This handbook is an attempt to define those qualities most desirable to be admitted as a member of the Viking-Poet’s Club, so there are chapters set aside to outline what it is to be acceptable. It explains the moral code that best exemplifies that which is held highest to the Viking. It is the moral ideal, like Nietzsche’s übermensch but more adventuresome and poetic, with the focus on the spirit and action of the man, not the needless politics. It is a document that expresses the morality best suited for his character to flourish and achieve in this world.

Distanced from academic argument,

I labored ahead and discarded all that was unneeded,

digesting all that fit into my own web of belief.

Truth expressed herein is seen and understood

and adopted for the betterment of self

despite the currents of injustice

and delayed fruition in our current zeitgeist.

Chapter One

Wisdom

The Viking character symbolizes all that is healthy in man. He is in touch with his hearty instincts and is not afraid to affirm his own morality on the world he sees.

An artificial handle holds until you splash literate,

First instinct shoves the fruit of spent skepticism aside,

Liberation from the overseer reminds the soul of empowerment,

And all of life’s conundrums land into an open palm.

Some understand but don’t do,

Some want to do but are unable,

Some begin with an open field,

But loose balance from the middle.

Confidence comes from fullness,

Centeredness springs from balance,

Experience dictates endurable perspective,

But talent wins all wars.

This handbook distills the wisdom of life, and explores how the getting of wisdom enhances our ability to enjoy the art of living.

Opportunity and circumstance provide the template;

Situational pressures test the fat of successful employment of the Golden Mean.

The delicate application of wisdom is the Mean’s actual progression that begs no fanfare because wisdom has its own indigenous humility.

Wisdom ceases to be a medal or trophy once it is attained;

Indeed it becomes a primary guiding force in life, like extra IQ.

The wise carry an extra stick to fight all those who dislike wisdom.

Having that which commands respect is something that forever removes him from the ordinary.

Those who have wisdom look for this mark of Cain in others,

And those who have yet to solidify that insight shun the wise,

For fear of exposing their foolishness,

And their unfounded notions of sure epistemology.

Wisdom, in short, is that which separates all men from each other,

And places them either at odds with or in sync with the evolution of humankind.

Wisdom is the conquering of one’s innate antagonism towards the passing of time. Once insight into what is wise and what is foolish is attained, all decisions and actions adhere to the bird’s eye view of time. This affects how one governs their life because they exist in a new frame of time reference. This is because one’s time is finite: it’s the most expensive thing a man can spend. It is the one thing that we cannot control and yet is passing all the time.

And because it can’t be controlled, it is regarded with a mild form of resentment.

Most importantly, the bigger decisions involving one’s destiny march to the sound of a different drum. Employing a time-friendly frame of mind encourages the calmness of a sage; an ease of being that is based on a fear that has been overcome. All becomes attainable in the wise man’s world. Each action is deliberate and done with purpose. That fear of missing out and making mistakes is quelled so a peace of mind can rule with foresight, mastering the NOW – knowing that tomorrow he will still be in the NOW.

The philosopher-king can finally take his throne and conduct life in adherence to what will be tomorrow and in the years to come by becoming a Zeitqualia Master.

There is art in all aspects of living, so that all Viking-Poets are artists in how they do what they choose to do. Flourishment of self comes from the self-affirming enjoyment of overcoming obstacles that litter one’s path.

The club motto is “Live your life like a work of art.”

Chapter Two

A Viking-Poet Exploit

Exploits call forth the best in the Viking-Poet, inviting a chance to see hidden abilities and dormant gifts. Exploits are the Viking’s bread and butter. Both meaning and art are rich when the Viking undertakes an adventure. A crucial source of personal identity and self-esteem, exploits provide the means for acting on healthy instincts. They are actions where he makes his own rules and acts under no overseers other than God, or Odin in this case. The freedom of how to execute an exploit feeds the creative need of Nietzsche’s ‘beautiful blonde beast.’ It is his vehicle to express that which he considers play.

