Picture Me

Leavenworth was difficult, to say the least. I was able to hop on a v9 and get somewhere on it but it’s a work in progress. I could only send v3’s and v4’s since all of the hard stuff will take more than a few tries, or even a few sessions. There was a v10 that I found just before I left that looked doable if I were fresh, just something to look forward to next time.

In order to train my footwork, I’ve started to take a new approach to gym climbing: climbing without feet, but still able to use features on the wall and bolt holes (along with whatever hand holds are on the problem. It makes some problems a grade or two harder. I’ve noticed that this greatly affects the opening sequence of problems compared to the last half or so. Difficult, but also very fun. It gives a whole new approach and vision to bouldering. The focus becomes more on footwork, since the feet aren’t nicely taped for you and they don’t consist of nice flat edges facing in the direction that makes the move easiest.

The hardest problem I sent footless was a v6 following a slightly overhung arête and transitioning to vert halfway up. Super cool.

One last thought: Indoor climbing is such a joke compared to the outdoors.

What are the foundations of morality? My first inclination leads me toward religion. Some divine power communicates its bidding to us of what is and isn’t allowable, its legitimacy coming from mystic or supernatural reasoning. People look towards something which is impossible to understand, its essence of being along with its reasoning, and through faith come to trust and rely on it. What I see coming out of this trust and faith in a divine being is submission and a bound sense of living.

What a person can and cannot do is explicitly laid out in religious texts. Obvious problems occur when society moves away from using a religious text as the primary document regarding law and morality. Perhaps society becomes more tolerant than what the text teaches. Whatever the case may be, religious texts become outdated as society changes, as people question what is acceptable or what they are willing to accept. A submissive life ties in with living a bound life, one where all moral actions are performed according to an external source. Freedom of choice exists but is limited to complying with the external source.

Another problem with this type of divine induced morality is that it sets up a hierarchy. At the top is the divine being, in the middle are those who have faith in the divine being and submit to its bidding, at the bottom are those who do not have faith. Those in the middle regard themselves as being more moral than those at the bottom due to their faith. The strong vs. the weak.

Could morality come from people? If it does, than moral principles seem entirely arbitrary. They can be based on any detail, no matter how small, and can be carried out if the principle is enforced via consequence for disobeying. The intentions behind these principles might be based on controlling others, or maintaining power, or protecting people from themselves. Regardless of the intention a principle is based upon, it limits freedom and increases the creators power over others.

Going to Leavenworth this weekend, early morning start. Gonna try and get on some stiff problems. Looking through the guide book is making my hands sweat, it’s gross, but exciting. Gonna look at some v9’s, 10’s, and maybe an 11. I haven’t felt this confident in a while, not since almost sending stained glass (v10) in Bishop last year.

yeah, strong gym climbing doesn’t necessarily mean strong outdoor climbing, but some strengths translate better than others, like tendon strength. What doesn’t? Some technique styles and mentality. It’s much easier to get hurt outside, whether it’s a bad landing or sharp holds. Also, I think static climbing is helpful for preventing a variety of injuries.

Had a decent session today. Sent a v7 in two tries, sent a v9 in three tries (one of the moves was a big cross that looked difficult when I saw a guy try it, but it wasn’t), flashed a v4, sent a v8 in two tries (after half heartedly trying it earlier in the day) in that order.

It always takes me by surprise when someone tells me that I’m a good climber. It’s even more surprising when they say that one of my strengths is figuring out problems. I’ve always thought a weakness of mine was reading problems, and that I’m a mediocre climber at best. Maybe the v9 was misgraded, three tries seems too few for a problem of that stature.

I climb late evenings or early mornings because there are fewer people watching and judging. I’m acutely aware of people’s eyes, for various reasons. I also don’t like competitions. Too many people judging me as I climb, watching my technique, judging how much better they can climb a problem. My friend said that I could do well in the open category. Highly unlikely is what I thought, maybe is what I said. There seems to be a lot of powerhouse climbers who show up during competition time, those double digit climbers coming from their caves.

