Category Archives: politics

Nov 03 2016
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politics

Why not? ‘Cause I wouldn’t tie in with the P.O.S.

…and I will tie in with just about anybody.

I have climbed alpine with people I met hanging out on the toe of Canadian glaciers.

I have climbed multi-pitch rock and ice with people who I met on the internet.

I have climbed with five-year-olds.

I have roped up with Christians, Atheists, Muslims, Stoners, Anarchists, Libertarians, Communists, doctors, nurses, roughnecks, contractors, and engineers.

But You could not pay me enough to tie in with that shit-bag, Donald Trump.

You see, I can make it safe with almost anybody who has half a lick of sense.

And of course, that disqualifies the fuckwit, Trump.

He is the sort who would insist on leading, even if the pitch was clearly over his head.

He would shake his way through voluntary run-outs above gear he really didn’t check, because he’s just that good.

He would slap together an anchor without inspecting it, because he didn’t have to weight the rope, so why should you, and besides, his stance is good.

He would spray about his lead instead of getting ready for the next pitch.

If he couldn’t clean a piece easily, he would leave it.

If he started to lose control of the rope during a fall, he would just let go of it.

I would not tie in with the worthless piece of shit. Vote for him if you want, but don’t be surprised if something bad happens.

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Sep 22 2016
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climbing, philosophy, politics, psychology

No Other Reason

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I looked at the anchor. There was a lot to it, but it was all small. Still, it showed no sign of motion when I bounced on it. Bouncing on it was my job, and that was OK, even if the anchor failed its test. I hadn’t called ‘off belay’ yet. If the whole thing blew out of the crack in the Apache sandstone, I would fall about thirty feet.

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It wouldn’t be pretty, but everyone would survive, because I had done the same thing at the last anchor. Having tested the set-up, I did the usual thing and stopped worrying about it. I would check it a couple more times as part of the process, but those would be dispassionate inspections and a matter of course.

I felt a twinge of pride in my hard-earned discipline because, from a certain perspective, I was in the process of engineering m own Armageddon. I had both of my teenage children 500 feet up a technical climb with no fixed anchors. If things went wrong, everybody could end up dead. Sure, the climbing was far from a red-zone effort for me, but the possibility remained. From a certain perspective, our trip up the route was irresponsible, if not abusive on my part.

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The perspective in question had been on public display over the past couple of weeks. Just before our climb, two alpinists were given up for dead on a mountain in Pakistan. The typical mewling followed.

“Darwinism in action.”

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“Stupid.”

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“Irresponsible.”

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“High price for a cheap thrill.”

As always, the simpering pieces of shit making those comments were … well, to be fair, they were simply unqualified to comment. They were the kind of weak which makes me ashamed to be classified in the same species as them.

They were Nietzsche’s vision of the last man, realized.

I believe the term-of-art is, “punk-ass bitches”.

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Anyone who has climbed knows why the two men were on that mountain in Pakistan. They were there because it moved them – the mountain, the climbing, the commitment, the whole thing. While they were climbing, they were living by a pure aesthetic, and anyone who has not lived that, cannot understand it.

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Frogland, 5.8, 6-7 pitches, 700 feet, Red Rocks, Nevada

Those who have lived it know: There is no other reason.

 

 

 

 

 

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Feb 07 2015
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climbing, philosophy, politics, psychology