What is an exploit? It is an act or a deed, especially a brilliant or heroic one, from the Old French word esploit. In Latin it is explicitum, neutral past participle of explicare, which means to unfold. The verb of explicare is explicate: to make clear the meaning of; explain.

So an exploit is an action whereby something unfolds that also explains something about the character or the nature of the deed and person. Regardless, at the end of every exploit is something gained and explained.

No matter how you slice it, an exploit is always a chance to improve your situation and to fortify yourself. It’s a blue-chip positive. Without the playful flourish, the child within the man becomes dormant; without the lightness of spirit, actions are perpetrated with lead shoes. The spirit of poetry is demoted to hibernation, or dormancy in the mechanics of cold execution. Without the exploit outlet the man soon becomes sick in spirit and unable to smile.

It is in the art of perpetrating an exploit that the Viking can realize his full potential.

A Viking-Poet needs his open spaces, his sounds of nature and his visual textures to feel a sense of belonging in nature’s bosom. He continually feels the urge to ride, to sail, to go on an exploit, to make the most out of his short time. This is what makes him restless: the diminishing availability of his remaining elixir of life: time.

Lost time is the crime.

For the Viking-philosopher, an exploit is like candy: it’s a piece of knowledge to be unwrapped upon perpetration.

For a Nietzschean Viking, another exploit inches him closer to the much-coveted notion of objectivity.

For the Religious Viking, it is an opportunity to toy with fate as well as come into contact with God/Odin.

For the Viking Scientist, it is an opportunity to test hypotheses and witness the laws of nature in action.

For the Loner Viking, an exploit is a time of reflection-and-mulling while laughing-and-doing in a peaceful silence.

For the Carpe Diem Viking, the given adventure is always an once-in-a-lifetime occurrence special for its uniqueness.

For the Bored Viking, it is the ideal slot of experiential time to explore new colors and regain the magic hue of novelty.

For the Old Viking, an exploit is a time to recover lost youth through the timeless thrill of challenging adventure.

For the Artist Viking, it’s a bouquet of multi-colored images in symmetry, mise-en-scene and the angle of light.

For the Adventurous Viking, it is an opportunity to push the envelope, cover new ground and graduate to the next level.

For the Morose Viking, an exploit is a time to try to get at the root of his sadness while pumped up about the playfulness of the adventure.

And for the Student Viking, it’s when he can procrastinate and still better himself in mind and body, and forget about his exams.

For a Bookworm Viking, an exploit is an occasion to come closer to the cleavage between real life and the created worlds of the imagination.

For the Dreamer Viking, wasn’t an exploit a time to live out his dreams and build on new dreams from new stimuli?

For the Viking Motorcyclist, an exploit is a time to savour the mobile equilibrium and milk the art of balanced motion and technique.

For the Viking Mathematician, his exploit becomes a matrix of numerology and measurable in the language of math.

For the Young Viking, it’s an exciting opportunity to learn a new skill and develop the know-how and cognitive equipment to undertake subsequent adventures.

For the Sleepy Viking, the exploit is a chance to slumber in new lays of the land and to experience vibrations of a new geomancy.

Every exploit needs a primary objective that serves to satisfy one of man’s natural instincts. When perpetrating the steps toward the completion of your primary objective, it should be executed with the utmost incorporation of your own style that can be interpreted as poetic motion.

Once completed, each exploit should yield wisdom, a moral or unit of enlightenment that you can apply to the rest of your days. As an absolute master you should tackle exploits that yield insights that you can use to paint your canvas.

Live life as a work of art, using strong strokes of the brush.

Exploits purify the will.

And philosophy is experience and thought, not passive study without leg work.

Also, the best strategy for the Viking-Poet to use in choosing an exploit is that it has plenty of oxygen for him to breathe. Oxygen is that which feeds the Viking-Poet’s anima. That is, his source of animation; his energy. Motorcycling and mountain biking are the best forms of two-wheeled transportation for a maximum oxygen quota. But one must have a good machine.