I prefer bouldering by myself. Maybe a friend or two but that’s about it.

I had a good session at the gym today, about 3 hrs of bouldering to see if my hangboard routine has increased tendon strength. I began with the usual finger stretch followed by traversing until I got a light pump in my forearms. I sent a v7 in two tries, rested, sent a v6 in two tries, rested, did some more traversing, then flashed a v7.

I created a two problems. The first started with a big cross with the left heading right (maybe 45 degree overhang), toeing in on the start with the right foot, quick match and up and right to a sloper (no overhang). Finally a big hand-heel match with the left foot, pull up very high on the sloper and hit a decent crimp with a thumb catch, then toping out. Not sure why I explained it since nobody will understand it but me.

The second problem was a lot more fun and physically demanding. I wasn’t able to finish it after many tries, so it might be between a v7 -v8. Not really sure, but I do know the moves were pretty core intensive.

All this took about two hours, I spent the last 40 or so minutes working an extremely crimpy, slightly overhung problem. It was just set (while i worked the second of two problems) by a setter who didn’t send. I could tell my tendon conditioning worked because I had ample tendon toughness to hold on to the half pad crimpers I fell on the second to last move on all 5 or 6 of my attempts. I think I did pretty well considering since my tips were burning quite a bit before I had my first attempt.

I noticed improved tendon strength and forearm endurance, most likely due to the supplemental exercise.

I think I need new climbing shoes. I’ve used the same La Sportiva Venoms for the past 4 or 5 years i think. I’ve only had them resoled 3 or 4 times, which makes me wonder how people burn through climbing shoes after 3-5 months. It might have something to do with climbing on rock as opposed to plastic. Rock is generally more detrimental to the life of the toe box area. I’m sure it also has something to do with footwork technique; smearing/pasting compared to placing a toe on a hold. Personally, I prefer precise footwork instead of the paste and go. If I can reach the next hold without my foot popping off, you can be sure that my foot will stay on (as opposed to a dyno or campus move).

My back up/warm up shoe is the Flash by Madrock. Doesn’t really excel at anything except heel hooking, but they are comfortable.

Here’s what I’m looking for: an aggressive bouldering shoe (down turned toe, slip last, asymmetrical), low volume fit (especially in the heel), preferably velcro or slipper but lace up is always a possibility. Any suggestions?

The plan was not executed in the least. I tried Equinox a few times, felt ok but not well enough to work it. Didn’t get a chance to climb at 5 star boulder. On the plus side, I climbed some very chill easy to moderate problems including a techy slab with micro sized holds along with a fairly difficult core move on a separate problem. It was nice to get back outside, even if we were forced to commit to the 40 min. hike to/from the area due to a giant puddle behind the gate.

Plans for climbing in the very near future: weight vest training sending v3-v6’s to tap into my potential. I think I have technique down pretty well but I feel like I’m missing that ‘next level’ finger strength. I also need to work on power, being able to pull through on some of the more difficult moves.

I boulder, I am a boulderer. I don’t enjoy top roping, have no interest in participating in any other type of climbing other than to watch people or listen to them talk about ‘how difficult that last clip was’ or ‘pitch 3 was so chill’ etc. The stories and excitement with which they tell their stories is wonderful. It’s great they’ve indulged in the many disciplines within climbing.

I am completely happy sticking with bouldering, but just about every person I’ve met can’t understand why I’d want to ‘pebble wrestle’ when I could be climbing a 70 ft line or multi-pitch behemoth. Continuously defending myself becomes very monotonous, because in the end they still don’t get it.

I wonder, are there any other people who purely boulder out there?

This Sunday i’ll be bouldering in Gold Bar. It’ll be quite a treat since I don’t normally climb outside. Speaking of which the most recent outdoor session was in Bishop a year ago, a nice 21 day trip camping outside and bouldering everday…except for a few days of top roping (ick) which the other people in the group were looking forward to. Now that I come to think of it, the last time I climbed outdoors was at Smith Rock towards the end of last summer. More top roping there (bleh) but climbing nonetheless. But Bishop… a dream of mine to return to.

