Are These Two Words Holding BACK Your Climbing?

(This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the channel and allows us to continue to make videos like this. Thank you for the support!)

While my masters degree is in public policy: the ugly, pragmatic, and constrained acts of making decisions for a group of people that is larger than the decision makers, my undergraduate degree is in political theory - in essence political philosophy. I also have a minor in philosophy, proper, with a concentration on ethics.

It is probably so many years of training that has made my ears perk up in skepticism when I hear people use absolutist words like “always” or “never.” If there is one thing the study of philosophy will train you to do, it is come up with counter arguments and examples.

Always wear a helmet.

What if you are in an off-width crack that risks wedging your helmet in place?

Always tie your tie in knot the same way.

Well, what about the need for differing tie-in practices for glacier travel?

Always cross-check your partner’s system before starting a climb.

What if you only harness up after a leader scrambles up a section that the follower decides is something they want to do with a rope?

Sure, things can get pedantic pretty quickly. But we can also criticize most absolutist statements as being either wrong or being tautological. We could say, “Always tie in your figure 8 retrace knot like this if you are using a figure eight knot and the rope isn’t damaged and neither is the harness and…” At some point, the clarifying corollaries get so burdensome that we’ve narrowed down our context to something so small that we are no longer saying anything interesting.

But, in the end, it isn’t really about the language; it’s about what the language may do. Does it invite us to shut off our brains, thinking an issue is “settled”? Does it invite us to ignore nuance? Does it invite us to stop being situationally aware? Does it invite us to stop assessing our circumstances?

Context is a big deal in climbing. Weather and rock quality and level of fatigue and risk tolerances of our partners and so on can all change with each and every climb. That anchor we built yesterday may not be the right system choice for the rock type of today. We need to stay aware of our surroundings and - I would argue - apply principles of safety to our particular circumstance rather than absolute rules. As doing the former keeps us curious, aware, and engaged. Doing the latter could give us tacit permission to do the opposite.

So, maybe take a look at this video and decide for yourself if the language of “always” and “never” is a problem or just a philosophy student’s intellectual exercise.