The Discontented Future

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Broken pillars cluttered the slope. Winter had come to this. False starts, collapsing possibilities, and ruined glory lay across the span of weeks between the first snowfall and the now-inevitable warm-up. I loaded the Soloist and began to climb.
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My swing was still good. Over the preceding couple of seasons, I had passed a threshold. My technical skills no longer seemed to deteriorate over the long warm spells. My performance on ice now depended almost exclusively on psychology, and my psychology today was fueled by anger.
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Maybe this Winter was an aberration, but I suspected that it wasn’t. Things were changing; the climate was changing. I’d made a vow, back when rumors of soft and liquid Winters first circulated. When the day came that ice climbing ended, and I had no more use for my crampons, I’d clip them to my boots one more time and kick the nearest climate-change-denying Republican politician in the ass. I felt the time coming.
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The column of ice I’d chosen was forty five feet tall, and beginning to deteriorate. It was a bit of a risk, and a little silly. It was so short, and it was wet and manufactured. I could hear cars on the road down in the canyon. I had followed a tourist’s Yak-trax prints up the trail to get here. I knew that I would find a PVC pipe leaking water over the cliff band at the top of the ice. There was no wild beauty or uniqueness to be found here. The pillar’s existence was all that recommended it.
The bottom took a light touch. It was wet and brittle ice. It tolerated only one, gentle swing per placement. I weight tested each tool before committing to it. I placed the crampon points in little divots in the ice, rather than kicking the spikes into the column. I waited to place the first ice screw until I was well off the ground. I had picked the spot from below, and it turned out to be as good as I had expected.
The ice improved after the first piece of gear. Above a small roof, it took a full swing. My anger transformed, clarified in the movement. Another ice screw and a few more swings led to a different game on the thin steps of low-angle ice at the top. I grabbed a tree and stepped over the PVC pipe.
I fancied another lap then. I was done being angry. I knew that the anger arose from fear of loss, and a deeper fear of loss than the fear of losing cold seasons. It came from the fear that I might someday no longer be a climber and find myself looking at the world from the same viewpoint as those cramponned-boot-in-the-ass-deserving politicians. It was a fear that I was losing. As more days like today passed, I felt more and more certain that I would not habitually trade an ‘is’ for an ‘ought’. I would not stop paying attention. I would not find myself trading real days for fears of an imagined future and its glories at risk.
As the ice receded, I would move higher. I would take notice of the boulders that had been hidden under permanent snowfields. My tools would scratch more rock. At last, I would walk up glaciers covered with rubble, arthritic knees aching, tottering on my piolet, and feel no different than I did at the top of the little pillar today.
As I set up the rappel, words from a Howlin’ Wolf song began to run through my mind:

I have enjoyed things that kings and queens never have – things that kings and queens can’t never get. And they don’t even know about ’em.

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May be I was still a little angry. Yeah, fuck them, another lap.

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Nov 07 2014
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politics, psychology

Political affiliation? Oh, I’m a Pessimist.

In the Billings zoo, there is a small, Plexiglas enclosure housing a family of pygmy marmosets. When you approach the glass, they dash back to cower against the trunk of their artificial tree. But if you stand there long enough, the lead marmoset will venture back out on a branch at head height. Once he is eye to eye with you, he will yawn and blink, flashing his teeth and upper lids in threat. Primates held captive by other primates, the marmosets persist in behaviors towards us which appear a little silly in their current situation with its artificial constraints and artificial accommodations. However, it is the best that they can do, as their alternatives are battering themselves to death against the glass or succumbing to madness. I consider my own situation to be no different, and I don’t consider myself special.

If we are really being honest, we must admit that the move to agriculture has been a disaster. Since our domestication, we’ve tried to make the best of it. Most of our efforts to spiff up domestic existence have gone into building transparent boxes for ourselves – titles, cubicles, buildings, polities – and equipping them with life-like accommodations. The remainder of our efforts have gone into building boxes for others, (our little cousins in the zoo for example), to make us feel more comfortable with our own enclosures.

Political organizations have been no small part of our attempt to settle in to domestication. They have been a great tool, as they incorporate lots of toothy yawns and exaggerated blinks in their proceedings, and those gestures are as natural and comforting for us as they are for the marmosets. However, political organizations sometimes take themselves too seriously. Most seriously, they sometimes propose that they can offer a final reconciliation and teach us to love the box. Europe and Asia have endured the stewardship of such true believers and, perhaps excepting the Russians, have learned to revile it.

