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The meaninglessness of grades (8a.no thanks) (Read 16164 times)

Andy W

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If progress in climbing (as in progress in general) is measured on a horizontal axis, and the grade of a climb is part of that progress then the measurement of it can only exist in the past or future. When a climb or climber is reported as ‘9a+ for X’ or ‘bold ascent for Y’ or even if a future grade is sold to you e.g ‘train your max hangs and achieve 8b’ or you need ‘ancap’ before ‘aeropow’ or even practice ‘flow’ to conquer your fear. The climber has bought into or been sold an image of themselves, or even is selling an image of themselves to others. To be the ‘best’ in whatever way relies on the failure of others for success. When I watched free solo I was surprised to find the opposite of what I expected, a man determined to push barriers driven by ideas of success and failure which had been instilled since childhood by a particular parenting style. There was no choice in his decision to solo free rider it was preprogrammed.
I wonder what it would be like to do away with grades and paying attention to the reporting of these things? To ignore the horizontal axis and focus on the vertical instead. In this sense when you are hanging two crimps on a climb (say 8a) on the horizontal you have set out on an 8a with the intention of getting to the top of an 8a. On the vertical you are hanging to crimps on a wall,those two handholds and the experience of holding them are not ‘8a’ and in that sense do not symbolise success or failure and the personal experiences that go with those ideas. I wonder if this is where the deeply experienced dissatisfaction comes from as we attach meaning that isn’t there to others perceived successes and failures, which is fertilised by the manure of climbing press and self reporting. I quite like the summing up line of this poem-

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

In my beginning is my end.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

TS Elliot

Dan you seem a bit stuck...many interesting questions and propositions...however you seem to favour a quantitive questioning whilst hankering after qualitative answers.

Bonjoy

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Hi Jon  :wave: Agh, yes it is a sweeping statement that refers to any activity. Caught in a bit of a bind here. If I back up what I said I’m telling people what to do, if I agree with what you guys are saying fully that would be untrue. Either way I just re-read the original post and all it does is set out to question. No where in it is directive.
:wave: Hiya Dan.
In answer to your op question. I think grades are a necessity in climbing, if they didn’t exist we’d inevitably use verbal proxies to less effectively perform the same functions. I’ve climbed in areas abroad without a guide and I found it mildly annoying. It’s just a lot easier to find something that has the right level of challenge if you have grades. Climbing without grades when you do new stuff is a whole different kind of challenge and the inconvenience is outweighed by other positive factors. Grades are also required for communication with other climbers. What would a beer garden chat about the relative merits of sea cliff E5s be if there was no such thing as E5?

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Sure maybe the title of post should have read. Grades and symbolism in climbing, what do they mean to you?

Thanks that’s cleared it up a bit in my head. And honestly I have no problem with objectivity as Andy and Jon said. Grades of course are a useful if not often wildly inaccurate / subjective way of deciding on your chosen route or boulder problem.

I think I’ve seen one to many climbing partners get sucked into chasing grades to their detriment in different ways.

Thanks for the input guys and while it may seem like I’m struggling with some sort of existential crisis and questioning my motivations. It’s honestly much less than it ever was. In fact I’ve not really enjoyed climbing this much in years, and climbed so many cool and challenging routes.

My working life involves encouraging people to develop a curiosity about their lives and often involving  complex physical and mental health problems and life transitions. As I’ve started to enter Jung’s later stages of life, it’s been good to feel comfortable enough to ask a few complex questions without getting to het up about the responses.

Will Hunt

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Your posts do seem to reveal a barely concealed disgust at the thought of people training or otherwise trying to "up their grade". For me, the main reason to try harder has always been to open access to a broader range of routes. If I was more confident on E3s I'd love to go and do the Roaring Silence. E4? Bloody Sunday and The Axe. It would be great if I could climb E5 so that I could go and do routes like The Cumbrian.

Bradders

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the main reason to try harder has always been to open access to a broader range of routes

Yeah, this. And the fact that the majority (although definitely not all) of the lines that most inspire me tend to be hard. The given grade in that sense doesn't matter of course, but as others have said it's a useful marker.

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Your posts do seem to reveal a barely concealed disgust at the thought of people training or otherwise trying to "up their grade". For me, the main reason to try harder has always been to open access to a broader range of routes. If I was more confident on E3s I'd love to go and do the Roaring Silence. E4? Bloody Sunday and The Axe. It would be great if I could climb E5 so that I could go and do routes like The Cumbrian.

