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Domingo

Trad climber

El Portal, CA

Apr 16, 2008 - 10:41pm PT

I just read your post, and being a soul-less, lifeless internet climber, I feel the need to make a comment about your wrap-up:

"My opinion is that if you explore that without preconceptions, judgements and ideas of what's "right" and "wrong," then climbers would be a lot happier..."

Pretty much everything would be easier for me if I ignored a societal moral compass. While ditching said compass and exploring is an interesting idea (one covered extensively in popular film, writing, etc.), I don't think it's appealing in practice.

WBraun

climber

Apr 16, 2008 - 10:55pm PT

So Andrew

You said: "I think climbing is the opposite of all of this stuff here, so why is this such a pre-occupation? Climbing is real,....."

So? You belive what's going on in your mind is unreal?

Because that's what's going on here and it's real too.

Otherwise, when you are physically climbing you use your soul to communicate to your mind which communicates to your brain which communicates to your body which then moves to be able to climb.

So the process here is real too in the thinking and writing.

It's real too.

So what's unreal then ......?

Monkeys don't read or write books. Are you calling you and me a monkey?

survival

Big Wall climber

A Token of My Extreme

Apr 16, 2008 - 11:21pm PT

Andrew,

You have simply GOT to watch out for those typos!!
Gee, do you want your stuff to be unreadable?
Last time I checked the word "thought" had a T on the back end of it. It's a good thing there's a little edit button you can use to clean up after yourself.

I think almost all of us prefer the reality of climbing to working the web, but nobody climbs 24-7. We have jobs, homes, kids, computers and sometimes it rains, blows, snows and all of the above. So we prefer talking about climbing to cleaning the basement...

And yes, the manner in which climbs on Half Dome and other places are established is a matter of some importance. As a climber you should understand this.

jstan

climber

Apr 16, 2008 - 11:48pm PT

Andy:
In the posts above I hope I explained clearly one of the problems I had with your eblast. I know I try hard when I state what I take to be a guiding principle, to make sure the other things I have said plus even the things I have done – are logically consistent. While I don’t always succeed, I always try. I found the things you were saying to be logically inconsistent. At least this member of your audience has been left entirely adrift and unsure of what you were trying to do. Perhaps you could expand on the point?

Early in your summary above another set of words seized hold of me as soon as I saw them.
“……and the type of dialogue that is obviously important to your self-worth….”

The implication being that the participants on this website intend their self-worth to be bouyed by that participation.

In the Lincoln Douglas debates Lincoln took issue with Douglas’s assertion that “Lincoln intended to destroy slavery.” Lincoln replied by saying, “When someone tells you my intention, they tell you something they cannot know.” So I have to ask, what is it that proved to you the ST participants’s need for self-worth caused them to take part?

If you have in fact object proof of this connection you will have made an advance that will loom large in human history. Can you share this with us?

nick d

Trad climber

Apr 16, 2008 - 11:50pm PT

Geez, talk about no soul!

No wonder I don't read R&I.

jstan

climber

Apr 17, 2008 - 12:21am PT

Coz:
I get your point. Having said that, I owe it to you to explain why I think this may not be a digression at all.

Discussions in which people sketch out their ideas and opinions very carefully have a much higher chance of success than one gets when care is lacking. When carefully drawn, everyone can look at two expressions and see where two people are in agreement and where they are not. It is the difference between two people talking "at" each other and talking "to" each other. Huge difference.

In this case, for the life of me, I can't figure out what Andy really means to say.

EDIT:
OK. IMO wanking or non-wanking is irrelevant and totally unimportant. What is the larger issue?

caughtinside

Social climber

Davis, CA

Apr 17, 2008 - 12:30am PT

I think he's saying that we're wankers. And it's a microcosm of a larger problem.

WBraun

climber

Apr 17, 2008 - 12:34am PT

"it's a microcosm of a larger problem"

In a nutshell that would be true.

jstan

climber

Apr 17, 2008 - 12:45am PT

You guys are killing me! That's what I have been saying. But what is the larger problem???????

Within minutes the reply I drew Coz may be proven correct! What an accident.

But what is the larger problem?

Some of you may have wondered why I was happy not to discuss "style" and "ethics" all this while. IMO they are not the problem at all.

Begin Locker space.

End Locker space.

Doubtless there are a lot of sharp cookies out there who have known all along what is happening here. I just figured it out.

Several hundred years before Christ a guy was saying something like...people learn truth through asking questions......
It came to be called "A Socratic Dialog".

Those Greeks were so bloody smart!

I repeat. What is the larger problem?

bhilden

Trad climber

Mountain View, CA

Apr 17, 2008 - 12:53am PT

It is pretty clear to me from reading Andrew Bisharat's recent post here on SuperTopo that he has no clue about SuperTopo. He may be correct about certain climbing-related websites that seem to have lots of talk about climbing, but nobody seems to be climbing anything. However, here on SuperTopo, the majority of the posters are very actively climbing and some at a very high standard.

I think what Andrew Bishart fails to understand that for a lot of people who post on SuperTopo, climbing isn't just "fun", it is a way of life. Many of us here spent years living in Yosemite. We didn't just walk out of a climbing gym, buy a rack of quickdraws and go looking for a bunch of closely-spaced bolts.

Because we see climbing as a lifestyle and at the core of who we are we hold our beliefs quite strongly and when we feel a need to offer an opinion, we do so. I am disappointed that Andrew Bishart appears to have taken very little time, if any, to really understand what SuperTopo is all about. He just lumped SuperTopo in with all the other climbing websites and that was a huge mistake.

Too bad Andrew Bishart probably won't ever take the time to understand SuperTopo.com. A good journalist would do exactly that.