Over here, in the terrarium tagged “U.S. of A.”, we have been slightly more fortunate. Our politicians have flirted with Great Societies and Shining Cities, but have been good players and hypocrites, rather than true believers. Right now, the Republicans are flirting with – something? – that they say will constitute the ideal box. I can’t quite make out the lines of their sketch. It’s either a homogenous, industrious God-and-Country, or a socioeconomic free-range game park. It doesn’t matter. When it’s time to commit to their vision, they won’t. To do so would mean the beginning of stewardship and the end of all the yawning and blinking, and the latter is what’s made them as happy as they can be in their own little box. We should be glad to be ruled by the foolish and the weak, considering the alternative. It is the best that we can do, even if it is a little sad. As a proud pessimist, I am hopeful and confident that the new Republican congress will live up to my expectations.

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May 10 2014
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atheism, philosophy, politics, psychology, theism

You Can’t Escape Your Faith

This will be a quick point. The point is negative, but the motive behind the point is not. So I will go on about the motive for a bit before getting to the point. Please bear with me.
Believers are often flabbergasted by non-believers’ obsession with theology. If I may indulge in a little hyperbole, this is like marveling at the Israelis’ obsession with the Third Reich. It’s kind of the elephant in the room, and a very insistent elephant at that. See ‘evangelism’. The non-believer’s ignoring it all will not be ignored.
Some see the constant poking as an invitation to a fight. I don’t. People are more complicated than that, if given the opportunity. Maximizing opportunity explains my political motive and my personal motive in making the critical point that I’m going to make about apologetics. I want believers to be the best believers that they can be. I want them to heed the exhortations in their scriptures to be humble, to have faith, to take their empathetic impulses seriously. I want them to be good believers because I think it will temper their impulse to distrust and marginalize us non-believers. But that’s the lesser part of it. Mostly, I want them to be good believers because I am a social animal, and that makes them my people. I don’t know why I am a social animal, and as I understand my circumstances, I can’t know why. But that is irrelevant. The truth is: we need each other, and when we cut off members of the species, we are contradicting ourselves.
Faith is necessary to be a good believer. If you are to believe in a transcendent context and a grand necessity it must be something posited, a starting assumption by which all is explicable. It cannot be something which is explained, even by all things. It can’t need an apology. I’m sorry, but that’s what transcendence really means, if it really means anything.
Now I can make my quick point. Cosmological arguments are prime examples of the corrosiveness of apology. These are arguments by analogy. They state that, for a primary or non-contingent cause to participate in subsequent causal relations or contingencies, it must be like those subsequent causes or contingencies, though it is not a subsequent cause or contingent object itself. From this likeness, the arguments then deduce other qualities as necessary precursors unique to the primary cause or non-contingent base. Such deductions are not valid. The qualities in question are, by definition, essentially unlike and independent of subsequent causes and contingencies.
The problem with all theological apologies, as in the Cosmological ones, lies in the habit of deducing from analogies. The practice implies that there is not just an explanation from God, but that there is a science of God. It implies that there are things which we can deduce about God’s workings. We can then begin to repeat the mistakes of the Scholastics, and not just the initial, innocent ones about angels and pinheads, but the final ones about crusades and confessions too. It’s a tempting way to be. It seems so decisive and satisfyingly self-righteous. But it’s ultimately limiting, fearful and inconsistent. It’s OK. You don’t need it. Stop apologizing and just have faith.

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Oct 04 2013
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philosophy, politics, psychology

Looks Like Warhol Was Wrong

So was Nietzsche. We achieved the egalitarian culture envisioned in Warhol’s prediction of 15 minutes of fame for all, but the result was not a new richness of expression or exploration. Nor did we go under, though we have realized the veneration of the Last Man which Zarathustra foretold. Instead, we leapt right over our potential into an unanticipated and more horrible age – the age of the Spectacular Idiot.
The original idiots, to whom the Greek root-word referred, were ordinary rabble, lacking in the judgment which comes with mastering a skill. The English derivation means incapable of rational conduct. Our current iteration has boosted the concept to a new level by replacing the ‘incapable’ with ‘self-consciously dismissive’. Representation is everything. Our idiots are nothing if not democratic, exalted by, of and for the rabble and its discomforts.
The Idiots of this age are driven and sustained by discomfort born of psychic vacuum. Ideas are not ideas for our Idiots; ideas are badges to adorn the clothing which cloaks scarecrow personalities. If one has no sense of efficacy, criticism or modification of one’s adornments is then a disconcerting, existential threat. Alertness, capability in the face of changing circumstance, and the ability to appreciate the immediate cannot be a source of self-worth for stuffed clothing on a stick. None of Warhol’s bubbling, creative ferment for these folks.
When he contemplated the consequences of mass communication and global culture, Warhol missed the possibility of Idiot ascendency because he was an artist. Though not noted for a consistent ability to overcome their own insecurities, artists must at least accept the inevitability of insecurity to do what they do.
Nietzsche recognized the weakness which led to the Age of the Spectacular Idiot, but missed its positive symptoms. He saw the timidity but not the fear.

…Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he who is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man…Becoming sick and harboring suspicion are sinful to them: one proceeds carefully. A fool, whoever still stumbles over stones or human beings! A little poison now and then: that makes for agreeable dreams. And much poison in the end, for an agreeable death.

Little did he know, the last men would not simply sip their poison in silent relief if it were placed at the bedside. They would drain the cup and screech for more, even pushing some of their number forward to fetch it. The last men of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Eurasia and North America have stood up such cup-bearers for themselves and for everyone.
Sadly, the political right has bred these fellows. It is no accident, for circulating in the conservative vital essence is an element of comforting authoritarianism, the extract of which makes the best soporific toxin. The process is sad because the necessary juices must be boiled off the base solution of sobriety and caution which makes the conservative indispensable, destroying all healthy self-despite in the distillation.
What remains is the Spectacular Idiot, who not only bears the cup, but also supplies the juice for the last men. The words of the bearers do not matter, nor does the content of their ideas. What matters is the rhythm of the sounds, the smell of the thought, the fit of the jacket and the sparkle of its badges. Spectacle, upstanding and forthright, dulls the pangs which come of the last men’s impoverished experiential diet. Idiocy eases the last men’s insecurity, displacing it with denser righteousness. There is only one cure. Somehow, the last men must have their capacity for self-despite restored, so they can clear their stuffing. They need a purgative to make room for some personal integrity. The question is: How to accomplish a rehabilitation at this late hour without being poisoned as well?

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Aug 22 2013
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philosophy, politics, psychology

Dear Texas A.G.,

I listened to your statement regarding the voter I.D. lawsuit today with a great sense of nostalgia. You see, I grew up in the South. I know the code. I was a soft-spoken, clean-cut kid and so people let me in on it without thinking twice. You might say racists educated me.
I was learning when they said things about what you should reasonably expect of someone, about what was only fair, and how certain people just were.
I was learning when the guy on our work crew vetoed a job applicant because, “I don’t want to ride around in the truck with one of them, the way they smell.”
When our church’s choir director turned to my father and said, “Isn’t that just like a nigger?”, after my friend in the heavyweight division got pinned and lost the tournament: another lesson.
I learned that some people just weren’t like us white folks. Some people didn’t deserve the same consideration. My instructors taught me to look down on people based on affiliations, manners of speech and origins. I got it, but not like they thought I would. You see, my teachers succeeded; I just came to feel that way about them.
The thing is, I wasn’t raised to bite my tongue like the black kids with whom I went to school and worked. By the time I had to do it to get by, the thing had already grown nerves. It galled me, and I guess I took it personally.
So, don’t blame me when I say this, blame my teachers – your ideological predecessors. When I hear some pig-fucking, redneck, piece of shit start talking Reasonable Racism – the code – I just get blind mad. I hate. So piss off. And if you decide not to piss off, as my teachers would say, “Don’t come ’round here, boy.”

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Jul 09 2013
2 Comments
evolution, intelligent design, philosophy, politics

Is Intelligent Design Distinguishable from Creation Science?

