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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 6, 2016 - 08:46pm PT
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In the early 60's my brother and I took to hiking with ice axes and insteps in the iced canyons of upstate NY parks. Those places were unbelievably beautiful. If the internet had existed and I had seen ice climbing versions of ST at the time, it never would have happened. People today aren't different. It's way more serious than that.
We are mutants.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Bill Murray and a few of his friends were doing ridiculously hard and scary ice climbs in unbelievably beautiful places in Scotland in the late 1930s. If the internet had existed then, and he had seen ice climbing versions of ST at the time, would it have happened?
What if he'd been able to see you setting new standards on rock? Would he have thought of you as a mutant?
People today aren't different. It's way more fun than that.
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2016 - 09:29pm PT
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I did not set anything. It was all just the same, Fun. Today we get all twisted up in our shorts about nonsense. Like what is Trad. Who is doing it and who isn't. Pick any thread. Barrels of nonsense.
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WyoRockMan
climber
Grizzlyville, WY
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I might be missing the point... EDIT: Barrels of nonsense, agreed. Sorry about below.
I took an intro ice climbing trip to the Genesis area in Hyalite my freshman year of college. A trip led by the one and only Dr. Pat Callis. As a late registrant to the trip, no boots in my size were available. I figured since we were skiing in from the reservoir anyway, I'd just use my ski boots/AT setup (Ramers). The skin in was fine, the ice was fat, it was cold. Really cold as I remember. The straight shafted tools with too tight of leashes restricted my blood flow, I had the barfies by the time I finished my first miserable lap. Somehow, despite the cold, liquid water had soaked my arms. This is the dumbest activity in the world. I'd rather ski frozen avalanche debris. And so it was, I relegated ice climbing into the dustbin of moronic hobbies.
...
Fast forward 20 years, add in the wild visuals from the internet, upgraded technology and presto, I was talked into giving it another whirl. This time I found it sublime and enjoyable. As if the polarity of the ice caps had flipped, I now prefer to swing the tools over skiing. Unless it is a big powder day. And only one thing tops that.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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One minute we're talking about Ondra, the next minute we're defining trad,.... again...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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I hear you, John. When I began in 1953 I bought a pair of JCHiggins work boots, had red Brahmani lug souls put on them, bought fifty feet of natural fiber rope and had a whale of a time in north Georgia scrambling on the limestone bluffs. Naivete is precious and cannot be reproduced.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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One minute we're talking about Ondra, the next minute we're defining trad,.... again...
Wait. I thought we were talking about Werner. And jstan setting stannards. And fun by the barrel as we climbed ice in ski boots and rock in work boots. Although Gill cheated. Getting special purpose soles put on your work boots is aid. Which is not trad. Unless the bolts are at least twenty meters apart. I read that in a thread on Supertopo so it must be true.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Geez, and I thought I was badazz climbing at Joshua Tree in my Keds in '63.
I was decades late to the partay!
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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have fun ole timers...
i for one look forward to some more stories once you settle back down into the ole rockin' chairs...
sincerely. :)
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2016 - 10:53pm PT
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Now that's better. We are getting into life. In JT I had a neighbor who played football for Kansas in the 30's. Really big dude, and interesting - but dangerous. I always took visitors over for happy hour to meet him, but made the mistake of taking two lady type visitors over on consecutive weekends. What does Lee say right off the bat?
"You are not the same girl John had here last weekend."
(By the way, you are not free to draw conclusions from this story.)
Moose:
My email is still broken. Beginning to rather like it that way.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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We are all products of our time, none of us can go back, things change, and the activities that called to us may seem to have taken unrecognizable forms.
We had another thread about "would you get into climbing as it is now," and I thought about it and concluded that yes, I would. Don't get me wrong, I miss the solitude and simplicity of the truly bygone days, when the landscape seemed infinite, even the smallest crags were rife with as-yet undiscoverd possibilities, and there seemed to be only a few of us.
I've been climbing in the Gunks for almost 60 years now. Sometimes I think John would weep to see what has happened to the Trapps. And yet, and yet...I get on an easy route I first did as a teenager, heart pounding and brain churning, goldline rope hanging down too far to the last piton---and now it's a walk in the park. I walk past some of the harder routes of my youth, now beyond my capabilities, and smile watching some modern climbers dogging the daylights out of them.
