David Ryder – Designer – Blog
philosophy
Philosophical Thoughts on Fear
01 year ago
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.” – Anne Frank
Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are. – Don Ruiz
Somewhere, even if you have to look for it, you possess fear. Some sort of fear. We’re all afraid of something. Some people are afraid to take physical risks. A risk that would require you to put your body in physical harm. Or maybe it’s a fear that stops you from walking over a ledge to your death. Fear is a powerful emotion and physically speaking, is one of the human characteristics that keeps us living. It’s not necessarily the lack of desire to do something, but the fear of harm that prevents us from doing so. Sure, anyone that has set “foot” on the ski slopes has probably wanted to try a black going absolutely full speed with no inhibitions. But that’s just the thing. Fear – one of our inhibitions – stops us from barreling down the mountain at full speed. In the interest of self-preservation, we dial it back appropriately and try to find the balance between the greatest amount of exhilaration we can feel and our safety.
Fear can be manifested into forms other than physical. Humans have the ability to turn fear into a very abstract feeling. Fear of professional failure for example. This fear doesn’t cause any bodily harm or threaten our physical well being per se, but it can create the same sort of inhibitions as a directly affected physical inhibition. So by this we find ourselves trying to find a healthy balance between maintaining our position and being as successful as possible.
Fear is a powerful and useful emotion. But it also has the ability to become a poison that slowly deteriorates the health of your psyche. The worst trap anyone can fall into is becoming more afraid of life than death. When you begin to ride the coattails of mediocrity to avoid an inevitability that we all face: death. Fear begins to overtake our lives and the control it exerts over our every action – or rather, inaction – turns us into something that isn’t necessarily afraid to dream, but afraid to pursue our dreams. We get lost in the fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of being impoverished, fear of not being accepted, fear of being uncomfortable.
-David Ryder
Adaptation, unhealthy America
02 years ago
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There are two systems that promote change in the human being. Adaptation and evolution. Adaptation is something that can be achieved in one person’s lifetime, and be inherited from one generation to another. Evolution is a slower process, and maintains a much larger scope of change. Evolution can also be described as a change in the genetic material that can be a permanent psychological or physiological adaptation that benefits survival in a changing environment.
What has spurred this idea is how our bodies adapt to continual physical exertion, load, and impact. I think for the most part your physical ability is limited to what was passed down by your parents. If they were inactive their entire lives, it is possible to be given traits that are less resilient than their own. If they were very active and put a constant heavy load on their bodies or minds, their children can inherit abilities that exceed their parents in the same aspect.
This idea can be disparaging in learning that no matter how much you condition, your tendons can only take so much stress in a given time period. But it should be encouraging that your continual drive will ensure that your offspring inherit improvements in areas that you were weak in. This is adaptation. It can revert if your children are lethargic. Their offspring may inherit weaker tendons, muscles, bone structure, etc. If you live your life as a pig, lethargic and gluttonous, you are potentially disadvantageous to the advancement of your children.
Evolution is less short-term, and usually is a much larger development. It is arguable that evolution is constantly advancing, never do we devolve. Adaptation on the other hand can advance or retard certain human levels of performance aspects from one generation to another, or even in the same lifetime.
This idea exemplifies the need to care for our bodies. We only get one, and it is selfish in many aspects to let it go to waste. People who live unhealthy lives put an unfair load on the health care system, pass on weak and unhealthy characteristics to their children, introduce hereditary diseases in their blood line (and more importantly, OUR society), and are more likely to breed less healthy children. There are studies that also indicate that unhealthy people can breed further infirmity through social acceptance. Increasing exposure and making it more of a norm has made it acceptable, and some cases glamorous.
We are taught from a young age to eat large, healthy portions at every meal. We are taught to clean our plates, at any cost. Enormous portions that are offset and processed largely by our highly active childhoods. I remember being held at the dinner table for more than an hour after my father finished eating because I didn’t finish everything on my plate. I was only relinquished from my post when I started to cry. This is a horrible mentality. “Eat because other people are starving!”. Except the gleaming hole in this logic is the fact that those hungry people will be just as hungry whether I stuff my face or not.