Chapter Three

The Viking-Poet Club

What is the Viking-Poet Club? It’s a club for those brave souls who choose to live their lives like a work of art through extraordinary exploits, which reveal the secrets of life’s mysteries and answers to life’s timeless questions and to the true nature of their character.

All prospective members of the Viking-Poet Club are told: all individuals are given the same opportunity to live a life that is extraordinary.

Membership to the Viking Club is paid for with passion, creativity, dedication and a single-mindedness to pursue all that is offered to you through chance and circumstance as well as the innovative utilization of one’s time and space in their zeitgeist.

All full men who possess the mental and physical equipment necessary to live a Viking-Poet’s life are above their given epoch and instead stand outside their history so that convention and morality indigenous to their epoch fall outside their scope of reference. The Viking-Poet lives among the ancients. His idea of good is different from that of the 21st-Century Man, (who is discussed in Chapter Six).

The first principle of the Viking-Poet Club is to abide by the Socratic dictum: know thyself. These two words were written over the door to Plato’s Academy, which he founded after traveling the known world for fourteen years after his teacher Socrates had been convicted of sedition and thus drank hemlock to end his life. Socrates’ primary task was to determine how an individual could live a life that was good, the Greek word being eudemonia.

From Old Frisian, good means to unite and from Old High German means to fit together or to hold fast. It means bountiful yield, having favorable character, genuine, promotes well being, beautiful, not small or insignificant, wise, noble and worthy. This is what is good for the Viking-Poet: something that is either an end in itself or a means to such an end. It satisfies its intrinsic value by promoting individual self-realization.

Like empty time waiting to be played out, brushstrokes come from the manifold of experience. Colors come from how you express your soul. Texture is determined by your yield of qualia (discussed in Chapter Ten) and shading is an illustration of your level of fulfillment.

The second principle of the Viking-Poet Club is: to promote one’s originality at all costs.

For membership to the Viking-Poet Club it is strongly recommended to locate in a foreign country for initiation so that a new culture forces you to adapt yourself to your new environment. This begins the process of tapping into your instincts. Viking-Poet members choose books over television, art and philosophy over science and technology, and continually strive to build their knowledge about all facets of life. A member should have the inherent equipment to survive in all corners of the world without the help of others so that not one place but rather the planet itself is their home where they are comfortable in all geographies.

The top-level task of all members is to earn wisdom upon completing an exploit in which he has freedom of movement using self-sufficient means.

Execution of all exploits must be done poetically.

All members should live their lives on the third principle of Viking-Poet philosophy: ‘Experience is the source of all knowledge, and knowledge is a catalyst for spiritual health and a queller of ignorance.’

Opportunity is a door waiting to be opened to life’s hidden secrets and kernels of wisdom. One’s degree of wisdom is the measure of all things. This means full-time adherence to justice of the soul, as defined by Plato. (From this justice of the soul springs all integrity, a hallmark of the Viking-Poet. And thus the antithesis of phoniness).

Members soon become aware that truth makes them hard so they should be reminded never to lose their compassion. The ability to maintain compassion even in trying times of extreme difficulty is the one quality that distinguishes Viking adventurers as men of noble character.

Members must understand the wisdom: ‘Everyone arrives into the world and leaves the world alone, everything else is a gift,’ so they should regard all the special things that life offers as a gift, and as such never expect anything from anyone.

A further deduction is that all Vikings should know that their greatest moments throughout their lives can only be experienced alone. Besides, it’s easier to move when unaccompanied by others. Viking-Poets tend to be solitudinarians – a person leading a solitary or secluded life. To be alone is to achieve. To be with others is to celebrate what you have achieved alone. That’s why members are encouraged to always have their own mode of transportation, motorcycle or mountain bike or what have you, and are encouraged to develop fundamental skills required for cartography and its derivatives. After all half of life is just being there.