Back on the rock, I reach up and curl my not-nearly-as-strong-as-they-used-to-be fingers around the same incut edge my boyish hand grasped more than a half-century ago...and I feel at home. Much is not the way it was, and that surely includes me, but that little hold hasn't changed a bit, and all the things I loved so long ago are still right there on that rock face.
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steveA
Trad climber
Wolfeboro, NH
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rgold,
Your last paragraph is pure gold!
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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If the internet had existed and I had seen ice climbing versions of ST at the time, it never would have happened.
Just about everybody on this forum is a better climber than me. My best has never ever approached the standard of what I've seen people on the Internets doing. It's never bothered me a bit. Walking around Josh and climbing all those 5.4 to 5.6 routes has always been a blast. Some of the best times in my life. And leading the occasional 5.8, what a hoot! Going back to camp and listening about the .10s, .11s and .12s everyone else did was OK with me.
You know all those crappy Todd Swain routes? I bet only Todd Swain has done more of those than me!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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How come Richie gets all the cool posts?
I seldom get tired of philosophic discussion, but it's basically not productive and gets bogged down here in forum garbage.
It's just good to sit here and know that chocks replaced pitons and cams replaced chocks, while ten points weren't good enough and twelve points were better.
It's also good to sit here and contemplate what things would be like with no Sticht and not a single quick-draw.
Or chalk!
Or sticky rubber!
Or longer and lighter and stronger ropes!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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T’would be interesting to be able to separate fact from the color of memory. But that seems impossible. What all of us are left with is our thoughts about our memories. How beautiful they are.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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It's true.
When I think hard enough about the coming zombie apocalypse, I realize that there's no way that I'm ready for it! Not like I was before cams were invented, anyway. :-)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Truth is life's just way too short and most of it's wasted on the young. IMHO.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Our memories of suffering are affected disproportionately (i.e. almost exclusively) by the peak and final intensity of suffering, with almost no consideration of the duration of suffering. Our remembering self remembers differently than our experiencing self experiences.
But then moving into the future, our remembering self is the one who calls the shots - creates our beliefs, and decides what our experiencing self should experience - based on our "memories."
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
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First impressions are always the most memorable. As Tolkien put it - not referring to climbing - it's "like elf-children in the deeps ot time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn."
And we can never go back, except in memory.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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T’would be interesting to be able to separate fact from the color of memory. But that seems impossible
How very true. Yesterday I watched the movie Race, about Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics in 1936. I have a vivid memory of driving through Hyde Park in the fall of 1958 and waving at Owens as he stood at a street corner greeting drivers, apparently running for some political office - at least that's what memory tells me. On checking the internet I cannot find any reference to him running for office, although he was in the Chicago area at roughly that time. He did support youth groups, so maybe that's what it was about. I'll never know.
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Gunkie
Trad climber
Valles Marineris
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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Nice Thread, great comments.....need to wrap my brain around it to comment.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Try to always live in the present...not easy, not by a long shot.
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2016 - 07:16pm PT
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I have one thing to say to those who think memory is a very dark mirror.
Poppycock!
I was hanging out around the MITOC climbers because they seemed very interesting. One day Willie Crowther looked up from his noontime game of GO and said, "Anyone want to do a 5.8?" This was decades before Eddie Murphy jumped up and down in Shrek 1 saying, " Me! Take me!" when Shrek proposed to take on the dragon. That's precisely what I did in response to Willie's question."Me! Take me!" It proved to be a great chase for the rest of that first summer. I led MF and Retribution before snow began to fly.
As for living in the present, there is no alternative. Today the Clean Team held a special work session to clean the weeds off Turtle Island in downtown JT. My goal was to start trucking all the bags to Landers before 3PM. The landfill locks the gate at 4:30 PM.
Made it with 30 minutes to spare!
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TwistedCrank
climber
Released into general population, Idaho
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JGill - I do believe you are thinking of Ralph Metcalf, who was a teammate of Jesse Owens and an Olympian in 1932 as well as 1936. Democratic congressman in Illinois until the 1970s.
And let us not forget the fine buildering problems on the outbuildings in Jackson Park that, I believe, were first graced by your hands. These grippy problems had some reknown among UofC students who knew a thing or two about the history of climbing, in case you did not know.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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What do you know? I always thought that song lyric was, "Same as it never was."