Historically people didn’t begin to gain unhealthy amounts of weight in America until they were out of high school or college. This is when most of American’s active lifestyles come to a screeching halt. Unlike many countries in Europe, we don’t encourage adult-based physical activities like soccer, tennis, football, etc after we finish school. They exist, but are not the norm. And now children are eating even less healthier than just ten years ago and they are becoming more and more sedentary. Less active. In a time-crunch, parenting is more frequently being done at McDonalds and in front of a television. This has led to obesity beginning at even earlier ages.
All of these factors are working very hard against our society. We are being pushed fatty, processed, unhealthy food and it happens to be easiest and cheapest way to eat. The media is glamorizing obesity, parents have less time to be parents, children are becoming more sedentary, and even less sedentary when they reach their adult phase. Producing a healthier society by creating a healthier you extends further than just a healthier you. It encourages a healthy lifestyle in the people who you are surrounded, and more importantly, it passes down traits that will lead to healthier children.
Healthy living isn’t something that should be a considered a short-term fad, it should be a lifestyle.
The blinding pursuit of numbers
02 years ago
I have become comfortable, and lost sight of what I have come to love about my country. Our mountains, our waterfalls, our valleys, our forests, all of our natural land… the harmony which is created by the wonders of God and is imparted upon us. Things I readily understand and am tightly bound to. I have always felt the mountains were where I could truly call home. Where I felt like I could observe the creations of God, and worship these creations.
However I have ashamedly fallen to the blunder of chasing numbers. I have lost sight of what compels me, internally, driven by God and my own love and appreciation for the natural Earth. These things have been cast aside and taken place by the next grade, the next highest peak, the next increment in difficulty. I have averted my attention to the next identifiable striation in the leg muscles which ascend me to the top. I have focused my goals on climbing the next grade of difficulty.
These things have aided in me losing sight of who I truly am, and I question the source of these new motivations. It seems so unnatural to move through God’s creation simply for the sake of touting an achievement. What I seem to have lost sight of is that the simple exploration and sight of something not yet seen is THE reason for my being. Anyone with the right gear and training can move up the most difficult of mountains in the most difficult of seasons. But it takes a special someone to be able to move through the simplest of terrain and be able to find and recognize true love. Love that is capable of bringing tears to my eyes by the simple invocation of seeing a simple beauty for the first time. To be able to see something as a pure creation of God, placed there for my appreciation and even worship, is something that should not be lost sight of.
It is so simple to segregate yourself from nature. To believe that humans and nature are two separate entities is in my opinion disingenuous to the understanding of your own soul. Humans are a part of nature – created by nature – and there is no easy way to separate the two without an arrogant assumption akin to humans ruling nature. I wish to experience the natural world and feel connected to it – as if I am truly a part of it. I have torn my body apart to get to the next level, and have forgotten – or rather, had a momentary lapse – one of the reasons I exist.
The pursuit of life
02 years ago
I want to feel alive. I want to feel beauty in my heart. I want to feel connected. I want my existence to transcend the people I touch. I want my love for everything to blossom such as a hibiscus flower blossoms during a cool morning’s sunrise. Most importantly, I want to be SUCCESSFUL.
Society has done a good job of inhibiting our emotions and instincts by teaching us how to be successful. Success in a socialized aspect is defined as working your life to accumulate wealth and and a family – at any cost. We aren’t taught how to experience life the way God intended. Wealth, gathering of materials, who you know, how much of that matters when you die? We all die, and likely we all die alone. This is a fact that most people simply cannot understand. You will die, uncontrollably. Most people don’t understand how drastically different their life and philosophies may be 40 years down the road. I can’t think of many that would ever admit to wanting to look back on their life and wonder where it all went, and what it was all worth.
We all start out living our lives as if we are eternal beings. We have no expiration date. Then we grow into a sense that we at some point die, maybe at 70, 80, 90, whatever. What is often refused to be accepted is that our life can be extinguished at any point. You may be able to agree with that, but it is unlikely that you live that way. Of course you CAN die at any time, but you won’t. You won’t die until you are ready. That is what in my heart I at one time believed – even in the face of the realization and acceptance that I COULD die at some random time, even in the near future.
I don’t plan on dying, nor do I intend to die anytime in the near future, but I realize that I will die, and I have absolutely no idea when it is going to happen. The point is, I don’t want to die and have had my life exist in vain. I don’t want to die where my only mark left on the world is how much wealth and items were to be distributed to my successors and how many false relationships I have accumulated in the name of vanity. I also don’t want to live my life achieving something society has defined as success, to only look back twenty years and realize that my life has been relatively uneventful and pointless.
My drive is to live my life as I deem successful. Wealth and social status is superficial, and will be forgotten as soon as I’m gone. What is important to me is who loved me, who I loved, and who will remember me for what reasons. It is our humanistic obligation to live our life to the fullest according to our love and passion. There is a sharp disconnect in what the human soul needs to be happy and what socialization has defined what it takes for every human to be happy. Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. There is no one single path that equally makes every person happy. And with the way we are socialized we all start on the same path with the same goal in mind and for most of us it’s too late by the time we realize that that isn’t the path to happiness.
I think a lot of people live their entire life striving to reach a goal that has been fed to them by the media and they either reach that goal and realize that isn’t what makes them happy, or they still feel empty because they missed out on life while attempting to pursue what they believed was going to make them happy. There is an equilibrium that can be reached, and that is something we aren’t taught. We are left to our own devices to realize this.
To me success is just that, to be able to realize your full potential in the thing you have the most passion for. In fact, it is often considered to be one of the habits of highly successful people. People whom begin their journey doing something they love and are passionate about, and wealth happens to be a side-effect of this pursuit. At any rate, success is subjective and I no longer consider myself successful unless I am living my life doing the things that absolutely make me happy. I used to think living my life this way was irresponsible, but now, nearing 30, I am content with the fact that I have lived my life the way I have. I am not an empty shell striving to fulfill a destiny that has been laid out in a cookie-cutter fashion. I intend for my own reflection of my life when I am nearing death to be something that contains absolutely no regrets. I want to live, not necessarily every day, but every month as if I was going to die. I don’t want to build false relationships, nor do I want to be involved with anyone with that intention. The only things I want from a relationship with another person is truth and forthrightness.
Comfort
02 years ago
Comfort is a relative term. To each individual exists a set of minimum circumstances that has to be met to be comfortable. This may sound like common sense to many; it does make sense. But a slightly harder concept is the idea that in relation to one persons current greatest discomfort to another persons current greatest discomfort, the magnitude of discomfort is the same. For example: the magnitude of grief, discomfort, or hardship is the same for a person that lost a loved one and the person in a state of starvation. The application of this idea is limited in scope and primarily pertains to enduring and lasting discomfort or pain.
It is a human condition and it can be compared to a deck of cards that are stacked on top of one another and the card on top is larger than those behind it. Each card in the stack gets progressively smaller. One card represents a weighing problem. When the largest problem in one individual is resolved and removed, the problem behind it grows to its size replacing it relatively. Each human has the same sized top card. In theory, we all possess the same relative largest enduring issue.
The ability to conquer, or dwarf with confidence, determination, drive, and spirit is a powerful ability that aids us all in the human struggle. This can be directly applied to the discomfort felt when realizing a goal. Assuming this theory of magnitudal relative discomfort holds true, the amount of discomfort a person feels enduring any problem may be harnessed with the ability to appreciate the discomfort. It is often this discomfort that makes the realization of a goal which begets discomfort much more rewarding.
There is another aspect of the previous theory that is described by the ability to manipulate the magnitude of your greatest discomfort. The characteristic that allows someone to enjoy the pain associated with pushing their self forward relentlessly stems from the ability to manipulate the natural magnitude of a series of discomforts. The pain associated with making a gnarly climb up a mountain – a particular discomfort – can be overshadowed by the natural draw to and distraction of the mountains.
Questions
02 years ago
The reward for frequent exercises in reflection and contemplation is a better understanding of self and a healthier psyche, amongst many, many other effects. In a society where we are becoming more and more time impoverished it’s becoming a forgotten and misunderstood activity. People are becoming disconnected from themselves and in turn are becoming afraid to stop the world around them and spend actual time alone.
- What drives people to deceive?
- Why do people try to spare each others feelings?
- What motivates people to assume a particular identity?
- How do you create a balance between a healthy soul and a rewarding career?
- What is the price of exploring and developing your own religious views?
- What determines value?
- Is industrialization truly crippling the globe?
- If our objective is a rewarding afterlife, why care for the Earth we inhabit for such a glimmer of time?
- Is technology getting in the way of art?
- Is it better to be absolutely sure, introspective, or blissfully unaware?
- Is it possible to create a perfect balance between humility, ego, arrogance, confidence, and empathy?
- Are you comfortable with who you are?
- Are you certain you know what you want?
- Do you think you have all the answers?!
Reward beyond ego; spirit
02 years ago
Going to the top of a mountain is rewarding regardless of its shape, grade, vigor, prominence, or elevation. While it’s hard to profess that those factors don’t contribute to any greater victory it’s easy to profess that climbing to the top of any mountain, regardless of its characteristics, is equally rewarding in all aspects outside of ego.
Ego for me is a very small prize for accomplishing a goal set forth. I find more value in the serenity I find at the top. The more time I spend in the mountains the more I realize that every mountain offers its own unique set of challenges, views, and experiences. Standing on top of a peak – regardless of its size – allows for the same reflection, contemplation, and admiration. It allows for an equal opportunity to explore a mildly spiritual connection to my soul and to the souls in the natural bodies around me. It perpetuates my love for God and the simple appreciation for the Earth that is in my opinion required – or at least greatly contributes – for a healthy psyche.
There is no small victory in accomplishing any goal when you can embrace everything else associated with going to the top of a mountain. It is this perspective that has allowed me to – outside of ego – to appreciate a mountain of any size equally. And without the overbearing clouding of infalted ego and with the ability to push through deep pain, my time in the mountains can be blissfully rewarding on a consistent basis.
Spiritual, wilderness quotes
02 years ago
I like reading other authors’ work to help me put into words how I feel or approach an idea or philosophy. I especially like to read works of philosophy and anything dealing with the human struggle, soul, spirit, or wilderness because they are all at the center of my personal drive and inspiration. These aren’t mindless regurgitations; I hold all of these quotes in high regard and they have some important meaning to me in some manner.
If I were to ever choose who to summit a peak with I would without hesitation name John Muir. He and I may share some sort of descendant spirit.
John Muir
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”
“The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.”
“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
“The Mountains are calling and I must go.”
“Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
“I care to live only to entice people to look at nature’s loveliness. My only special self is nothing (I want to be) like a flake of glass through which light passes.” -John Muir
“In the midst of such beauty, pierced with its rays, one’s body is all one tingling palate. Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.”
“No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movement of water, or gardening — still all is Beauty! ”
“Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen. ”
“If my soul could get away from this so-called prison, be granted all the list of attributes generally bestowed on spirits, my first ramble on spirit-wings would not be among the volcanoes of the moon. Nor should I follow the sunbeams to their sources in the sun. I should hover about the beauty of our own good star. I should not go moping around the tombs, nor around the artificial desolation of men. I should study Nature’s laws in all their crossings and unions: I should follow magnetic streams to their source and follow the shores of our magnetic oceans. I should go among the rays of the aurora, and follow them to their beginnings, and study their dealings and communions with other powers and expressions of matter. And I should go to the very center of our globe and read the whole splendid page from the beginning.”
