We tend to believe that our bodies do naturally good and healthy things. We assume that if the body does something by itself, then we shouldn’t interfere. But that’s not necessarily true. Give a monkey a pack of cigarettes, and it will smoke all of them. Where did its instinct of self-preservation go? Feed junk food to your dog and see if it stops eating it. Sometimes, we have to use our reasoning to find out what’s best for our health, we have to help our bodies. In other words, instincts need our aid. For example, you may feel that a soft bed is cozy and comfortable when you lie down on it, but how do you feel when you wake up? Surely much worse than if you had slept in a harder bed, where (according to you first thought) you shouldn’t even be able to close your eyes. The same happens when we sit down on a chair. First we sit up straight, but as time goes by, our posture becomes poor, and at the end of our working day we end up aching and in a bad mood —and we are lucky if we happen to know why.
But first of all, our bodies don’t use chairs out of choice. They do it because they don’t have a choice: by repetition, our social context fixes our behavior, it tells us to use certain objects or do things in certain ways. In fact, sometimes, during moments of relaxation or entertainment, people choose to sit on the floor, or to adopt different positions. This tells us that chairs aren’t the natural place to sit on.
So, why do we use them? They’re obviously a good invention, but nowadays their use is so widespread that we lost track of their origin. Besides, if we look around, we’ll see a lot of other inventions that are thought to be used together with them, which leaves us no choice. A brief history of chairs can help us understand where they come from. Books point to ancient Egypt, where they were used only by noble families. Then, Greeks and Romans adopted their use. For centuries, it was a symbol of status, while benches were used by common people in their everyday lives. And then, in the Renaissance, they stopped being a privilege and became affordable.
Like many things then, this object is here by “historical accident”, and now that we know it’s not a natural and perfect thing, we can question it, we can think of improving it. Let’s do it; let’s give our bodies some help. They need it, specially nowadays, when we live in a world built by civilization, pretty far from nature, and the things we use were already here when we arrived. It’s a mistake to assume that an object can’t be improved just because it’s been used for decades or centuries. Try adding a back support to your chair and see the difference. It will help you have a healthier life.
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