The Beauty of Climbing Rocks
It turns out that the pleasures of philosophy and rock climbing are oddly comparable. The general public's perception of climbing is incorrect; it is thought to be an especially thuggish approach to tempt death. Prior to actually trying it, I had a hazy mental picture of climbing that included pull-ups, shouting, and Red Bull gargling. However, it turns out that rock climbing is a sport that is delicate, sophisticated, and frequently extremely intellectual. It involves using both your body and thinking to solve puzzles. It involves using a blend of grace, sensitivity, cunning, and power to get past mysterious rock sequences.
Such a project may initially appear completely unfeasible. The wall is either too blank or overhung, while the grips are either too small, positioned incorrectly, or impossible to space apart. But gradually, little by bit, you discover a series of actions that might help you go through. Put your left foot there and adjust your balance just enough. Lean down on your left hand as though you were in a triangle position in yoga, flipping it so that it presses against the rock ridge. After that, you can grasp a small pocket with your right hand by reaching high. To lean the other way, take a high step and then put your hand in your pocket. The impossible gradually becomes possible with patience and care. You train your body until one day it all comes together and you dance your way up that wall. You learn the holds, you learn the movements, you learn when to give it your all and when to take a break.
The aesthetics of rock climbing, second
Additionally, I believe that dancing is the ideal starting point for comprehending the artistic aspect of rock climbing. Let's begin there: climbing is similar to dancing in both ability and visual appeal. When you hear climbers discussing their ascents, you can hear the similarities. They discuss climbs that have unique moves, good flow, and nice movement. You could initially assume that they are merely discussing the appearance and characteristics of the rock. And occasionally they are; every climber enjoys a big, protruding fin to ascend or a clear crack up a blank rock. However, if you question a climber and observe how they describe the climb's beauty—with arms extended, legs raised, and mimicking the strange, exact movements—you'll discover that the quality of the movement—the sensation of moving through the rock, the wonderful bodily sensations, and the subtle mental attention—is what many of them are most concerned with.
Let's begin with dancing. Dance philosopher Barbara Montero has persuasively argued that a dancer's proprioceptive awareness of moving through space and perceiving that movement as beautiful constitutes the core aesthetic experience of dance. We can sense dance in our muscles and neurons in addition to its visual appeal. She continues by saying that the dancers themselves and audience members who have danced are the greatest people to comprehend the aesthetics of dance because they can more accurately picture what it must feel like to move in that manner. The elegance of embodied movement is what makes dancing so beautiful.
The feel of the movement, the sense of grace, and the ability to move with accuracy, economy, and elegance are the things I can most clearly recall from my favorite climbing experiences. I enjoy that moving quality, I think about it, and it makes me want to come back. And occasionally, something dramatic incorporates that moving character. There is a connection between it and difficulties. Some of the best climbing experiences were when I was worn out, possibly bleeding a little, and my fingers were raw, but I forced myself to pull through, calm my trembling limbs, and reach inside myself to find that elegance, that precision, that beautiful movement.
Climbing is similar to dance, but not quite the same. Climbing is a smooth motion that always has a clear, goal-oriented objective. You want to reach the top, and the more difficult the path, the better. Additionally, some climbs need graceful movement; if you are careless, you will be punished and thrown off the cliff. A set of extremely precise demands gives rise to the economical movement in climbing. Unlike in dance, where a choreographer frequently teaches a piece of established choreography, the rock—real or artificial—may force a series of movements out of me, but it doesn't explain what those movements are. In order to solve the issue, I create it. In order to solve the issue, I create it. I may occasionally see someone else and mimic their movements, but even in those cases, I must modify them to fit my own body. I mimic their broad movements, modify them, and then clarify their inner feelings while keeping in mind the challenges presented by the rock. Generally speaking, climbing is a problem-solving activity. My climbing motions are constantly in response to the obstacles presented by the rock; the elegance I occasionally manage to achieve is imposed upon me by the need to conserve my limited stamina and be economical.