Anyway, got the pink route today, after quite a chase, so am happy.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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TC, you must be right. Metcalf was a character in the movie also. I'm fairly certain it was Jesse Owens who was standing on the corner, for a big to-do was being made about it. He was campaigning for his buddy. Thanks!
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 16, 2016 - 11:54am PT
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Rgold:Much is not the way it was, and that surely includes me, but that little hold hasn't changed a bit
This was one of the things about pin damage that I found most compelling in the late 60's. Ed may be right now when he says the migration away from pins was probably inevitable. It did not feel that way at the time. The usual expressions on "reduced freedom' were common. Above all else I thought it would be tragic if pins were rejected but only after destruction of the area had gone to completion. Urgency. Urgency. Urgency.
There was another factor, to my way of thinking. Dan Smiley and the Trust had been wonderful hosts to us for decades. Had I decided to say to Dan, "I have enjoyed myself wonderfully, but now that you have a problem, I am outta here."
If we all had just gone, each of us would have had to grow beards. We would not again have been able to look into a mirror.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Dec 16, 2016 - 02:40pm PT
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...in the iced canyons of upstate NY parks Ha! Too funny! A friend and I went sneaking into Watkins Glen in upstate New York during the winter of 1999, without any ice gear at all. Utterly terrifying experience, trying to traverse the trails but not to slide and bounce down into the icy creek below.
Maybe I'll try to dig up some of my own photos from that trip.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Dec 16, 2016 - 02:56pm PT
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This was one of the things about pin damage that I found most compelling in the late 60's. Ed may be right now when he says the migration away from pins was probably inevitable. It did not feel that way at the time. The usual expressions on "reduced freedom' were common. Above all else I thought it would be tragic if pins were rejected but only after destruction of the area had gone to completion. Urgency. Urgency. Urgency.
There was another factor, to my way of thinking. Dan Smiley and the Trust had been wonderful hosts to us for decades. Had I decided to say to Dan, "I have enjoyed myself wonderfully, but now that you have a problem, I am outta here."
I know I keep saying it, but however inevitable the transition to nuts may seem now, one of the main reasons it happened was because Stannard was a visionary who was prepared to advocate, at his own expense, for the outcomes he foresaw as saving the climbing environment.
And so it has transpired that John has been granted beardlessness, with all the rights and privileges pertaining to it. Many of the rest of us, who followed in his footsteps but did not lead, seem to have acquired beards, perhaps because our reflections are in need of a little softening.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 16, 2016 - 03:56pm PT
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Donini says:
Try to always live in the present...not easy, not by a long shot.
Isn't the present constituted by your current feelings and what is currently going on in your mind? If you are thinking of something in the past isn't that what is presently in your mind and makes the present for you? It seems everyone is living in the present. It is that some just choose to dwell within on whatever and others have a list of sort of to do's that they sometimes act on.
It seems awareness [which is in always in the present?] is knowing what you are thinking/feeling about right now.
We weave the present out of the here and now of feelings mixed with all we bring mentally [past memories, unsolved problems, thought of the future etc ] to that moment of nowness. The thisness and suchness of everything?
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Dec 16, 2016 - 04:17pm PT
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It's not the liar's paradox, it's figurative language, Dingus. Some people tend to spend the present dwelling on what they did in the past and others are more concerned about doing something right now. Donini is recommending the second option.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 16, 2016 - 04:46pm PT
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those that spend the present dwelling on what they did in the past
are also
doing something right now.
and doing such constitutes interacting with the present.
I think Donini has some other idea about, try to always live in the present ...
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WyoRockMan
climber
Grizzlyville, WY
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Dec 16, 2016 - 04:50pm PT
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It seems awareness [which is in always in the present?] is knowing what you are thinking/feeling about right now.
Due to the lag of our neural processing network, our awareness of the present would actually be in the past relative to a given event. But what’s a few nanosecond(s) between friends.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 16, 2016 - 05:00pm PT
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wyorockman,
Could we all go to Grover's Corners and have empathy for Emily in the last scene?
I think Donini has some other idea about, try to always live in the present ...
But in the closing act the stage manager shouts,"NO"
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Dec 16, 2016 - 05:11pm PT
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At age 68, I'm enjoying living in the present, just fine. Life is darn good!
However, the climbing, white-water rafting, & party adventures of my youth & later years are still vivid (if not perfectly accurate) in my mind. I enjoy writing down & sharing those stories too. Idaho magazine has actually paid me for 13 of those stories in the last few years & I have a prestigious collection of rejection letters from national publications. I now want to publish a book of my Idaho adventures.
