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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Oct 11, 2006 - 12:11pm PT
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More with less.
I had a pretty good discussion on this topic with my climbing partner last weekend and I think about this one often.
My thoughts shift the focus from whether or not to appeal to more gear to a broader context of the choices involved. I’d as well like a departure from the focus on generational expression of risk taking values.
To me, this is about how we approach our life challenges, as individuals, as a culture, as a world body. The issue is: do we seek to adapt or conquer? Do we “fit” ourselves to the challenge or seek to submit it to our will? Are we reliant upon brute force, mechanized analysis or upon intuition and artistic engagement?
I suggest that we are talking about a choice to drape into the landscape of a challenge in such a way that a greater degree of precision, accuracy, and ultimately understanding is achieved. We are talking about our essential habits of relationship to ourselves, our surroundings, our world and the nature of the questions, goals, and actions which follow.
What I see Yvon saying is: do we choose success at all costs or is harmony to be sought and preserved; is harmony itself a crucial and retainable fulcrum and end of success and is it lost when a strict definition of success is pursued at the outset? Are the underlying goals of understanding, fluidity with our surroundings, functional survival, these things in fact representing useful metrics of success, are they in fact eschewed when we use a particular approach which places a high value on controllable outcome as an end in itself?
The key elements of a continuum which we scale with our choices can be illustrated in the relationship or stylistic imperative of a number of comparable scenarios:
Adventure/Competition
Conciliatory/Adversarial
Inquiry/Argument
Collusion of Interests/Debate of Positions
Conflict Resolution/Litigation
Guerrilla Warfare/Strategic Planning
Improvisation/Calculation
Art/Engineering
Chinese Medicine/Western Medicine
Root Cause/Symptom
Dietary & Behavioral Modification/Medication
Active Internal Control/Passive External Control
Spiritual/Mechanistic
Subjective/Objective
Sensing/Analyzing
Listening/Talking
Poetry/Prose
And don’t think I am throwing any one of these approaches above under the bus completely; it is about recognizing the distinction and balancing the approach.
Ed, you may recall we had a long discussion with LEB on whether or not we “think” our way up the rock like a chess game –this type of discussion skims the meat of what I am outlining.
To range just a bit, here are a couple paraphrased examples from 3 disparate fields:
John Fowles, in “The Magus” has a character espouse in that novel, to paraphrase:
“War is an inability of man to understand and excercise relationship; relationship to the environment, to humanity, to the self”.
A music critic and writer, maybe a composer, a guy with a headset like Quincy Jones, suggested that Jazz as an essentially improvisational musical form embraces elements which can teach us adaptive skills very well attuned to the increasing complexity and myriad, simultaneous challenges presented by the rapid and ever changing “landscape” of the modern world.
Yvon probably went for surfing because it is much harder to create a top heavy balance of technology over spirit. Tow in surfing comes to mind and that argument rages, but look at the correspondingly horrific challenges which are approached.
So, back to climbing and tools per se:
It has been said by a couple people up thread, that it isn’t the increasing complexity of the gadgets available to us, but the correspondent extension of goals which we then stretch to meet. Technology is not going away, but we have some choices about how to use it and what we need to do to appropriately compliment it, or it becomes a headless horseman. It must serve us, not drive us.
You don’t “engineer” your way up a route, even aid climbing, even sport climbing, you start with a strategic rational plan and then artfully and intuitively extend and compliment that, finally to artfully and intuitively “fit” yourself to the rockscape in the most economical and graceful way, thereby conserving energy and succeeding.
What I am getting at directly is the notion that a left brain/right brain balance is necessary when we seek to interact with our world or the soulful aspect of the self is lost under a myriad of ineffectual “tools” which render the outcome of our pursuits at first blush perhaps successful but ultimately unsuccessful, leaving us feeling hollowed out and vacant.
I suggest for humanity to develop and flower we need to continually and rigorously investigate and question our approach to life’s challenges. I suggest we don’t attempt to “win” or “conquer” the world and distance ourselves from our individual nature; we can instead each strive to sensitively tune our approach and our goals in concert with our particular nature, in this way we can choose to intelligently coexist with our environment, ourselves, our community.
Happy Hunting,
Hahaha!
Roy
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Hootervillian
climber
the Hooterville World-Guardian
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Oct 11, 2006 - 01:48pm PT
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no longer anything to take away and a vehicle sport like surfing....other than marketing, i don't understand the surfing allusion at all.
unless he's THAT guy with the Gucci break-approach wear in a pile, board free, sans Churchills, at the Wedge?
why not get on Hamilton for not body surfing Piahi and Teahupoo?
bottom line is that YC comes off likes he trying 'hold' onto his past by 'pulling down' on the future.
his next house is on you, dudes.
don
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426
Sport climber
Buzzard Point, TN
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Oct 11, 2006 - 06:26pm PT
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Very interesting discussion/comments ...mebbe we should let "his" people surf...
Making more with less?
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 11, 2006 - 08:33pm PT
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Lots of interesting discussion upthread. Thanks!
There's a very natural tendency to see the past as a golden age - historians are quite aware of it. It seems a deep seated need, to want to believe that things used to be better. Though golden ages were rarely quite as we like to believe - we usually don't have the memory and perspective and information to accurately judge. And you can never go back.
It would be interesting to hear what a historian thought of Yosemite's Golden Age, the 1950s and 1960s. In the context of Yosemite, U.S. and world climbing, was it really a golden age? Perhaps, but maybe less so than some say.
