While slouching may not be sinful, it can create an atmosphere of disregard, carelessness and sloth. It favors bad habits that may facilitate vice. Hence, people can combat these horrible consequences by living up to standards of propriety that favor effort and consideration in a well-ordered society.
One great tragedy of radical individualism was the loss of all the social skills and practices that help make living together in society more agreeable, uplifting and, virtuous.
The Revolution of the Sixties was not just a complete change of sexual mores. It also overturned all the social manners and practices that kept everything upright and proper. Things like posture were swept away as superficial and burdensome.
If the primary purpose of life is to “do your own thing,” what difference does it make in how you appear before others? If the supreme rule is “if it feels good, do it,” what is wrong with slouching if it feels better and more “natural” than standing erect? If there is no practical benefit from standing up straight, let everyone decide what will be done.
Individualism lets each one invent an autonomous narrative: “It’s none of your business if others stand straight or slouch.”
It Does Make a Difference
Such logic rules the postmodern world. However, like so many other myths that have dominated the culture since the sixties, the one that posture does not matter is falling apart.
Science is proving that how one stands does make a difference. People are not autonomous islands. How one behaves when with others can have both personal and social consequences.
Defining Posture
Posture can be defined as the proper positioning and carriage of the limbs and the body as a whole. When standing, posture counteracts the pull of gravity, which constantly pulls the body downward and out of balance.
An erect and balanced bearing facilitates the efficiency and ease of bodily movement. It creates a center of gravity that relieves stress and strain and maintains balance. Because it must work against gravitational forces, good posture also takes a lot of effort.
For this reason, parents and educators took care to instill good posture habits in children. They would constantly tell them to stand or sit up straight as a proper way to present themselves and feel better.
Good Posture From an Individualist Outlook
Numerous studies support the benefits of good posture. Ironically, some arguments are precisely from an individualist perspective of self-interest.
Thus, if the sole criterion for doing things is the pursuit of happiness, the studies say that bad posture will not deliver this happiness. It is bad for a person’s physical and emotional health.
This egoistic outlook focuses only on self, but it is compelling. It is a good starting point from which more social and moral reasons can be broached later.
The Physical Benefits of Good Posture
After generations of slouching, more health officials are saying that posture is not a look-good, feel-good thing. However, it does offer numerous health benefits. For example, a recent one-page article in The Wall Street Journal reports that those with good posture will have better circulation, respiration, digestion, and bladder functions.
Physical therapists note that maintaining a healthy posture places the body in a state of equilibrium that is proper to its nature. There is nothing unnatural about good posture. However, it can feel “unnatural” because it requires effort and constant attention. That effort, like all worthwhile things, allows the body to reach its full potential by working with it, not against it, to achieve the best possible positions for movement.
This policy has long-term benefits. A lifetime of good postural habits can help individuals cope better with the decay of the body. It keeps all the weight directly on the feet where it should be and avoids all sorts of compressing, straining, and stretching that make life difficult and painful.
Bad posture may feel more “natural” since it takes no effort, but it deforms the body and can have horrible and painful consequences, especially as people age.
For those individualists who only worship the god of good health, these physical reasons for maintaining good posture should be compelling reasons to sit or stand up straight and listen.
Enhancing Mental and Emotional Health
However, good posture is not limited to better physical health. It can have an immense impact on emotional and mental health. These reasons should also interest individualists, as posture focuses on the self and involves personal development and enrichment.
A 2023 research effort covering twenty years found a significant bi-directional connection between depression and a slouched posture. Slumped-down people not only look depressed, they often are depressed. Standing erect helps.
Another study showed that people who remain upright in stressful situations have higher self-esteem, less anxiety, and better moods. They are in better positions to confront the vicissitudes of life.
Many medical scholars believe that good posture increases a sense of vitality, improves cognitive performance, facilitates speech, and avoids self-absorption. The erect person will experience better well-being than the slouching one.
Thus, those individualists seeking a more spiritualized reason to embrace good posture find an answer in these mental and emotional benefits.
However, all the above reasons are the least important. Other aspects of life also need to be considered.
A Social Dimension
Good posture has a social dimension that most individualists neither realize nor care about. The proper carriage of the body has an impact on those around them. Posture sends messages that can uplift or discourage. Body language is a reality that often speaks more and louder than the spoken word.
Humans are social beings made to live together in society. Thus, there is constant communication. Posture can help, comfort or inspire others. Correct posture should be maintained for the sake of one’s neighbor, not only oneself. It is an act of consideration for others.
A policeman’s or soldier’s disciplined and erect stance conveys a sense of security and confidence. A teacher’s or speaker’s stately presence can communicate certainty and passion. The upright posture of those directing things is a sign of competency and control.
Social interaction in which everyone makes an effort to show the best side of human nature makes life more agreeable and attractive. It sends the message that a person cares about another and acts accordingly. Even the Wall Street Journal recognizes that good posture makes for better business.
A Forgotten Moral Dimension
However, a higher reason for posture beckons. There is also a moral dimension about posture that is all but forgotten in today’s egoistic society. Traditionally, maintaining good posture is part of the virtue of modesty.
Modesty does not only consist of properly covering the body. It is the virtue that safeguards a person’s dignity in association with others and thus helps make society civil and harmonious.
The virtue includes presenting the body properly and beautifully, as God intended. It forbids sloppiness of appearance, purposely shoddy clothes, uncouthness, and deliberately poor posture.
While slouching may not be sinful, it can create an atmosphere of disregard, carelessness and sloth. It favors bad habits that may facilitate vice. Hence, people can combat these horrible consequences by living up to standards of propriety that favor effort and consideration in a well-ordered society.
The Opinion of Saint Thomas
Saint Thomas Aquinas states that individuals are immodest when they are unduly negligent in their appearance and fail to present themselves in accordance with their state in life. They are also immodest when they seek to attract attention to themselves by showing a lack of concern for presenting themselves well (see Summa, II–II, q. 169, a. 1).
Thus, modesty applies not only to posture but also to the manner of speech, dress, gestures and general presentation of the person. All these things provide an atmosphere for the practice of virtue and love of neighbor. They allow a man, for example, to present himself as a temple of the Holy Spirit made in the image and likeness of God. He is ordered, dignified and upright. All of society profits from his behavior and sacrifice.
Why Do So Few Have Good Posture?
If maintaining good posture offers so many benefits, why do so few follow this path? The health benefits alone should merit some consideration. Mental well-being should be an incentive in this age of loneliness and stress.
However, most people prefer the opposite because the culture preaches a message of unrestraint, comfort and less effort. They embrace these bad habits. The celebrity models proposed for society portray fashionable individuals as lacking posture, and many imitate them. Individualism turns everything subjective so that people might live according to their disorderly passions. No wonder there is so much lack of dignity today and so much unrest.
Indeed, things like posture matter. Sooner or later, people pay the consequences in a society that becomes unbearable. Society abandons these civilizing influences at its own risk. People need to sit up staight and take note.
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The featured image is “Growing girls are very apt to slouch” (1918), from “Scouting for girls, adapted from Girl guiding,” by Robert Baden-Powell, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons