Move or Die: The Digital Body

After reading Younger Next Year, especially all its information on the blossoming science of aging and the body’s responses not only to what we eat but also to whatever else we do, or maybe even more important, what we don’t do, it seemed to me that the body is, very much more than any of us (well at least anybody I know of) has previously understood or even guessed, a kind of digital machine.

Think about the basis of the digital device: the binary system, sets of 1’s and 0’s, creating a system of virtual switches—either on or off. The computer only works because of these switches—many many many of them, I admit, but many many many instances of the same simple operation: one or zero, on or off, there or not there.

Likewise, the body. Here are the relevant passages from Younger Next Year for Women: “In the absence of signals to grow, the body and brain decay and we ‘age’” (36). That is, grow or decay, move or die, one or zero, on or…off”; “You have to talk to your body in code and follow certain immutable rules…. Nature’s rules, and you can’t get around them” (34-35).

So, once again, grow or decay, move or die, on or off.

Certainly the conscious life is one of great complexity. We know there’s more to life than just thinking and moving. There are also feelings—desire, aversion, sorrow, and joy, just to define with very broad brush strokes the spectrum of human sensation. And many of us believe (though many of us do not) in a soul or spirit or some kind of essence that exists within and yet independent of the body. Even those who do not believe in a human essence often think of the mind as independent of the body in some ways.

But if the essence or mind is independent, so is the body independent of essence. The body has, so to speak, a mind of its own, or at least, an agenda of its own, its own agency. This should come as no surprise, but the strength of the body’s agency is news to many. The body has certain demands, and we ignore them at our peril. And the science of aging is finding that the body’s most pressing demand is this requirement to move, to do. Because the body is singleminded in this demand (funny how hard it is to describe the body’s agency without using mental metaphors): it wants to do something. And if we do not satisfy it with movement, then it turns its singlemindedness 180 degrees around and sets about decaying. Can’t you just imagine the body curling its fists, stamping its foot, and gritting its teeth: “All right, if we won’t move, then we’ll just damn well die!” Petulant, this body.

Petulant, or singleminded, or machine-like in its will to move: we may not much care for this view of the body. But there it is, and we can’t change it. We can give in to the petulant demands and feed the machine with movement or turn it off—quite literally.