Destruction of the body

The body is the basic way in which man exists in the world and the basic way in which he belongs to the world. It is not a natural given and as such a sui generis phenomenon, but a product of the historical development of society. Every civilization creates a specific body and a specific relationship to the body, and thus a specific person. Even in antiquity, they realized that the production of a certain body is at the same time the production of a certain type of man (economic race and goods). Class and racial physiognomy have a first-class significance in civic anthropology, and civic Hellenists who idealize antiquity especially insist on it. At the same time, man does not experience his body directly, but through the concrete totality of the epoch in which he lives and the ruling ideological "model" of the body, which means as a concrete human (social) being.

The answer to the question of what the human body is in the modern world can be reached only in the context of the ruling tendency of the development of capitalism. Capitalism produces a man who is in functional unity with him and who enables his development primarily by producing an appropriate body. The ruling attitude towards the body is mediated by "technical civilization", which means that the body is reduced to a kind of machine, and bodily movement to the mechanics of movement. Technical functionality and efficiency are becoming the most important features of the capitalist body. In essence, the ruling instrumental and exploitative relation to nature is the basis of the relation to the human body. It is not a harmonious part of living nature which, as such, should be respected, but is reduced to an object of processing and a means to achieve inhuman goals. In the "consumer society", consumer activism has become the dominant form of bodily activism. The body has become part of the consumer lifestyle and is adapted to the demands of consumer civilization. The relation to the body has an instrumental character: it ceases to be an integral part of the human being and becomes a means of reproducing the ruling order. It is, in fact, about the complete commercialization of the body as the "highest" form of capitalist degeneration of man. The illusion is that man is the "owner" of his body. Indeed, he treats his body the way capitalism treats him as a man: by dehumanizing man, capitalism has dehumanized man's relationship to his body. It is a capitalist-created narcissism that has an instrumental, destructive and spectacular nature.Capitalist totalization of the world implies capitalist totalization of the body, which means its distortion and creation of a chronically ill man. It is dominated by the rhythm of capitalist reproduction, which destroys the biological rhythm of life - without which there is no healthy man. Man is not guided only by consumer activism as a value challenge, but his body cannot survive without an increasing number of preparations and aids, as well as artificial living conditions. Human survival is increasingly mediated by artificial means that make a person disabled.Elo has lost its natural needs: it can no longer process natural food, lives on medicines and through medicines. The whole life of a person is under "treatments" which, in the end, should enable him to survive in functional harmony with the ruling order. Based on the attitude towards the body, it can be seen that the development of the "consumer standard" implies the destruction of the standard of living. Work, lifestyle, movement, rhythm of life, diet, sleep, space that is a modern ghetto (cities), air, water, food, tobacco, drugs, drinks, lifestyle that destroys the natural human being, night life, rhythm and diet - almost all forms of life become a way of degenerating man. Cholesterol, cellulite, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, neurasthenia, depression, AIDS, etc. - they are not "diseases of the modern world", but a capitalist form of physical and mental degeneration of man. Part one_)