I just got back from an unusual mountain bike ride, that is, one in which I was successfully miserable. It started going downhill. Oh what a sinking feeling that is, literally and figuratively! It is so easy to dig a hole for yourself so deep that digging out of it will be pure misery. The same could be said of hiking down into a canyon at the beginning of a hike.
Consider for a moment how unnatural it is: when you were a child, your mother trained you to finish off your carrots and peas first -- bleah! -- before you earned dessert. That is the feeling you get starting a mountain bike uphill. You can get so addicted to the rhythm of depleting yourself on the ascent and to the smug satisfaction of resting at a scenic high spot, before turning around and whooping it up on the descent.
Now consider the opposite: descending at the beginning, and being chilly. When you turnaround now, it is later in the morning, and you are digging out of your hole in warmer air. That is just plain perverted!
And yet, when camping high in the summer to stay cool, you find most of the roads below you. So what are you going to do but start your rides downhill? It is useful to be able to learn to like this sort of thing, and I was practicing today.
I have discovered a trick of the trade, and wrote it up in the tab at the top of the screen, "Summiting: Ideals and Suffering." Imagine taking some famous philosophers along with you on this ride: half of the bike club consists of ascetics, poets, Romantics, early Christians, Thomas Carlyle, and Nietzsche.
The other half of the club consists of that dreary string of Utilitarian philosophers, such as Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. (Ralph Nader would be a good addition to this list.) These are the people that Charles Dickens satirized as "Professor Gradgrind" in one of his novels.
'The greatest good for the greatest number'? The 'avoidance of pain.'? Comfort, utility, safety, long life, standard of living, and quantity as the standards of value? How does any of those maxims help when you are digging your way out of your hole, you are hot, your shin is banging the pedal, and you are twisted sideways to push the damn bike?
But the other half of the bike club tells you that your voluntary Suffering is noble, manly, and glorious. As you fixate on this vision, you do start to cheer up. You develop a disdain for the complaints of this rotting carcass known as a human body. "Reality" exists in an Ideal, not in flesh. And you do surmount the challenge. (If it doesn't kill you, that is.) People, that I would ordinarily poke fun at, have actually given me advice more practical than all the pragmatists, utilitarians, materialists, and men of common sense put together.
I am still looking for a chance to reread the opening of an interesting book by Neff, called "Carlyle and Mill." John Stuart Mill had initiated a friendly contact Thomas Carlyle, who was virtually a bete noir of Mill's sect of Utilitarians. Carlyle was working on his history of the French Revolution. He asked Mill for comments on the one and only draft of the book. Mill took it home.
And it was burned in an accident. Neff gave such a moving and poignant portrayal of the scene when Mill had to give Carlyle the bad news. Carlyle rose heroically to the challenge of starting the book over again from scratch, and he completed it. Would Professor Gradgrind have been able to do the same?
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Forgive me. I intended to make a paragraph-list of a half dozen counter-intuitive habits that help a camper get the most of his lifestyle. Instead, I went off on a sermonette about noble suffering. My excuse is that I am still trying to develop the habit of starting a ride downhill. Next time, the list.
Consider for a moment how unnatural it is: when you were a child, your mother trained you to finish off your carrots and peas first -- bleah! -- before you earned dessert. That is the feeling you get starting a mountain bike uphill. You can get so addicted to the rhythm of depleting yourself on the ascent and to the smug satisfaction of resting at a scenic high spot, before turning around and whooping it up on the descent.
Now consider the opposite: descending at the beginning, and being chilly. When you turnaround now, it is later in the morning, and you are digging out of your hole in warmer air. That is just plain perverted!
And yet, when camping high in the summer to stay cool, you find most of the roads below you. So what are you going to do but start your rides downhill? It is useful to be able to learn to like this sort of thing, and I was practicing today.
I have discovered a trick of the trade, and wrote it up in the tab at the top of the screen, "Summiting: Ideals and Suffering." Imagine taking some famous philosophers along with you on this ride: half of the bike club consists of ascetics, poets, Romantics, early Christians, Thomas Carlyle, and Nietzsche.
The other half of the club consists of that dreary string of Utilitarian philosophers, such as Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. (Ralph Nader would be a good addition to this list.) These are the people that Charles Dickens satirized as "Professor Gradgrind" in one of his novels.
'The greatest good for the greatest number'? The 'avoidance of pain.'? Comfort, utility, safety, long life, standard of living, and quantity as the standards of value? How does any of those maxims help when you are digging your way out of your hole, you are hot, your shin is banging the pedal, and you are twisted sideways to push the damn bike?
But the other half of the bike club tells you that your voluntary Suffering is noble, manly, and glorious. As you fixate on this vision, you do start to cheer up. You develop a disdain for the complaints of this rotting carcass known as a human body. "Reality" exists in an Ideal, not in flesh. And you do surmount the challenge. (If it doesn't kill you, that is.) People, that I would ordinarily poke fun at, have actually given me advice more practical than all the pragmatists, utilitarians, materialists, and men of common sense put together.
I am still looking for a chance to reread the opening of an interesting book by Neff, called "Carlyle and Mill." John Stuart Mill had initiated a friendly contact Thomas Carlyle, who was virtually a bete noir of Mill's sect of Utilitarians. Carlyle was working on his history of the French Revolution. He asked Mill for comments on the one and only draft of the book. Mill took it home.
And it was burned in an accident. Neff gave such a moving and poignant portrayal of the scene when Mill had to give Carlyle the bad news. Carlyle rose heroically to the challenge of starting the book over again from scratch, and he completed it. Would Professor Gradgrind have been able to do the same?
_______________________________________________________
Forgive me. I intended to make a paragraph-list of a half dozen counter-intuitive habits that help a camper get the most of his lifestyle. Instead, I went off on a sermonette about noble suffering. My excuse is that I am still trying to develop the habit of starting a ride downhill. Next time, the list.
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Chris