I think about Baudrillard’s words often as I train for the Brooklyn marathon. Did he have a personal beef with a jogger? And what would he think if he were on tech Twitter, reading think pieces by the greatest minds of our generation about their very unique hobby?
Atomized individuals are brimming with energy that is not being directed (or cannot be directed?) and which is being expended for the sake of expending it. It is not to produce, not to demonstrate athletic achievement, not even for pure fun. It is for a sense of discipline and self-sacrifice.
Purge it. Purge yourself. Feel the burn. Martyr yourself. Is running a good analogy of (and perhaps a symptom of) a culture, or rather a certain demographic of society, bursting with excess energy but no idea what to do with themselves? I think it is. Did Beaudrillard go overboard as if his wife cheated on him with a jogger? Definitely.
Running is for the spiritually lost. So is picking up heavy weights and putting them down repetitively. But I have to agree with Murakami when he said, “nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.”