Maybe disappointment but not disgust or in people. Just the way it’s gone. Sure building a broad skill base is great to allow anyone to explore more territory in confidence. There’s not much of a relationship between training and e3 unless your doing laps on cabbage crack. Which is fun. More’s the point who cares what I think anyway. It’s not personal man so why should anyone feel criticised? I’m not even sure why anyone gives a monkeys and I certainly wouldn’t want most of my drivel taken seriously! Don’t you boulder like 7’s Will? That equates to at least e8 apparently

DAVETHOMAS90

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I'll echo the thoughts of Will and Bradders above.

Dan, I think that my interpretation of your original post is towards the over-emphasis on "the number", the rating, and away from experience. Am I correct?

I can think of many (most?) situations where enthusing about particularly inspiring routes has nothing at all to do with the number assigned.

There are interesting interpretations of what a "sporting" experience means too.

8a.nu seems to emphasise the score, the number - it's about the league table. However, you can use grades to of course help select routes at the right level to have a "sporting" experience etc, but without it being anything at all to do with the number.

Sport can be about defeating others - putting at a lower level - or about rising to the challenge.

There is often too much of the former - not losing - rather than the latter - enriching.

I was actually thinking about the philosophy of numbers the other night, and the question of narrative in their use. I know that Johnny D would often use the grade as part of the attempt to capture the experience.

mrjonathanr

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 ;) Like giving Janus E7 7a because the grade looked like the parallel grooves?
« Last Edit: April 04, 2019, 05:59:02 pm by mrjonathanr »

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Grades as a symbol of something other than difficulty and the direct relationship with success. I’d wonder if we are unconsciously conditioned to respond to grades in a particular way and might feel more satisfied to cruise an e1 than to struggle on a VS. The hardest route I climbed last year was e3 which left me slightly confused, elated and disappointed somehow. Interesting you mention JD’s routes as on the high ball thread some have just been reduced to ‘font 6b+‘  with the suggestion that any ascent talked about carries with it ‘the illusion of difficulty’. I’ve heard that voiced before I think on Jam Crack and by Toby Benham? In XS? ‘I love gritstone [because] you get loads of respect for being weak’. I think that’s what Moo was suggesting before because I’ve trained and not ‘succeeded’ then the disdain arises from a position of bitterness and disappointment. No way man, I really enjoy climbing more now than for the past 20 years. It’s easy to denigrate a climb by calling it soft or font 6b+ rather than e8, you can see that on ukc logbooks time and time again. If you can’t be ‘good’ then reduce yourself and the routes and experiences because that’s what it’s all about? Fuck it, if you climb ‘End of the Affair’ you climb that, the history and mistique of treading that hallowed ground. Or it’s just a bold 6b+, get a life if you think that’s any achievement.

Moo

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Don't get me wrong Dan I basically agree with you up to about 95% I'm just not sure why you think what is true for you needs to be true for everybody else.

I personally think coaching for the vast majority of climbers is a waste of time and somewhat devalues the experience but if it makes them happy then I think crack on.

Will Hunt

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Somehow you've taken completely the wrong sentiment from the highballs thread. I'm not sure how you've managed to get those impressions from it. I suspect you're imposing your own angst on what's been written there.

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Crikey it’s all in my head! Hey Pete, I now empathise with your repeated attempts not to appear sexist while still making a point.

Thanks moo, yeah live and let live man of course. Am I really bothered by sitting at the wall watching others do their programs? A bit. Have I done it myself. Yep. Do I project my own angst onto others. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t.

Bonjoy

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... reduced to ‘font 6b+‘...denigrate a climb by calling it soft or font 6b+ rather than e8...
Maybe 6b+ was used as a measure of difficulty rather than a measure of worth. Isn’t the conflation of the two what you were critiquing to begin with?

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Nah it was used as a measure of worth.

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Back in the mid 90’s I was at art college with this guy Jason Jones. His work involved ‘living Sculptures’ and human installations, often pretty disturbing in nature. Like JR but more messed up. He compulsively mixed up fantasy and reality in almost any interaction you had with him. So you were constantly discombobulated. What I mean is there’s always a subtext, and the soft grit one is ever present

Moo

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Are you one of the justified ancients of mu mu ?

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I’m just bitter about the million quid

Fiend

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Right you asked for it. Time to sort this out.

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If progress in climbing (as in progress in general) is measured on a horizontal axis, and the grade of a climb is part of that progress then the measurement of it can only exist in the past or future. When a climb or climber is reported as ‘9a+ for X’ or ‘bold ascent for Y’ or even if a future grade is sold to you e.g ‘train your max hangs and achieve 8b’ or you need ‘ancap’ before ‘aeropow’ or even practice ‘flow’ to conquer your fear. The climber has bought into or been sold an image of themselves, or even is selling an image of themselves to others.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Obviously there is a big market catering to, errr, performance as a measure of self-worth. Tick 8a and you will be more valid, have a bigger dong / smoother minge (no sexism here), etc. The same as everything else in society. What BMW series does 8a correspond to? Or is it Audi series these days? If an A3 corresponds to E3, I'm very happy.

