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Peter Pallotta

A titch of philosophy - a window into golf rankings
« on: February 23, 2015, 08:58:37 AM »
No, not another ratings thread - well, not exactly.

It's very cold here. I am not playing golf. I have lost significant flexibility since I last picked up a club. I can touch my toes, yes, but a full shoulder turn is currently out of the question.

So I stumbled across a passage from Soren Kierkegaard -- perfect for these cold, dark non-golfing days, especially as reading requires no significant shoulder turn. Reading it, and with some imagined word-changes/replacements (that I'm sure you can intuit) to make it more golf related, I found it an interesting comment on our seemingly endless desire/capacity for "comparison" and the "rankings" that necessarily result. Not so OT, perhaps -- as Mr. Kierkegaard was from Denmark and the Dane Thomas Bjorn almost won the 2003 Open at Sandwich.

"Worldly worry always seeks to lead a human being into the small-minded unrest of comparisons, away from the lofty calmness of simple thoughts...Those great, uplifting, simple thoughts, those first thoughts, are more and more forgotten, perhaps entirely forgotten in the weekday and worldly life of comparisons. The one human being compares himself with others, the one generation compares itself with the other, and thus the heaped-up pile of comparisons overwhelms a person. As the ingenuity and busyness increase, there come to be more and more in each generation who slavishly work a whole lifetime far down in the low underground regions of comparisons. Indeed, just as miners never see the light of day, so these unhappy people never come to see the light: those uplifting, simple thoughts, those first thoughts about how glorious it is to be a human being."

« Last Edit: February 23, 2015, 09:47:58 AM by PPallotta »

Joe Hancock

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Re: A titch of philosophy - a window into golf rankings
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2015, 10:20:35 AM »


So I stumbled across a passage from Soren Kierkegaard.....



It's probably been a week and a half since the last time I heard that phrase....

Peter, you make me smile..even if you didn't mean to.

Joe
" What the hell is the point of architecture and excellence in design if a "clever" set up trumps it all?" Peter Pallotta, June 21, 2016

"People aren't picking a side of the fairway off a tee because of a randomly internally contoured green ."  jeffwarne, February 24, 2017

Thomas Dai

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Re: A titch of philosophy - a window into golf rankings
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2015, 11:22:36 AM »
These words, the opening words of the 19th century novel 'Paul Clifford' by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, always remind me of winter golf -

"It was a dark and stormy night........"

:)
atb

BCrosby

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Re: A titch of philosophy - a window into golf rankings
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2015, 11:45:22 AM »
There have been innumerable threads about the courage it takes to design simple golf courses and resist the temptation to fancy them up for ratings.

Soren, per usual, nails it:

"As the ingenuity and busyness increase, there come to be more and more in each generation who slavishly work a whole lifetime far down in the low underground regions of comparisons."

I have always heard that Soren had a weak short game, but that his long game was over the horizon.

Thanks for the quote, Peter.

Bob

Charlie Ray

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Re: A titch of philosophy - a window into golf rankings
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2015, 11:50:32 AM »
Peter, thanks for the intellectual stimulation this morning.

I am in need of some; as we are confined to a ‘snow-day’ here in Louisiana (even though there is only a slight chance of snow).  If we apply Kierkergaard’s concept of existence  (the more and more a something becomes an individual and the less and less a member of a group)    (I believe this is called something like Transcending universality in favor of individuality).  then you could comfortably conclude that Kierkegaard would detest rankings and comparisons, which I applaud;  however, I think Kierkegaard undervalues the social characteristic of the human person in his epistemology. 

Although not a true application of this thought;  I have noticed that I receive much more enjoyment when I play the course that is before me instead of recalling what features remind me of other courses. 

I will go attempt to go the rest of my day abstaining from comparisons

Peter Pallotta

Re: A titch of philosophy - a window into golf rankings New
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2015, 12:32:53 PM »
Bob: thanks, that angle -- i.e. the impact of 'comparisons' on the actual design process/architectural choices, long before the rest of us then have the chance to start ranking the finished product -- was something that hadn't occured to me; but you are spot on. Yes, Soren's 'record' got better and better in retrospect; looking back, we realize that while he didn't win many majors in his prime, he just wiped the floor with the competition on the Champions Tour.

Charlie: yes, the process of 'individuation' (Jung's word, not SK's) is completely tied I think to the notion of personal subjectivity. As SK noted elsehwere, the professional philosophers and theologians wanted to talk about religion 'objectively', and, while that was fine for what it was and even finer for the classroom, each individual/personal experience of the object of religion was or needed to be 'subjective' if it was to have any true meaning/impact/efficacy. The idea that, for the believer, subjectively speaking, it was more 'true' and 'real' for a (so-called) pagan to worship a tree with all his heart and soul and mind than it was for someone else to worship the one true God half-heartedly.

The connection to gca is, needless to say, glaringly obvious!  ;D

Joe: I wish I could say that I was actually trying to make you laugh, but alas...
« Last Edit: February 23, 2015, 01:36:41 PM by PPallotta »

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