Questions W 9 - Th 10

W 9/Th 10 Cosmic philosophy-Pale Blue Dot, & WATCH; AND (scroll down) *Peripatetic philosophy: Gymnasiums of the Mind (if it's nice during class we'll go mobile, or I will at least). AND, Peace Corps rep Christopher Destiche will visit on Wednesday

Lots of questions and bonus material here, possibly a reflection of my passion for both subjects; as always, take it or leave it.

Discussion Questions:

• Do you recall your own thoughts and feelings, the first time you saw a photo of the earth from space? Do you imagine they'd have been different if you knew you were among the first people ever to see such an image?
• Do you agree that the pbd gives no hint of help coming to save us from ourselves, and that it underscores our responsibility to cherish one another and protect "the only home we've ever known"?
• COMMENT:  "the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time"-T.S. Eliot. Do you think space exploration will ultimately teach us something philosophically important about ourselves and our place in the cosmos?
• Are the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record worth sending into space, even if they're never intercepted or understood by an intelligent representative of another civilization?
• "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me." said Blaise Pascal. Why "frightens" rather than intrigues, mystifies, haunts, inspires, or... ?
• Do you think Elon Musk's SpaceX, or other entrepreneurial space-farers, will succeed eventually in helping humanity spread out in the solar system (and someday,maybe, beyond)? Should our government be more actively pursuing space exploration? Should it be working cooperatively with other governments? Should there be an American Space Force? Should anyone be seeking to militarize space?
• The first photos of Earth by Apollo astronauts apparently were an afterthought, not part of the mission. Do you think it hadn't occurred to NASA that such an image might be powerful and even transformative, for the consciousness and self-image of humanity? Or is that just not how astrophysical engineers think about things? (See interviews with Frank Borman, for instance...)
• How does it make you feel, when you consider that everything and everyone we've ever known appears so miniscule from so relatively near a distance (near, at least, on the cosmic scale)? Small, insignificant, lucky, privileged, grateful,... ?
• "The earth is a small stage in a vast cosmic arena." Do you consider Earth your home? Or the cosmos? Or both? Or neither?
• Do you find the pbd humbling and character-building? Or would you rather just not think about our place in the cosmic scale of things?
• Do you agree with William James that the "really vital question for us all is, what is this world going to be? What is life eventually going to make of itself?" In light of such questions, is it possible to maintain a posture of indifference towards things like catastrophic climate change, nuclear proliferation, social injustice, etc.?
• What does the Four Quartets epigraph mean to you?
• Should we fear to introduce ourselves to unknown extraterrestrials? Or should we "boldly go where no one has gone before"?
• Did you see the solar eclipse in August 2017? Did you view it alone, or in the company of others? How did it make you feel?
• Is the prospect of space tourism frivolous? Or would humanity become a more peaceable and mutually-caring species if more of us could lay eyes directly on the Pale Blue Dot for ourselves?
• What do you think of Drumpf's proposed Space Force? Is it a good idea for the U.S. to take the lead in militarizing near-earth space?

More cosmic philosophy...

Two books encountered at an impressionable age inspired me to pursue my philosophical vocation: The Story of Philosophy by Will & Ariel Durant...

and The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan.

On a related theme: here's my This I Believe essay, published on July 20, 2009-the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong's "One small step for (a) man..."

A Pale Blue Dot

This excerpt from Sagan's book Pale Blue Dot was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.


THE PALE BLUE DOT OF EARTH. This image of Earth is one of 60 frames taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990 from a distance of more than 6 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. In the image the Earth is a mere point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Our planet was caught in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the Sun. This image is part of Voyager 1's final photographic assignment which captured family portraits of the Sun and planets.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
'Space Chronicles': Why Exploring Space Still Matters

After decades of global dominance, America's space shuttle program ended last summer while countries like Russia, China and India continue to advance their programs. But astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, author of the new book Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, says America's space program is at a critical moment. He thinks it's time for America to invest heavily in space exploration and research.

