Skip to main content

Facebook Likes, Bathyspheres, & Borrowed Bucket Lists by Mark Hatmaker


Several studies have shown overall decreased participation in team sports, civic activities, club memberships, and other like participatory activities. [Keep in mind these are overall trends/numbers, not everyone is opting out—raw numbers in bulk are doing less, we must not mistake the images of doers as the mean.]



Some studies are also showing that [aside from the depressive effect of increasing screen times] we are seeing the lessening of cognitive load/ambition via “vicarious experience.” That is to say, some self-report that watching videos or reading posts of people doing certain activities gives them a similar experience to doing the activity.

You read that correctly. Viewing is the same as doing.

That statement is absurd on its face. Watching porn is not making love and viewing MMA is not getting punched in the face, etc. The man atop the mountain is in no shape, form or fashion US. That experience belongs to the man who climbed the mountain and he alone.

 

The cognitive load/tension within becomes lighter when one “Likes” or “Shares” such videos or posts. It is assumed the mechanism of adding this wee bit of physical action [the click or swipe] lightens our “willpower/ambition” burden and gives a brief illusory burst that one is somehow in some minuscule way a part of the “Liked” or “Shared” activity.



Again, absurd. “Liking” porn is not even one step closer to a light kiss on the cheek, and “Sharing” a fight video is not one step closer to the gym or mat. Sharing a “funny” video does not mean that you have a funny bone in your body.



Only present doings are actual accomplishments. Liking and Sharing is a polite act of encouragement to others—a kindness. I’m not opposed to this at all.



 Any assumption of association with the accomplishments or doings of others is a delusion.



Let’s allow the below observations from a legendary doer and his explorer compadre to drive the point home.



[From the National Geographic article “To the Depths of the Sea by Bathysphere” by Jacques Cousteau dated July 1954. It tells of Cousteau and team plunging to an unprecedented 4,000 feet beneath the Mediterranean Ocean. In the below extract, an observer asks why they didn’t just allow the automatic camera aboard the experimental craft to do the work, why risk his own life?]

“Skeptical, one observer on board asked me if I really expected to see anything that 10,000 photographs failed to record.

“Of course!” I said, “A direct look is something else again.”

“After all,” added my friend Dumas, “the eye is closer to the brain than the lens. The eye knows how to select.”

Two phrases to keep in mind: A direct look is something else again.

And: The eye is closer to the brain than the lens.

Might I amend that to The eye is closer to the brain than the screen.

I offer these observations in the hopes that we all [self-included] use the “Likings” “Sharings” & “Doings” of others as inspiration to our own doings and not let ourselves off of the cognitive-accomplishment hook where we wind up with the only muscle exercised is the right-clicking finger and the only thing completed on our bucket list is giving a big thumbs up to someone else’s bucket list.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apache Running by Mark Hatmaker

Of the many Native American tribes of the southwest United States and Mexico the various bands of Apache carry a reputation for fierceness, resourcefulness, and an almost superhuman stamina. The name “Apache” is perhaps a misnomer as it refers to several different tribes that are loosely and collectively referred to as Apache, which is actually a variant of a Zuni word Apachu that this pueblo tribe applied to the collective bands. Apachu in Zuni translates roughly to “enemy” which is a telling detail that shines a light on the warrior nature of these collective tribes.             Among the various Apache tribes you will find the Kiowa, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Chiricahua (or “Cherry-Cows” as early Texas settlers called them), and the Lipan. These bands sustained themselves by conducting raids on the various settled pueblo tribes, Mexican villages, and the encroaching American settlers. These American settlers were often immig...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Original Roadwork by Mark Hatmaker

  Mr. Muldoon Roadwork. That word, to the combat athlete, conjures images of pre-dawn runs, breath fogging the morning air and, to many, a drudgery that must be endured. Boxers, wrestlers, kickboxers the world over use roadwork as a wind builder, a leg conditioner, and a grit tester. The great Joe Frazier observed… “ You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you're down to the reflexes you developed in training. That's where roadwork shows - the training you did in the dark of the mornin' will show when you're under the bright lights .” Roadwork has been used as a tool since man began pitting himself against others of his species in organized combat. But…today’s question . Has it always been the sweat-soaked old school gray sweat suit pounding out miles on dark roads or, was it something subtler, and, remarkably slower? And if it was, why did we transition to what, and I repeat myself,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fightin’ Words: “I’m Gonna Clean your Clock!” by Mark Hatmaker

To our ears quaint, in a former time formidable, the expression “ I’m gonna clean your clock! ” was not a mere amusing gibe heard bandied about in a 1930s film but a bondafide threat with a meaning well understood by all. Until the 1940s the pre-dominant mode of mass-transportation in the United States was via railway. Indeed, America had embraced the automobile, but railroad tracks spanned and spider-webbed the nation whereas roads, while plentiful, were not quite what we may expect. In 1927 the first transcontinental highway in the world, Lincoln Highway, was only continuously paved from New York to Iowa. From there paving was intermittent, signage rare, roadside markers almost nonexistent. In the words of one contemporary user of the road, the highway was “ largely hypothetical .” So, while the automobile was on the rise the railroad dominated. Everyone knew railways, had some experience with them and to an unusual degree the railroad was held in a bit of romantic regar...
Post a Comment
Read more