There is but one witness who sees all these extraordinary lives of adventure and poetry, and that is Odin. It is the omnipresent overseer with the long white beard who is witness to this ancient club of men who have created masterpieces over the millennia in how they have used their brief time on earth. It is Him who has kept the catalog of paintings in His library in the Great Mead Hall in the Sky for all eternity.

It is under the benevolent gaze of both the Viking-Poet and Odin that one paints his brushstrokes just as it is Him and the Viking-Poet who judge how well one has lived while lying on his deathbed.

The mind is a refuge full of elastic bands, plucked by the thumb of reason to echo pleasantries in the ear. Time is the only thing that has met our ancestors – probably the oldest thing in the universe – and never stops moving. It is the unrecognized elixir of life. To master time is to master the elixir. And one extrapolates this elixir through his will.

Chapter Four

Harnessing One’s Will

The biggest fundamental difference between a Viking-Poet and the 21st-Century Man is his complete mastery over his will – something that needs to be exercised regularly or the Viking-Poet’s mastery will wane. His expert use of his will is his defining quality. In fact the extraordinary nature of a member’s life is the direct result of mastering his will.

What is the will one might ask? It is a desire and inclination to act, but it is a bit more subtle than that. It’s a settlement of mental uncertainty and indecision resulting in purposeful volition. It’s the total conscious process involved in effecting a decision.

The will is action directed toward a goal clearly known in advance and requiring effort to overcome obstacles or contrary desires. It is the faculty of the soul to coordinate with the intellect that determines rational choices in accordance with what the intellect has determined as good or bad.

Philosophers disagree whether it is a faculty of the soul or a faculty of the mind, but for the Viking-Poet it is a faculty of the mind that is usually coordinated with thought and feeling that determines moral actions in accordance with ideals, principles and fact. The will of the Viking-Poet is a disposition to act according to particular principles, or to conform in conduct and thought to general or ideal ends.

There was the character first, before words. The character lies in the will and not in the intellect. Nature has produced the intellect for the service of the individual’s will. The old mistake of philosophers is to place the essence of mind in thought and consciousness, but Schopenhauer believed the primary guiding force is not the conscious intellect but rather the will: a striving, persistent vital force of action and imperious desire.

Nietzsche said of the will: ‘The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.’ It’s a clever notion that touches on this idea that the will is somehow lacking in one of the senses.

The will is taking action to get to a desired goal but it’s more than that: It is tied up with thoughts and feelings and moral judgment, disposition, choice, inclination, passion, intention, determination. One could say it’s a summons of purpose.

The will is the commander of all the chess pieces on the board with the power to control, determine and dispose. It’s a restlessness that constantly reminds one to do something – an omnipresent inclination standing just outside one’s door but never knocks. It’s that inkling that whispers in the ear too softly that makes one feel as though they had something to do but have forgotten. It’s like the unsatisfied craving for coffee in the morning knowing there’s nothing holding you back from getting a cup. Or like a mild suspicion that there’s a voice in your subconscious mind trying to tell you something really important.

Morality targets the heart, not the intellect. The home of the will is the heart, not the head. The Viking-Poet masters his motorcycle by imposing his will on it. And the more exploits achieved increases the power of the Viking-Poet’s will. It is fatigue of the intellect that disrupts the will’s work. Will is the cause of all action, and force is the form of the will. Over time one can see one’s destination at the end of the teleological line which the will goes forth to.

The opposite of exercising the will is ‘ennui’. It’s a word Schopenhauer uses to explain the will. Ennui is a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction, languor or emptiness of spirit. It is life when the will is dormant.

And Aristotle would concur with that. He believed that pain is life’s basic stimulus and reality, and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain. For Aristotle it was the fundamental equation of existence. He believed the wise man seeks not pleasure but freedom from care and pain.

That is why the exploit is of such importance: it keeps everything sharpened and polished. In the words of Heraclitus: ‘The unshaken mixture decomposes.’ Like a flower, the moxie of one’s will blooms but soon withers from lack of purposeful volition so that the whiff of bloom can never be attained again.

