A couple years ago I knew only a couple people who talked about Wim Hof. Both of them were pretty far outside mainstream: One, my brother Gage, was then a circus performer and musician with a penchant for cold water swimming; the other, my housemate Hunter, was–and still is–a gymnastics coach and electronic music producer who’d been inching closer and closer to supersaiyan since we’d met.
Both were intrigued by Hof’s methods but far more intrigued by what he represented: A stark departure from our Zeitgeist’s obsession with glass ceilings and inborn limitations. Where our culture so often emphasizes different forms of genetic predetermination as opposed to personal agency, Hof’s message was a simple counter: “No, look what I can do. Now breathe right, and look what you can do.”
Now the guy’s gone real famous, real fast. Now, this isn’t gonna be another article hyping up Hof himself or the potential of his methods. (Though I will say I’ve dabbled in his breathing exercises and they work quickly and dramatically, and I’ve seen my brother become able to take hour-long winter swims.) This is just gonna be a quick, “Why?”
Like the method itself, the reason it’s reached such heights of popularity is deceptively simple: We like the idea of free will. No one ever talked joyfully about a glass ceiling they’re subjected to. No one sees genetic predetermination as a source of optimism. At least no one I’ve ever talked to does.
No, we’d rather not believe these things exist, but their existence has become something to get “woke” to, a “hard truth” we’ve got to accept.
There’s the thing. Despite all our bandying about of words like “empirical” and “reasonable,” the old mantra that “the truth hurts, so bear it” still holds tremendous weight in the U.S. Accepting difficult truths is seen as one of the cornerstones of growing-up.
The problem is that we’re not as discerning as we should be. Rather than accepting only harsh truths, we tend to accept harsh things in general more readily than optimistic things. Pessimism is in style, and it keeps us from realizing our potentials.
So the soaring popularity of Wim Hof is more closely related to the soaring popularity of revolutionary communism than we think: In the same way that it’s trendy to accept the harsh idea that money will always rule humanity while we would rather think that people can work for others’ benefit, it’s trendy to accept a greater degree of physical limitations than our physical bodies actually have.
But there’s some strong part of us that wants to think otherwise. We want to think money won’t always take precedent over human lives, and we want to think that we can hold our breath for absurdly long times, take casual swims around icebergs and breathe out diseases.
So we can take a couple important things from Wim Hof other than his clearly effective breathing and cold-conditioning methods: Harsh “truths” are not always truths, and, as with anything else, it’s irresponsible to accept them as truth unless we test them thoroughly.
And even if they do appear true after our first rounds of testing, Earth appeared truly flat for a long-ass time. Likewise, it’s impossible to pick up a plane with your teeth until you do it.