==
Space Chronicles-Facing the Ultimate Frontier
by Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival," Tyson tells NPR's David Greene. "Not only does that get people interested in sciences and all the related fields, [but] it transforms the culture into one that values science and technology, and that's the culture that innovates," Tyson says. "And in the 21st century, innovations in science and technology are the foundations of tomorrow's economy."

He sees this "force of nature" firsthand when he goes to student classrooms. "I could stand in front of eighth-graders and say, 'Who wants to be an aerospace engineer so you can design an airplane 20 percent more fuel-efficient than the one your parents flew?' " Tyson says. "That doesn't usually work. But if I say, 'Who wants to be an aerospace engineer to design the airplane that will navigate the rarefied atmosphere of Mars?' because that's where we're going next, I'm getting the best students in the class. I'm looking for life on Mars? I'm getting the best biologist. I want to study the rocks on Mars? I'm getting the best geologists." (continues-LISTEN)

What price do we put on knowledge? How does it profit a man if he learns about the universe, but goes to bed hungry? When the economy takes a downturn, should we still go up into space? NASA missions aren't cheap-sending astronauts into low Earth orbit or to the Moon, sending robotic spacecraft to explore the planets, and launching telescopes into space can cost millions or even billions of dollars. Lou Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, argues that even when the dollar is dear, the quest to explore our universe is priceless. Co-host: Bill Nye The Science Guy. Guests: Lou Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society.
Startalk - NDT's podcast... Carolyn Porco on Startalk


Here's how humanity might greet ETs... Pioneer Plaque... Golden Record... What's on it... music on the GR... What NASA's Golden Record taught me about humanity... Pale Blue Dot,... PBD animated version... The Little Spacecraft that Could (60 Minutes-full ep.)... Why exploring space still matters (Tyson)...

Also recommended:
Carl Sagan explains evolution in 8 minutes
Carl Sagan in a children's book: "Star Stuff"
Carl Sagan on literacy and democracy
Carl Sagan on mystery & living with the unknown
Carl Sagan on the meaning of life

Wonder & cosmic perspective
"Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder." Plato

"It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them." Aristotle

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known... We are a way for the cosmos to know itself... it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." Carl Sagan

The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself. Neil deGrasse Tyson
==
In the cosmic blink of our present existence, as we stand on this increasingly fragmented pixel, it is worth keeping the Voyager in mind as we find our capacity for perspective constricted by the stranglehold of our cultural moment. It is worth questioning what proportion of the news this year, what imperceptible fraction, was devoted to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded for the landmark detection of gravitational waves— the single most significant astrophysical discovery since Galileo. After centuries of knowing the universe only by sight, only by looking, we can now listen to it and hear echoes of events that took place billions of lightyears away, billions of years ago — events that made the stardust that made us.

I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. It is only by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective, that we can then dip back in and do the work which our time asks of us. Maria Popova

Golden record... Golden record goes vinyl...Golden record 2.0... Contact opening... A way of thinking (video interview/transcript)

"Two billion years ago, our ancestors were microbes; a half-billion years ago, fish, a hundred million years ago, something like mice; ten million years ago, arboreal apes; and a million years ago, proto-humans puzzling out the taming of fire. Our evolutionary lineage is marked by mastery of change. In our time, the pace is quickening."Pale Blue Dot

Variations on the theme... Four billion years of evolution in 40 seconds... in 8 minutes
==
An old post-
Monday, August 29, 2016
Walking to the stars

What a gorgeous, beckoning crescent moon out here in this morning's pre-dawn.

In CoPhi we're talking walking today, with side-orders of space-faring and belief-sharing.

We'll discuss the first two chapters of Frederic Gros's Philosophy of Walking, and Christopher Orlet's Gymnasiums of the Mind.

We'll also consider these old posts and this one on walking and believing (and the ongoing This I Believe franchise), Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, and Sagan heir Neil de Grasse Tyson's Why exploring space still matters. The common thread? Some of us fervently believe, with Nietzsche, Rousseau, and so many others, that the best ideas first come while walking. Some of us also believe we should expand our range to include more distant turf, over the Terran horizon. I'm a believer.