BUT there is also the desire for challenge and progression for it's own sake and own pleasures. Learning, pushing yourself, discovering what you're capable of, putting effort in and reaping the rewards of that, enjoying the technical and mental stimulation of working something out - otherwise we'd all be climbing ladders, on top-ropes.

And guess what the simplest measure of that likely challenge is, in comparison to other challenges of varying degrees....

....GRADES  :devil-smiley:

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To be the ‘best’ in whatever way relies on the failure of others for success.
That is rather "glass half empty". The other perspective is it relies on the success of yourself - obviously that has to be slightly more than the success of others, but that doesn't necessarily involve relying on nor wanting their failure (failure to do what you are capable of). Is Ondra the best because he strives so determinedly for his success, or because he strives to do things that others cannot?

Answer: Neither, he's the best because he's having the most fun.

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When I watched free solo I was surprised to find the opposite of what I expected, a man determined to push barriers driven by ideas of success and failure which had been instilled since childhood by a particular parenting style. There was no choice in his decision to solo free rider it was preprogrammed.

So people's personalities are partly formed by nature and nurture. Do we have free will or is it just destiny? Is the illusion of free will enough of a placebo? Could we even tell the difference? And if we can't, does it matter?

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I wonder what it would be like to do away with grades and paying attention to the reporting of these things?
Possibly less interesting. Grades give us information about difficulty, and used in reporting they can give us interest in the feats being reported. This is not a qualification on the climber as a person, merely on their "feats". But knowing the level of difficulty of those feats in relation to what we already understand about climbing challenges can make the report more interesting and impressive and inspiring. Humans across the board like seeing "impressive" feats, as long as we don't get carried away with that as a measure of self- or other- worth, I think that's fine.

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Ghisno I agree with all your points and think grades in a totally informative sense do direct us in the way you mentioned. What I’m curious about is the idea that there is no such thing as ‘success or failure’ other than the one created by our ego unconsciously. In this way grades are meaningless and is only a concept devised to support our ego’s (which is no bad thing). In my experience grades do appear to be used as a measure of ‘success’ and there is nothing wrong with that, but there is a choice to recognise that this isn’t a ‘fact’ but a product of the unconscious.
Success or failure can be reduced to whether you perform the task you set out to do - often, say, get to the top of the rock in the style you have chosen (unless it's top-roping in which case you've already failed ahem). Grades are merely an estimate of the likely chance of success or failure on that bit of rock based on your current abilities (abilities which are also roughly quantified - but not necessarily qualified - by grades). As such, they are full of meaning in describing that bit of rock compared to other bits of rock. What angle is it? How big are the holds? How far apart? What angle are they? What fissures allow protection? How well spaced are those fissures? What rock features allow placing of that protection? Reality, summed up by grades, honed over the years by comparison to other rocks and other grades. Trad grades in particular are a matter of objective science, describing facts about the rock. Sport grades almost as much, bouldering grades get a bit more subjective due to morphology.

The personal value one places on those grades can be an entirely different matter of course.

Going back to this....
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Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Information is fairly useless in itself.
Knowledge is understanding of information.
Wisdom is the usage of knowledge.

Grade-wise,
Grades are the information
Knowing the grades is understanding what they mean, how they work, what they refer to (conversely some UKCers and Youtube commenters don't even reach this stage).
Having wisdom of grades is using them to estimate suitable challenges, recognising the variability and inaccuracies involved, measuring progress if desired but not getting fixated on them....indeed going back to acknowledging them as pure information.

Conversely...
Grades as a symbol of something other than difficulty and the direct relationship with success.
....suck. Tail wagging dog, ego wagging soul, etc.

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I’d wonder if we are unconsciously conditioned to respond to grades in a particular way and might feel more satisfied to cruise an e1 than to struggle on a VS.
There's nothing mysterious about that. We have expectations based on the information given (unless it's as wildly speculative as Will's highball grades), and if the reality fails to meet those expectations, then we will feel something in relation to the discrepancy. If we expect E1 to be a bit tricky, and we cruise it, we feel we're climbing well. If we expect VS to be fairly straightforward and we struggle, we feel we're climbing poorly. Unless of course there are some of the many other factors involved - bad grading, morphology, conditions, style of climbing, mood and inspiration. Wiser climbers will take those into account.

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The hardest route I climbed last year was e3 which left me slightly confused, elated and disappointed somehow.
Was it a good E3 tho?? Many of them are bloody brilliant.


