G. Steve Journal

Small

"To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way."

                                                                                                                            E. M. Forster

(thanks Seth Godin)

 

What Matters

Came across a fascinating piece in this week's NEW YORK TIMES about ultra-distance runner Kilian Jornet. His feats of athleticism – running hundreds of miles at a time in mountainous terrain – are a testament to the machine that is the human body. 

What's equally fascinating, though, is the spirit with which he accomplishes these challenges.  While most of his peers are focused on finishing an event in the fastest time possible, Jornet is observing and admiring the natural beauty of the landscape through which he's running – finishing first, which he often does, is merely a side benefit.

From the article:

What are you running after? I asked Jornet. Having beaten men, do you now want to challenge the mountains? He gently corrected me. You don’t beat the mountains. You go when they permit, he said. The speed records and “firsts” aren’t important except for motivation, he insisted. Then he mentioned the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Hughes Galeano, who once likened the ideal of Utopia to the horizon — goals that retreat even as we chase them. “The important thing is not to catch something,” said Jornet,  "What matters in life is the pursuit, and everything we learn along the way. “The important thing,” he said, “is moving.”

Indescribable Essence

I'm enjoying the book "Being Wrong" by Kathryn Schulz – a wide-ranging exploration of how we think about and interpret the world around us.  Sprinkled liberally throughout are excerpts from the disciplines of science, philosophy, epistemology…etc. that she uses to deftly compare and contrast differing viewpoints. 

Here's one I found especially interesting, and in keeping with one of the themes of this blog, namely: can a visual language, e.g., photography be adequately described or translated into written or spoken form?

"The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke thought that error seeped into our lives from the gap between the artificiality of words and the reality of the things they name – from the distance between an indescribable essence and the nearest sayable thing."

 

Try it...

 

“Dare to be naive.”

             - Buckminster Fuller

 

Wired For Beauty

Fascinating article in the NEW YORK TIMES by Lance Hosey on "Why We Love Beautiful Things." Turns out we may be genetically wired to respond positively to natural beauty.  We've written about this before, passing along a thesis found in the book "The Art Instinct" which made a similar claim.  Here's an excerpt from the TIMES article:

Certain patterns also have universal appeal. Natural fractals — irregular, self-similar geometry — occur virtually everywhere in nature: in coastlines and riverways, in snowflakes and leaf veins, even in our own lungs. In recent years, physicists have found that people invariably prefer a certain mathematical density of fractals — not too thick, not too sparse. The theory is that this particular pattern echoes the shapes of trees, specifically the acacia, on the African savanna, the place stored in our genetic memory from the cradle of the human race. To paraphrase one biologist, beauty is in the genes of the beholder — home is where the genome is.