We still live in a world where there are frontiers, perhaps not as there were a century ago, but still there. There are still climbers on those frontiers, seeking challenge and experiencing risk. I know some younger climbers who do amazing stuff. Sometimes a bit puzzling, but usually comprehensible. The change seems to be that climbing used to be assumed to entail risk, by all climbers. That's no longer the case - there's been a cultural shift, though risk is still a central factor for many climbers.
Sadly, we are running out of frontiers - or at least those that we have sometimes are contrived. The so-called Eco-Challenge being a good example.
I've often felt that climbing, at its best, is poetry. As such, it's very hard if not impossible to put into words. That doesn't mean it's always is poetry - all too often it's prose, doggerel, or even nonsense verse. But done well, it speaks to the human spirit.
There are also important underlying elements that may be hard wired into our psyches. Those to do with adventure, frontiers, risks (perceived or real), and camaraderie. Lots relating to the basic human unit - the family, hunting group, clan, platoon. And of course adolescent behaviour, particularly adolescent male behaviour.
I have less time for "ethical" debates than I used to. To my mind, the only things that matter in climbing, in the broad sense, are:
1. Are you challenging yourself, mentally and physically, at least some of the time?
2. Are you minimizing your impacts on the human and natural environments, both in terms of your immediate environment and generally?
3. Are you being completely honest with yourself and others?
4. Are you generally being respectful, with an awareness of who and when and what you are?
Knowing only too well that some now simply climb for the physical challenge, the companionship, and perhaps being in the outdoors. Risk, frontiers and the environment aren't part of the equation. They observe some of the forms of climbing, but whether this is truly climbing may be another matter. Paradoxically, such people climb, but may never be climbers.
Most here know the story of Cain & Abel. Cain was the agriculturalist, Abel the pastoralist. Some see this story as a parable for the eternal conflict, starting in the Middle East, between the nomadic and the farming peoples. Or as a metaphor for the question of how we should relate to our environment. Should we use all available means to "tame" the climbing environment (agriculturalists), or should we leave it more or less as is? Human history over the last 10,000 years has always taken the former choice - should climbers also?
The parable of Pandora's box is also germane. As climbers, we long ago opened the box. Now what are we going to do about it, if anything?
In another vein, a friend says that there's no reason to take climbing seriously - even though it may kill you. But you still have to do your best.
I'm not sure how any of this fits into the bigger human picture. But aren't we fortunate to live in a place and time that allows us to indulge in things like climbing, and debates about it?
Anders
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Oct 11, 2006 - 10:38pm PT
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Fun stuff...
Hey 426:
'Nice pic, prolly Jason Kiel, After Midnight?
Awesome Dude.
I spent 2004/2005 repping Evolv rock shoes, doing over 100 demos on plastic and rock alike; I can tell you the spirit is alive and well amongst the younger community, yes, more diversified, but at times it felt much the same to me as it did in my teens -night time bouldering excursions, dedicated dirt bag thrill seeking soloists and all the neat stuff.
Long live the eternal flow of youth!
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426
Sport climber
Buzzard Point, TN
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Oct 12, 2006 - 08:22am PT
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Exactly 'bous, full disclosure:not mine, stoled it from his site (cryptochild.)...looked adventurous to me...
Leftovers 4 the "Mop up crew"?...still reppin Evolv?
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Oct 12, 2006 - 08:29am PT
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What intriques me is the blending or overlaps in 'Bustiers' seemingly dichotmous pairings.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Oct 12, 2006 - 11:47am PT
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Thats' because Jay,
As Janis Joplin said: "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow; It's all the same fuchin' day Maaan"
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Oct 12, 2006 - 11:48am PT
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...no 426 I am knot pushin' Evolv, but I still point them little booties into the stone.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 12, 2006 - 02:46pm PT
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hey Dingy... did you hit the "Return To Forum LIST" button to get back to the front page?
... you got the machine making lists for you know... sort of like an executive...
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nvrws
climber
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Oct 12, 2006 - 04:14pm PT
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"when the truth comes out, I hope it will be truth to you".
Great thread! Adventure? It is so personal and fleeting. One person's epic is another's walk in the park. As a mediocre aid climber in my best days, I could have had all the fancy gadgetry and still had far more adventure than i could have tolerated. So, adventure lies in the eyes/skills of the beholder. By stacking the odds(ie.tools etc.) in ones favor we decrease the adventure factor but perhaps increase the fun factor although the two are not always at opposite ends. Is risk a requisite for adventure? Yes, but not necessarily risk of physical harm. I think Ed in his original post was trying to elude to this. Risk comes in all kinds of flavors. While those of us who were around before sport climbing might not see it that way. I think todays hardcore climbers are still taking huge physical risks. This speed climbing bigwalls seems to take huge stones and free soloing has gotten higher and harder.
Chouinard, like many visionaries, has to struggle his financial/commercial success and his personal beliefs. I personally, think he has done it well. On the occasions that i have run into him (ventura/yosemite) he has been a regular guy, never flashy, never fancy and come to think of it... not one piece of new shiny gear.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Oct 12, 2006 - 05:39pm PT
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Oh, Oh, Oh!
MR Milktoast,
Thanks,
I need to add one more pairing to my list above:
*Analog/Digital*
Right on bro, I feel much better now.
'Just love spinnin' that vinyl, volume knobs that turn (variable capacitor?), 5 speed gearboxes, down tube shifters, manual control wherever it can be engaged.
But back to Uncle Choui-ey:
I think he had the right idea, followed those design constraints and produced some really elegant gear,
But alas, got sucked into the vortex of what is known as the "Retro-Grouch".
Sumbody over there in Ventura needs to give him a Noog-y, also maybe a Melvin,
Then tell 'im he's well loved anyways.
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I despise simplicity. It is the negation of all that is beautiful.
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