[extropy-chat] book: Paddling my Own Canoe by Sutherland

[Amara Graps]

Dear Hal,

>Sutherland's description of the effects of being alone and isolated,
>miles from any other human being, for days or weeks at a time suggests
>that it can be a mind-altering experience, almost like taking drugs:


I don't think being alone for a few days or a week or so is
mind-altering in that way. At least my drug experiences were radically
different than being isolated for a little while. My impression from
her book (I've read it twice) is that she was talking about being
completely comfortable in one's own mind and being comfortable with
accepting that each of us are ultimately alone. And that these facets
of our character can be gained at the same time of challenging
ourselves in a basic survival environment.

Even though she didn't use the word: Abyss, the ideas of the Abyss are
present in her book. No matter who may be around us for giving love
and support, ultimately each of us are alone.  The Abyss is a
terrifying freefall place where one sees that there is no support
outside of oneself. And the Abyss provides the framework with which we
can grow our true selves.

Growing our true selves, following our life path, is a process:

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    oops       oops
  /   \      /    \                /oops
/     \    /      \              /     \
        \---        |-----\      /       \---
                           \    /
                            \  /
                            oops
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Failures and mistakes are an integral part of living and growing and
taking risks, and sometimes it's excruciatingly hard to know if one is
following in the right path of being true to oneself. Sutherland chose
to challenge herself with a Moloka'i beach impossibility, and so began
years of efforts and mistakes and successes, and growing herself at
the same time. For her, it was important to be in a completely
different environment to challenge herself in the way she needed.
Perhaps it is not necessary for other people, but I suggest _some_
isolation is still valuable to have a dialog with one's mind.

>Here's what I think.  We grow up amid a culture and a language.  We are
>immersed in it and it becomes part of our minds.  It's strange, but a
>fundamental part of what we think of as being human comes from outside
>of us.  It is language and lessons and ways of thinking about the world.
>These are as much a part of us and as much a part of being humans as
>our limbs and senses and organs.

I think that one can do well to understand what are mostly external
inputs and what the core parts of our psychology that can face an
Abyss by sitting at a table, and 'having a tea' with it. I agree that
a fundamental part of who we are comes from the outside, but I think
that a crucial challenge in every human's life is to know how to
psychologically support ourselves. No one else can do this for you.

>Imagine a human baby who is somehow raised without any of this.  He lives
>in a natural environment which is so benign that he is able to survive.
>It may be a challenging and interesting world, one to test and stimulate
>his mind and body.  But he never hears a human word and never sees a
>human being.

>This person, when grown, would not really be a human being as we think
>of one.  He would have no language, other than perhaps some rudimentary
>mental patterns he might construct himself.  He would not be able to
>think about abstractions and reason with logic the way we can.  He would,
>in truth, be deeply crippled, and mentally damaged.

>Humans have evolved to live with linguistic input.  We can't develop
>properly without it.
[...]
>Now imagine a person who loses this connection to the flow.  They go
>off, as Sutherland did, and live for weeks by themself.


I understand what you are saying about linguistic input, but I don't
believe that Sutherland's excursions were long enough to cause her
mind to fill in the gaps from the missing linguistic input. She was a
single mom with four children, and she spent her excursions to
Moloka'i using her one or two vacation weeks per year away from her
secretarial job. I don't believe her trips were longer than one or two
weeks. But she did this over 20 years.

Her challenge to herself was how to survive (and survive well) given
the goal of reaching that beach, and then later, building her little
cabin on the beach. This is why I say that her story showed how to
break large tasks into small parts, and keep trying, and refining and
learning how to make it work, by iterating on mistakes, solving each
over time.

Even though I have not challenged myself to survive like Sutherland,
I've played with that survival boundary in my bike tours and I
understand how a few days in 'survival mode' and relying on oneself
changes (recharges) you. My bike trips were also never very long (5
days to 2 weeks), but my life perspective during that short time is so
different and so 'rich' from my usual life that I find that I crave my
bike journeys when too long of a time passes with no bike trip. It's
as if I'm missing an integral part of myself.

During those days or weeks that I'm on my bike, like Sutherland, the
survival aspects are the most important. I'm concerned with getting
enough water, or finding a place to sleep, or reaching a town where
there is a store for food, or having enough strength in my legs to
make it up a mountain pass. When parts of my bike break, I either fix
it and congratulate myself, or berate myself for not bringing the
proper tool or backup part and I vow that I will never make that
mistake again. Injuries while on tours are yet another challenge.  I
didn't face death from my many bike trip mistakes but walking or
hitching rides from mishaps while in foreign countries teaches one
many lessons about the importance of selfsufficiency and skill in
fixing one's mode of transportation. Over time it helps me build
confidence. My bicycle trips have an added benefit that Sutherland's
doesn't have, in that I'm alone in strange places and vulnerable, and
I reinforce or relearn how to trust complete strangers (because I
must).

>This, I think, is what people like Sutherland describe when they talk
>about the impact of being alone and experiencing the silence.  Their mind
>changes.  And they like it, or at least they find the novelty of the
>experience attractive.

For her, I don't think it is the lack of language. The experience of
the silence is to hear one's own mind, like it, and revel in being
alive.

>The key question, then, is whether going out alone and altering your
>mind in this way is actually a valuable experience.  Are you gaining a
>useful insight?  Or is this simply a new drug?

Well, I can say from my own drug experiences that I've gained valuable
insights. For one thing, I learned how fear looks, because I was able
to walk around it, and see it from every perspective and I learned
that the usual pain associated with fear didn't kill me.

Amara

-- 

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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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"It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end."
--Calvin