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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 24, 2015 - 08:33pm PT
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Jstan's post opens a new avenue of metaphysical investigation for JL: Path integrals in QM.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 24, 2015 - 09:50pm PT
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Excuse me for barging in without staying up on the entire thread contents, but when I scan thru I seem to find what mind is not or what is not mind.
If mind isn't knowable by the methods employed by all the usual suspects, then what methods are to be utilized.
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Psilocyborg
climber
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Oct 24, 2015 - 10:19pm PT
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Zbrown, LSD, large dose, alone in silent darkness
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 24, 2015 - 10:28pm PT
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I will then know the intrinsic nature of mind like I know gravitational attraction?
Is the experience sharable?
How?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 25, 2015 - 07:57am PT
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If mind isn't knowable by the methods employed by all the usual suspects, then what methods are to be utilized.
Another path
Say the question was, "What is Chicago?"
Is Chicago knowable? If so what methods would you employ?
Although we may need to distinguish the objective processing that "is" Chicago from the subjective experience that "is" Chicago."
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 25, 2015 - 08:39am PT
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Although we may need to distinguish the objective processing that "is" Chicago from the subjective experience that "is" Chicago."
How? Is there a list of the intrinsics of mind? If there is then aren't we back in the old boat of knowing through language?
Here's a 1/2 facetious and 1/2 not question. How do I know this? I just know.
Why ask what is "mind"?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Oct 25, 2015 - 11:58am PT
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So the mind is sublime because it is awesome and dangerous?
Sounds good to me.
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Oct 25, 2015 - 02:08pm PT
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Nope. We're not allowed to attach attributes to it. Have you learned nothing?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 25, 2015 - 04:38pm PT
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Why ask what is "mind"?
There is no "because."
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 25, 2015 - 08:32pm PT
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If you can actually prove what's sublime about it then you will have transcended ......
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 25, 2015 - 09:52pm PT
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Sublime symmetry.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 25, 2015 - 10:14pm PT
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While there may be no objective "because", there is a subjective "because".
I have fathomed it intrinsically in my mind.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 26, 2015 - 09:27am PT
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Have you learned nothing?
Yes, I have learned nothing.
Thanx for asking.
;>)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 26, 2015 - 09:37am PT
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If you want to know about the subjective you need shut up and stop calculating and directly explore that realm.
I think we all "explore that realm" we have and we will continue... my main objection to the line of your arguments is that you aren't that interested in the sort of exploration that takes place over the map table... you like to "walk into the map."
And once you do that, how do you convey the experience? How do you make the subjective, first person witness a thing that people can understand as closely as you experienced it.
---
In climbing we all have many life altering experiences, we seek them out as we put ourselves into "the danger zone" where our acts, trivial little acts, can have gigantic consequences. Not only that, most of us have good friends that have died, and memorializing them becomes a bit of legend making.
Most of us have experienced the absolutely terrifying act of rappelling off of a single piece of gear. I remember retreating in a storm off of Snow Patch Spire in the 'Bugs, one of our raps was off a single knifeblade, which I hope was more than half way pounded into a single seam.. as a team of three, I was the last to rap... at some point, my hand brushed against the pin, and I could feel it flexing as Lawrence, number two was descending.
I was next...
It was the single most difficult thing I had ever done in climbing. I was soooo smoooooth on the descent, looking up the whole time wondering what it will feel like when that pin popped and Newton's third law gave way to the first...
But I survived and have been climbing 30 years since then... lots of other terrifying stories to tell.
In fact, most of those experiences were not as dangerous as we thought... but the experience is truly open to a subjective interpretation, and our stories, legends, myths attempt to tell the subjective side of those experiences rather than the "dry" historic facts... one of which is the rate of fatalities in climbing.
So these stories, as was said upthread, are "the lie that tells the truth," we have a correct description of the subjective aspect of the experience, which may have nothing at all to do with the objective description of the "actual" experience.
Of course, what is "actual?" the subjective or the objective description?
I guess it all depends... in the following essay, Largo takes time to correctly describe the actual situation, because it matters that the objective description include the climber's assessment of the single point anchor used on the rappel they perform. Important that any novice climber reading the piece wouldn't be confused that: 1) it's not a good idea and 2) in certain situations, a single piece might be adequate.
That's an objective description of the situation...
...the subjective piece morphs from the description of terror on a single piece of pro, which turns out ok (as it usually does, mine included) to the myth of Tobin Sorenson, who was bad ass, but died early, being a bad ass.
The dry account of the history of Tobin might make an interesting read... but Largo opens it up to the "larger" reality... one that is not necessarily real, but is true.
But this is, of course, problematic from many different directions.
