Friday 27 August 2010

Sergei Bubka war ein guter Mann

English translation follows the German text.

Dieses Thema beschäftigt mich ziemlich viel in letzter Zeit. Deswegen schrieb ich vor kurzem etwas hier auch darüber.
Heute habe ich noch etwas über neue Erlebnisse gedacht.
Wenn man gerne Neues erlebt, sucht man neue Erlebnisse. Man macht Urlaub in Ländern, in denen man zuvor nicht war, man besucht Städte in dem Heimatland, in denen man auch nicht war, man nimmt an Selbsthilfegruppen, an denen man bislang nicht teilgenommen hat. So erlebt man jedes Mal etwas Neues. Jedoch: man macht mit jedem neuen Urlaubsziel, jeder neuen Stadt und jeder neuen Selbsthilfegruppe sein Leben schwieriger. Das Erleben etwas Neuen schränkt die Auswahl des Neuen ein, was man danach noch erleben kann. Dann muss man noch weiter fahren oder einer noch extremeren Sucht unterliegen, um das nächste Neue zu erleben.
Wenn man richtig schlau wäre, (mit der Voraussetzung, dass man gerne Neues erlebt) würde man manchmal etwas machen, was man schonmal gemacht hat, in dieselbe Stadt fahren, wo man schon ein paar Mal gewesen ist, damit es dann nicht immer schwerer wird, das Neue zu finden, wenn es soweit kommt, dass man dann doch unbedingt es finden möchte. Man kann doch schon erkennen, dass man gerne Neues tut und dieses Sache objektiv betrachten und versuchen zu analysieren, wie man am besten die Balance (das Gleichgewicht) zwischen der Anstrengung und dem tatsächlichen Erleben vom Neuen managt, ohne dass man nie wieder Neues erlebt, aber auch ohne dass man richtig bescheuerte Sachen zu unternehmen hat, bloß weil sie bisher nie unternommen worden sind.
Sergej Bubka sprang gerne höher, als Menschen je gesprungen waren, mit seinem Stab da. Er wusste aber, dass er das gerne machte und dass er weiter durch seine Karriere das gerne machen würde. Deshalb sprang er pro Turnier nur einmal höher als Menschen je gesprungen waren, um weitere potenzielle Sprünge, die höher waren, als Menschen je gesprungen waren, möglichst erreichbar zu machen.
Wir sollen seinem Vorbild folgen. Er war ein guter Mann.
Bis morgen.


I have been dealing with this topic quite a lot recently. That's why I wrote seomthing about it here not too long ago.
Today I have had a new thought about new experiences.
If you like experiencing new things, you look for new experiences. You go on holiday to countries that you've never been to before, you visit cities in your home country that you've also never been to, you take part in self-help groups that you've so far never taken part in. This is how you experience something new each time. However: you do, with each new holiday destination, with each new city and with each new self-help group, make your life more difficult. Experiencing something new restricts the options of new things, which you can then subsequently experience. You then have to travel further or fall foul of a more extreme addiction in order to exprience the next new thing.
IF you were really clever, (assuming that you like experiencing new things) then you would sometimes do something that you've already done, go to the same city that you've been to a few times already, so that it then doesn't become more and more difficult to find that new thing, when it comes to the time that you would really like to find it. You can recognise that you like doing new things and then observe this objectively and try to analyse, how you can best manage the equilibrium (balance) between the effort and the actual experiencing of something new, without never experiencing anything new, but also without having to undertake thoroughly absurd actions, simply because they have never before been undertaken.
Sergey Bubka
liked jumping higher, than man had ever jumped before, with that pole of his. He knew, however, that he liked doing it and that he was set to, throughout his career, continue liking it. That his why he only jumped higher than man had ever jumped before once per tournament, in order to make further potential jumps, which would be higher than man had ever jumped before, as reachable as possible.
We should follow his example. He was a good man.
See you tomorrow.

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure I agree with you on this one. It's true that by having a new experience you increase the number of experiences you've had by one, thereby reducing the number of experiences you haven't had by one, assuming that the number of experiences in total remains constant. But there are two flaws in the reasoning.

    One is that by acquiring new experiences it may actually be easier to acquire further experiences. For example, by scoring a century at a ground you've not scored one at before, you reduce the number of novel grounds by one, but you also make it easier to score centuries at the remaining ones, because your experience makes you less likely to get yourself run out in the nervous nineties. A more familiar analogy is making money: by making money you reduce the amount of money you don't have, but you make it easier to get your hands on new money. The first million, as they say, is the hardest.

    A different issue is with the individuation of experiences: by having new experiences you may in a very real sense increase the number of available ones, so although you've taken one out of the pool you've increased the size of the pool, so to speak. An example is wine-drinking: to an unrefined palate like mine, there aren't many wine-tastes for me to experience: there's white, red, and a small amount of variation along the dimensions of fruitiness, oakiness and corked. However, the more wine I drink, the more discriminating I become, so where drinking Cabernets from '92 and '94 currently present the same experience, I might be able to differentiate them after drinking a '96 Merlot. So by having one new experience I create new ones in store.

    Bubka's method is appropriate to pole-vaulting though. Height being objective in a way that taste is not, jumping higher doesn't increase the number of new heights. As regards the first issue, it's hard to argue that by smashing the record he'd have made it any easier to break in future. Usain Bolt should take note.

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  2. It is true that I overlooked the fact that experiencing something might open up more possible experiences to be experienced. Thanks for pointing it out. There may be more on this topic in about a month's time.

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