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Saturday 27 November 2021

One of the big whys


I used to climb rocks. Badly, but never mind; for a few years it was my sport.

Why climb? It’s risky. I could have fallen - did so, twice. Or been wiped out by a detached boulder - one weighing a hundredweight just missed my head. Did I have a death wish? Not at all.

Wasn’t it scary? Sure. Wouldn’t I have been safer watching telly or – ugh! – gardening? Sleeping would have been safer still. Problem with sleeping there’s no confirmation you haven’t rolled over in bed and snuffed it. From time to time it’s nice to tell yourself: Hey, I’m alive. Climbing can help with that,

Reflect. You’re on a straight road, no other vehicles in sight, your family saloon can do 100-plus mph. You press just a little harder on the pedal. Why? The hedges whizz past. If a front tyre blew you could be upside down in a ditch, watching a tongue of flame caressing the fuel tank. Harder still. Wheee-ee!

Nah, I’ve never ever done that. Never? Chances are you’re fibbing.

Rock-climbing usually happens in marvellous rural surroundings. That’s an excuse. Sort of. But that vista could be better inspected leaning against a dry-stone wall with binoculars. Don’t kid yourself; you’re halfway up Devil’s Groove because of the height, not because sheep are grazing on the hillside..

There’s a consensus that human beings are rational. Mostly it’s true. But then a happily married man, alone in a pub, catches the eye of a woman also alone. Speculation stirs, then is suppressed. Hurray, rationality works! But sometimes speculation evolves. Irrationally? Isn’t it entirely rational that attraction between the sexes should exist?

I used to like swaggering about with 100 m of nylon rope over my shoulder. Did anyone else give a damn? Was I harming anyone?

7 comments:

  1. I think humans, and perhaps also all animal life, are genetically programmed to push boundaries which is part of the mechanics of evolution. Science will probably break this down into performance of chemicals in the brain and body, but that leaves me cold. Take the example of falling in love. I don't want that explained in the context of chemical reactions. I prefer to have it as a romantic mystery. Good on the scientists who have produced so much to wonder at but most of it is so far beyond my ken I am happy to leave it to them. Having said that similar forces as outlined above are within me and I do from time to time find myself exploring science as far as I can go, so exploration is perhaps something so inbuilt we deploy it almost subconsciously, but perhaps more for some than others? A well worn cliché is the frequent reference to "adrenalin rush" used by people who, including me, have almost no idea what that really refers to scientifically or if it is even accurate in the specified circumstances.

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    1. Sir Hugh: Surely the dominant tendency with humans is laziness; with animals it's a response to hunger. As to "the performance of chemicals in the brain and body" leaving you cold I can only evoke my extreme gratitude to the RAF (even if it didn't feel like it at the time) for forcing me to comprehend a necessarily condensed aspect of physics and - even more remarkably - its associated mathematics. Greater understanding of natural phenomena is never a disadvantage and in any case there's no reason such knowledge can't co-exist with romantic mystery, since you're likely to be reading different books for either. Wilful ignorance is always the easier option.

      During my eight-month training I was, of course, concentrating on electricity and the wonders it could perform in the event of a need to kill large numbers of people in some foreign country. I am still woefully under-informed about chemistry but not quite so badly as I was in 1955. Physics shines light in all directions. Many people better educated than me are wont to refer the "beauty" of physics and maths and I think I vaguely grasp this idea. However, I'd have preferred to substitute "satisfaction".

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  2. And riding a motorcycle at 100 mph when you have a wife and kids. I did it when young - now I poodle at 50 mph when, at 83, I should (?) be sitting by the fire in carpet slippers.

    Reminds me of an excellent Australian film, "Look Both Ways" (a play on the title words) worth watching and still available at Amazon as a DVD see:
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Look-Both-Ways-William-McInnes/dp/B000FDEUYO

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    1. Avus: These relative speeds are unsurprising, at an advanced age one has less available time to play with. Could your first two sentences point to a conclusion in which youth is seen as selfish? And/or insensitive? Lacking in conscience? Incapable of thinking beyond the next meal? These questions are not rhetorical. A stream of nostalgia runs through your blog, implying that older times - and especially their machinery - were somehow golden. Verb. sap

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    2. You have got it in one RR. Not "insensitive" youth (which implies selfishness) but "unthinking" I think is more applicable.

      Your last sentence sums me up - the golden age for me. Would you rather have the present one?

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  3. Human beings have the ability to be rational, anyway. I'm not sure most of them are.

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    1. Colette: Human beings - the group to which you and I belong - have the ability to do more or less anything, although this bald statement does require some qualification. We may not have the ability to learn, say, mathematics, but we we may embark on an open-ended course to absorb this knotty subject, lasting for an infinite period of time. More surprising we have the ability to adopt the political philosophy of the previous US president. Yes we certainly do.

      I think, but can't be absolutely sure, that behaving rationally is a skill. Might some people be born with this? For those that aren't there's hard work ahead. Since I firmly believe (as I say to my brother, above) a major tendency among humans is towards laziness; this may explain why rationality is presently in short supply.

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