Read for yourselves:
THE WAY OF THE "WHOPPER"
Former track athlete, saxophonist, single-malt Scotch aficionado, and mythology guru Joseph Campbell said that myths "reflect the spiritual potentials we all carry within." Myths likewise reflect the rascal within who romances the facts simply for the fun of it. The resultant whopper might spring in part from unconscious spiritual longings and point us toward the stars, but the art itself surely began around ancient campfires. Picture the caveman, describing his run-ins with saber-toothed tigers and other terrible foes, and hear him stretching the odd detail to hop up the conversation and improve his odds with the womenfolk. The style was distilled and refined in Greek and Roman mythology, with Hercules taming the Cretan Bull, Jason and his boys crossing the River Styx, and so forth. And yet even these hallowed tales probably got started with something as ordinary as a chicken getting run down by u chariot. Add two gallons of John Barleycorn, a few thousand tellings, plus the whopper's inherent trajectory toward the Almighty, and the chicken becomes the Phoenix every time. Over the last twenty years I've seen this process play out before my very eyes.
Nowhere has the whopper found such fertile ground as in the climbing world, and never has the climbing world know a grander maniac than the late, great Tobin Sorenson. As climbing's designated madman, people insisted Tobin live up to his role. Whenever he fell short-which he occasionally did-the whopper was called on to restore the luster and provide a psychological release valve for the rest of us cowards.
Tobin and I had just scaled the Center Route of Reed's Pinnacle, a climb "obligatory for hard-men," according to the guidebook. The previous week I'd followed Jim Bridwell up the Left Side of Reeds, with its glacier-polished, dead-vertical, 4-inch-wide crack on the second lead. After battling up the Center Route, Tobin and I decided to rappel down the Left Side to admire the crack I kept bragging about. The normal rappel anchor, consisting of three pitons, was clogged with old nylon slings so we rapped off a 2-inch bong (an aluminum piton) several feet below. True, our anchor was only the one bong, and you're never supposed to rap off only one piton; but keyed into a bottleneck, and given the downward loading, the bong couldn't possibly fail. Tobin went first. The bong flexed because all aluminum bongs flex. No worries there-the rappel went fine. Later that night I mentioned to no one in particular that Tobin and I had rapped off a single, flexing bong. I skipped describing the pin's bottleneck placement or that it was a physical impossibility that it should ever rip out. By excluding this one detail-that our rappel presented no risks whatsoever-I unwittingly planted the seed for a whopper. The image of a creaky bong and the involvement of a renowned maniac (Tobin) furnished the water.
Over the coming years I heard many versions of our rappel off Reed's Pinnacle. The first rendition, which began circulating around Camp 4 mere days after the fact, claimed the moment Tobin leaned back on the anchor, the bong shifted and miraculously reset itself several inches down the crack. As the suummer advanced, so did the distance the bong had "shifted." I left Yosemite in August and headed back to school. A few weekends later, while cragging at Suicide, I overheard an Arizona climber serve up the following version.
"Yeah, Long and Sorenson ran up the Center Route of Reeds and decided to rap off the Left Side. Sorenson just loops the cord through this skanky sling strung through an old bong, and bails off. Long sees the bong flexing. Then it starts to shoot out of the crack so straightaway Long kicks the thing back into the crack and fractures his heel." I fancied this version. It didn't put me in Jason's league but I'd performed a heroic act so I let the thing go at that. The following summer in the Yosemite cafeteria, I overheard an enhanced version.
"So Sorenson goes up and solos the Center Route on Reeds Pinnacle. He doesn't want to downclimb the thing so he trails a rope to rap with. He can't rap the regular route 'cause it'll take two ropes, so he raps the Left Side. He just loops the rope straight through the eye of this cracked old bong and dives off. After 'bout ten feet the bong fires out of the crack and Sorenson pitches down the wall like a cliff diver. But dig it: after 'bout thirty feet the bong whips back into the crack and lodges tight as a nut in a shell. Tell me the guy ain't crazy!"
I didn't appreciate getting edited out of the story, but by now there was no room for me anymore. Nevertheless I fought for my survival and accused the raconteur of molesting his material.
"What the hell do you know about it?" he barked. "Like you were there or something," another put in.
That's when I first realized the fundamental dynamic driving all whoppers: When a thing is touched by the miraculous, people will fight you tooth and nail to believe it. With a whopper there is a silent chiding of our human limits. The adamancy of the believer fixes the whopper in stone rather, lava, since the tale keeps rounding the horn, and in each telling the "facts" mutate upwards, pushed by unseen hands towards the pure land of Greek Gods.
Over the following years, just when I had forgotten about Tobin and my uneventful rappel off Reed's Pinnacle, another version of the now legendary event would drift up from the ethers. The details had grown so preposterous I found myself listening with a kind of bizarre reverence. The bong had ripped out and Tobin plummeted 150 feet before,by divine providence (Tobin was a Christian fundamentalist), the bong jammed itself back in the crack. Or, the bong had ripped out and Tobin's knee, rather than the bong, had lodged in the glacier- polished, dead-vertical crack, which Tobin chugged out solo to effect his deliverance. Another version had the bong ripping out and Tobin catching himself on a mantelshelf after falling 100 feet. The craziest interpretation claimed Tobin whistled all the way into the deck after crashing through the branches of a ponderosa pine, which eased his fall somewhat. Tobin's clothes were badly torn, but little the worse for wear; he walked away basically unscathed. I heard several variations of this last installment, the final one coming several years after Tobin's death (while attempting the first solo ascent of Mt. Alberta's North Face-in winter). Here, the narrator added a deft touch. After his narrow escape on Reed's, Tobin always kept the bong close by his person, and in fact the bong had been placed in the coffin alongside the peerless mountaineer.
