Cracked.com Biggest Loser article

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5 Details They Cut from My Season of 'The Biggest Loser'

By Evan V. Symon

 

May 13, 2014

232,034 views

 

In 2006, The Biggest Loser was in its third season. This hit reality show focused on a group of 14 people sent off to live in a complex together, with the goal of losing weight via the fastest possible methods that weren't amputation or amphetamines. However, behind the hasty weight loss, trumped-up drama, and dramatic music, there lurked a dark side. Cracked talked to The Biggest Loser Season 3 runner-up Kai Hibbard, who told us ...

#5. They Hid Real Relationships if the Fat People Were Deemed "Too Fat"

 

 

Fuse/Fuse/Getty Images

Have you ever seen a reality show like The Real World or Big Brother? They all have romantic relationships carefully crafted to draw the audience in. And besides being possibly faked, can you guess what else those relationships all have in common? Skinny people. TV just can't seem to bring itself to show fat people falling in love unless it's the two comic relief characters having their arcs wrapped up in such a way that we don't have to see them bone.

 

Robert Voets/CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

Over in sitcom-land they'll do fat guy/hot wife, but don't you dare think about reversing those roles.

 

 

The Biggest Loser had romantic subplots that would build throughout the season, too, but the producers and editors made sure to Jim & Pam that shit as slowly as possible. Those "relationships" weren't allowed to bloom until both partners were skinny enough that their kisses were safe for a presumably very shallow audience that knows love only as something bedazzled on the butts of pretty girls' pink sweatpants.

 

 

AlexZabusik/iStock/Getty Images

"Sorry, 'Attraction Can Be Based on Non-Physical Qualities' just isn't cost effective from a glue and rhinestone standpoint."

 

 

And no, that wasn't because those couples were only down to clown once they were both skinny. Obese people like genitals and emotions as much as anybody else. It was just the cameramen's sacred duty to make sure as little of that got caught on film as possible. They'd straight up refuse to follow actual couples to catch a glimmer of real romance because, and this was their actual reasoning, "Who wants to see two obese people making out?" If we can stomach watching the oompa-loompas from Jersey Shore drunkenly chewing on each other's faces, we could probably manage a couple of hefty folk gettin' tastefully busy in the bushes.

#4. The Results Were Skewed and Took Way More Exercise Than They Showed

 

 

Creatas Images/Creatas/Getty Images

Every week on the show, you watched us exercising and working out. That's part of the process, of course -- making people healthier. But they don't show the additional mandatory six hours or so of us furiously flailing the pounds away. They much preferred filming us right at the end of a workout, when we looked like lazy quitters for stopping so early. Even the giant scale they had us all weigh in on was fake.

And sometimes the "healthy habits" you saw on the show were no such thing: My season made a big deal of showing us all drinking our milk to prove how nutritious it was. But as soon as "cut" was yelled, the trainers made us spit it out. Calories do not trump calcium, apparently. They claim the weigh-ins you see are weekly, but that's a straight-up lie. When people exclaimed "I lost 12 pounds in a week!" that wasn't always the case. It's all based on filming schedules. Sometimes the real period between weigh-ins was over three weeks, and you got liked like a rock star for losing so much weight so quickly. Other times it was only five days, and the audience thought you were phoning it in that week -- after which you probably hung up and dialed for a pizza, you lazy cheese-beast.

Losing five pounds in five days was actually pretty dangerous on its own, but the audience didn't care. The show trained them to expect more results than were reasonable, safe, or sometimes even possible, and failure to deliver in the fat arena got you a thumbs-down.

 

 

NBCUniversal Television Distribution

"This pleases us ... for now."

#3. The Show Has Absolute Power Over You

 

 

RGtimeline/iStock/Getty Images

During Season 3, the gimmick was having contestants from all 50 states. To get to the core cast of 14, they flew us to LA, put us in church vans, and drove us off to somewhere in California. The entire time, we were not allowed to talk to the other contestants. Then we were essentially locked in our hotel rooms, being let out only to do shoots or doctor visits. They confiscated all of our stuff -- no TVs, books, magazines, nothing. We weren't even allowed to call our families. My parents didn't know where I was until three weeks later.