Bruce

graniteclimber

Trad climber

Nowhere

Apr 17, 2008 - 12:54am PT

abisharat: "Everything seems so sanitized... especially climbing forums.

What planet are you from? You don't read supertopo much do you?

"Please subscribe to RI, too. There's occasionally cool stuff in there."

RI? Long, long ago there used to be good climbing mag with that name.

bhilden: "Too bad Andrew Bishart probably won't ever take the time to understand SuperTopo.com. A good journalist would do exactly that.

I think you are mistaking Andrew for a good journalist. His writing is one of the better examples of why I don't read his mag.

jstan

climber

Apr 17, 2008 - 01:16am PT

Dingus:
You very eloquently described why I am here. If you believe my being here is the problem, that's OK. It is not impossible that I am a problem.

Seems to me a place where everyone can stand up and speak their piece on a level playing field - is a solution. Not a problem.

But you raise an interesting concept. Problems and solutions are one and the same. Hmmmm?

Two sides of a coin? Or really the same thing? This is going to give me a headache. How do you determine whether two things are the same?

OUCH! Help us. Please.

Ohmigod! It is getting worse. You don't have two objects sitting in front of you each labelled as to whether it is problem or solution. You have one object in front of you. And you are UNCERTAIN as to whether it is problem or solution!!!!!!!!

Mungeclimber:
I will thank you to keep your fuT^@#$&(^%!@# wiseass*&&^%*%^$comments to yourself.

Edit^2
I'll be honest. I never was very good at C4 etiquette, so I will just guess here.
Kevin:
Bugger off old sod!

Mungeclimber

Trad climber

sorry, just posting out loud.

Apr 17, 2008 - 01:17am PT

what happened to good old name calling and ethical knock down drag outs in the early posts?

bunch of philosophy professors on this site.

;)

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Apr 17, 2008 - 01:48am PT

Dingus said it best, I will just second it in a long winded way...

The SuperTopo Forum is a dialog among climbers. It posses all of the foibles of that community including, as Russ noted, bad spelling and grammar. However, there is real communication going on, and the Forum builds the community and extends it beyond the physical, geographic boundaries of any particular climbing area. This happens in ways that are unimaginable to our old community, which often received news through the print media, a media that does not offer the same ability to dialog.

The "Vedauwoo Boogaloo" of last summer was an example of the power of the Forum. It began as a somewhat distended idea, actually a suggestion, and "self-organized" into a meeting of climbers from all around the west, who converged on Vedauwoo to climb and talk and be together. It was glorious, it was fun, it was real and it was climbing (I still have scars to prove it!). I don't see how that could happen without the SuperTopo Forum...

I have met outstanding climbers who I only read about in the magazines 20 and 30 years ago, full of enthusiasm, encouragement, advice and wisdom about any number of topics... who are people I am glad to know independent of climbing. It's not that I am some socially backwards person who doesn't get out... the Forum is a meeting place unlike anything before.

I have met outstanding climbers who are largely unknown to the magazines, are intentionally out of the "lime light" of climbing celebrity but are doing amazing routes... I knew of Sean Jones and his route production long before I read about it in Rock and Ice,

"hey Eric, who's line is that?"...
"oh, that's a Sean Jones route, he has a good eye for a line, and he seems to know all the obscure cliffs too"

I knew about him by being out there climbing. I don't need Rock and Ice to tell me it's happening, I don't need it to tell me whether or not it's great, I can do it myself... by being out there. And I can run into Sean Jones here probably easier than in the Valley because when we're there, we're climbing.

On a business trip to St. Louis last week I spent a couple of dinners in engaging conversation with a STForum poster, we talked about lots of things, we talked about climbing, and climbing together, in the Valley, in Colorado... months ago I was in Vancouver for business and had a great dinner and discussion with another... it's great to be able to run into people all around the country, around the world, who are here.

To me, climbing is not just what I feel about it, but how that personal experience is part of a larger community, something larger than myself. It matters to me what is happening in that community, it matters to me what happens on the SFHD... it is important. I don't need a magazine to frame the question for me and select the responses and opine on behalf of the community.

Editors, we don't need no stinkin' editors here on STForum... and we do fine by ourselves.

Magazines play an important role, but commercial pressure has corrupted the magazines I recall from my youth. I'm an old fogey, probably, but the original Climbing and certainly Mountain were exciting and fresh and significant publications. Alpinist is the contemporary mag comparable to those... but the new Climbing and that one time "bad boy" Rock and Ice are hardly worth subscribing to anymore. They have become irrelevant as their audience has found a better way to communicate what is happening in climbing.

That's what's happening here...

Ragz

climber

Tartarus, black hole of the internet

Apr 17, 2008 - 01:48am PT

I've stayed out of this, but I have read everything. I'm only now weighing in because abisharat decided to poke his head in and draw conclusions for which he has he has no clue.

I'm sorry that many of you felt like my eBlast denigrated this website and the type of dialogue that is obviously important to your self-worth

Sounds a little condescending Andy boy.

This one really gets me-

As someone has already noted above, the eBlast intended to use this forum as an example to tackle a larger issue about how removed we are from reality

Your presumptuous as well. So you have some sense of reality that evades the rest of us? Please do not presume to speak for anybody but yourself. In fact, considering the dialogue of some posts around here, I would suggest that supertopians are more in touch "what's real" than most (we have exceptions). The only abstracts here are your preposterous suggestions. Your attempts at some quasi intellectual analysis of climbing and reality, using ST as your backdrop, is pretty weak.

Carry on,

P.S.
This is as close to a campfire in camp 4 as I'll get for a while. Wow, I sure am removed from reality.
I know, I'll light my laptop on fire!!!!