Philosophy in the Ski Area

Published on 2020-3-05 by Michael Stanton

Osterfelderkopf, ~1400 meters up and down on skis

Georg and I set off in light rain/snow mix from the Garmisch ski area. Almost immediately, snow stuck in huge chunks to his ski skins.

We had an excellent time. We discussed lots of philosophy! I only captured about 20% of our topics here, in this diary entry I wrote the night after our day:

Philosophy is not a way to get from point A to point B. It is a way to play once you grew up.

When we were kids, the playground had everything. When we are adults, we are told what to think and how to think about it.

Georg and I talked, me tossing out a bunch of things I picked up in early 20th century occultism books.

"As above, so below," I said, skinning up the slope with poor Georg fighting the enormous clumps of snow that stuck to his skis. This was the only way I could stay out in front!

"It's an occult concept. It means when you are imagining a new space, say, a space in another dimension where you'll never have access...you can take the things you've learned in this life about how systems and organizations develop, and you can reasonably apply them to the new, as yet unpopulated space."

I went on. "We are programmers, we understand systems. We know that caches become filled, or remain underutilized. We know about slow leaks in systems. About interactions, unpoliced by cleverly situated locking primitives that ensure multiple threads of control don't crash into each other."

"It's the same 'up there,' or 'out there,' or wherever you are pointing your consciousness."

Our problems are their problems, whoever they are.

"Whenever I enter these spaces, I'm interested. But I fear that I'm going in circles. I won't get anywhere," said Georg. "And worse, I might delude myself into believing I DID get somewhere." He stopped, removed his skis and used poles to scrape off potato-sized blocks. The fast-falling snow collected around us.

"That should help," I said. "But why do we want to go anywhere?"

Maybe, I thought, going somewhere is merely a mode of thought that allows us to hide from the truth: there is nowhere to go.

As if in defiance of this burdensome truth, we continued up the mountain. Georg slowed down but never stopped by his tumors of snow, ever building under his feet. My left ski developed one, too. We made it to the Osterfelderkopf after some tiring trips down and back up. That was a lot of (good) work! Inside, over a beer, we talked about energy.

"Have you heard of a Dyson sphere?" said Georg, steaming slightly in the fuggish warmth of the little bistro. "It's a way of harnessing the energy of an entire sun. It would provide the energy needs of an enormous, galaxy-wide population."

"How terrible," I said. "Think how awful our fall will be when we need another one, and can't find a star with the right chemical balance!" Laughing now, "rather than failing to continue our experiment on one planet, we'll leave a husk of a galaxy, burnt out and the witness of suffering on an enormous scale."

I'm just not excited about that kind of progress, even though I know I benefit from it every day. Georg sees the tremendous possibilities, and the beautiful complexity in the way a new technology opens a slanted context on the world, which then establishes a new environment whose rules and ideas bear little resemblance to the old.

Me, I seem...eager, almost, for endings. For the empty larder. For the eventual confrontation with a starker reality. The planet Saturn looms behind my vision, awe-inspiring and yet, possibly the final vision perceived with human eyes.

Every cast of thought is a reaction to other thoughts. And all of them take place within delicate membranes that are not only hierarchical, they interpenetrate and condition one another. The structure of a new tendril of thought may be conditioned by the life of the cluster of thoughts before it, such that as it grows, it reproduces the structural elements of it's parents experience. In that sense we pick up where they left off.

Suitably filled with beer and warm soup, we skied down. "I forgot HOW to ski!" I said. "Me too!" said Georg. It had something to do with the tired legs and the beer. But we got down somehow, enduring long traverses of the mountainside to reach the final black run that led directly to Georg's van.

A thought experiment: what if you gave the humans a heaven, and set them loose in it. Would they be happy?

We both agreed, no way, because they become accustomed to every good thing that comes, then need more to stay happy.

"I think that IS what happened. I think we are in that heaven, but it was given to us long ago, and now we who are born into it can find no trace of the original deed. Nor can anyone else. So, the people made wars, driven by desire to feel more virtuous than others. They then built factories and created paper wealth, so they could play games of feeling powerful or weak," I said.

"No one remembers the original conditions."

I remembered a theory I had once. That we are Martians who finally used all the resources of that planet. We came here long ago, fell into primitive life and forgot our history. And now...we dream of going to Mars in order to escape the diminishment of resources on this planet! LOL.

How to escape the cycle of getting accustomed to happy things?

"You would need a controlled, minimal environment," said Georg, applying his thinking to the problem.

"Ah! This is what monks are trying to do!" I exclaimed. "They try to escape the wheel of desire. They eat the same food every day, and seek to be perfectly content."

"They try to escape excitement about current conditions," I went on, now thinking myself. This must be the way. That is, there must be something here for me.