Only those who take action while in bloom can say to have truly lived.

The will is there to maximize life.

Chapter Five

Instinct

The fourth principle of being a Viking-Poet is: The marrow of strength is born from the healthy expression of instincts.

And while endeavoring in an exploit, members should remember the Viking-Poet Club dictum: Become who you are! And as from Nietzsche will necessarily come Schopenhauer: symmetry is rhythm standing still. So even in inaction there is a type on inner rhythm, and symmetry of self.

And this is where one gains their power that all people can sense and respect.

How does one define ‘instinct?’ Instinct is a natural or inherent aptitude, tendency, impulse, or capacity. As an adjective it’s to instigate, to incite; impelled by an inner or animating or exciting agency; profoundly imbued instigation; to implant as animating power. Instincts are largely hereditary and unalterable – a blueprint for behavior that goes back millennia.

The instinct in man is what governs our behavior during our earliest years of development. And it should continue to aid in more complex decision-making in adulthood. It is a suitcase full of inclinations that contains an entire system of built-in action. Clearly, it is an integral part of our biology.

For example, one has an instinct for location. That’s our a priori apparatus we are taught by society to repress. The screams of awakened instincts all come from the same ancient cellar of being. Choosing location? That was merely the adventure instinct: the urge to find ever better geomancy, which I turn promotes better qualia.

And one might ask what is the best way to call forth an instinct? Isn’t it something that a father always used to say when we were kids? The light that emanates from the magic of fires awakens the sleepy instinct. Looking at fire: that is the way to stir the cellar of instincts!

Chapter Six

The 21st-Century Man

It is the repression of instinct that is the source of all psychological problems. Man today, who is referred to in this handbook as the 21st-Century Man, epitomizes the repression of instinct. He ignores his instinct. He thinks it is base, that is, opposite of noble.

The 21st-Century Man:

Thinks mountain bikes are for children;

Thinks anything to do with the ‘spirit’ or ‘philosophy’ is a form a mental instability;

Ignores all that he doesn’t understand;

Hasn‘t read a novel since high school;

Measures his life as a countdown to cashing in his pension;

Fluent in the games people play with each other using deception and manipulation;

Always follows rules;

Believes everything he reads in the newspapers;

Completely unable to understand the ‘NOW’ in time;

Lives in constant fear of the unplanned, like a typhoon or earthquake;

Avoids debates;

Distrusts those of higher education;

Has never gone through the metamorphosis of boy to man;

Does not have any opinion that differs from the general consensus;

Prefers to follow rather than lead;

Acts primarily to please others;

Regards his time as something to get through and endured rather than to be valued and enjoyed;

Measures all activities in monetary terms first;

Thinks instinct is the urge of lust;

Believes Affirmative Action is fair.

It is curious to find so many today behind bars and locked in their jail cell by their own hand. One of humankind’s most comic traits is shown by those who self-censor their own spiritual expression and development through the constant repression of their true self. It is a fortress of self-censorship that imprisons countless people the world. It very well may be a more punishing form of imprisonment than any physical incarceration.

In the Havamal, what one might call the Viking Bible, it states:

‘A laughing-stock is he who nothing knows,

and with the instructed sits.

Of his understanding no one should be proud,

but rather in conduct cautious.

When the prudent and taciturn come to a dwelling,

harm seldom befalls the cautious;

for a firmer friend no man ever gets than great sagacity,’ (from “The High One’s Lay”).

Yet it is more than likely that the 21st-Century Man regards Vikings as plunderers and barbarians, yet it begs the question: who is the barbarian now? A man soft and hampered by the luxuries of his age, cynical and sarcastic, a man out of touch with his healthy instincts that made his forefathers great; how wrong and weak he is!

For even Vikings sought wisdom:

‘A miserable man, and ill-conditioned,

sneers at everything;

one thing he knows not,

which he ought to know,

that he is not free from faults.

