Reseña del libro "Running Barefoot for Human Survival (en Inglés)"
The planet is literally burning, but not in danger, while we humans are in danger of extinction. We’re indeed sitting on a mega time bomb fueled by frantic consumption, and the timer is ticking faster and sounding louder with each passing day, because the planet can’t ensure the survival of almost eight billion people in the blind search for happiness through overconsumption, which can also result in serious financial problems for some people. Fortunately, we have a free, natural, sustainable, healthy, planet-friendly and highly efficient alternative to achieve the great human happiness billions of dollars can’t buy. That’s barefoot long-distance running, which also means heading back to our roots to find reason and meaning in life, for free. Since Homo sapiens is a tropical species, the cold is the only real challenge for our naked feet. If we keep hiding the head in the sand, the mega-bomb will inevitably end up exploding under our backsides. And before that fateful end, we will likely suffer from countless human tragedies, which will be more devastating and more frequent than those of recent years, such as fires in Australia and California; suffocating heat waves in many countries; islands and coastal regions swept away by storms, hurricanes or typhoons, etc. “We have to save the planet!” is the unfortunate motto shared by almost everyone, including many climate activists and the United Nations. Therefore, the UN has been organizing a yearly conference on global warming since 1995, with, expectedly, disappointing results. So there we have individuals of an endangered animal species, who are pretending to have the power to save the planet that gave us life, which is more than 4.5 billion years old, and which will survive us for a long time. We’re born to hunt for food, procreate and live naturally happily, not to indulge in frantic consumption for having fun or finding meaning in life, because this inevitably fuels a permanent frustration, which leads not only to overconsumption and global warming, but also to the dreaded chronic diseases, such as stress, depression, insomnia, fatigue, overweight, obesity, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, erectile dysfunction, certain cancers, loss of mobility or cognitive ability, etc., against which doctors and drugs are proving increasingly powerless. This means that those responsible for the global warming and the chronic diseases are neither politicians, companies, producing countries nor other scapegoats, but the consumers. Moreover, three million years of human evolution has created an impeccable and highly efficient musculoskeletal system for barefoot running. Abebe Bikila, the first barefoot runner of a marathon, won the race and broke the world. Unfortunately, he afterwards agreed to wear sneakers, and he eventually became the legendary victim of running shoes, when he suffered the serious injuries that terminated his marathon career. Like him, an increasing number of people have to stop running, because of injuries to their feet, legs or spine. Shoes are foreign objects that significantly disrupt the functioning of the musculoskeletal system. Injured or exhausted finishers are surprised to meet a barefoot runner, who completed a marathon without any injury, pain or fatigue. And most of them are convinced that my feet must have thick horny layers, as hard as iron, when the opposite is true. Current humans actually should do two complementary jobs for our survival: (a) the one to bring home the bacon; (b) our ancestral job, that is barefoot long-distance running to stay healthy, by preventing the incurable chronic diseases and running injury, and happy thanks to the natural release of endorphins, and to stop global warming, by regaining our brain control, becoming humbler and more united, and above all, by consuming just what we really need and nothing else.
