It’s not about religion.

Or going to pakistan with only a box of bibles, you would just get yourself killed. It’s not about mountaineering either! It is not a spirit that all humans have, matter of fact the vast majority of “huemans”—who are sultry cave dwelling animals cannot possess that spirit. Religious interpretations are particularly egregious bastardizations of such a spirit. The entire idea is that a lone spirit acts with a strong determination towards an outlandish or unusual goal and that aside from fear and astonishment, its will invokes confusion as the primary reaction felt by its spectators. To claim that this image is one of religious conviction, and that such a motivated will is one of devotion to a “God” is to completely subvert the most important aspect of this image, a complete perversion of the initial mystery that drew us to admire such an image in the first place, to that beautiful question “why”—which was never meant to be answered by the way!—it provides the most pedestrian and conventional answer.

It its not about acquiring certain views from the top of mountains, those views have already been captured in countless expeditions before you, so much so that they are the stock images displayed on the screens of every new device. Those views are understood to be what is mighty or beautiful even to the most lay member of society, within them there is no air of what we see in that initial vision, that hint of an unseen, unfamiliar beauty. Why is it that people are eager to erase the mystery in such images? How does it satisfy you to know that such an unusual passion was actually for some mundane hobby like mountaineering or hiking, does the follow up question of “why mountaineering” not discomfort you even further?

It is not about doing hard things for hardness sake either, after all the hardest thing one can do is be homeless, diseased and mutilated, all of which are the ugliest images one can imagine and those things are unquestionably undesirable.

It is not about love either, such a word is a trivialization of what that image is meant to represent. To throw such an image into a pot of common terms like “love” is to reduce it to the most lousy version of love that the word “love” is also meant to represent. It matters what kind of love we think this is.

Additionally, to repeat terms like “the indomitable human spirit” in the presence of this image or to relate it to popular trends or philosophers or movements is fantastically useless, or maybe taken in a better way, an intentional effort to subvert its allure for personal profit or gain, because even that is more respectable than mindlessly parroting disemboweled phrases.

◈