A foolish man is all night awake,

pondering over everything;

he then grows tired;

and when morning comes,

all is lament as before.

A foolish man think all who on him smile to be his friends;

he feels it not,

although they speak ill of him,

when he sits among the clever.

A foolish man thinks all who speak him fair to be his friends;

but he will find if into court he comes,

that he has few advocates.

A foolish man thinks he knows everything if placed in unexpected difficulty;

but he knows not what to answer,

if to the test he is put.’

Chapter Seven

The Time Factor

For a Viking-Poet, time is not recyclable.

The first warning to members is: always beware of time-stealers. Time can be defined as a period during which something (as an action, process or condition) exists or continues: an interval comprising a limited and continuous action, condition, or state of being; measured or measurable duration. So you could say a time-stealer is something that takes away potential action that harvests flourishment. But more precisely, since an exploit is a creative endeavor, time is a unit of duration as a basis of poetic meter.

In the words of Henri Bergson: ‘…life is a matter of time rather than of space, it is not position, it is change; it is not quantity so much as quality; it is not a mere redistribution of matter and motion, it is fluid and persistent creation.’ (Creative Evolution).

In the context of Western thought, there is a massive oversight many academics have in factoring in the centrality of time in their philosophical arguments. The relationship of rules with regard to time, whether finite or infinite, is seldom addressed – Henri Bergson being the exception.

As far as one can see it within the canon of Western philosophical thought, it was Immanuel Kant’s fault. His a priori intuition of time and space has been overlooked ‘as a given,’ which has caused scholars to construct their theories on a foundation that does not move and has virtually no consideration for the finite nature of time in every individual’s life. This is particularly revealing when seen in terms of making a rational choice of action for a young child, an old man or man in his prime but afflicted somehow and crippled in some way, such as having a fatal disease.

Every thinking person recognizes they don’t exist in a vacuum of time immune from the demands of life.

Truth is a function of time. And all life decisions are made in light of the backdrop of what time is to that individual.

Chapter Eight

The Viking-Poet Philosopher

As a philosopher, who has both life experience and strength of conviction, the Viking-Poet philosopher has an inclination to buck authority, particularly with people who impose their authority in such a way that disrupts one’s flow of equilibrium. The man of originality marches to the sound of his own trumpet, not only because he wants to but because if he doesn’t he would be a phony, and a phony is the antithesis of who a philosopher is.

A philosopher can’t even fake being phony.

And this is the reason why the philosopher will always fail under the yoke of another. It will always end in failure. He needs to be the king of his own domain and resist any force infringing his time-and-space kingdom.

In certain situations arising from social convention, Viking-Poet philosophers occasionally find themselves forced into corners that create confrontations usually resulting in refusals to submit, questioning, misunderstanding and ultimately bad blood.

The character of the philosopher is too penetrating to be assaulted by custom or convention.

Nietzsche believed that man lives only one life – the only life he has – and that when he dies he doesn’t go to heaven or hell, but lives his already-lived life over and over for eternity. But what’s brilliant about his theory of Eternal Recurrence is that because you live your life again forever, the importance of what you choose to do in this life has much more significance than if you believe in an afterlife where you can live again. This is why Nietzsche wrote ‘God is dead’ in the first chapter of Thus Spake Zarathustra.

He profoundly disagreed that man should forego this one chance at life for an improvable yet glorious afterlife.

We will relive this moment now forever. It’s good time-utility. Time commands respect for what it can give you and do for you. To treat time profitably is to enhance its value.

Derive gain through the beneficial application of time and you have spent well.

All Viking-Poet philosophers believe David Hume’s words to be true when he said: ‘It is confessed, that the utmost of human reason is, to reduce the principles, productive of natural phenomena, to a greater simplicity, and to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes, by means of reasoning from analogy, experience, and observation,’ (An Inquiry Into Human Understanding). That is the Viking-Poet philosopher’s work. That is how they see the world. And to do this work one must live in the now.