 

 

Jason Merritt/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

"We were a day away from sending Liam Neeson to come find you."

 

 

They make the fat women walk out in sports bras and spandex shorts. That's only for the ladies, of course -- guys don't have to stroll out in nothing but the classic jock-'n'-socks combo; they get normal exercise clothes. On the "plus" side, once you dumped a bunch of weight, you got to wear a tank top again. Once we're skinny, we've "earned" the right to wear a tank top and dress like a human being who might like to have sex someday.

The obese are already seen as something less than normal humans, so the show-runners thought it would be perfectly acceptable to put us in horse stalls and make us run on a horse track, because hey, maybe that small percentage of personal trainers that believe yelling in your face while you're on a treadmill are right and shame does burn calories. To protest, I simply walked the course, refusing to run until they asked me to at the end, hopefully ruining the competitive spirit of the challenge (and, of course, they called it like a horse race all the while). I felt like maybe I'd be able to preserve a little dignity by not running. But in retaliation, they acted like I was just too fat and exhausted to finish. Later, fans on the Internet threatened me because HOW DARE I NOT RUN FOR THEIR AMUSEMENT? CAESAR OF THE FATTIES IS DISPLEASED.

 

 

Jean-Leon Gerome

I have a great suggestion for what to do with those thumbs.

 

 

That happened to other contestants, too. If you didn't act grateful enough, or you had the audacity to demand to be treated like a human being, they made you look like a huge jerk on TV. That is the mighty power of the television editor: With enough time and a copy of Adobe Premiere, you can make Mr. Rogers look like a blood-drinking psychopath. One woman in my season was one of the kindest individuals I have ever met in my life. Five years after the season ended, she even donated a kidney to save a complete stranger's life. That's the kind of nice we're talking about here -- the full Ned Flanders treatment.

But she injured her leg during filming and couldn't run much, so she refused. The people on the show told her, "We don't care -- run," and she said no. Because she didn't comply, they edited the footage to make her look like the biggest bitch in the world. Without the whole "threat of injury" thing, she seemed like a big ol' entitled wussbasket. And guess what? She got death threats. She got so many death threats that NBC had to disable the messaging function on her part of the show's site. All because she had been injured the previous week and physically could not do what they were asking.

 

 

Medioimages/Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images

"You misunderstand; those were death threats of encouragement."

 

 

#2. You Are Physically Ruined Afterward

 

 

Juriah Mosin/Hemera/Getty Images

Losing that much weight in such a short amount of time is not healthy, especially for morbidly obese people. The healthy way to do it is to lose weight slowly by eating well and exercising. But turning down the second slice of pizza and going for a walk doesn't exactly make for dramatic TV, does it? So we did things the other way: They frequently filmed us vomiting because they wanted the viewers to think that working out until you threw up was somehow admirable. It makes good TV, but it can also seriously harm you.

 

 

NBCUniversal Television Distribution

"No pain, no gain!" isn't so great when the gain is more pain.

 

 

Everyone got injured at some point. It's a virtual guarantee that when you take a bunch of out-of-shape people and suddenly throw them into a Christian Bale-esque workout routine, somebody's back is not going to be up to Batman caliber. For example: My knees are fucked at 35. They should not sound like cellophane whenever I walk up and down the stairs. Can I prove the show did it? No. All I know is that I had no knee problems, and then I got on the show and started running up mountains at 260 pounds.

 

feellife/iStock/Getty Images

"Hey, losing meniscus still counts as weight loss."

 

At the end of the series, my immune system shut down due to the effects of losing too much weight too fast. My hair fell out. I can't say I was in better health at 260 pounds than I am now, but doctors told me that everything I did to my body on the show was a physician's nightmare. Before the final big weigh in, I lost 19 pounds in two weeks. That's pretty good progress for half a year of eating well and working out. Doing it in a fortnight is madness. It's only a matter of time before some contestant's over-stressed heart gives out during ... I don't know, a faux-dog sled race with fat people instead of huskies. And when someone finally does die, I'm sure they'll edit him to look like another lazy fat bastard stealing a nap.

