Gymnasium (school)

Health culture is huge and growing. This is great! People value exercise more and now fast food includes chipotle and sweetgreen instead of just mcdonalds and burger king. But I ask for more, specifically on exercise.

Culture around exercise today feels transactional. We do exercise, and in return we get improvements to health or appearance. I would like to see a shift towards the belief in physical excellence as being virtuous, that pursuing your peak performance is a part of what people just ought to do.

The greeks had this concept of kalokagathia, which was roughly that the ideal of a person brings many different aspects of virtue into a coherent whole. Education's goal was to make a well-rounded citizen, and incorporated physical, mental, and artistic training. Classical gymnasiums (mentioned) were places where people would train physically as well as intellectually. The physical aspect was partly to train young men to defend the city, but excellence was also seen as virtuous, to honor the gods.