Given the vast scale of the cosmos, and the fact that we've really only just learned to walk, "we" means future humans. But the horizon just came a lot closer, with the discovery of our sister planet at Proxima Centauri. By present propulsion technology, of course, Proxima Centauri is NOT in such close proximity. It's 80,000 years away. If that Russian billionaire figures out how to boost those iPhone-size probes to a fifth of the speed of light they'll get there in 20 years. This is less about us getting there, than about us getting excited about our great-great...grandchildren getting there, and for that even to be possible we have to get excited about sustaining this planet, here and now. An Exoplanet Too Far

Neil Tyson believes a redoubling of our efforts in space would be the most practical investment we could ever make in our species.

'We need to double NASA's budget because not only is it the grandest epic adventure a human being can undertake, not only would the people who led this adventure be the ones we end up building statues to and naming high schools after and becoming the next generation's Mercury 7 as role models, not only will there be spinoff products from these discoveries, but what's more important than all of those, what's more practical than all of those, is that he will transform the economy into one that will lead the world once again rather than trail the world as we are inevitably going to be doing over the next decade.'"

And it'll give us peripatetics a lot more room to roam.

The cosmic perspective need not lead to resignation and existential despair, of the sort hinted in Bertrand Russell's "A Free Man's Worship" - "For countless ages the hot nebula whirled aimlessly through space..." -and made light of in his "Why I Am Not a Christian" - "Nobody really worries much about what is going to happen millions of years hence..."

Some do, actually. But others, reflecting on a mote of dust with Carl Sagan, dream.

We humans have set foot on another world in a place called the Sea of Tranquility, an astonishing achievement for creatures such as we, whose earliest footsteps three and one-half million years old are preserved in the volcanic ash of east Africa. We have walked far.

It all began with one small step. Between now and the end of eternity, we have countless more steps to enjoy. Let's go.

And bring a book. I recommend Five Billion Years of Solitude: the Search for Life Among the Starsby Lee Billings.
==
SOME LINKS. More cosmic poetry... Are Americans especially prone to be gullible when... Socrates Wants You to Tidy Up, Too... The cosmic philosophy of Emily Dickinson... Contact... The cosmic philosophy of Alan Watts... Happy birthday Francis Bacon... Gary Gutting (1942-2019)... Gadflies for understanding and brotherhood... New York Times free digital subscription... Happy birthday Ben Franklin

==
LISTEN: CosmicPhi, recorded 8.31.18 @dawn... And following up class discussion on William James's distraught "Cleveland workingman" who took his own life, Stay - with a powerful quote from Jennifer Michael Hecht's History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It...

LISTEN: Neil deGrasse Tyson ("...we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool!" g'reads)... Carl Sagan (“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” g'reads)... Sagan reads from chapter 1 of Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space... Today's discussion questions...
==
*Peripatetic Philosophy
Gymnasiums of the Mind (see below #)... 

RECOMMENDED: More peripatetic philosophy...Hemingway, Thoreau, Jefferson, and the virtues of a good long walk... How to be a Cynic: Diogenes the dog philosopher (Philosophy Now)... Diogenes @dawn... Solvitur ambulando...Thinking Through: Solvitur ambulando
LISTEN- Solvitur ambulando. Traveling Afoot (an excerpt from John Finley's essay in The Joys of Walking)... Traveling Afoot conclusion ("And the moral of my whole story is that walking is not only a joy in itself, but that it gives an intimacy with the sacred things and the primal things of earth that are not revealed to those who rush by on wheels." )...Rebecca Solnit, from Wanderlust: A History of Walking ch2, "The Mind at Three Miles an Hour"...More from Solnit, on Rousseau...