Anyway, I’ve got a problem I tried a while ago at Gold Bar called The Equinox, seen here

There’s another problem called Ebriosity that i’d like to work too. The problem starts at 2:33 mark. The movement is quite a bit more dynamic and…lurpy, I guess, than Equinox. Not really my preferred style of bouldering but I was inspired when I saw my buddy Art (pictured in the video sending Ebriosity) sending it.

I’ve been climbing pretty strong in the gym; sending hard problems fairly quickly, creating my own problems to target certain areas that I feel need improving (which seem pretty difficult to me), and, in general, trying to climb as smooth as I can. The problem is that the transition form gym climbing to outdoor climbing is awkward and very difficult to predict. For one, gym climbing tends to give you feet in all the right places, good feet at that. Outside, feet tend to be very small small and precise or whatever your hand just left. On top of that I need to get my mental game situated.

Nothing seems genuine anymore. I can almost always find an ulterior motive that trumps, nullifies the original motive put forth. Example, advertisements show you products that will help you, either by making you look better, make certain tasks easier, etc. It’s blatantly obvious to me that the companies who pay for these advertisements are only interested in one thing: money. 

It seems like there are two ulterior motives that consistently recur: money and an advantageous position. Money is obvious, businesses see each person as a dollar sign with a number next to it. Whatever they can do to lower that number in their favor will be considered and implemented in their tactics, such as withholding certain features from a product for a future version making the previous version obsolete or creating demand for a product that is only compatible with other products that company creates. An ‘advantageous position’ would be any position of power one is able to hold over someone else to their disadvantage. This could take the form of extortion via knowledge or material, a position of authority (such as a policeman with exclusive rights), a person being “better” than someone else creating inferiority in the “lesser”, etc. Money might fall under the advantageous position, thus one ulterior motive.

Think about the hash tag for twitter. It’s usage has skyrocketed since twitter was the “in” thing to do. I still don’t really know what it does, maybe it’s a marker or a way to tag a little 150 word blurb? That hash tag is free advertisement for twitter that all their users use. I feel sick just thinking about it. It’s worse than a brand name since the hash tag can be followed by anything, while a brand name remains the same. Anyone can post the hash tag and it immediately becomes twitter marketing, whether it’s on facebook, tumblr, anything that gets any amount of traffic. Just discussing it is advertisement. I’m starting to ramble so I’ll stop.

This is just a surface post. There’s so much more this but I’ve been having a hard time getting myself to write lately. Nothing seems to have any value, or at least not enough value to matter.

Off topic

Why is it so difficult to just be?  Rhetorical yet a question which must be asked. It seems as though everybody is exuding their wills against me, hoping that it will soak into me even though, unbeknownst to them, I’m wearing a wet suit. The repetition involved in eluding their wants and desires for me is wearing me out, fast.

Inevitably, there’s an idea that people have of me. I’m a collage of features, aspirations, dreams, and traits that they impose on me which some how comprises who I am and should be to them. I know of part of this collage; get a job, make money, pay taxes when needed, buy a home, marry, have kids etc. These are all the types of things almost every person strives for in their life, in a word: success, at least success as they see it. 

Obviously a conflict arises between how I want to exert my will and how other peoples wills are exerted upon me. I don’t want those things which collaborate to form success. People have this idea of societal duty that must be realized in each individual. Those who don’t meet this end up ostracized through ridicule, constantly being reminded of what they don’t have which others do. 

http://www.untilabortionends.com/en-us/default.aspx

There’s a website called Until Abortion Ends in which people submit stories or videos about themselves telling what they will give up until abortion ends. I couldn’t find any information regarding what the constraints are about the ‘abortion ending’ part of the pledge, perhaps it’s up to each person depending on where they live or it’s just a US in A phenomenon or a worldwide group. I’m not sure. There aren’t very many people involved in this…movement…, at least not that many on the site if that’s the case.

I can’t see what this will accomplish. It sounds like a faith issue, perhaps, of which I have none.

