tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post2620385786381649942..comments2023-10-20T06:31:29.919-05:00Comments on The Logic of Long Distance: Experience and RunningJeff Edmondshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11840746835757479590noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-31615922075537976062010-01-31T00:05:42.464-06:002010-01-31T00:05:42.464-06:00This comment has been removed by the author.acehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17240130164195040602noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-81092668464994549232010-01-30T21:21:39.931-06:002010-01-30T21:21:39.931-06:00I appreciate the questions!
Here's a quote f...I appreciate the questions! <br /><br />Here's a quote from another philosopher, John Dewey, that is relevant to the original blog entry and also the conversation at hand:<br /><br />"Try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing; otherwise you resort to expletives and ejaculations. The experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated. To formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing as another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may be got in such a form that he can appreciate its meaning. Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's own experience. All communication is like art. It may be fairly said, therefore, that any social arrangement that remains vitally social or vitally shared is educative to those who participate in it. Only when it becomes cast in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power."Jeff Edmondshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11840746835757479590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-83228127381540396092010-01-30T15:41:05.415-06:002010-01-30T15:41:05.415-06:00i think my life is full of experiences, fwiw. heh....i think my life is full of experiences, fwiw. heh. and, this -- sometimes i like to experience asking questions.acehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17240130164195040602noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-35757176517052025392010-01-29T18:43:46.298-06:002010-01-29T18:43:46.298-06:00I read your blog, and I think it is full of experi...I read your blog, and I think it is full of experiences, FWIW.<br /><br />I don't know, maybe I exaggerated the idea a bit or made it more complicated than it seems, but I guess I wanted to say that running can be a practice that refreshes our abilities to experience: to break habits, to have new sensations, to think in new ways. To be awake instead of that person who gets beaten down by the same old thoughts, the same old sounds and sights.<br /><br />Further--and this is the main point of the post--one thing in particular that inhibits the having of an experience while running is the mythology of self-improvement because that mythology requires a persistent self that can be improved over time. That mythology works well enough and I use it often. However, running can break up this "heroic I" in ways that go beyond the project of self-betterment and end up fracturing that myth and even the idea that "I" have an improving self at all. <br /><br />Sometimes it's just oh breath in my lungs and footsteps and rhythms and loose and tangled thoughts. There: experience beyond the tyranny of an ever improving I. Foucault called this process de-subjectification. Yes, it's a way to wake up into new experiences.Jeff Edmondshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11840746835757479590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-34436689854079838592010-01-29T18:25:40.594-06:002010-01-29T18:25:40.594-06:00okay so first off i had it a bit bassackwards ther...okay so first off i had it a bit bassackwards there thinking that you were saying experience is unplanned. so now i see you are saying it is something we can/should/must plan for in order to have it. i must work to have experience. okay. i am up for that because experience seems worth the effort. <br /><br />i believe then what you are saying next is that i must think outside the box, yes? "the threat to experience is the common schema". that sort of tells me what NOT to do but not exactly what TO do. <br /><br />i am willing to do the work. what is it that i am supposed to be doing? perhaps this - pay closer attention, don't pre-judge a situation or a person or a feeling, don't classify or explain an experience based on past experiences even if they feel similar.<br /><br />this is interesting because i think i am already doing this so perhaps i am fooling myself.acehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17240130164195040602noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-16934970656615875882010-01-29T11:33:42.670-06:002010-01-29T11:33:42.670-06:00Not only do you have to expect experience, you hav...Not only do you have to expect experience, you have to work to have experience. This work may even take a plan. It is difficult to even arrive at the place where one can have an experience. It takes work and effort, though what this work entails is different from most things that generally fit in that category.<br /><br />The point is this: the threat to experience is the common schema. Having an experience demands developing a different mode of attention, and very often all we do is somewhat haphazardly overlay experience with ideas and mythologies that pretend to "explain" experience, but actually function to prevent experiences from happening. They do this by substituting an idea or a simple narrative for the actual experience. It is this substitution--the "tired and brutal mimicry" that keeps us the actual effect of an experience, which is always transformative in the sense that it unfolds the possibilities and limitations of a life.Jeff Edmondshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11840746835757479590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-52610407789624432032010-01-28T20:47:33.944-06:002010-01-28T20:47:33.944-06:00are you saying that experience is by its nature un...are you saying that experience is by its nature unexpected? i think you are saying you cannot plan it, okay, but unplanned and unexpected are two different things. even if you do not plan something, you can still expect it. are you saying that by definition, experience is unexpected?acehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17240130164195040602noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1196651674832836865.post-32578456132249631402010-01-28T10:41:28.977-06:002010-01-28T10:41:28.977-06:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02586994996661017655noreply@blogger.com