Are people getting more feeble?

[Cornfed]

Just as we know we have gone over the hump of peak intelligence and people are getting stupider, it seems that people are getting weaker. I am not so much referring to how much they can lift for short periods, but to the inherent tendon strength and inertia in their bodies, which seems to be decreasing.

I say this because I recently did a holds and restraints course for the first time in the many years since I did one as a teenager. Things have changed. It used to be that in order to reliably restrain a healthy man without beating the crap out of him you would need first strike him to distract him and then complete a precise sequence of movements or put on a strong hold like a sleeper hold. (This is assuming that he was bigger and stronger than you, as such courses should assume). Now it seems to be possible to cut to the chase and eliminate a lot of intermediary moves. That works now. In particular, in the past it was taken as a given that un-reinforced wrist-locks would not work reliably enough to be usable. For example, even though I am small, I am strong, and the average person could not put me in a wrist-lock, even if I were not resisting. But now wrist-locks do work and they are used with other holds constantly by the people who need to use such things. The inherent inertial weakness of most people makes training to restrain them much easier. I was paired with mental health medical orderlies in the training, who were huge muscular thugs in their early 20s. I could easily apply effective wrist-locks to them. Sure they weren't resisting as much as they would in reality, but in the past guys like them would have been completely invulnerable.

The disturbing thing is that this has happened in less than a generation. We really seem to be going to crap as a species. What is causing this? The diet?

[Jester]

The disturbing thing is that this has happened in less than a generation. We really seem to be going to crap as a species. What is causing this? The diet?

Maybe you're just getting MEANER, Cornfed.

JK

Seriously, good thread here, thanks for starting it. I've certainly seen more EMOTIONAL weakness among under 40 men. But lets stay on topic... I'll read with interest if anyone else has a comment.

Certainly more men than ever have six-packs yada yada. But your grandad did NOT have a six-pack, yet he could demolish most of your friends.

[onethousandknives]

I think it's two things. Passivity in the face of aggression, which isn't really based on muscular or tendon strength, but the brain's fight or flight response, and most people now have more of a flight response than a fight response. Why? Partially because physical fighting or horseplay isn't allowed in school anymore, I think. You can get arrested for a schoolyard fight now, whereas little schoolyard fights were just assumed part of life (at least this is my impression being in an oldschool Christian school for elementary school) unless bones were broken or whatever. As a side note, I think this is messing up the psychology of younger people as now people cannot physically fight each other, so natural physical strength is being made obsolete and boys are made to handle their problems like girls, using psychological tactics and gossip. So "the strongest" boys are actually bypassed more or less, and the evolutionary advantage goes to the boy most skilled in psychological manipulation and gossip. But anyway... With the fights though, the neurological response to someone touching you wrongly is developed back then as a kid, so thus you can't learn to apply tension to the muscles and think fast enough "hey, this is a real fight, I should do something." That's my rationale for what you've observed.

Not speaking of physical fights, but yeah, it is really surprising how people are so broken now. There's so many people who have trouble walking even. One reason Japan seemed really cool to me is that the old people there aren't 300lbs and half dead. They still walk around town and do whatever and then when they die they just drop dead. They don't spend 30 years of their life being artificially kept alive and living basically half a life and unable to do simple daily tasks, taking all kinds of medications that costs thousands of dollars, and writing it off as "oh well, that's just life!" like older people do here.

I personally don't think it's quite on the level of genetic weakness or something quite yet, it's lifestyle related and I think still reversible, but it could become a permanent part of genetics in another few generations, people having no "fight" response anymore.

[Wolfeye]

onethousandknives: Spot-on! Don't know if it would become a genetic trait or anything, but for shit-sure it could become a cultural thing- as it already is, to an extent. There was a high-schooler that got arrested for writing a fictional story about shooting a dinosaur with a gun & another one where an eighth-grader got arrested for wearing a shirt that supported the NRA! Sound like bad signs?

[onethousandknives]

One issue too could be water fluoridation or fluorinated drugs (fluoxetine.) http://fluoridealert.org/studies/brain03/ It's proven pretty well that fluoride will affect your reaction and visual spatial skills.

The results of the present experiment suggest that the effects of high doses of fluoride on the behavior development of the offspring are visible primarily as slight delays in response times, particularly with regard to motor and coordination function and well as muscle strength.

[Wolfeye]

Didn't know about that! You know, another idea is too much estrogen in... well, everything. A woman's not really meant to have more than she already does, but a man's not even supposed to have that much. Certainly has adverse health effects, one of them seems to be weight gain.

[Cornfed]

But anyway... With the fights though, the neurological response to someone touching you wrongly is developed back then as a kid, so thus you can't learn to apply tension to the muscles and think fast enough "hey, this is a real fight, I should do something." That's my rationale for what you've observed.

I think you may be on to something there.

[jtest28]

Ive noticed this too but I noticed it on myself when I started eating GMO foods again. So I think its an increase level of overall inflamation that's making people feel more feeble.

[Cornfed]

Ive noticed this too but I noticed it on myself when I started eating GMO foods again. So I think its an increase level of overall inflamation that's making people feel more feeble.

So what could be done to counteract this tendency in ourselves and further exploit it in others?