After an adult lifetime in sales & marketing, I don't consider it odd if I embellish a story to make it better.
And following pleasant rock climbs up to 5.9 & leading up to 5.7 still is a hell of a lot of fun for me.
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WyoRockMan
climber
Grizzlyville, WY
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Dec 16, 2016 - 05:12pm PT
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Some could, some may chose not too.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Dec 16, 2016 - 05:24pm PT
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Dingus here's a list of things to do right now
(1) Dwell on what you did in the past.
(2) Climb a new route in the Himalayas.
(3) Cook dinner.
(4) Go on a walk with your dogs
(5) Argue with someone on the internet.
(6) Play the guitar
The list could be longer.
When I say "Live in the present" I mean do something on the list that doesn't include (1), even though (1) is something you do in the present. It's figurative, not literal langausge. Get it?
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 16, 2016 - 05:38pm PT
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yanqui,
I understand,
there’s layers and layers of nonsense
you want to poke at only one?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Dec 16, 2016 - 05:38pm PT
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Overlap with the serious and astute thread What is Mind?.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 16, 2016 - 06:06pm PT
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Wilder tells us of Emily returning from the grave,
Deeply saddened by everything she failed to notice while alive
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 16, 2016 - 07:05pm PT
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You guys are so generous to encourage me to talk about the present, I can't let it get by but I
do know enough to reward you using photos.
Tonight I talked to Emily, a contributor who has a group sponsoring a "Toddler Party" in January
to pick up trash in Yucca Mesa. We hope to get some of the doddering old folks from the Clean
Team to discover how hard it is to keep up with toddlers.
Last Wednesday as a special project the Team cleared the weeds off Turtle Island (more properly
Tortoise Island) in the center of JT and in return we got a donation from the Rotary Club of
$100 along with a coupon for tools from Harbor Freight. We get to go tool shopping!
One of our people drove down a trail we cleaned up two years ago and found it has remained
pristine. When we were working the area in the first photo a resident drove up saying, "I use this
road all the time and I believed nothing could be done about the trash, I told him that question
would be answered that very day. And it was:
Completion:
The last photo shows we know how to have fun.
I am inordinately proud of this particular dump because after cutting up the hot tub with a chain
saw I got almost the whole thing into one truck load. The attendant at the land fill was amazed. Take my word for it. That's a tough crowd to amaze.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 16, 2016 - 07:18pm PT
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Jgill: . . . serious and astute . . . .
You do us honors over there, John.
It’s a quiet little piece of real estate where we argue and talk about nothing . . . which is what here and now is really about. (Wink, wink, nod, nod.)
Nice post, jstan. Good on ya. :-)
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Dec 16, 2016 - 07:45pm PT
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I'm always amazed at how much Jstan contributes to the tribe,
and the rest of humanity.
I'm humbled.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Dec 16, 2016 - 08:21pm PT
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jstan & all posting here:
Thank you for your thoughts & adventures.
jstan! I am most impressed with your clean-up work in your area. Big Congrats on that work!
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Dec 16, 2016 - 10:39pm PT
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I guess my way of thinking about it is in a probabilistic sense.
We don't form beliefs/decisions/behaviors based (solely) on an analysis of objective probabilities derived from the information/observations/experiments available in the present.
We interpret our current observations/experiences through conditional probability, where the conditional prior probabilities are set by prior experiences, memories, etc. -
the learned associations and neural connections and functioning that we've developed in our life's experience.
But those memories aren't accurate. When we ran the experiment/experience in the past, we observed p = 0.3, but when we remember it in the present, we might remember it as p = 0.25, or p = 0.35, and then we use that value in our current calculations.
Including our calculations about what we would have done in the past. But back then, if we had thought about ice climbing, for example, we would have used the p = 0.3 value that we had just measured (maybe that would have sounded to us like "wow this stuff is fun!, even if I am afraid of dying") not the p = 0.25 value that we now remember measuring.
I guess my point is that, IMHO, we do the math on our past selves using inaccurate data. Maybe not that differently than we do the math on other people, using our inaccurately self-confirmation biased data.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Dec 17, 2016 - 03:18am PT
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R gold is an amazeing writer and a good sole...