“I . . . am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.”
“The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, profits, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains — mountain-dwellers who have grown strong they are with the forest trees in Natures work-shops.”
Thoreau
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”
“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate. ”
“That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
“To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to.”
Tolstoy
“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.” -Tolstoy
“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken. ” – Tolstoy
“Where Love Is, God Is”
“God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists…”
“Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him. ”
“The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words.”
Other
“You will be more inspired by these mountains in a year than a lifetime of reading inspired authors’ writings.” -David Ryder
“Only after the last tree has been cut down
Only after the last river has been poisoned
Only after the last fish has been caught
Only then you will find out that money cannot be eaten” – Cree Indian Prophecy
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” – Mohandas Gandhi
“I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth.” -Steve Mcqueen
“The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth … the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see.” -Edward Abbey
“Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them. ” -Isaac Asimov
“In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height; In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth.” – Tagore
“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained. ” – Walt Whitman
“The smaller we come to feel ourselves compared to the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in its greatness. I do not know why this is so.” -Arne Naess
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
Disconnect from "nature"
02 years ago
Everybody enjoys their own version of the mountains. There is no limit to the number of attributes which draw an individual to the mountains and everyone can appreciate their own interpretation of the joy they bring. They are so simple yet they have the capability to attract the most complex and diverse pool of perception brought by man. You can derive that this leads to the realization that every human shares one instinctual characteristic – on a spiritual level – that connects us all: a subconscious draw to the natural Earth. The overbearing mounds of rocks that quietly exert their power over us.
This instinct however can be hindered – or inhibited – by a socialization that teaches us that humans and nature are two separate entities. That we go in and out of nature on our own cognizance. This however is disingenuous to our inherent relationship to “nature” as one could argue that we are born of the natural Earth and therefore there is no way to disconnect ourselves from nature, only to misunderstand our meaning to it.
We all have different appreciations. Different lenses that show a different beauty to each individual. So it makes this attraction unique – to all of us. Your level of appreciation may vary and it may very well be determined by the condition of your soul. If you can subscribe to the idea that natural entities have souls, or contain some form of a soul, then it would be easy to believe that your connection to those entities can be clouded or strained if you don’t have a healthy connection to your own soul.
Realizations, awakening, and goals
02 years ago
I started backpacking with my father when I was around 14. Fourteen years later, I have come a long way in my abilities and knowledge. I always felt I have done a lot but since I have been to Utah I have realized that my relative experience and knowledge has been dwarfed by how much is to be learned and experienced here. Between freeing myself from a shadowing relationship and coming to one of the most inspiring locations imaginable, my priorities, dreams, and celebrations on life have slowly returned. I’m reaching a point where I feel completely free and it has re-awakened part of my psyche and soul that I have long forgotten about. My sense of adventure, ambition, love, and deep passion for everything Earthly has returned.
I have done hikes and summits more strenuous and masochistic than Timp but I have never done anything so inspiring at a point of being where I could be so moved by something so simple. A series of events, experiences, and realizations have helped me to form a idea for the direction I want to take in conquering personal goals that parallel in ways to the common human struggle.
Immediately, I have a summer wish list of 7 peaks in the surrounding area that I want to summit once a week on a long (14-16hr) dayhike. These will shoot my endurance and climbing strength through the roof. Kings Peak, Deseret Peak, Lone Peak, Box Elder Peak, White Baldy, Thunder Mountain, and Twin Peaks. I want to do a winter summit to Timp with snowshoes and backcountry skis to go down. I want to do Mt. Whitney in the spring and in the coming 2 years take down as many of the CO 14ers as possible and become and intermediate climber before attempting a summit on Denali.