Belief without Verification or Certainty

[emjay]

I'm still trying to parse the general meaning of this thread so don't really have anything meaningful to say about all that

It seems to be coming slowly into focus, after a provocative start. What you say here helps, I think.

Like for instance when I'm doing my exercise on the treadmill, which at the moment relies on 'high volume, low intensity' it can sometimes be quite hard to keep motivated for the whole 100 minutes I'm trying to do it for... so I end up doing a lot of mental gymnastics whilst I'm doing it to try and keep motivated. One way is by essentially splitting the task into easier tasks... 

Jeez, man -- I feel proud of myself if I manage 20 minutes on the treadmill. 100 is impressive.

Hehe, nah it's not that much of an achievement in that sense... for one thing it's only walking and it's very low intensity so the challenge is mainly about keeping motivated from an interest point of view more than a hardship point of view. The hardship part is mainly just getting started really... have to power walk (or do some aerobics) to get my heart rate up to the (low) rate it needs for this type of exercise, but once it's there, it's usually very easy to maintain it. And then, me being the ever-clumsy git I am , managed to injure my foot getting into the shower, so now I'm doing something else instead until I feel comfortable putting full weight on it again. So now, instead of that, I just stand whilst I'm watching TV and try to keep my arms moving for the hundred minutes. According to the all-seeing fitness watch, that burns me about 1100 calories, but I'm not so sure... cos I hardly break a sweat with that, but who am I to argue? ... which then 'earns' me more food... and more choice of food... for the day... so my exercise days are the days I get to eat well (so I understand what you mean about the cake ), compared to what feels like starvation rations on the other days, so there's at least a somewhat positive feedback loop that's keeping me motivated long term to keep doing this, so that's perhaps another relevant aspect of the mental framing we are talking about.

But you know, come to think of it, it is largely about the mental state. I can easily walk an hour and a half at a brisk pace if I'm out and about. In fact I have all the local supermarkets timed -- to Jupiter and back is exactly an hour, if I cut through grounds of the Shinto shrine. Fresta is 45 minutes, not counting shopping time. Downtown to the good cake shop is 50 minutes each way, and I'm allowed to eat the cake if I walk it. 

And last Wednesday I walked the mountain trail just north of town, and went down the wrong way and ended up on the wrong side of the mountain, and walked a solid three hours. That was tiring, but not like I needed an ambulance or anything. Unlike the treadmill, I was motivated to find out where the hell I was, and calculating the best way to find familiar ground. 

It's not exactly about faith, or about what we're justified in believing, but it certainly shows that what we're capable of changes a lot depending on the aims. I could never manage three hours on a treadmill, but up and down the mountain and then wandering unfamiliar streets was an adventure.

Yeah, I get yer. Boredom vs interest, and how time flies or doesn't fly in each case is another contributing factor, and another interesting subject. Like for the treadmill I forgot to mention I use a walkman... which is basically to create a distraction to offset the boredom... and watching TV whilst pumping the arms serves the same purpose, but both are still poor substitutes for the adventure of getting lost up a mountain or exploring new places. Basically for a treadmill or whatever it's a case of creating some sort of artificial meaning, because the actual activity is repetitive and boring, but being out and about, brings ever changing and novel points of interest, even on a generally familiar trip.

I have is to put some sort of narrative/story around it and essentially role play... I think of the famous galley scene from Ben Hur

This is very much what I've been thinking about. The role that fiction or other imagery plays in motivation, knowledge, all kinds of functioning. We understand our lives through symbols. Importantly (and I think Neo was saying something like this earlier) there are ways of knowing that are not conceptual. Stories, myths, pictures, are probably more important to life overall than logically-sayable concepts. 

As you say, framing the task is crucial, and we do that largely with pictures.

I'll ponder that over the weekend if that's okay. I'm just about to go to basically my first party since the pandemic started. Granted all Covid restrictions have been lifted in the UK for a while now, but still it doesn't feel like that for me... so this is going to be an interesting experience, and I'll probably be the only one there still anxious to wear a mask. And it's bring a bottle as well, so also got to parse how I feel about sharing drinks, as well as drinking full stop. So yeah, won't be posting for a while is what I'm saying, but this definitely seems like it will be an interesting subject to ponder