#1. You Are Mentally Ruined Afterward

 

 

9nong/iStock/Getty Images

When you're young, you don't always realize what the ramifications of your actions will be. The Biggest Loser had a huge impact on millions of viewers. All of the horrible things I did to try to "win" my health had consequences, and not only for my own body.

Once, during a speaking engagement in Colorado, an overweight teenage girl came up to me after my presentation. She was a fan and desperate to emulate the weight loss results she saw on the show. She did everything she'd seen on the show, even the stuff we didn't actually do (like *gasp* drink the milk). Obviously her results weren't as drastic as ours had seemed to be. She didn't have careful editing and outright lies on her side. She was so crestfallen that she resorted to anorexia and bulimia. At one point she felt like such a failure that she tried to kill herself and wound up in the hospital. That's at least one life horribly impacted in the name of more compelling reality TV. But I've heard from lots of other people who tried the same unhealthy techniques to replicate the weight loss results shown on TV -- more than you can imagine.

 

 

Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images

"What if I change my name to Jillian? That's got to be worth a couple of pounds, right?"

 

What I have come to realize is that I am, at least in part, personally responsible for this damage, because I participated in the show while not even considering the impact it would have. Looking back, I'm disgusted at the whole thing. There's no other show based on the concept of "competing for your health!" The public wouldn't stand for it if we, say, pitted cancer patients against one another to see who The Biggest Cancer Survivor was, but since we associate obesity with comedy, it's perfectly fine to turn overcoming it into prime-time television.

[StillWaters]

Wow. Just...wow. I always knew that show was misleading because its "reality" tv, but this is far beyond anything I thought could possibly happen behind the scenes.

[Machete]

See this is what irks me about the modern attitude towards fitness. [Almost] Nobody wants to pay their dues and "put the miles in" to be an expert anymore. Rocky and The Karate Kid ruined it for everyone. They made the training montage cool, and gave us the impression that with hard work we too can beat Johnny Lawrence and Apollo Creed in a few short weeks. This is why people training in Boxing and MMA are itching for their first fight 3 months in. (I only first started figuring out Boxing after 3 years.) The whole concept of "no pain, no gain" and "working for your body" and motivational videos inspire people to go all-out for one or two sessions and expect results. Then they become frustrated when they don't get the results they feel they deserve for working so hard [once or twice]. Giving the so-called 110%. This is why so many soldiers are needlessly injured during training every day. This is why the hardcoreness of CrossFit is so popular - how they seem to glorify vomiting and urination and Rhabdomyolysis. This is why they have 8-week training plans in Men's Health. And despite what every textbook and fitness expert tell us, (It's not about how hard you work once, it's about how consistent you are. The "work" you put in is cumulative.) our instincts (along with mass media and pop culture) make us do otherwise. As if none of us ever watched Varsity Blues.

[Kaylya]

Yeah - it promotes a focus on weight over health (Not that it's the only source of that). Loosing at the rate they do (in real time) is unhealthy, and not acheivable in a real world environment - and then they make it even more unrealistic through distorting the actual time and turning it into "show weeks".

 

Quite a few of the biggest losers regain the weight they lost and more  - basically, except for the ones who turn their lives into something fitness oriented and become full time Personal Trainers etc.

 

You're better off making a few changes for the better to your diet and exercise habits and loosing a small amount of weight than you are going to extreme measures and then re-gaining it.

[TaraTheMiddle]

I always felt like that show was the modern day equivalent of a traveling freak show. A disgusting way of telling every one that anyone that is overweight is less than a human. 

[SevenofSeven]

I have never watched a full show, let alone a season, I felt humiliated for the contestants. It was so cringe worthy it was uncomfortable to watch.

[Devyn]

This show is everything that is wrong about America's attitude toward health and fitness. I'm so glad the rebellion is here to set things straight!

[Jettica]

This is why Jillian Michaels left the show. It's scary. TV entertainment over health, lovely.

