Progression is a myth.

 

 

 

 

I’m a bit older than your average superpipe competitor. And as old people are notorious for doing, I am back in school to get a graduate degree. My partial completion of this so- called “advanced” degree means that I know enough about contemporary philosophy to misguidedly apply it to my favorite winter sport, but not enough to edit Jacques Derrida’s Wikipedia page (although anybody can do that, so get at it). 

Getting to my point- progression is probably the most damaging idea in skiing today. “Oh my god! How can he say that? This dude must hate Jon Olson and Peter Olenick,” you say, and you are correct. However, I don’t speak out of a simple distaste for the huckfests we call contests these days. It’s the underlying concept that park skiing (or powder skiing) is moving in some direction that is quantifiably better or more advanced that’s gotten under my skin. (Warning: I am about to butcher an entire school of philosophy for my purposes, DO NOT quote this in a paper about postmodernism) You see, modernists (our parents and grandparents) had this silly idea that the world was progressing. Science, medicine, industry, and reason were going to lead us into a golden age. Therefore, they didn’t question it when forests were cut down, rivers were used as the world’s toilets, or weapons that could kill us all were developed. It was all in the name of progression. Then millions were killed in wars, and we discovered that filling all the rivers with our poo would result in us having to drink poo-punch. So some new thinkers decided that all this “advancement” might have been pretty crappy after all. In fact, there’s no saying it was any better that anything else that came before it.

If you’ve made it this far I applaud you, I’m writing it and I zoned out somewhere around “wikipedia.” SO…progression is an idea that justifies everything. We look at bigger rotations and more flips and immediately recognize them as better than the smaller spins being done last year. The problem with this mindset is that it stifles creativity. We don’t have to come up with anything new that doesn’t involve an extra few degrees of rotation. It doesn’t have to be this way BroBombers!

Your challenge: In a month or two, when your hill opens, dedicate one day to un-progression. Imagine that no trick is better than another trick, and no feature (or non-feature) is superior. Just do what seems fun or appealing, I bet it’ll be the most fun day you’ve had in awhile.