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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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