[Machete]

Everything You Know About Fitness Is a Lie by Daniel Duane | Men's Journal

[hblyne]

Horrendous  

 

I wondered about Jillian Michaels. I know that last year there was all that controversy over just how thin the winner ended up being at the final and Jillian's face at the reveal was priceless. http://cdn.hollywoodtake.com/sites/hollywoodtake.com/files/styles/large/public/2014/02/05/jillian-and-bob.jpg

[StillWaters]

I think the woman in the red shirt behind them agrees.

[wilkymouse]

I watched the full season where Dani won even though I had never watched the show before.  My reason was that I worked for one of the show's sponsors and heard more about it, so I became curious.  It definitely did draw me in, but, even before I really did decent research on fitness and health, it rubbed me the wrong way.  It's tough because, to the casual viewer, it's encouraging to see people who want to work hard to change their lives, but at the same time, it doesn't seem like it's normal to lose weight so rapidly.  Reading that article was even more of an eye-opener.

I no longer work for that company, but have considered going back if a job opens...I'm just not sure if their skewed attitude towards health makes it against my principles (it goes beyond their sponsorship for the show).  I loved the people there and it's a great place to work, but I don't know if I should work for a place that promotes unhealthy habits that they advertise as healthy.  It's really sad that that's something to consider and companies want to pull the wool over everyone's eyes when it comes to health.

[I-Jo]

I have no sympathy- there is no big secret that it was going to be a cake walk- it's all about money- and they weren't walking in there without the temptation of money. 

 

Sucks to be you- but I don't feel sorry for you.

[Machete]

[jasonkoller]

I always assume there is something they aren't showing on TV.

It's sad that a show that appears to be about making yourself better is so misleading.

[SimonTemplar96]

See this is what irks me about the modern attitude towards fitness. [Almost] Nobody wants to pay their dues and "put the miles in" to be an expert anymore. Rocky and The Karate Kid ruined it for everyone. They made the training montage cool, and gave us the impression that with hard work we too can beat Johnny Lawrence and Apollo Creed in a few short weeks. This is why people training in Boxing and MMA are itching for their first fight 3 months in. (I only first started figuring out Boxing after 3 years.) The whole concept of "no pain, no gain" and "working for your body" and motivational videos inspire people to go all-out for one or two sessions and expect results. Then they become frustrated when they don't get the results they feel they deserve for working so hard [once or twice]. Giving the so-called 110%. This is why so many soldiers are needlessly injured during training every day. This is why the hardcoreness of CrossFit is so popular - how they seem to glorify vomiting and

and Rhabdomyolysis. This is why they have 8-week training plans in Men's Health. And despite what every textbook and fitness expert tell us, (It's not about how hard you work once, it's about how consistent you are. The "work" you put in is cumulative.) our instincts (along with mass media and pop culture) make us do otherwise. As if none of us ever watched Varsity Blues.

 

You have a point, particularly regarding expecting immediate results. However, regarding hard work there is a counter-point. Our society, on the whole, leans far more the other way. Yes, there may be too much fascination with "hardcore" and "extreme" but the majority of people in our society (speaking of the USA) have been trained into a combination of helplessness and entitlement. By far the biggest thing limiting them is not their physical capacity or the real limits of their body, but rather the mental limits and limits of the will that they put on themselves. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that most people, maybe even the vast majority of people, need to pushed into some hardcore working out because that's the only way they will ever break the mental barriers they have erected for themselves.

 

The only way you ever learn what you are really capable of is by pushing yourself up to, and ultimately past the limits you think you have. (this is true for most people, who don't know their real limits) So yes, the super hardcore workouts may not be the best thing for long term fitness. I think they serve a very useful and necessary purpose though of helping people to break out of their mental limitations. They may not be the best for training the body, but they may be necessary for training the mind. 

 

In fact, I would hazard a guess that maybe much of the hardcoreness that is so popular in things like Crossfit is actually a direct reaction against the helplessness and entitlement that plagues our society. On the one hand people get trained into those debilitating attitudes, but on the other our inborn nature drives us to want to achieve and to accomplish things. It is often the case that the dominance of one extreme pushes people to the other extreme in reaction. 