Three years ago I returned to Reed's Pinnacle for the first time in over a decade. Finding myself on half-remembered ground, I spent the day climbing the standard classics-including the Left Side and Center Route. Back down at the car, as the sun's last rays gilded the wall, I mingled with a dozen or so other climbers-all strangers to me-and we gazed up at the steep off-width pitch on the Left Side, which looks far graver than its actual difficulty. Those of us who had climbed the Left Side mentioned how modern camming devices-which had long replaced the old pitons-made the route a safe, if strenuous, enterprise.
"Yeah," one climber started, respectfully eyeballing the Left Side. Perhaps 25 years old, he had the voice and manner of Charlton Heston playing Moses on the big screen. "Before Friends and Camalots and all that," Moses resumed, "you got a knife-blade piton in low down and had to run the crux out all the way to the second belay. That's fifty feet without protection."
"Christ!" said another climber. "You had to be pretty tight with your off-widths to do that."
"Damn straight," said Moses. "And some of them were so tight they couldn't be bothered to even place that first piton, or any piton. You guys probably never heard about Tobin Sorenson, but back in the '70s he soloed up the Center Route and downclimbed the Left Side."
"Without a rope?!" another climber begged.
Moses simply nodded, and we all gazed up at the fabled crack, which shimmered in the shadows like a dream.
It took 20-some years to wear the burrs off this whopper, for the thing to finally find expression in mythic form, as pure and unencumbered as a mythical climber free-soloing a mythical crack. And so far as I know, that's how the story stands today: The great Tobin Sorenson soloed up the Center Route of Reed's Pinnacle and then soloed down the Left Side.
The rock stands mute. The myth swirls about our minds like the clouds above Mt. Olympus, spiritual home of Zeus and Hercules, Hermes and Athena, and-Tobin Sorenson.
John Long, Long on Adventure ©2000 John Long
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 26, 2015 - 09:51am PT
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Thanks for the posting. JL spins a great tale! I've seen fables like this develop over the 55 years I climbed. I suppose it's part of the charm of the sport.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 26, 2015 - 10:31am PT
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I thought it an interesting point of departure for a discussion of "subjective"
And starting with Largo's thoughts on story telling, which is ultimately an attempt at expressing the "subjective," first person experience, takes us to interesting places in terms of what we take as "fact" and what as "fiction" and just what that all means... what is "actual" and what is not.
Largo, in this essay, is careful to "set the record straight" on the actual experience, which I find very interesting. While Largo insists on the importance of the "objective" and the utilitarian application of it, here he is pushing on the "subjective."
Interestingly, he would claim that it is not something that can be "objectified" since that requires making it a "thing," in his extreme, he requires that to be a material object. It is where his 19th century philosophical sensibilities are taxed... but certainly, if nothing else, we'd place Largo back in that romantic era, aside from his updated dialog, most of his stories are crafted short stories in the classical vein of mountaineering literature from that period.
There is some interesting physics that also expands the domain of what an "object" is... later...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 26, 2015 - 11:16am PT
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But let's remember liars, crooks and frauds call upon their inner "rascal" as well - engaging in the same sort of storytelling in order to exploit or escape. So it's not always "simply for the fun of it" and such "romancing" comes at a price. In a larger picture or "larger reality".
The dry account of the history of Tobin might make an interesting read... but Largo opens it up to the "larger" reality... one that is not necessarily real, but is true.
(1) I suppose it depends on what "it" is. The dry account? The history of Tobin? The subject of myth-making? Romancing the facts? (2) I'm thinking perhaps my definition and or use of "true" is/ would be different.
Good writing though.
And who doesn't like a good myth or story?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 26, 2015 - 11:28am PT
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Good stuff.
And, who knows? One day we may find out why our minds are so attracted to stories that they take a seed and grow it into a fantasy.
And who knows, maybe Tobin did solo up Center and down Left Side? Who would have been there to know?
One thing I doubt:
Nowhere has the whopper found such fertile ground as in the climbing world
but in a funny way that sentence can be put in evidence for what it claims.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 26, 2015 - 11:56am PT
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Nowhere has the whopper found such fertile ground as in the climbing world
But story telling is a kind of expressionism: emotion into sensation. If I'm describing the experience of catching a fish, I might exaggerate the size of said fish in order to communicate with accuracy the intensity of the experience. The "fish story" becomes a means to the shared experience. The goal is truth, truth of experience and reality just gets in the way.
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