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Interesting you mention JD’s routes as on the high ball thread some have just been reduced to ‘font 6b+‘  with the suggestion that any ascent talked about carries with it ‘the illusion of difficulty’. I’ve heard that voiced before I think on Jam Crack and by Toby Benham? In XS? ‘I love gritstone [because] you get loads of respect for being weak’.
That reduction is only looking at the physical dimension... Font 6B+ is nothing..... Font 6B+ at 10m up, 6m above the gear, with holds you've never seen nor touched before, hanging on, working it out, no mistakes allowed....is stupidly fucking hard overall. The overall difficulty is no illusion. Being physically weak but mentally very strong deserves loads of respect.

I suppose if one wanted to sum it all up: Grades have quantitive meaning rather then qualitive.

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Beat me to it Matthew. That was beautiful.

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Ah ok I get it now ‘grades’ the currency of climbing. Maybe a better title.

mrjonathanr

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BUT there is also the desire for challenge and progression for it's own sake and own pleasures. Learning, pushing yourself, discovering what you're capable of, putting effort in and reaping the rewards of that, enjoying the technical and mental stimulation of working something out - otherwise we'd all be climbing ladders, on top-ropes.....

 Grades have quantitive meaning rather then qualitive.

Super post. That sums it up.

I get why you don’t like the subtext of some rather chest-thumping reporting Dan, but as someone once said  “there is no thing which is good or bad but that usage makes it so”.  It’s not the grade but how it’s used.

Andy W

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I think Dan is interested in how the experience of climbing is reduced to a series of numbers (quantitive). Of course this isn't the full picture, after the experience of climbing takes place all accounts of the experience are to a degree representations of that experience. This representational process can take the place of subjective and qualitative accounts, writing, drawing etc or they can tend/strive towards a more objective representation, for example photography. Grades are simply the most extreme qualitative approach rendering the climbing experience into numbers. Representations of climbing are tending towards the latter approach, the former being less marketable and accessible. Dan do you feel like you are forging a lone path? your videos/films certainly are made with the intention of representing the feeling and experience of climbing rather than an attempt at objectivity and conventional narrative for example.

Anyhow I didn't mean to write a reply, but got sucked in. I spent four years on a Phd looking at the failure of conventional forms of representation in accounting for the bouldering experience (or something like that  ;)) I currently embrace a phenomenological approach in my attempts to understand bouldering, but I also enjoy the chasing of a grade.

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I don’t know about forging a lone path, but I probably do create that a bit by expressing the ideas in this way. I’m interested in things like fear, designer danger and control, nature and the interaction with manufactured experiences including routes, gear, style, gardening, manufactured ‘wilderness’. Aesthetics and lines are also important in movement and the rock, but not necessarily shared. When I made some films it was about interpretation, feeling, signs and symbols. I don’t think it ever became accomplished enough to feel more than a sketchbook. And certainly not a mature work. Symbolism and visual metaphor interest me as does states of consciousness, the unconscious, dissociative states and the interaction with the above. I’ve tried to express a few of those things here as the opportunity exists but also as a response to the changing times. Trying to keep the sub in the culture to some degree. If some of that comes across as overly negative or even preachy then it is what it is. To transcend the pursuit of grades is a worthy one in my view, but not possible for me either. 

Andy W

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I'm afraid  I don't really know what you are talking about. You mentioned you went to art college, me too. Art college encourages many good things, but unfortunately it also encourages wooly language and obfuscation. My advice is be clear in the questions you ask and establish a context for asking them.

Your last post includes references to;

fear, designer danger, control, nature, interaction with manufactured experiences, routes, gear, style, gardening, wilderness, aesthetics, lines, movement, rock, interpretation, feeling, signs, symbols, visual metaphor, consciousness, unconscious, dissociative states, changing times, sub culture.

That's to much for me :o

Andy W

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I don’t know about forging a lone path, but I probably do create that a bit by expressing the ideas in this way. I’m interested in things like fear, designer danger and control, nature and the interaction with manufactured experiences including routes, gear, style, gardening, manufactured ‘wilderness’. Aesthetics and lines are also important in movement and the rock, but not necessarily shared. When I made some films it was about interpretation, feeling, signs and symbols. I don’t think it ever became accomplished enough to feel more than a sketchbook. And certainly not a mature work. Symbolism and visual metaphor interest me as does states of consciousness, the unconscious, dissociative states and the interaction with the above. I’ve tried to express a few of those things here as the opportunity exists but also as a response to the changing times. Trying to keep the sub in the culture to some degree. If some of that comes across as overly negative or even preachy then it is what it is. To transcend the pursuit of grades is a worthy one in my view, but not possible for me either.

Just read my last post and it seemed a bit negative, I do think Dan that the things you are posting are interesting and much needed in the 'changing times' you mention.

 

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