[Ansteorra] Travel (was Re: Participation vs. Recruitment (long))

[HerrDetlef]

Definitely a point worth considering, Your Excellency!

Here's the part of the show where I can throw in my experience as a writing
teacher: I teach my students Aristotle's three rhetorical appeals (logos,
ethos, pathos) as three questions that every reader has for every writer:
what are you telling me? why should I trust you? why should I care? The
question "why should I trust you" calls on the writer (or the speaker, if
he's giving a speech) to demonstrate how he knows what he's talking about.
This part of the discussion quickly leads to the importance of source
citation. But I ask my students, "How do you know what you know?" And there
are two ways, generally speaking. One way we can know what we're talking
about is through asking questions, through reading, watching and listening
to media information. In short, through research. The other way is through
actually being there when the event in question took place. "I was there!"
That's experience. Research is a great way to gain an abstract knowledge
about a subject, but experience makes that knowledge concrete, turns it
into skill. And the more varied and more in-depth the experiences, the
greater the knowledge/skill. I do not mean to knock research, of course.
Many times, research is the best we can do, and at others, research
provides the necessary impetus to drive us to the experiences. The doctor
who finds the cure for cancer will not have gotten there on experience
alone, without having first read up on the subject. Both are important.

So which is easier? Going to the experiences? or getting the experiences to
come to us? Sometimes one is easier, and sometimes the other is. But a good
mixture never hurts. How much knowledge you gain on a subject (and how much
authority you have to speak on it) depends on your ability and your
determination to get that experience. In a way, this is what the SCA is now
all about. It's one thing to read up on pre-modern European culture, but
it's another thing entirely to LIVE it.

So we all have to balance what we want to get out of our SCA experience
with what we're willing (and, alas, able) to put into it. Some folks can
get everything they want without traveling beyond their local group, while
others find themselves wanting to witness an event in Drachenwald or
Lochac.

Here'd I'd like to segue into another point before weekday SCA'ers feel
completely cut off. While traveling expands our range of experiences,
playing locally can do the same thing, perhaps in different ways. The
Society is greatly enriched when weekend SCA'ers and weekday SCA'ers are in
contact and are learning from each other. The value of LIVING the Current
Middle Ages on a kingdom level should not be taken to belittle what's done
on the local level. I don't know how many SCA'ers started by playing
kingdom before playing local, but I know that I am not one of those people.
One could not exist without the other. We need each other, and we need to
acknowledge that need.

Thank you so much for the food for thought, Your Excellency!

Yours in these Current Middle Ages,
Detlef von Marburg

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 7:55 AM, Jean Paul de Sens <jeanpauldesens at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Ismet's quote bears extra discussion in my eyes.  I used to think that the
> purpose of travel was in essence, to advertise yourself.  After our
> vacation to Scotland, where we got to see what happens to fighter's who
> were not able to travel because of the geography of where they live, my
> opinion changed.
>
> You travel because distance breaks habits, and people outside the a
> rational travel distance are substantially different in the ways that they
> do things.  Learning these differences, and the reasons behind them,
> encourage faster growth.
>
> Anyway, my two cents.
>
> JP
>
>
>
> Qui mieux fait, mieux vault.
>
>
-- 
Hwæt! We Gardena         in geardagum,
þeodcyninga,         þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas         ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing         sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum,         meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas.         Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden,         he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum,         weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc         þara ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade         hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan.         þæt wæs god cyning!