David Ryder – Designer – Blog
Posts tagged 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.
Edward Abbey
02 years ago
From Wikipedia:
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire. Writer Larry McMurtry referred to Abbey as the “Thoreau of the American West”.
I was recently introduced to Edward Abbey by a friend and began some research. He has some resonating quotes that I wanted to share.
He has some pretty radical views that I don’t agree with but he seems like an honest writer that finds a similar importance to the natural world. Desert Solitaire has been added to my reading list.
“Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.”
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit”
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
“Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.”
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
“In the modern techno-industrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood”
“God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar. You may be going
through a tough time right now but God is getting ready to bless you
in a way that only He can. Keep the faith. My instructions were to
pick four people that I wanted God to bless, and I picked you. Please
pass this to at least four people you care about”
“One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast… a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.”
“We are kindred all of us, … killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails, all of them, all of us.”
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and animals. Stand up for the stupid and crazy. Take your hat off to no man.”
“It seems clear at last that our love for the natural world—Nature—is the only means by which we can requite God’s obvious love for it.”
“A journey into the wilderness is the freest, cheapest, most nonprivileged of pleasures. Anyone with two legs and the price of a pair of army surplus combat boots may enter.”
Reflections in the sand
02 years ago
I’m laying down with nothing between myself and the sandy earth. Looking up at the black sky reveals an abundance of stars. The breeze is gentle and slightly warm. The sound of the Colorado river roars from the distance. Tonight is a special night to be watching the stars. There are the remnants of a meteor shower from previous evenings supplying me with a steady show of shooting stars. I have seen more than three dozen, sometimes they will scream across the sky disappearing in a blink of an eye while others float across lazily leaving a bright burning trail that lingers for several seconds. The lack of any city light – or any light for that matter – and the absolute clear sky makes for a rare view of the night sky.
The sky is so clear and the stars so plenty that they appear to form clouds in space. Maybe its the Milky Way. Its the eerie silence and lack of illumination that makes places like this so special. It makes me feel so alone in what is presenting itself as a universe larger than anything I am capable of fathoming. I am such a small part whose existence is as relatively short as the shooting starts painting the skies right now.
I’ve run out of wishes!
How blessed I am to be able to witness something so wonderful yet so simple. There are faint flashes of lightning so far in the distance that it carries no sound to me. As I lie here thinking about all the obstacles, chaos, and events the next five days will bring I find solace in the fact that my nights will be peaceful, lonely, and calming.
I feel inspired by so many different things but I believe that at the root of my inspiration is love. The universe is so vast yet I feel I like a shining beacon of love that is capable of touching every star and every object in the universe. I can only hope that the ones that love me can feel the touch of my love, even hundreds or thousands of miles away. Love is hardly explainable, or quantifiable. I believe it may go as deep as supernatural, spiritual. Something that is capable of touching your soul and the soul of another simultaneously. The energy for this love may be supplied by the stars in the universe. It may be supplied by God, something that every living thing is capable of experiencing on some level.
The peace brought on by lying under the stars, alone, miles from any city, is somewhat overwhelming. I feel emotions I don’t normally feel driving in my car or sitting behind a computer monitor. It has enabled me to connect to myself in ways not possible in a different – more hectic – environment. The time poverty I suffer in our fast moving society makes the reflection out here so rewarding – and likely necessary. We get so caught up in accomplishing the next task that we forget to take a moment for ourselves.
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