Discussion questions 

• Do you think you'd prefer the peripatetic style of instruction (like Aristotle's lectures at the Lyceum) to the standard contemporary model of sedentary instruction?
• Does it surprise you that so many thinkers have shared Rousseau's conviction that his "mind only worked with his legs"? Or, that other philosophers have been glued to their chairs and entertained questions like "Do I know that I possess a body?"
• How many steps/yards/miles do you think you walk everyday? Is it enough, for your optimal physical and emotional well-being?
• Have you ever taken an "imaginary walk"  like John Finley? (See "The Joys of Walking") Have you experienced "the joy of walking in the free air"?
• Have you ever had a new thought or sudden insight while walking? Have you "walked yourself into your best thoughts"? Or hiked, or biked, or swam... ?
• Do you have a favorite place to walk in Murfreesboro or in your home town?
• Does it seem strange to you that so many able-bodied, strong-limbed young persons prefer skateboards, electric scooters etc. to walking 5 or 10 minutes to class? Or that they'll wait far longer for a bus than it would take to walk the distance of the bus ride?
• Are we "enslaved by wheels"?
• Have you ever had a "long walk" that you found to be good "medicine"?
• What does "solvitur ambulando" ("it is solved by walking") mean to you?
• If you've looked at Wanderlust: A History of Walking or A Philosophy of Walking (see below), do you have a comment on them?
• COMMENT: “all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” Nietzsche
• Do you agree with Jefferson that walking is the best exercise?
• What do we lose, by not heeding Thoreau's advice to walk in the "fields and woods"  and not just "gardens and malls"?
• Would you like to have attended Aristotle's school, Plato's, neither, or both? Why?
• Do you consider yourself an active or a sedentary person, by preference? (If given a choice, on a lovely Fall day, would you rather stay in and play video games or go out for a walk/hike/run/bikeride/swim/etc.?)
• What's the most memorable outdoor experience you've ever had?
• Have you ever attempted to share your beliefs, convictions, core principles (etc.) in public? (Ifyes, would you say you did it in a spirit of evangelism and proselytizing, or in a philosophical way? What's the difference? And if no, why not?)
• Are you a good listener? (Do you try to understand the points of view of those who disagree with your beliefs, or do you simply dismiss them as just wrong?)
• Do you agree that we live in a time of intolerance and incivility, when it comes to dissenting points of view?
• Are Americans especially prone to be gullible when confronted with false claims and "advertizing"?
• Post your own suggested discussion questions...

A father & daughter on the Pacific Crest Trail...

And while we're in the comics section (check out panel 3):

# The Gymnasiums of the Mind

Christopher Orlet wanders down literary paths merrily swinging his arms and pondering the happy connection between philosophy and a good brisk walk.

If there is one idea intellectuals can agree upon it is that the act of ambulation – or as we say in the midwest, walking – often serves as a catalyst to creative contemplation and thought. It is a belief as old as the dust that powders the Acropolis, and no less fine. Followers of the Greek Aristotle were known as peripatetics because they passed their days strolling and mind-wrestling through the groves of the Academe. The Romans’ equally high opinion of walking was summed up pithily in the Latin proverb: “It is solved by walking.”

Nearly every philosopher-poet worth his salt has voiced similar sentiments. Erasmus recommended a little walk before supper and “after supper do the same.” Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell built into his walking stick to more easily jot down his brainstorms during his rambles. Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed he could only meditate when walking: “When I stop, I cease to think,” he said. “My mind only works with my legs.” Søren Kierkegaard believed he’d walked himself into his best thoughts. In his brief life Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles, or ten times the circumference of earth. “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” wrote Thoreau, “unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly engagements.” Thoreau’s landlord and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized walking as “gymnastics for the mind.”

In order that he might remain one of the fittest, Charles Darwin planted a 1.5 acre strip of land with hazel, birch, privet, and dogwood, and ordered a wide gravel path built around the edge. Called Sand-walk, this became Darwin’s ‘thinking path’ where he roamed every morning and afternoon with his white fox-terrier. Of Bertrand Russell, long-time friend Miles Malleson has written: “Every morning Bertie would go for an hour’s walk by himself, composing and thinking out his work for that day. He would then come back and write for the rest of the morning, smoothly, easily and without a single correction.”

None of these laggards, however, could touch Friedrich Nietzsche, who held that "all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking." Rising at dawn, Nietzsche would stalk through the countryside till 11 a.m. Then, after a short break, he would set out on a two-hour hike through the forest to Lake Sils. After lunch he was off again, parasol in hand, returning home at four or five o’clock, to commence the day’s writing.