Climbing rocks is a game. And this is where we might once more benefit from philosophical work.Let's go on to The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia by Bernard Suits, one of the most enjoyable, perceptive, and underappreciated works of recent philosophy. As you may remember, the ant works hard during the summer while the grasshopper sits around doing nothing. The grasshopper eventually dies from starvation. The story's lesson is to work hard or perish, suckers. However, Suits flips the story's lesson. The grasshopper, a model of playfulness, is the protagonist of his novel. In a charmingly pseudo-Socratic manner, the book begins. Surrounded by his followers, the renowned philosopher who championed play, The Grasshopper, is near death. Please allow us to work while providing you with food. However, the Grasshopper responds: No, not just now.
As a result, the Grasshopper gives his followers a number of games and riddles regarding play before passing away right away. The pupils solve those puzzles throughout the remainder of the book, which also defines the word "game" in the process. Wittgenstein's argument that most concepts in general, but "game" in particular, did not permit of formal definition is specifically addressed in this. Suits provides his definition in digestible versions. He refers to this as the "portable" version, and it is the least technical:This provides us with a fairly broad definition of games, encompassing sports, board games, rock climbing, and possibly even certain academic fields. The definition of suits has gained notoriety—or notoriety—in certain intellectual circles.
His description in its whole teaches us, among other things, that in order to establish a new type of activity, playing games entails adopting fictitious objectives and forcing ineffective methods on ourselves. Basketball isn't about getting the ball through the hoop; that has no intrinsic worth. If it did, we would bring a stepladder to an empty court after hours and pass the ball through as much as we wanted. Instead, we create the activity of playing basketball by taking up the artificial aim of passing the ball through the hoop and the obstacles that stand in the way of that goal, such as opponents and the dribbling rule. Observe that playing a game is defined by the deliberate state of mind rather than the actual movement.In summary, we use the means to achieve an independently valuable goal in everyday practical activities. We can, however, adopt a false goal in gaming for the purpose of using a specific method.
Let's go back to rock climbing now. Bouldering is the sport I've chosen; it's done without a rope, on short boulders that are typically no more than twenty feet, and with fold-out gymnastics cushions for a safe landing. Bouldering quickly became its own thing, pursued for its own reason, after starting off as a safe way to practice for more daring climbs. The term "boulder problems" is really used by boulderers to describe particular climbs; they are obviously similar to, say, chess issues.Boulder issues are frequently very short, very challenging, and the type of thing where you could fail and fall on your ass a hundred times before you succeed. Bouldering is rock climbing's sprint trial if those multi-day roped ascents up cliff faces are its adventure marathons.
Suits himself gives the example of a game: mountain climbing. The goal is more than just reaching the summit; for example, you could reach Everest via helicopter or El Capitan by taking the roadway up the back. The goal is to accomplish it using a particular set of constrained resources. Bouldering is undoubtedly no exception to this rule. For boulderers, this happens frequently: Boulderers frequently experience this: as we attempt to ascend the rugged overhanging face, a small child will sprint up the slope on the underside of the rock, peer down at us from above, and smugly and happily tell us that we must have missed the simple route up.
In the Suitsian sense, climbing is therefore a game. But many people play it for purely aesthetic reasons, making it a really interesting kind of game. Though theorists have taken into consideration a relatively limited set of motives for partaking in that Suitsian action, the Suitsian analysis may be found throughout the recent history of the philosophy of sport. Typically, it looks something like this: We put ourselves through these needless challenges in an attempt to improve, gain physical prowess, or succeed. However, the Suitsian approach permits any kind of motivation for wanting to create an activity, and if one listens to climbers' discourse, one will find that these motivations are frequently aesthetic—and proprioceptively aesthetic.
