The [Meta]physics of Running

Philosopher-types tend to love running. That includes me. But it's not for reasons you might suspect. Every new-age pseudo-spiritual theory about the zen of running is a ruse. Running will not give you anything like a nirvanic escape of selfhood. Running is not The Secret, a pseudo-spiritual capital-hugging panacea for the anxieties of modernity.

In fact, running is deliriously brutal most of the time. (If Sade were around, he'd have dumped the dungeon for the track long ago.) Most days, running smacks you square in the jaw with lots of self truths you'd rather not think about. (Like the amount of chateubriand and bags of chips you've actually consumed over the past twenty odd years. Like just how slow you actually are.)

Running is a philosophical pastime. You want Heideggerian Dasein ["authentic being there"]? The minute you hate that first half-mile, you'll be forced to confront the taunts of Das Man. Trust me.

You want phenomenological analysis? Running is a bodily experiment in Husserlian consciousness, messing with time as protention and retention, every step protends the next footfall and retends the last. Its like living suspended at the instant where the illusion of time grabs us....Somehow if I just keep going, maybe a little farther, I'll get to peep around the corner where space/time bends. Or.....maybe not.

Its no accident that physics is all about the laws of motion. For those of us cultural theorists who find Foucault fun and quantum mechanics sexy, running is a playground for postmodern post-subjectivity. And don't let the granola-humanist types tell you otherwise.