To me, pro-life means infringing on the rights of others, forcing them into a choice, one already made for them. Pro-choice means not infringing on the rights of others, allowing each to make a decision based on their own beliefs. Based on the tenets of anarchism, forcing someone to do something is always unacceptable, which I believe. This is precisely the implication of pro-life, that is, forcing someone to do something (forcing a set of beliefs on one). Now, if someone makes the statement “abortion is wrong”, they are simply stating an opinion (abortion is wrong for me), one that can be turned into a universal principle (abortion is an unacceptable act) which they, almost always, try and force others to abide by. Similarly, if someone says “abortion is right”, they are stating an opinion (abortion is right for me), which can also be turned into a universal principle (abortion is an acceptable act) which they, almost always, try and force others to abide by.

If the principle ‘abortion is an unacceptable act’ is taken as a universal, then abortion is no more. Interestingly, if the principle ‘abortion is an acceptable act’ is taken as a universal, then abortion can or cannot be performed. It encompasses the first principle, in a way. Everyone can apply the second principle, whether they believe in abortion or not, but not everyone can apply the first principle. The second principle doesn’t infringe on the first because it is not forcing anyone to accept a principle. It might seem that way since it, itself, is a principle, one that everyone follows, but it is not restricting either party’s beliefs, which the first one does. If one disagrees with abortion, all is well. If one agrees, all is well. So, pro-choice seems a more viable option.

It gets much more complicated when religion is used, since those who are religious and believe that ‘abortion is an unacceptable act’ generally cannot agree with it’s use, regardless of anyone else’s belief, or situation. The second principle, would be unacceptable to them.

And it gets even more complicated when you throw in contraception, religious rights, women’s rights, bigoted activists etc.

Just a thought on abortion.

I have a Facebook, I “stalk” other people’s statuses in order to find philosophical content, regardless of how small it might be. Most of what I find is utterly ridiculous. Someone asked the question, “how can you trust a murderer not to kill you?”. They were asking the wrong question. Asking ‘how…x’ involves an answer of process, steps to take to get to x, or achieve x, or… This showed in the sort of responses people gave, since almost all of them referred to the facts of the situation of the murder. Depending on the facts, their responses varied i.e. legitimate forms of murder vs. illegitimate forms of murder, other questions pertaining to the original, yet off topic. The question assumes that a murderer can be trusted.

A more suitable question for discussion not involving circumstantial reasoning is, “Is it possible to trust a murderer to not kill you?’ to which I would answer no. A murder is generally defined as a ‘wrongful killing’. Since ‘wrong’, and ‘right’, are extremely subjective and based on a variety of circumstances (personal beliefs, the law of a particular government), a person’s reasons for murder are just as subjective. Anything could make a person kill someone, even nothing at all. If each person’s consciousness is available only to themselves, we cannot know their reasons for murder, therefore there is no way to know if a murderer will kill you. The reasoning is disputable, but I think the answer remains the same, a firm ‘no’.

Again, the question is worded strangely, implying that the only answer is ‘no’. If you answer ‘yes’, then you must know something that someone who says ‘no’ doesn’t, or are thinking of a specific case. Trusting a murderer to not kill you is like trusting the lottery to return your money. If you give the lottery your trust to win money, you will almost always come out behind. There is a slim chance you’ll win, not enough to reasonably continue to bet. Similarly but in reverse (that is, comparing the odds of the positive of winning the lottery to the negative of being killed by a murderer), if you put your trust in a murderer not to kill you, they might not, but there is that chance that they will, a chance that makes trusting them unreasonable. (the odds that they won’t kill you are relatively poor compared to the odds that you won’t win the lottery, which is very, very high)

It reads a little muddled, my apologies. If you don’t want to read it, remember, don’t trust a murderer to not kill you and don’t get caught up in philosophy on facebook.

Anarchy, what is it? Or maybe I should begin with what it’s not. It’s not uncontrolled violence where the strong prey on the weak (read: capitalism). It’s not the lawless, unruly wasteland (read: Mad Max). It isn’t…I can’t even remember all the other negative aspects people attribute to it because of the reading I’ve done. Anyway, the picture has been developed.

