It does strike me as vaguely incongruous the amount of time, effort and money I spend exerting myself, whether it be plain running, obstacle running or lifting heavy things at the gym. As all of these activities are now big business I am obviously not alone in my desire to raise a sweat for no good reason.
I have been watching an interesting series called “Blood, Sweat and Luxuries”. The program takes a group of young, rich, spoiled British men and women and shows them exactly what is involved to bring them the luxuries they take for granted. They travel to a sapphire mine in Madagascar, a coffee plantation in Ethiopia, a gold mine in Ghana and an electronics factory in the Philippines. For a day or two they must participate in the same work as the locals and are then paid a corresponding pittance. Needless to say the work is unbelievably difficult and mind numbingly repetitive, and it certainly sheds light on the hard lives that people lead in order to deliver us the things that complement our soft lives.
It is hard to imagine any of these people going for a 10 km run after work or paying to crawl through mud under strands of barbed wire. I would think that, at the end of their working day, they would like nothing better than to have a nice sit down and watch a bit of tellie. If only they had a tellie, or electricity for that matter.
Still, this need to exert ourselves must obviously be hard wired into our DNA. Otherwise, why would people lucky enough to lead lives of physical ease pay big bucks to put themselves through intense physical challenges when they don’t have to?
Dr. F. Bunny
vetsbeyondreason 
Run For Your Life
Posted by vetsbeyondreason in Social Commentary on 05/02/2014
It does strike me as vaguely incongruous the amount of time, effort and money I spend exerting myself, whether it be plain running, obstacle running or lifting heavy things at the gym. As all of these activities are now big business I am obviously not alone in my desire to raise a sweat for no good reason.
I have been watching an interesting series called “Blood, Sweat and Luxuries”. The program takes a group of young, rich, spoiled British men and women and shows them exactly what is involved to bring them the luxuries they take for granted. They travel to a sapphire mine in Madagascar, a coffee plantation in Ethiopia, a gold mine in Ghana and an electronics factory in the Philippines. For a day or two they must participate in the same work as the locals and are then paid a corresponding pittance. Needless to say the work is unbelievably difficult and mind numbingly repetitive, and it certainly sheds light on the hard lives that people lead in order to deliver us the things that complement our soft lives.
It is hard to imagine any of these people going for a 10 km run after work or paying to crawl through mud under strands of barbed wire. I would think that, at the end of their working day, they would like nothing better than to have a nice sit down and watch a bit of tellie. If only they had a tellie, or electricity for that matter.
Still, this need to exert ourselves must obviously be hard wired into our DNA. Otherwise, why would people lucky enough to lead lives of physical ease pay big bucks to put themselves through intense physical challenges when they don’t have to?
Dr. F. Bunny
Blood, Coffee, Effort, Electronics, Exercise, Exertion, Gold, Gym, Mud Run, Run, Running, Sapphire, Sweat and Luxuries
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