 

And for the record, it's only the unrealistic expectations and immediate gratification attitude that makes training montages like Rocky and Karate Kid a problem. Things like that are great motivators and there is nothing about them that necessarily feeds false expectations if you go in with basic realizations like "hey this is a movie, and it represents compressed time" etc. I love to watch stuff like that because it makes me want to go work out. Not because I think I'm magically going to be transformed in a couple of sessions at the gym, but because it reminds me that working out is fun and that it does lead to rewards.

[Machete]

A completely different topic though. While I was talking about the fitness attitude, you were referring to the largely sedentary, unchallenged population. I'm talking about people who train and go to the gym for a purpose, not just to 'work out' or exercise; people who follow actual scientific training principles and the General Adaptation Syndrome, not some motivational quote out of Instagram. And though there are times when "push until you puke" is appropriate, only Dan Gable trains like that on the reg. To mere mortals like us, it's just a shortcut to burnout. That sort of mindset is reserved for the competition, not the training. CrossFit was made as another competition that people can train for. It's a sport, not a workout. There is a method to the madness.

Anyone, when put in a life-threatening situation, will perform the the best of one's ability in order to survive. That's why we hear about people lifting cars and seeing things in slow-motion. The brain acts as a safety break for a reason. The more important lesson that I think people need to learn these days (about training in particular) is attention span. Mao Tse Tsung said that "in general, any form of exercise, if pursued continuously, will help train us in perseverance. Long-distance running is particularly good training in perseverance." But who wants to run long distances now when people just want to run a short distance until they puke?

The whole "it's all in your head" is technically correct when you factor in the neurological adaptations in training. But notice that the people who say that (usually out of context) are usually ones who are already fit. Because it's easier to be mentally tough when you're not tired; that's why people bother with training in the first place. The people who prevail aren't the ones who push harder the day of; they're usually the ones who trained better prior.

The Karate Kid and Rocky weren't bad as movies in themselves; the sequels are what ruined them. Rocky going the distance with Apollo showed the importance of grit, but him becoming a champion was farfetched. (It's based on a true story, and the guy never became champ.) Yes, sometimes movies are motivating, but athletes don't have the luxury of only training when motivated. You always have to be motivated to begin with. Everyone has off-days, but you still have to train. You just have to suck it up and get to training, day-in day-out.

[SimonTemplar96]

ok, I get that you are talking about a different group of people, those who are into fitness and are actively training while I'm talking about the sedentary masses. Also, I'm not continuing the discussion to be argumentative, but because I find the topic genuinely interesting and valuable. 

 

First, I agree very much with what you say about consistency and "attention span". That has always been my #1 failing in fitness as well as in many other areas of life. I generally refer to it as discipline. Discipline is the ability to do what you don't want to do in the moment because you know you need to for the long term. It is that without which there can be no consistency. 

 

However, consistency and discipline must follow attitude. Granted there is a lot of concurrency and mutual influence. Developing consistency and discipline will also impact attitude etc. But to even begin, to even start pursuing requires a significant change of attitude for most people. That really is, in my opinion, the difference between the two groups of people we are talking about; those who are actively pursuing fitness and are training, and then those who are sedentary. 

 

It is all in the mind goes beyond just how far you can push yourself in the gym, it also determines whether you ever get to the gym. 

 

Once a person is actively training I agree that consistency is the most important thing in order to achieve long term change and results. But first a person has to actually get to the point where they even want to be consistent and disciplined. 

 

Maybe you don't really have any interest in motivating people to change their attitudes and their outlooks to go from sedentary to training etc, in which case I apologize for babbling on about it but I'm interested in that and so I'm interested in things that can provide a break in people's apathy and lack of desire. Things that can spur them to dream of being more. 

 

I don't have a problem with Rocky being unrealistic in that he became the champ. The fact is someone became the champ, someone is always going to become the champ, so why not you? Obviously, much like kids dreaming of playing pro football or baseball etc, only a tiny percentage are ever going to actually accomplish that dream, but 0% of those who don't try, will accomplish that dream. AND perhaps even more importantly, even if you don't make that tiny little percentage, even if you don't become the champ, you will accomplish much more by trying, by reaching and falling short, than by never reaching at all. Convincing yourself that you don't have a chance and therefore you shouldn't try stops you from accomplishing everything you could have along the way. 