Yes, as horse shit is distinguishable from bull shit. ID is a deductive argument from analogy and teleology. As such, it is neither valid nor scientific. Both Creation Science and ID are based in the politics of religion, a genre which degrades both politics and religion, but ID is an attempt at subterfuge whereas Creation Science is at least an honest effort to advance an agenda.
Both are like unwanted attention from a belligerent drunk, but where Creation Science is like a shove, ID is like the question, ” What are you looking at?”. As with the shove or the question, one response is in order.

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Jun 14 2013
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climbing, politics, psychology

Dear Ueli,

You know what this is about. It’s what everything has been about for – how long has it been – ever? I mean the little dust-up on Everest. Let me reassure you, I am writing as a great admirer and friendly correspondent. You are living the dream, and showing all us amateur climbers how to do it. We are all limited by what we think is possible, and you have made a career of crushing the limits. So I am not a critic, but I do have a concern.

I’m not so worried about the actual events on the Lhotse face. I don’t know shit about Sherpas or their culture, but I am a field observer of human psychology, as a hobby and in my job, and here is how it looks. It appears that the Sherpa crew on the face was pissed because you guys passed them and may have knocked a bit of ice down. As climbers, we know how frustrating it can be to have a stronger team pass us. We accept it as part of the game, though. It’s the same with ice fall; even the best climber is going to knock a little ice down, no matter how careful he or she is trying to be. However, the reaction you got didn’t come from climbers, did it? It came from technicians trying to get a job done.

I’ve tasted that flavor of hostile indignation before. The first time was from a Chicago cop. I used to run a route that took me past a housing project. Rain or shine, I did that run for a year and a half, until the cop stopped me. He didn’t yell or throw rocks at me, but he made it clear that I was not to run the route past the project anymore. Unpleasant legal consequences would follow, he implied, if I did not comply. Before my encounter with the cop in Chicago, I had the naïve idea that laws and cops were there to keep the peace and let the citizens get on with their business. Afterwards, I understood that laws and cops were there to prevent trouble for cops and the legal system. Seems like the situation is the same with the fixed lines on Everest and the people associated with them.

These people – the functionaries of the Big Expeditions to the Classic Routes on the Big Mountains – have a different view of risk than climbers. A climber’s view of risk is like a card player’s. He pushes the chips to the middle of the table and then does his best to get them back. These other people do their best not to have to play the game. Who can blame them? They have a job to do.

Which brings me to my concern. What do you want with mountaineering anyway? We all know that mountaineering is for those who can’t do anything else. Hell, in fifteen years or so, I know I’ll be trading in my tools for a piolet and begging my kids to drag me up some god-forsaken volcano (assuming I live that long). Of course, on Everest you were after the West Ridge, which is not a mountaineer’s route. No doubt you were motivated in part by the tale of the route’s first ascent. I have heard Tom Hornbein talk about the original climb. Even back then, he and Willie Unsoeld had to fight the mountaineering expedition mentality to get to their climb. That mentality is institutionalized now in the environs of all the prominent peaks, high and low. Did you hope to escape it in this day and age on the most prominent peak of them all?

I know you have a job to do too, and you are beholden to the weasels in marketing because of it. However, you shouldn’t feel compelled to stoop to mountaineering. You must realize that the weasels in marketing would rather not have you around. They would prefer an endless parade of reality TV celebrities coming off the summit of the world’s highest. Those wankers come much cheaper and are easier to liquidate. The climbing community would recognize the significance of a West Ridge ascent, but the rest of the world would see only the summit of Everest, and they would be glad that you had finally got there, after all your preliminary fiddling in the Alps.

You ratify the popular perception by adding an Everest summit to your resume, and in the process, you increase the value of wanker stock. To us climbers, you represent the consummate talent and discipline required to push the chips to the middle and reliably pull them back. To the summit industry, you represent recklessness bordering on assholery, by playing your game in their workspace. Even worse, when their stock goes up, yours goes down. As the notoriety of the high summit grows, lending credence to the wankers’ claim (explicit or implicit) that the high summit is the Grand Prize of climbing, the significance of soloing the North Face of the Eiger in a few hours, shrinks.

