also, purposeless bicycling.
need to be away from traffic, so you don't have to concentrate. a bike path - even better, a national/state park.
but to clarify, it helps to have a destination, even though it's not the "purpose".
The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
31–40 of 166 posts
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#32My super power.
During the week I walk a loop in the morning (9.5miles) and when I have to commute to NY, it's a few miles downtown,a brief lunchtime wander around, and a swift walk back up in the evening to Penn.
Part of my walking is for health reasons, part is due to a need to move about, part is meditation. My mind wanders while out for a good walk, it's the most liberating feeling I experience.
My wife and I go for longer walks on the weekend, sometimes we chat, but often time we walk together in silence. It's a guilty pleasure.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#33> But are people losing their love of the purposeless walk? BBC Magazine strikes again. No, they're not losing it, it's not "slowly dying". Did "people" at large ever have that? Having the time and energy to go aimlessly wandering was a luxurious privilege until very recently. If anything, the existence of "[a] number of recent books [that] have lauded the connection between walking - just for its own sake - and thin…
You are both centering your argument about whether or not people used to walk more or less than they do now. You are not presenting any more evidence than BBC did.
The BBC are the ones writing the damn article about the supposed trend, I'd say it's their responsibility to provide evidence.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#34Wanderers were our ancestors and wanderers we are, gentrification and hipsterification in large cities are a notable exception.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#35I walk a lot, but often with Podcasts and I find that to be very relaxing. Of course, I walk a lot without podcasts as well and I honestly don't feel anything different.
I have to say though, I don't listen to entertainment podcasts but rather thoughtful ones like msdevshow, startalk radio, fullstack radio and the changelog among others.
I also have a dog, so walking at least 3 times a day is a must and I guess that changes things. But I used to walk everyday for at least 1 hour before my dog was born, now I just have company.
Sometimes I find a place to be very beautiful then I usually absorb the moment.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#36See also the concept of "Dérive"[1] or purposeless walking as defined by Guy Debord[2] and used by the Letterist and Situationist movements.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérive [2]: http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#37I'd hazard a neurological mechanism for this: walking feeds information to path integration mechanism which helps us form a spatial map of what's around us. This same map is also considered a cognitive map which we can explore to find different solutions to the same intellectual problems, which we represent spatially.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#38I just can't function without a daily walk (~5-6km or 3-4 miles). If I don't take my walk, I can't wind down after a day of work and can't sleep properly. No purpose, no soundtrack, no smartphone - except when I want to write down some ideas that came to me during the walk.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does it need to do something to your body? Wouldn't it be good enough if it does something beneficial to your mind? Apart from that, go for a stiff 2 hour walk and then come back and tell me that it didn't do anything to your body. It's certainly not extreme sports, but it's still exercise, at least for your legs and your whole motion apparatus.
> Why does it need to do something to your body? Wouldn't it be good enough if it does something beneficial to your mind? Well, why not ride a bicycle, and let both your mind AND your body benefit? > Apart from that, go for a stiff 2 hour walk and then come back and tell me that it didn't do anything to your body. I've tried this. I walked 1.5 hours a day, 5 times a week for about a year. Didn't lose a gram of body w…
> Well, why not ride a bicycle, and let both your mind AND your body benefit?
I can walk in the city and be relaxed; cycling in the city stresses me (I live in London). There are large parks nearby where I can walk without traffic and where I at least in the mornings could easily go 20-30 minutes without seeing either a person or a car, but where cycling isn't an option. If I could cycle along somewhere with no traffic I might very well feel differently, but walking and cycling are very different activities, and I suspect a lot of the differences in opinion have to do with whether or not cycling is viable as a relaxing activity near where people live.
> I've tried this. I walked 1.5 hours a day, 5 times a week for about a year. Didn't lose a gram of body weight, while having a normal diet with limited refined sugars (I don't like sweet tastes). Switched to cycling (30 minutes a day), and feel much more in control now.
If you walked 1.5 hours a day without losing a gram of body weight, you compensated by eating more or moving less the rest of the day. If cycling works better for you with the purpose of losing weight, then great. But that certainly does not mean walking did nothing to your body.
In any case, if your purpose was exercise, it's trivial to make walking hard: Walk with a weight vest (5kg-10kg will do wonders), or walk faster, or both.
Re: The slow death of purposeless walking (2014)
#40A few good reads on walking, purposeless or otherwise:
"A Philosophy of Walking" by Frédéric Gros
"Wanderlust" by Rebecca Soinit
"The Old Ways" by Robert Macfarlane (or really anything by him)
"Walking Home" by Simon Armitage