Practice is human development

Practice is synonymous with human development. As a distinct concept, it gives us a space to sanctify and formalize processes of transformation.

To transform would imply a process of change. But how can I change from A to B, if I’m not B? (Setting aside considerations of physis vs poiesis). There’s this unbridgeable gap, going from zero to one. So we get Zeno’s paradox of the motionless arrow, proof that we could never change.

Such proof exists in the abstract; it’s in the concrete, away from the words, that a bridge is revealed.

Conceptualization is just a scaffold, collective knowledge, supporting those endeavors along the way, but what produces development, lasting transformation, is practice.

Practice and Procrastination

One of the prescribed antidotes to procrastination is to realize you might die tomorrow, or fall off the wagon.

But then, why would you even bother starting today?

If we were accumulating skills and attributes, there’d be no sense in pursuing that accumulation.

But with practice, something else is developed… and various cultures built around practices have recognized that this imminent potential of death increases urgency of practice (for example, to be ready at the liminal moment).

This is true of any practice, anything cultivating human development. It matters (in spite, and because, of this impermanence), unlike the skills accumulated. The skills and such are containers for that practice, they are fodder for that development.

“Memento mori“ might make some things less urgent (the skills), some things more urgent (the development) - yet often they might look very similar, if we fail to understand that where one stands in relation to what one does changes everything

Humanity, rhythm, and movement

Our plastic filled lives, interfacing through screens and abstractions, doesn’t grant much room for rhythms. There is, as an example, the gradual reduction in rhythmic complexity as we go from walking, to carts, to cars(And with electrical cars, we lose even the basic turning of the engine). And without those rhythms, it stands to reason we lose an aspect of our humanity.

More can be read about this here: https://www.republicofmovement.com/articles/why.

Becoming practice

I don't wish to have certain qualities, movements, or even a practice.

I wish to be those things, to be in the state of becoming them.

Applied Mobility (short video)

Mobility for mobility’s sake is an endeavor that lacks appeal to us. We’d rather put things in motion, use them in motion.