Not surprisingly, the romantic poets were walkers extraordinaire. William Wordsworth traipsed fourteen or so miles a day through the Lake District, while Coleridge and Shelley were almost equally energetic. According to biographer Leslie Stephen, “The (English) literary movement at the end of the 18th century was…due in great part, if not mainly, to the renewed practice of walking.”

Armed with such insights, one must wonder whether the recent decline in walking hasn’t led to a corresponding decline in thinking. Walking, as both a mode of transportation and a recreational activity, began to fall off noticeably with the rise of the automobile, and took a major nosedive in the 1950s. Fifty plus years of automobile-centric design has reduced the number of sidewalks and pedestrian-friendly spaces to a bare minimum (particularly in the American west). All of the benefits of walking: contemplation, social intercourse, exercise, have been willingly exchanged for the dubious advantages of speed and convenience, although the automobile alone cannot be blamed for the maddening acceleration of everyday life. The modern condition is one of hurry, a perpetual rush hour that leaves little time for meditation. No wonder then that in her history of walking, Rebecca Solnit mused that “modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness,” which seems the antithesis of Wittgenstein’s observation that in the race of philosophy, the prize goes to the slowest.

If we were to compare the quantity and quality of thinkers of the early 20th century with those of today, one cannot help but notice the dearth of Einsteins, William Jameses, Eliots and Pounds, Freuds, Jungs, Keynes, Picassos, Stravinskys, Wittgensteins, Sartres, Deweys, Yeats and Joyces. But it would be foolish to suggest that we have no contemporaries equal to Freud, et al. That would be doing an injustice to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Edward O. Wilson, James D. Watson, and the recently departed Stephen J. Gould. But as to their walking habits, they varied. Gould, a soft, flabby man, made light of his lack of exercise. Edward O. Wilson writes that he “walks as much as (his) body allows,” and used to jog up until his forties. Watson, the discoverer of the DNA molecule, frequently haunts the grounds of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, particularly on weekends, and is said to be both a nature-lover and bird-watcher.

There seems no scientific basis to link the disparate acts of walking and thinking, though that didn’t stop Mark Twain from speculating that “walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active.” Others have concluded that walking’s two-point rhythm clears the mind for creative study and reflection. Though not every man of letters bought into this. Max Beerbohm, in his essay ‘Going Out for a Walk,’ found walking to have quite the opposite effect:

“My objection to it is that it stops the brain. Many a man has professed to me that his brain never works so well as when he is swinging along the high road or over hill and dale. This boast is not confirmed by my memory of anybody who on a Sunday morning has forced me to partake of his adventure. Experience teaches me that whatever a fellow-guest may have of power to instruct or to amuse when he is sitting on a chair, or standing on a hearth-rug, quickly leaves him when he takes one out for a walk.”

And while Einstein may have been a devoted pedestrian (daily hoofing the mile-and-a-half walk between his little frame house at 112 Mercer Street and his office at Princeton’s Fuld Hall), the inability to walk has not much cramped Stephen Hawking’s intellectual style.

There is also reason to suspect that creative contemplation in the solitude of one’s automobile may be as beneficial as a walk in the woods, though considerably more hazardous. J. Robert Oppenheimer was known to think so intensely while driving that he would occasionally become a danger to motorists, pedestrians and himself. He once awakened from a deep academic reverie to find himself and his car resting at the top of the steps of the local courthouse.

While the intellectual advantages of walking remain open to debate, the health benefits are beyond doubt, though you would never know it by the deserted American streets. Here, where the average citizen walks a measly 350 yards a day, it is not surprising that half the population is diagnosed as obese or overweight. Despite such obscene girth, I have sat through planning commission meetings and heard civil engineers complain that it would be a waste of money to lay down sidewalks since no one walks anyway. No one thought to ask if perhaps we do not walk because there are no sidewalks. Even today, the typical urban planner continues to regard the pedestrian as “the largest single obstacle to free traffic movement.”