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 17, 2016 - 04:46am PT
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There are many takes we can conjure up on what Donini advises, ...try to always live in the present ... actually means.
But when Emily returns to observe what she was like as a 12 year she has added many layers [ layers and layers of nonsense?] and she is not constrained to be focused like the 12 year she sees. Hence she notices everything she failed to notice while alive. I doubt whether her observation is really everything.
Csikszentmihalyi has another take on living in the present.
"Each person allocates his or her limited attention either by focusing it intentionally like a beam of energy -- as do E. and R. in the previous examples -- or by diffusing it in desultory random movements. The shape and content of life depends on how attention has been used." This limited attention my be why the Stage Manager shouts, "NO" when Emily asked if we could live the way she now see her situation of when she was 12 year old -- Missing a lot of the details?
So when Jstan looks back he is carrying with him layers and layers and uses them to interpret how he was some number of years ago? But when he was actually doing what he ponders now of his past life his life then did not have those layers upon layers.
I don't know the answer as to what such a suggestion try to always live in the present can mean doing but maybe when shedding those layers upon layers we can grasp some essentials?
In truth we cannot cross the same river even once as same river does not exist. So as we start to grab that familiar hand hold we can entertain some of our memories of our use of it in the past or we can forget those memories and experiment to see what has changed -- better yet? find out what is really there? Minimize our climbing energy expended? Where do we want to put our limited attention?
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 17, 2016 - 10:02am PT
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So when Jstan looks back he is carrying with him layers and layers and uses them to interpret how he was some number of years ago?
At the time I did not imagine how we would feel if we decided we had to do something only after destroying the area. I did not consider this because I did not expect to succeed.
I expected to fail but I knew I had the power to avoid my doing nothing. THAT was entirely under my control. At each decision I did worry that my actions might make the problem worse. I could easily have done so.
What I say here is fact, entirely unaffected by "layers". I am interested here, only in the future.
Then came the Trust's Climbers' meeting. A whole room full of people wanted the same thing I wanted. Everyone wanted only to know what they, personally, might do. The room was electric. When I began to have trouble breathing I knew we were moving.
I can be criticized for living in the future.
Live with one foot in the present and the other touching the ground of the future. For that's where we all are going to be living. The past is a valuable guide to what worked in the past. Absent the past we have no clue what needs to be done in the present.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 17, 2016 - 10:44am PT
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an interesting thread, I'll try to be brief as many have posted some poignant observations...
out of left field - GW150914 - we "open our eyes" for the first time and are startled, not by what it is we see, but that we see...
pop culture - "Jack And Diane" - Oh yeah, life goes on/Long after the thrill of livin' is gone
the "thrill of living," seeing things for the first time, powerfully emotional, and physiologically influential, what drives a the experience deep into the memory
when we look back on climbs we've done over the decades, the same climbs evolve, as Richard recollects, our experience taming them, the thrill gone
my overwhelming feeling when climbing the Ames Ice Hose in 2012 was that I would never have been able to have climbed it 30 years earlier... everything had changed...
good or bad?
who could have anticipated the changes over those decades? except the banal assertion, "everything changes" I was looking at a legendary ice climb... yet
"...I'm already on my way, ready for anything - even for retreat, if I meet the impossible. I'm not going to be killing any dragons, but if anyone wants to come with me, we'll go to the top together on the routes we can do without branding ourselves murderers."
I slayed the impossible that day, and didn't really think twice about it... "nice job Bill" and then we were off to have a warm dinner and think about the next day's adventure.
We all have our skills, some of us in our youth are able to overcome the "thrill of living" to see clearly enough to set the direction into the future, not by pointing forward, but by moving forward, and after a time, we look back and conclude that that was the right way to go, even when others may push along their paths...
...sometimes retreat is just a slightly longer path to the right place.
Maybe we can hope that after "the thrill of living" is gone, we can look back and knowing what we know, move forward.
Causality, the "now" forever divides the past and the future. There were many ways to get to now, and there are many ways forward.
abstract?
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 17, 2016 - 11:42am PT
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Jstan,
no accusations to you of dwelling in the past meant to you by that sentence of mine with a question mark at the end. In fact, it seems you entertained a kind of an agenda but you were not expecting a totally definitive outcome.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 17, 2016 - 11:55am PT
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Can we have a simple algorithm for living in the ?? The word cannot be present.
