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The Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time #205 - Self-Evident Truths
07.3.13
One or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives
for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities,
and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the
encounters they find there.
It's a bike ride.
Started by user nathansnider and user theroyalacademy.
It meets every Wednesday at 8:30pm
at California Donuts #21.
We ride at 9pm.
We'll endeavor to return before the last red line trains (around midnight).
On this bike ride, you might expect:
- inconvenient passageways
- oblique strategies
- Oulipian constraints
- disorientation
- reorientation
- "cover" versions of other people's rides, performed with amateurish enthusiasm
- amateurish enthusiasm
- pool halls
- bowling alleys
- karaoke
- geocaching
- full moon picnics
- traffic median tea parties
- rivers that no longer exist
- smell tourism
- Couchwick v2.0
Furthermore:
- usually 20-35 miles
- usually some hills
- a medium pace (probably not for beginners; certainly not a hustle)
- few stops, short stops
- but we're not in a rush; we don't need to run every light
- victory donuts!
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This week:
Self-Evident Truths
When talking about rights, speaking of them as self-evident is often likely to
affirm more about oneself than any particular truth. For history has shown that
declarations about the universality of rights are generally limited in their scope
to the group making said declaration, and that rights supposedly unalienable
have been anything but. So, sure, "all men are created equal" but who, to those
with the power to uphold such rights, qualifies as a man? And what if you're not
a man at all?
Thus: activism; action. People band together to fight for expanded definitions,
for extended protections. And what was set forth as axiomatic, as inviolable,
is revealed as incredibly malleable indeed. And self-evidence is laid bare as a
historically-contingent position. The spirit of freedom may not change, but the
practical application depends entirely on questions of who, when, and where.
And as recent events show, though victories are won, the movement of time is
not entirely towards a destination of greater freedoms. The pendulum can
swing both ways. We struggle forth.
This week we visit a few sites from which the struggle has been waged.
(Fairly short -- under 25 miles -- but a few hills and more than a few stairways.)
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For the latest information about each week's ride, join our mailing list:
groups.google.com/group/the-passage-announcements
For more information about past rides, visit our website:
ThePassageRide.com
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Discuss
The changing of landscapes
from one hour to the next
will result in complete disorientation....
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