GroundquestMSA wrote:Maybe I'm experiencing a phase of childish rebellion, but the "hobgoblin of little minds" seems to scurry through the spelean Canon. Rightly or wrongly, we don't give people any credit whatsoever to use their brains.
Now, this gave me an off-topic thought, but rather than hijack that thread, I thought I'd start a new one. Since my thought relates to rope systems, I've posted it in the "On Rope" forum.
Groundquest's comment, which I did not recognize until its source was pointed out to me, is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." The essay is a call for individuals to follow their own instincts and ideas, or at least consider them strongly, when presented with a baseless consistency.
This started me thinking about the caving community, and more specifically our approach to systems for vertical caving. It would seem to me that cavers are fiercely individualist as a general rule; likewise, it would seem to me that we are surprisingly tolerant of personal preferences among vertical cavers, even when presented with other cavers whose climbing systems appear poorly-composed. There are some legendary examples here, which I'll skip. But -- with the exception of brand new cavers who have been taught in a class or by the same person -- have you ever even seen two people with an identical vertical system? I have caved with a lot of different people in the last six years, and I don't think I have.
I thought of myself and two friends, all of whom are froggers and all of whom learned independently before meeting. We visit very similar caves, with very similar goals, we frog exclusively and we all typically use micro-racks for rappelling. But our frog systems are all different! For example, each of us uses a different style of chest harness. One uses a handled upper ascender, one uses a Basic and one carries both. One climbs with a Pantin & single footloop, one uses a double footloop and one uses two independent footloops (one for each foot, attached at the bottom of the upper ascender). Considering that there aren't all that many components to a frog that may be interchanged, I find this fascinating. Having watched multiple, prolonged arguments on this forum about appropriate materials, configurations and attachment hardware for cowstails alone, it's not surprising... just fascinating.
So, do we do this? Do we bully each other into a foolish consistency? I don't think we do,at least not in many places (helmets being an obvious example to the contrary). But elsewhere, do we? And with rope systems, where consistency is probably least foolish, are we guilty of suppressing creative thought? If so, is this good or bad?