 

Teaching people to be realistic doesn't mean teaching them not to strive for greatness. It doesn't mean teaching them to be satisfied with smallness. It means teaching them that greatness is not defined by recognition and accolades, nor by mere achievement outwardly. Rather it is defined by being the best you, that you can be. 

 

I am reminded of a quote from GK Chesterton

"Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

[Machete]

No worries. I like expanding upon topics. It's the best way to learn.

Consistency is more about a schedule and building habits, while discipline is more about willpower. And it is known that willpower is a finite resource, so putting too much reliance on it would be unwise. People hire personal trainers more for the accountability than the [alleged] training knowledge. It's also why people train better with a workout partner. When I was training for boxing my practice schedule was noon 6 days a week. I didn't want to go, and I'm lazy and undisciplined. What kept me going to practice was my coach constantly bitching at me every day to come to practice and not be late. If you rely on discipline and montages, like most people do, you just end up gaining all the weight back, like most people do. It's not about discipline, it's about a lifestyle change; making training part of your life.

And I'm not saying don't try. But don't be delusional. In my experience, these delusions based off pop culture are what make people quit trying more often than not. They want to lose 100 pounds like they saw on the biggest loser, or they want to be the UFC champion. But after 4 months and only losing 25 pounds (which is not bad), or having their ass handed to them by some mediocre amateur they get hit by reality and how inconceivably far they are from their goals. So they quit. I've had too many people quit on me to keep feeding dreamers bullshit pipe dreams. Be realistic, find a smart goal, and live your life a quarter-mile at a time. (Hahaha. Had to use it.)

Finally, this is America, not ancient Greece. Our citizens have the right to be as fat as they want to be. I only waste time with those who have expressed the desire not to be so.

[SimonTemplar96]

Regarding discipline, consistency, and willpower. 

 

Discipline and consistency are closely related. Discipline, literally, is the process of building a habit. A person who is disciplined is a person who has regular, regimented, habits that they never or rarely vary from. Discipline is not a gift or an ability, it is the product of training. It is learned.

 

Discipline is actually not the same thing as willpower. Discipline is when a person is trained (by themselves or by others) to follow a set of rules without thinking but rather by reaction. In fact the more disciplined you are, the less willpower you need to do the action in question. This is why punishment is often referred to as "discipline". The point is to ingrain behavior that is conditioned, or reactive. You don't even consider doing the wrong thing, you just automatically do the right thing because you have been conditioned to do it. 

 

Military history has always been a hobby of mine so that comes readily to mind when I talk about discipline. The height of discipline was when well trained soldiers could perform complex, orderly maneuvers while under heavy fire in combat. They didn't do this because they had ridiculous will power or even necessarily more courage than anyone else. They could do it because they had been drilled in it and trained in it until it required no thought, it was just "2nd nature".

 

So discipline is actually a resource that enables you to follow a set of rules or a regimen in cases when willpower would not allow you to do it.

 

I also agree that willpower is a limited resource (as almost everything is). However, willpower, again like almost everything else, can be trained and built up. It's just like your body's physical capacity. It runs out as you use it up, but in the long term, the right kind of stress makes it grow stronger. Whereas too much or the wrong kind of stress can break it entirely.

 

Mental toughness is built, just like physical strength. 

 

 

And yes, you are right that a person has the right to be fat if they want to be. However, for a variety of reasons I am interested in ways of changing people's hearts and minds., not the least of which is that I want to change myself.

 

Of course I suspect that very few people want to be unhealthy, or over weight etc. What they want is over-indulgence in food, over-indulgence in leisure, entertainment, and so on. They either have bought the lies of our prevailing philosophy that you can live any life you want with no consequences, or they don't even understand the correlation between how they choose to live and the consequences that come with. And many, of course, simply want indulgence more than they want health. 

 

Also, there is a key difference between requiring people to do something and promoting doing something. I agree that we don't have a right to require others to live their lives a certain way, such a being fit, or working hard etc. They have a right to live how they want. However, it is in our interests to promote fitness and promote hard work, because as the lack of those things becomes endemic, it will inevitably degrade the whole society and in the end, you and I will have to live in the society formed by the choices of others. 