Don’t get me wrong, an artist like you should do what moves him without listening to anybody else, especially a duffer like me, and if you are moved to go back to climb the West Ridge of Everest, you should. Furthermore, you have nothing to be sorry for regarding the fight with the rope-techs on the Lhotse face. I’ve read all the anti-imperialist narrative and social justice analysis regurgitated in response to this incident. Sherpas attacking a bitchy client is a revolution. Sherpas attacking an independent team of climbers is just a good, old-fashioned turf war. So, I think there’s nothing to stop you from going back in principle, but please consider before you do: Is it good for business?

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Oct 05 2012
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medicine, politics

Carnival of Adverse Selection

A Canadian friend once told me that he did not understand the American political system and asked if I could explain it to him. I told him that it was basically an exercise in pest management. On the one hand you have your smarmy rats (Democratic politicians) and on the other you have your vicious rats (Republican politicians). The first kind you don’t even want near you, the second kind you just want to stomp. Either way you’ve got an intractable rat problem, so mostly you just try to ignore them as best you can and get on with your life.

Sometimes though, they crawl across the kitchen counter in broad daylight and then you have to pay attention to them. That happened to me during the last Presidential debate. I was doing my best to ignore it, but we have a radio in the garage with a power switch stuck in the ‘on’ position and the debate was playing in the background. I had it successfully tuned out until they started talking about health care and Romney, who’s turning out to be a particularly nasty little ankle-biter, came with the crazy talk.

Here’s what he wants to do about health insurance:

  • Block grant Medicaid and other payments to states, limit federal standards and requirements on both private insurance and Medicaid coverage. The state can structure a cost-share program however it wants?  It can still shift costs to the Emergency Rooms of Medicare-participating hospitals and to the Medicaid programs of richer states (a kind of internal ‘self deportation’ which already happens to a limited extent)? I can’t imagine what the states might do? These changes are supposed to lead to innovation, and they will – just more the sort of innovation that financial system deregulation allowed.
  • Unshackle Health Savings Accounts by eliminating the minimum deduction requirement and allowing people to use the account funds to pay premiums. HSA’s are a nice product for a very limited income range. If you make too much money or too little to make the tax savings worthwhile, a HSA makes no sense. The proposed changes won’t change that. So, why make the changes? Hang on a minute, I’ll get to that.
  • Allow consumers to purchase insurance across state lines. Recall this is the now minimally regulated insurance product. Watch the insurance companies gobble each other up as they try to recruit all those newly available good risks. Watch high risk people get filtered out of the broader  insurance pool as the generous benefit plans become increasingly burdened with these individuals, and the prices for those plans go up and up, in turn prompting lower risk people to leave for cheaper, less generous benefit plans. Will Romney & Co. adequately fund a reinsurance plan to keep this from happening? Not to worry, people with chronic problems can still go to the ER, right? People can preemptively accomplish this adverse selection themselves via purchasing pools, right?
  • Medicare will become a premium support program. The premium support and benefit requirements will be fixed at the current levels in Medicare. If costs go up, the market will determine how people make up the difference. And in time, like gravity takes care of shoddy construction projects (who really needs architects or building codes), the market will take care of things by channeling the high risk people into the more generous plans (Medicare), driving those plans’ costs out of sight and eventually, driving those plans and high risk  people out of the market. I can almost hear the invisible hand slapping – see adverse selection and cost shifting above. (It’s actually worse than that – Medicare has a normative effect that goes beyond its simple economic effects but that is a story too long and tangential for the moment.)

So, why make the changes if they entail all these predictable distortions? Free market fundamentalism is the answer. Markets aren’t a highly effective tool for these guys, they are a moral imperative. So in their view, markets must be good for every application. Just set up a market and have faith; it will solve any problem. Regulation and critical analysis aren’t caution, they’re apostacy. I’d usually ignore this crap, like I ignore people praying for rain, but this is more like praying that your kid gets better from leukemia in lieu of consulting an oncologist. I feel like I’ve at least got to say something.

So, for all who wondered what could be worse than Obamacare – it’s this happy horse shit. These two rats are scampering across the counter in broad daylight with this mess, and they need stomping, (metaphorically of course).

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