What this blog is about

Bicycle commuting, bicycle touring, bicycle racing; bicycle ADVENTURING.
To the grocery store, up a mountain, across the country or to the finish line--
it's all an adventure.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Sitting-addicts

I came across this in Aldous Huxley's novel, Island.

Context: Will, the main character, asks Dr.Robert why he, a doctor, was working in the fields earlier that morning.
"I do muscular work, because I have muscles; and if I don't use my muscles I shall become a bad-tempered sitting-addict. With nothing between the cortex and the buttocks. Or rather with everything-- in a condition of complete unconsciousness and toxic stagnation. Western intellectuals are all sitting-addicts. That's why most of you are so repulsively unwholesome... Spongy seats for spongy bottoms-- at home, in the office, in cars and bars, in planes and trains and buses. No moving of legs, no struggles with distance and gravity-- just lifts and planes and cars, just foam rubber and an eternity of sitting..."
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