[Machete]

Well, discipline, literally, is a specialization, a branch of knowledge, or an art. Later it meant punishing oneself, which is more associated with the term "conditioning", which in turn would result in your latest definition, the empirical state of being disciplined. The military definition is a bit of a subjective one, referring to the character developed through training.

Your previous definition, however, sounded more synonymous with self-control. Pretty much asserting one's will over one's baser instincts in order to accomplish a predetermined goal; self-control, which requires willpower.

Discipline is the ability to do what you don't want to do in the moment because you know you need to for the long term.

Discipline is more associated with drill and ceremony. For a combat unit, it's all conditioning. You don't drive through minefields or rush through small arms fire or jump on grenades because of discipline. When the shit hits the fan, all that goes out the window. The only thing that matters is the guy to your left and to your right, and what you would do to get them home alive. The Army is built upon brotherhood and trust. Leave the discipline to the Old Guard.

And mental toughness, though they could probably find a way to measure, does not mean anything when you're not getting results. You may have the best intentions and work the hardest, but life isn't fair. The only thing that matters is the result. You will notice a strong correlation between selection rate of Special Forces candidates and physical fitness. Because out there it's not all about how bad you want it and how mentally tough you are - it's also about how well you prepared yourself for it. Like I said, it's easier to be mentally tough when you're not tired. "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." (Lombardi)

I prefer to stay in my lane. If people want to be fat, they have a right to do so, and I reserve the right to call them such. I will only provide knowledge, not influence. I think of the dialogue in Oscar Wilde's novel:

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view."

"Why?"

"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self."

If being fat happens to prove an advantage over being fit in the future, then I will fall victim to the natural selection process. If not, then they will probably all die early of diabetes and chronic heart disease while the fit inherit the earth.

[SimonTemplar96]

I admit my original definition of discipline did sound more like self-control and willpower. I was originally thinking of it that way. 

 

The word discipline comes from the Latin Disciplulus -i (or Discipula for the feminine version) literally just means student. This is why a branch of knowledge became known as a discipline. Because it is the pursuit of students.

 

This is also why the more military kind of discipline which is also known as conditioning, and punishment, is called discipline. Because it is still a way of teaching and learning.

 

We usually think of students in terms of learning academic knowledge, but students also learn behavior and behavior, most of the time, is best taught by conditioning. I would say that this is what is behind the idea of habit building as well. It is discipline.

 

Discipline does involve choice, everything we do involves choice. However, not all choices are conscious in the moment. For example, a person who has been conditioned to act a given way under pressure, makes a choice to act that way, but they don't consciously think about making that choice. They have thought about it before hand and essentially set their mind to make that choice by default.  

 

When it comes to combat etc, testimony backs up what you say that it's about the guy next to you and brotherhood etc. However, where discipline comes in is with the things you are doing to fight. Loading your weapon, aiming, pulling the trigger, finding cover etc.Indeed, even the feeling of camaraderie and brotherhood itself that exists within a military unit can be thought of as a product of discipline.

 

 

Regarding the idea of influence from Mr. Wilde, I completely disagree. First I should point out that I don't take any issue with your not wanting to involve yourself with others. That's your right and I don't think there is anything wrong with your choice. Minding your own business is almost always a good choice. However, I enjoy philosophy and can't pass up the opportunity to discuss it and/or give my opinion on it. So feel free to ignore what follows

 

#1 - if Wilde really believed it, he shouldn't have written a book because the very act of reading a book is being influenced by the author. Keeping in mind that influence can be positive or negative in that whether I agree, or disagree with the author's writing, whether I like it or dislike it, I have been influenced. The course of my thought process has changed or been affected.

 

#2 - Knowledge is influence because giving people knowledge changes how they think. In effect all influence is about imparting knowledge some way or other, and all knowledge is influence.