Anarchy is community, people helping people who ask for it. Everyone in the community works towards a common cause, which is each other. One of the key aspects is that nobody is forced to do anything which they do not want to do, regardless of their situation. A tough pill to swallow if you don’t know what’s in the pill. What this leads to is a pursuit of knowledge. An anarchist figures that if a person knows the relevant information about their situation and they come to the conclusion that they do not want that situation to continue, then they will voluntarily ask for help, in which others will. Pretty simple. This can be seen with various examples: Someone abuses drugs, realize it’s hurting themselves and others, wants help; Another person isn’t doing their part with community work, decide they want to learn a trade to help for some reason, asks for help.

Most people refute anarchy by creating some sort of situational example that creates a problem which is, seemingly, “exclusive” to anarchy or is especially problematic. “What if a person does x” or “what if a person doesn’t do x”. Whatever the example is, apply it to the world we currently live in and see what the consequence of the person’s action is. Apply the example to Anarchy and see what the consequence of the person’s action is. Compare the answers; if the consequence under our current world is worse than the consequence in the Anarchistic world, then a state (no pun intended) of Anarchy is preferred. I hope I explained that well enough.

One of the worst situationals is “what if someone commits a crime?” The claim is made that anarchy does provide a sufficient way to deal with a criminal/crime. I could make up some term like ‘community punishment’ where the community confronts the criminal and somehow makes things right. Basically, a situational response open to counter arguments (“if the community deals with punishment, isn’t that a state, therefore being contrary to anarchy?” etc.) and it would be one long back and forth debate over some fictional situation. In the end, it gets neither of us anywhere, plain bickering. The wrong questions are being asked. Instead, I’ll respond with a question, one which will spark a genuine discussion: “what is the root cause of crime?” Here, I think we’ll find that a person commits a crime because they are lacking something; a person steals food because they are hungry (lacking financial means), or a racist kills someone based on their ethnicity (lacking education), or…you get the idea. In a state of anarchy, every person who contributes will be provided for, physically and emotionally. There would be no purpose to crime.

This is quite a contrast to the world as is. You commit a crime you go to jail, barring the fact that many people are not caught and even live a life of crime, continuously building their criminal record. Jail hardly serves a purpose and seems to exacerbate the situation of criminality. To conclude this example, under Anarchy, crime would be non-existent. Therefore, Anarchy is preferable to the current situation. Now the people need to ask for help.

It’s been a while, empty time passing. I haven’t smoked in month, cold turkey, no weening. Surprising how addicting it can be, addicting, not really the right word, habitual. I stopped just in case I need to take a drug test for some future job I don’t want.

I’ve done quite a bit of reading, book buying and downloading. Anarchy is much more formidable a view than what most people assume. Hm, this reminds me of an Ax commercial where people would spray Ax on themselves leading to ‘anarchy’, which happened to be the name of the spray. The city went to ruins because people were paying attention to each other via the smell of the spray; cars were crashing, water pipes exploding, sirens wailing, all quite wrong and misleading.

I’ve come up with the idea of moving to Bishop, CA and boulder. I need a job that pays just enough so I can own a trailer park house within a short drive from Bishop (the town is so small that there aren’t any apartments, only motels and those are not viable). How do you tell someone you don’t want money? They look at you stupid. A job and a home, that’s all I want, some job that pays me to do some menial task so I can devote the rest of my time to climbing and reading. I’m “not doing anything” with my degree, at least nothing that would make it seem that way. I read, I comprehend, I think, I write. That’s what I do with my degree, I don’t make copious amounts of money to impress my friends (though I am jobless at the moment, oops) or buy the latest and greatest x, or mod my car, or any of that junk we’re so used to.

I’m trying to write a book. I saw a friend on facebook talking about being 50+ pages into her book after a few days of writing. I can only guess at what she’s writing about, but I have my doubts on the quality, see, judging gets you nowhere. It makes you bitter, distracted, unhappy etc. She impressed herself upon me and that’s quite a lot to ask of anyone…