, subjugated by the imperative “Yes, We Should”. Instead of carefully contemplating whether or not to pursue a goal, the mere knowledge that we could achieve it forces us to strive towards that goal. Buying into the “Yes We Can” culture chains us to a life of self-exploitation and we are blinded by passion and determination until we collapse. Han uses the sad German alliteration “Erschöpfung, Ermüdung und Erstickung” (“exhaustion, fatigue and suffocation”) to describe the impact that an excess of positivity has once we forgo our ability to say “No!” to the demands of the achievement society. We keep on going until our minds and bodies shut down and this is why we live in a continuous state of exhaustion and fatigue. Han does not view multitasking as a sign of civilizational progress. Multitasking is an indicator of regression because it results in a broad but rather superficial state of attention and thus prevents true contemplation

ego is god
how it is now is how it always has been

Optimization of human capital
Society of the Spectacle
Territorialization
internalisation
and so on

God is a way of inflating the ego.

approach is everything.

is philosophy not the love of wisdom?

You are free to say no, just don't expect to be praised for doing so

>based_stand_out_of_my_sun_hobo.jpg
>that condescending, meritless critique

Grow up and you will find out.

I like how you conflate eating healthy and exercising with gadget obsession and new age horseshit all in the same breath, and then ask people to give the whole thing a label.

It's almost as if you want Veeky Forums to make a buzzword for you to justify sitting on your ass watching netflix all day.

wtf I love Nietsche now

this

the only reason you're so aware that people are participating in these kinds of activities is because they take every opportunity to remind you through social media for brownie points

It's not about improving as much as it is about people seeing you improve

>you are free to be a fag in the Islamic State, just don't expect not to be thrown of a building for doing so

Nice hypothetical freedom.

bluepill

yes it is!

i'm ashamed for having called this board Veeky Forums

Red meat =/= all meat. You're retarded for telling the other user to enjoy his cancer when he didn't specify which kinds of meat to eat. Really, great job.

Liftbros are retarded so I made a guess.

Obese is a broad classification. You may be obese.

Are you fucking serious?

what's wrong with excersise yoga and meditation

Takes up time that could be spent on hentai

Nat an my wetch
youtube.com/watch?v=WwGjkuFW0cY
youtube.com/watch?v=LCfz-VbM5eI

nothing wrong with any of those
I do/use all the things you just mentioned and I dont feel shallow or anything
People try to improve themselves

Never heard of him before, but I love him already.

>What philosophical way of life does this fall under?

None. Philosophy deals with the attempt to KNOW - reach and face fundamental facts about being. The consumerist "self-improvement" craze serves to avoid dealing with anything fundamental or even anything questioning the superfluous late-Capitalist ideology.

The comparison is like Seneca and the body-builders constantly disrupting his quest for actual understanding with the grunts of their "self-improvement".

I think it really is whatever you feel at the time and whatever you're doing at that time.

If you're spending all day looking at your phone because the phone was designed to get you to do that and you don't like it because you want to do other shit you're not happy.
You probably barely feel it though, because most people just know somethings wrong. They failed to figure out what they wanted out of life and instead are pushed around by external forces, just trying to 'live' when really they are just getting 'led'.

I felt that way for most of my life and it was shit, and even not I still feel that 'led' feeling quite a bit when I overpost on Veeky Forums.
The brains a vast, complex machine and it does many many things, making you happy is only one of them. You don't really get ahead, you just slowly gain more and more control over the silent parts of yourself and reorient them into doing whatever you wanted to instead of what you think others want you to do.
Self-improvement alone is just another distraction, even accomplishments alone can be a distraction. The truth is you've got to dig deep and through trial and error figure out what you can and can't do, will and won't do, and eventually someday you might find yourself not being a piece of shit. That's real self-improvement.

A person's life always seems to improve unexpectedly and without effort.

You can whip yourself into a frenzy to better yourself, but do it so intensely that it borders on self-abuse.

I like the zen idea of naturalness. This notion that the genuine actualized self is a state of pure effortlessness, automatism, and direct spontenaity.

Analyzing and researching how this state is achieved defeats the purpose. Just go, don't let the bad things stick, and do what feels healthy.

L O L !!!
>dis cuck
L O L !!!
>dis cuck
L O L !!!
>dis cuck
L O L !!!
>dis cuck
L O L !!!
>dis cuck

We're all going to die someday.

/thread
And this entire thing is pure ideology.

Isn't philosophy just a perpetual quest of knowledge, that you have no hope of completing in your mortal life? And if it is, it could be deduce that although you can not complete it, you can at-least derive pleasure from it by consolations and conclusions it gives you? And the longer you're of good mental health, the more experience and merit you can build up by your expertise; and to help aid your you live long, and stay mentally healthy, you do activities like exercise and having a good diet? (I can't speak for the others.)

There's also other benefits of being fit and having a good diet:
1. You're more discipline and less susceptible to being more of a slave of pleasure
2. Being physically fit means you can go through physical challenges, such as escaping disaster, being better able to fend yourself in an assault, and being physically ready to serve for your nation in war.
3. You live longer.
4. Your body will break down slower (assuming if you are moderate in your actions of both)
5. You will often more than not be happy and content with your life because you set yourself after a goal and completed it.

In the 50s people drank radon because pseudo-scientists said it was good for you in small doses.

Nothing has changed.

Most people don't want to die?

Perhaps being able to watch death on TV and a larger class with the means to buy health shit bump the numbers up, but superstitions about which medicines to take or which foods to eat and so on have always existed. Now we simply justify them with sometimes spurious science and statistics, leading to things like the "to the minute" sleep recommendations.

I don't think that's particularly specific for our day and age.
In the past, the same reasoning led to the cultivation of virtues and the like.
At the end of the day, all of the above and much more are excercises in preoccupation with own personality, ego-centered. Ergo likely to be there as long as there are people.

>lift weights

City dwellers and suburbanites should be massacred so us rural working folk can be at peace.

Only pathetic nerds masquerading as men need to lift weights. Do some actual work and you will get the workout you need without mindlessly lifting "heavy" plates.

I wish we could stop growing your food so you'd all starve.

>he thinks exercise is "superficial"

how's life in the ineffable realm of forms, fatty?

He may not be entirely wrong.
While being fit as such is certainly desirable and natural, the motives for bodybuilding which are so common today /are/ mainly superficial; it is not excercise for the sake of excercise, but for the sake of image.
Hence the monstrosities that often come of such ways.

How the fuck are exercise and good nutrition considered by you to be "superficial"? Get off the couch and go outside before you die of a heart attack at 35. There's nothing transcendent about being unhealthy you fat faggot.

In the case of physical fitness, one's image is a clear outward display of self control and dedication.

Please do not make conclusions on things you have never researched.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23251943
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20363650

That is not to say that these links are the absolute answer on the question of mediation - that requires more studies. But don't think it only some mystical mumbo jumbo