I usually think about separating mind and body because I live near Silicon Valley, where multiple entrepreneurs plan to live forever on the Internet, and the rest of us are keen for them to shed their bodies and be confined there. Today my thoughts on the subject are inspired by one of Rebecca Solnit’s essays in her collection about walking, Wanderlust.

Once upon a time, our bodies were useful. We used them to travel, either on foot, or perhaps combined with the body of a horse, with or without a carriage. We used them to haul water and to harvest or hunt food. We used them for recreation, including social walking and contemplative walking.

These things took time, and time was related to distance, giving us an intuitive understand of spatial relationships. As we moved through space, we noticed changes in our surroundings, connecting us to the natural rhythms of nature and evolution of our communities. Using our bodies to perform work taught us self-sufficiency, how to acquire water or food.

Today, the first world portion of our species mostly does not use our bodies for transport or work. We drive or fly, listening to music or browsing as we do. Our bodies linger in climate-controlled, interior environments. Understanding and appreciation of the natural world, our neighbors’ situations, and the methods of basic survival can still be sought, but can also be ignored.

The positive result is, no one is prevented from finding food, or visiting family, or enjoying entertainment because her or his body is too frail, or stiff, or unreliable. The negative result is, we think of our bodies as less useful, or even disposable. The weird result is, one of our drive-to activities is a gym, a climate-controlled, interior environment in which energy-consuming machines guide us to emulate the motions of farm chores or of moving over the landscape in order to maintain the function of our bodies.

Crazy? Well, once the market decided the work of the mind was more valuable than the work of the body, many of us tried to get that sort of work, noticed we were now getting fat and weak, and created the gym. Marketeers also learned how to create food and entertainment that engage our primitive reactions to sugar/fat and movement/change, which led us to overeat and to sit, staring at screens.

When we underuse our bodies we start to undervalue them, like those Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Our physical senses enable our interactions with other people, cement our connections to the planet, connect us to other creatures, and allow us to experience our environments one step at a time, thinking and breathing all the while. We all have the same body John Muir did, one that can walk across continents.