Subject: Re: [baidarka] Werner's Question
From: James Mitchell (baidarka@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Oct 30 2004 - 12:44:17 EDT
What a great response, William! And bringing Feinman into it... how
perfect. I wish he was still around, it would be great fun to take him
paddling. Feinman, the Dalai Lama, Werner...
My experience of Werner is that he is always focused on the people who
are doing the paddling. For him, the paddles and boats (which he also
designed and loves) are the Shakespearean stage on which our lives act
out. The technology is just that, technology, a tool, a toy we can play
with if (and as) we choose. I watch him teach courses on kayak
leadership, how to get so much more out of a trip by being totally
conscious, totally focused on the paddlers in your group. Against this,
the technology just hangs; the color and texture and canvas and paint
inside which "Starry Night" lives. Or another way: it is not the
"having" of kayaks and paddles, it is not the "doing" of strokes and
leans, it is the "being" that matters. Or as we discussed while gliding
across the Japanese countryside at 180 MPH on the Shinkansen, it is the
"becoming" that matters.
Who are we?
Who am I?
Who am I becoming?
Or, if those questions are a bit too much right now, as they so often
are for me, we can ask an earlier one... "What does your paddle feel?"
If we keep asking questions along this path, we will eventually get to
the bigger ones.
On Oct 28, 2004, at 1:20 PM, William Nettles wrote:
> I pull on the paddle the paddle is pushed into and through the water.
> I can
> make the paddle do lots of different movements, but what does IT want
> to do?
>
>> Werner's Question:
>> "What does your paddle feel?"
>
> Physicist Richard Feinman asked why does light always find the shortest
> path? How does it know in what direction lies the shortest distance?
> He took the refraction of water. How does the light know to do that.
> (I'm
> probably messing this up you can read it your self in his QED: Quantum
> Electro Dymanics) He decided that the light goes everywhere equally,
> but
> that in all the least efficient directions the light cancels itself
> out,
> leaving only the most efficient direction for us to see.
>
> I think Werner is suggesting a similar thinking exercise for paddles.
>
> If we could only know what our paddle feels, or if we could imagine
> what it
> feels, or predict what it feels, perhaps we would then be able to
> design
> and use the best possible paddle in the best possible way. ( A
> Panglossian
> Paddle?)
>
> Or as General George Patton said, "Tell your men what you want them to
> do,
> don't tell them how to do it. They'll surprise you with their
> ingenuity."
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>
James Mitchell
Email: baidarka@earthlink.net
US Mobile Phone: 425-273-0884
15917 Waynita Way NE, E103
Bothell WA 98011 USA
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