I Climb and Other Problems With “Self”

Editor’s Note: What follows reflects the author’s thoughts and not necessarily the views of theDIHEDRAL. Due to the length of piece it was decided that releasing it in multiple parts would work best. When asked for a more salient, less detailed draft, the author responded “this is the less detailed draft”.

Part I

I was working a fantastic line, it’s a tough route that was right at the limits of my ability.  I had confidence that I could send.  I tried it the previous year and wasn’t able to get through the crux, a short roof with a big throw to a crimp on the headwall.  This time the crux was hard, but I managed to stick the move and make it to the final section of the climb.  Climbing is strange, we go through bouts of hyper-focus in which it seems like we’re not the ones steering the ship.  There are times when you make it to the top of a route, and it takes a minute to even realize what you’ve done.  Such was the case through the crux of this particular route.  I was on the headwall, maybe two meters from the anchors, and my consciousness had a reawakening!  I was suddenly fully aware of myself and my surroundings.  I was really high up, I was barely holding on, and my arms were fully pumped.  I had managed to clip into the last piece of protection before the chains at the end of the route.  In hindsight I should have just shouted down to my belayer to take (take out the slack in the rope allowing me to get a much-needed rest), but there is something in us climbers that pushes us to do a route cleanly, i.e. no takes from bottom to top.  I pushed myself a little higher, and then a little higher.  I was one throw from the top, but I had no idea what I was throwing to or how good the last hold would be.  I just went for it.  It stuck, I was at the chains, but…the hold was a gross sloper.  My hand started slipping the moment it landed.  I knew almost immediately that I was going to whip.  I didn’t have the strength or time to place my other hand onto a decent hold, and I started falling.  A fraction of a second into the fall, I realized that my foot was on a great hold, too great.  My foot kept my lower body vertical as my upper body went horizontal.  The momentum kept me moving in this way until the back of my head crashed against the wall.  I don’t remember being lowered, but by the time I got to the ground and untied, folks from the entire wall were there to check on me.  My friends stepped up immediately, cleaning the blood from my head and holding bandages firmly to stop the bleeding.  I was so thankful to have them there.  Primarily due to the love and compassion they showed me, but I was also hoping for validation on the send.  I made it to the top. No, I didn’t clip the anchors, and yes, my head is bleeding and I probably have a slight concussion, but that counts as a send, right?

That’s how the story goes, but it’s not actually what happened.

Philosophers, scientists, and psychologists are among a select group of people who oftentimes find themselves living double lives.  Folks within these camps dedicate their careers to studying the world from peculiar perspectives.  What we learn along the way forces us to recognize that what we see and what we believe are not the same thing.  It doesn’t take long for those engaged in deeper ontological and metaphysical thinking to understand that our language doesn’t correspond well to reality.  Now of course there are arguments that suggest that reality supervenes upon language, and that may well be true, but therein lies the point. 

Most people aren’t really concerned with how language influences reality or how reality influences language.  Most people are content to embrace the disposition that the way we experience the world is by and large the way the world is.  Philosophers, scientists, and psychologists are among a select group who learn pretty quickly that to suggest otherwise is a surefire way to end up spending most weekends alone.  Thus, a double life!

Most people, including most philosophers, scientists, and psychologists just want to enjoy the happy slumber of ignorance.  Most of us just want to enjoy a sandwich with our family or friends; we want to act like the food is delicious and our favorite team has a chance to win the game.  It’s nice to share memories of beautiful sunsets, climbing trips, and the bad choices we’ve made along the way.  Most of us don’t want to hear about gravitons, photons, quarks, and qualia when we’re trying to eat.  We just want to eat. And so, we humans, most of us at least, we allow language to serve as the wind in our sails as we blissfully sail across a sea of illusion. 

Reality is not what it seems, but regrettably most of us are content with our current arrangement.  Seeing is believing! 

Seeing is believing? This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Unfortunately, etiquette dictates that we don’t rock the boat, and so philosophers, scientists, and psychologists among others are compelled to lead double lives.  The messy lives behind closed doors where nothing seems to make sense and everything is wrong, and the clean lives out in the open where everything seems to make sense, and everything is wrong.

If we go back far enough, we’ll arrive at a time when everyone on earth believed that the earth was flat.  Why wouldn’t they?  The earth looks flat.  Those people were wrong.  There was a time when everyone believed that the sun revolved around the earth.  Why wouldn’t they?  It looks like the sun revolves around the earth.  Those people were wrong.  There was a time when people believed that the sky was blue, that time was linear, and rocks were solid.  Why wouldn’t they.  That is how things seem.  But as it turns out, all those people were wrong.  Those things were never real, despite the overwhelming majority of the people who believed them.  They believed them to be true because that is how things seem.  So much for seeming!

The history of humanity is adorned with unremitting failure stemming from our inability to recognize that the way things seem is not the way things are.  Seeing ought not lead to believing.  If history is to teach us anything, it should be a warning that reliance on perception has always steered us wrong.

It’s as Philosopher David Chalmers wrote in his book Reality+ Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy; “We discovered that we didn’t live in an absolute three-dimensional Space in a world of absolute Time that passes.  Instead, we live in a four-dimensional and non-Euclidean spacetime.  Space and Time are relative to reference frames, and there’s no absolute now.

We discovered that we didn’t live in a world where objects have intrinsic qualitative Colors that are revealed to us in Perception.  Instead, colors are complex physical properties that affect our eyes and our brains in complicated ways.  In Perception, colors aren’t directly revealed to us but instead are inferred by the visual systems in our brains.

We discovered that rocks aren’t Solid.  They consist of mostly empty space and are merely solid.  They don’t have absolute Weight: They have one weight on Earth, another on the Moon, and in outer space they’re weightless.”

We’ve discovered all of this and more.  But did we learn?  Not really. 

We still talk as if the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening.  It doesn’t do either, the rotating of earth just creates the illusion.  We still talk as if three-dimensional objects (like rocks) take up Time and Space.  We talk as if those objects have Color.  We still talk as if they’re Solid.  We’re wrong.  We all understand this, but tradition is hard to shake, and language keeps us captive.

Problems with perception, problems with relying on the way things seem don’t stop with rocks and similar external objects.  These problems apply to us as well.

…to be continued!