In 1971 I was passing thru Berkeley with a curiosity of Zen. Yes pun and all it was a one time visit to the center on 1670 Dwight Way.
The center master gave a brief lecture: Try to figure out how things are not how you think they are.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 17, 2016 - 02:28pm PT
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be here now
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 17, 2016 - 10:30pm PT
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I can be criticized for living in the future.
You, and the gnurrs.
The long bright days are over now,
and still the heart beats on.
Come along now, Jenny, swiftly down the track.
We'll never see what lies ahead if we keep on looking back.
Behind is just an empty house,
Old memories and gone.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 18, 2016 - 04:40am PT
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Ed,
be here now
that was a catchy phrase back in the 70's if you had read a portion of the book. I did like it for a while as it was kind of a mantra to me for resolving what to do while in some scene or predicament. But the pharse carries with it no resolve unless you choose -- intentionality.
When I think of it now, open the Doors of Perception et al, Emily, saddened by everything she failed to notice while alive and tripping on acid, all would qualify as Be Here Now -- living in the present. Maybe it is my genetic makeup of needing kinetic, interactive situations with an agenda that keeps me from desiring a state of pure absorption. I have little patience to stay around and listen to some one tell of his acid trip. If it suits their genetic makeup to do these drugs, fine. But I can choose to listen to music and I do not tell of the experience I had while listening.
I might suggest keep your agency at all times -- The "sense of agency" (SA) (or sense of control) refers to the subjective awareness that one is initiating, executing, and controlling one's own volitional actions in the world.
As there is sort of tension line between empathy and agency -- we listen to all our friends situations and choose our actions so there is a win/win. If we fail to notice some things -- so be it.
There also might be this tension line:
pure absorbtion vs agency
Good music has resolve
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2016 - 09:31am PT
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Thanks Andy. That is about right. I would only repeat that memories can be a data set useful for decisions in the present. As a form of recreation or self validation----not so much.
Reading Dingus' last I started to think that all overt actions emerge from the conscious, thereby establishing that set of realities as intentional.
Unfortunately for that line of reasoning, there is this thing we call "sleep walking".
Rgold:Many of the rest of us, who followed in his footsteps but did not lead,
Life is a complex process where sources are seldom self-apparent. In many ways, I was following Richard.
On this same line, Mr. Petrowich led me when he tore me a new one for using blue ribbons while trying to see if subliminal trails might reduce trampling of vegetation. He was right. My unilateral action worked directly against the ultimate goal. Everyone needed, on their own, to support an agreed upon course of action. In the end, something very like this came to pass.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 18, 2016 - 11:30am PT
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An interesting factoid from a CBC Radio tech commentator: virtual reality goggles are a popular gift this Christmas. They can be used with street view to travel to faraway places. The most common place people try to visit is their childhood home.
I don't know if you can climb El Cap or Everest with them.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 18, 2016 - 01:00pm PT
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JSTAN,
Absent the past we have no clue what needs to be done in the present.
Why not get a better source of data than the past? as the present is what is.
1. Positions & Gradients do exist in the present. Let's use them to figure the [future] trajectory of the subject of need -- old man.
Taken from the Calculus of Living
But you also say:
Live with one foot in the present and the other touching the ground of the future. For that's where we all are going to be living -- which is sort of what I said in declaration 1. Are you clinging to the past unnecessarily?
And yet you say:
Today we get all twisted up in our shorts about nonsense
Are you a member of this set? And is that "nonsense" that you speak of part of the layers and layers of nonsense that we hear of in Our Town? I am asking, "Do facts really exist?"
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 18, 2016 - 01:57pm PT
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Ed,
you say,
except the banal assertion, "everything changes"
There was a recent article in Scientific American about forecasts and why they seldom give the right answer.
Reason: Banal or not, they rightly say along with the changing variable that you want a future measure everything else is changing. A lot of forecasts can have dozens of correlation variables and still fail flatly.
Maybe put more terms in your simultaneous differential equations?
SCIENTISTS: EARTH ENDANGERED BY NEW STRAIN OF FACT-RESISTANT HUMANS
By Andy Borowitz May 12, 2015
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scientists-earth-endangered-by-new-strain-of-fact-resistant-humans
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Dec 18, 2016 - 06:08pm PT
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More pertinent might be the findings by a group of epidemiologists who have identified 55 viruses likely to develope into a pandemic. WGD!
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