To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, walking remains for me the best “of all exercises.” Even so, I am full of excuses to stay put. My neighborhood has no sidewalks and it is downright dangerous to stroll the streets at night; if the threat does not come directly from thugs, then from drunken teens in speeding cars. There are certainly no Philosophers’ Walks in my hometown, as there are near the universities of Toronto, Heidelberg, and Kyoto. Nor are there any woods, forests, mountains or glens. “When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and the woods,” said Thoreau. “What would become of us, if we only walked in a garden or a mall?” I suppose I am what becomes of us, Henry.

At noon, if the weather cooperates, I may join a few other nameless office drudges on a stroll through the riverfront park. My noon walk is a brief burst of freedom in an otherwise long, dreary servitude. Though I try to reserve these solitary walks for philosophical ruminations, my subconscious doesn’t always cooperate. Often I find my thoughts to be pedestrian and worrisome in nature. I fret over money problems, or unfinished office work and my attempts to brush these thoughts away as unworthy are rarely successful. Then, again, in the evenings I sometimes take my two dachshunds for a stroll. For a dog, going for a walk is the ultimate feelgood experience. Mention the word ‘walkies’ to a wiener dog, and he is immediately transported into new dimensions of bliss. I couldn’t produce a similar reaction in my wife if I proposed that we take the Concorde to Paris for the weekend. Rather than suffer a walk, my son would prefer to have his teeth drilled.

In no way am I suggesting that all of society’s ills can be cured by a renaissance of walking. But maybe – just maybe – a renewed interest in walking may spur some fresh scientific discoveries, a unique literary movement, a new vein of philosophy. If nothing else it will certainly improve our health both physically and mentally. Of course that would mean getting out from behind the desk at noon and getting some fresh air. That would mean shutting down the television in the evenings and breathing in the Great Outdoors. And, ultimately, it would involve a change in thinking and a shift in behavior, as opposed to a change of channels and a shift into third.

Christopher Orlet is an essayist and book critic. His work appears often in The American Spectator, the London Guardian, and Salon.com. Visit his homepage at www.christopherorlet.net.

==

"Walking is a marvelous and seemingly simple feat, and it is a feat that robots
have yet to emulate with anything like the fluidity of humans and other animals.
Walking makes our minds mobile in a fashion denied other animals..." In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration by Shane O'Mara (W.W. Norton, 2020)

*

“Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors...disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.” 

"I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.” 

“Perhaps walking is best imagined as an 'indicator species,' to use an ecologist's term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedom and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies.” 

"Exploring the world is one the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.”

“Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented society, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.” 

“In a sense the car has become a prosthetic, and though prosthetics are usually for injured or missing limbs, the auto-prosthetic is for a conceptually impaired body or a body impaired by the creation of a world that is no longer human in scale.”  g'reads 

“By walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history. Being someone is all very well for smart parties where everyone is telling their story, it's all very well for psychologists' consulting rooms. But isn't being someone also a social obligation which trails in its wake – for one has to be faithful to the self-portrait – a stupid and burdensome fiction? The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life.” 

“Days of slow walking are very long: they make you live longer, because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen, instead of filling them up by straining the joints…”

“The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth..."

“Think while walking, walk while thinking, and let writing be but the light pause, as the body on a walk rests in contemplation of wide open spaces.” 

“Joy is not the satisfied contemplation of an accomplished result, the emotion of victory, the satisfaction of having succeeded. It is the sign of an energy that is deftly deployed, it is a free affirmation: everything comes easy. Joy is an activity: executing with ease something difficult that has taken time to master, asserting the faculties of the mind and the body. Joys of thought when it finds and discovers, joys of the body when it achieves without effort. That is why joy, unlike pleasure, increases with repetition, and is enriched. When you are walking, joy is a basso continuo..."

“In the history of walking, many experts considering him (Wordsworth) the authentic originator of the long expedition. He was the first – at a time (the late eighteenth century) when walking was the lot of the poor, vagabonds and highwaymen, not to mention travelling showmen and pedlars – to conceive of the walk as a poetic act, a communion with Nature, fulfilment of the body, contemplation of the landscape. Christopher Morley wrote of him that he was ‘one of the first to use his legs in the service of philosophy’.” g'reads

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Secret to long life: keep moving...