Consider The Angler, a well-known boulder problem in one of the world's most popular bouldering locations, which is located in Joe's Valley, Utah. It turns out that seeing someone climb it isn't all that fascinating. First of all, people who aren't climbers usually enjoy watching incredibly dramatic and explosive movement. Lay spectators will applaud large leaps from one enormous hold to another during contests on fake rock. The Angler is cautious, slow, and plodding; it lacks all of that. Even seasoned climbers enjoy observing delicate, complex movement, but it's still preferable when it's evident—that is, when you can see the rebalancing, the yoga-like stretches, and the intriguing body postures. However, The Angler doesn't show any of the interesting stuff. It's a very slow, careful climb with small invisi-feet and a sloping, slick ridge for your hands. Tiny changes in balance are what make the difference between success and failure; they require you to keep your core tight, regulate your center of gravity, and carefully move it about. And it feels so fantastic when you do it perfectly that you feel like you're a piece of pure accuracy, a delicate moving scalpel, slowly making your way up the rock. However, to an outside observer, it appears to be nothing. Watching someone else climb this thing is really boring, even for seasoned climbers. I adore The Angler, but I'll be honest: I've sat by the river behind it with a beer and attempted to watch people climbing it, but I quickly got bored. All those interesting internal movements in this climb are not visible to the naked eye. Here, the climber is the only one who can appreciate the beauty of movement.
For many, The Angler is the quintessential boulder problem.For many climbers, The Angler is the quintessential boulder problem. It has everything. The rock itself is quite lovely. Above all, the line, as climbers refer to it, is aesthetically pleasing. In other words, the climber follows a visually unique feature on the rock, while the actual climb path is clear, beautiful, and stunning. It's a really fascinating movement. The nicest part is that these items fit and match nicely. The quality of the movement in The Angler varies as the problem progresses. Below, it's delicate and complex, but as the line goes up and right, the movements get larger and more ominous.The final few moves, which are daring yet simple, must be made across the river itself when the season is appropriate. As the line increases, the movement's feel changes from delicate to exhilarating. There is a great consonance between movement, rock, and line. The feeling of triumph permeates the feeling of wild, free, open nature as you pull over the top, after all this pain and caution, with your nose wedged inches from the rock, looking down in search of the marginally better nubbins of friction. The river is running all around you, the wind in your hair, and the water is burbling.
I can be fairly attentive when doing philosophy, but on a challenging climb, I've never been more focused and attentive in my life. My mind is focused on the small ripples in the rock for my feet, the precise angle of my ankle, whether I'm holding the most grippy part of the rock with my hand, and the precise amount of force I need to push on my foot as I slide over to the next hold. If one were trapped in a traditional aesthetic paradigm, one may be inclined to suggest that climbing is merely a method or a trick to direct the mind toward the truly beautiful things, such as nature and the rock itself. However, this, in my opinion, misses what climbers are truly experiencing, feeling, and enjoying. They are focusing on themselves, observing their own motions and recognizing how they address the rock's issue. The climber's personal motion and the way that motion solves a difficulty are both considered to be part of the aesthetics of climbing. Climbers have access to a unique sensation of harmony—a balance between their skills and the obstacles they encounter.
I recall spending an afternoon at Bishop, California's Buttermilks, a magnificent group of rocks. I spent half of my time with my feet above the ground while I did my best to solve a strange, challenging challenge that involved a succession of heel-hooks and toe-hooks.A much more experienced climber was working a far more difficult issue on a different section of the same boulder next to me. We worked on our individual tasks all day. He was yelling his way up, swearing, and slashing at the rock because he was completely and utterly into it. His crucial maneuver was to ease his way up to a bad, slopey hold for his right hand, high-step his left foot nearly to his crotch, then squeeze himself between his left foot and right hand, popping himself between them like a wet watermelon seed, and using his left hand to stab for a small set of pocket dimples. This move is characteristic of high-end bouldering; you have to jump because the hold you're aiming for is so far out of reach that you have to throw yourself at it dynamically. However, that hold is so weak that you will tear yourself off the rock if you strike it with any extra momentum.
Comments 0