 

#3 - Influence is not imparting your soul. This is a confusion of subject and object. The human soul has the ability to know (intellect) and the ability to choose (will). This is the subject. What the soul knows and what it chooses are not the soul itself, but rather the object of the soul. The statement that by influencing a soul, the virtues and sins are no longer that soul's virtues and sins, but rather are borrowed, becomes absurd when you see the distinction between subject and object. The object exists independently of the subject. Thus no object can belong exclusively to a specific subject. 

 

For example, I (the subject) can know mathematics (the object) but mathematics can never belong to me specifically. Thus if I teach someone else mathematics, their knowledge of mathematics does not belong to me. I have not turned them into me.

 

It is however possible, and I would argue true that subjects DO have a natural object. For example the human soul is oriented to knowing truth and to valuing truth. Truth is the natural object of the intellect. But this object does not belong exclusively to any one soul, rather it is the natural object of every human soul.

 

#4 - What Mr. Wilde's character describes in the story is simply impossible. There is no such thing as an environment, let alone a social environment in which human beings are free of outside influence. We are all constantly being influenced by our relationships with others and our relationship with the environment that we live in etc. There is no such thing as a human being that lives completely free of outside influence.

[Machete]

I think there is a discrepancy between how the military and civil society uses the term "discipline" in context. Perhaps I'm insane, but I've heard people say "have some self-discipline", which somehow resonates more with your previous definition and self-control. Then you bring up the military term for discipline, which is more of a state of being where a unit has achieved the satisfactory standards of behavior. Grunts are not known for having individual choice (or it is not a trait commonly acknowledged really), and discipline pretty much boils down to how much they respect/fear their overseer. Much like conditioning in the classical behaviorist point-of-view, the dog who salivates does not do so by choice; it is a conditioned response. If you were to apply your latest definition of discipline, regular, consistent training is not achieved by having discipline, but rather is the state of being disciplined. The person goes out of habit, and not because of watching the Rocky montage prior and feeling motivated.

 

I wouldn't consider an unconscious choice as a choice. A choice affords one to be able to choose, and an automatic, unconscious action does not give one enough time to actually pick between A or B - it is merely a reaction, and that is what conditioning builds upon. An unconscious choice being considered an actual choice is tantamount to a drunk / roofied person's consent being considered actual consent. Yes, humans are capable of rational decisions and willpower and everything, but as interrogators know well, individual choice is an illusion. Eventually, everybody breaks. (I'm a bit of a determinist.)

 

Discipline in the military is more about fear. A unit that is afraid of its leader will be considered "disciplined". Discipline ensures that they complete their training to a certain level of proficiency, which eventually translates to combat power. But it is love, not fear, that makes a soldier fight hard in combat. "It won't be long before they fear my spears more than your whips." (300) This was the principle behind the Sacred Band of Thebes. You can't discipline your way into unit cohesion; unit cohesion is built. (Whatever happened to Pat Tillman?) Probably no man will ever jump on a grenade because of discipline; every single one who did it did so out of love for his blood brothers. Discipline is about the fundamentals. Keep your sight picture, keep a stable position, breathe, squeeze. Soldiers engage 38 targets out of 40 in garrison. Then they go to Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US has fired an estimated 250'000 rounds for every one insurgent killed. (Where is the discipline in that?)

 

1. Maybe he believed it. But I don't think Wilde is the kind of person who troubles himself with trying to be not immoral. Maybe he believes it, and tries to influence people just to be an immoral asshole.

 

2. Knowledge is not influence. Rather, the interpretation of knowledge is. It is unavoidable to impart unbiased knowledge, and therefore I try to minimize it by usually only offering mine when asked. (And I usually end it with a disclaimer.)

 

3. (I ignored this one. I currently don't believe in nor comprehend the function of a so-called "soul". Only a few people have soul.)

 

4. The context was a young Dorian Gray sticking to and being strongly influenced by Lord Henry Wotton (who is, what we in modern times would call, a douchebag), which is rather ironic, with him preaching against influence. But from how I see it, that was the whole point. Allow yourself to be exposed to influences, but be aware of how influences affect you. There is no such thing as a "self" as we are merely a collection of the experiences we have had. A bit like with Socrates, philosopher extraordinaire and defiler of young boys, keep learning, but always know that you will never know anything.