Human lives come and go but the first principles of life’s conundrums remain.

Also, when discussing the undertaking of an exploit, there’s an opportunity cost and all that. Better for the canvas, and better for one’s objectivity because objectivity is derived from a multiplication of subjective experiences. The more varied experience that is accumulated, the better one can be objective.

The more objective, the better the skills of achieving time utility.

Also, finding one’s range of balance is Aristotle’s Golden Mean. One must find an optimum balance between too much and too little. To quote Aristotle, ‘Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this – the intermediate in the object but relatively to us,’ (Ethics).

But this brings up the idea of balance versus extremism. Finding one’s equilibrium takes time. Seat height should be adjusted to maximize energy output by the rider’s legs when mountain-biking for example. In theory it seems plain but actually finding one’s geometrical equilibrium in practice takes patience at first to generate a quality yield.

One’s coordination of hand and toe diminishes when one’s seat is out of kilter.

Every individual has his own speed and direction. A higher speed does not necessarily mean better quality since each rider has their own comfort level. It is at one’s natural speed when one may have synergy of parts, which of course would have the highest quality. Since each individual is unique, each rider must find their preferred way and optimal flow.

Some are taller than others.

Just as some are more equal than others.

Chapter Nine

The Art of Motorcycling

Motorcycling requires clarity of the moment and sharpness of perception. And this is hindered by anyone who worries about unrealized phantoms. Self-contained and easy to maintain, the motorcycle is the Viking-Poet’s instrument to write his verses of adventure – a vehicle of freedom without glass windows cutting off one’s immediate intimacy with the world, such as smells and temperatures intermingling with side winds that dishevels hair. Like his life, the danger is indivisible from the ride.

And it is this ingredient that enhances the thrill.

Without danger an exploit is flat, like life without death. The Viking-Poet thrives in danger because it is a reminder of his mortality.

There are no seatbelts on a motorcycle.

Road-Tripping Rules

Can never have too much tissue, water, bread or nuts;

Always bring an extra wool sweater;

Always be in the appropriate gear;

Always give passing trucks wide berth;

Never push a bad position;

Always carry extra engine oil on long tours;

Always bring raingear – tops and bottoms;

Always bring extra pairs of wool socks;

Always wear eye tackle;

Always wear long sleeves and long pants despite the heat;

Always have emergency phone numbers;

Always bring a reserve wad of cash in small bills;

Always have a decent map;

Always bring a Zippo lighter and a candle;

Always keep an eye and ear peeled for au naturale music;

Always wear multiple layers;

Never bring a bulky jacket;

Always bring a journal and reliable writing utensil (pencil);

Always take the scenic route;

Never feel like you’re in a hurry;

Always have a pair of gloves for mountain riding;

All terrains are desirable except sand and volcanic ash;

Never climb when you could be one gear lower;

Always be on the lookout for side roads leading to lagoons;

Always sport a posture that aligns with the form of the bike;

Primary responsibility is to be considerate to your motorbike;

And always carry a compass.

In the code it is believed that if a Viking-Poet member believes in a Supreme Being, and is respectful and honest in all matters, a Guardian Angel will watch over them. (Comes in handy while adventuring in foreign lands where littering on the roads with unexpected red herrings is common). Since earthquakes, typhoons, tidal waves and avalanches were all deemed Acts of Odin, a Viking-Poet regards His acts as exploits that are full of beauty and purpose.

To free oneself from the worry of death, a Viking-Poet should believe they have a Guardian Angel looking over their shoulder during acute danger. There will be many close calls with the Grim Reaper but one survives each one in a manner that strongly suggests divine intervention.

Any mention of their divine protector would be bad form, but wisdom teaches one the importance of passing down knowledge to those willing to listen, so now you know why a Viking-Poet’s fear is small.

Great Teacher in the Sky instructs all who believe in Him, so keep an eye open for His Signs.

Chapter Ten

Becoming a Zeitqualia Master

As is stated in the theory of relativity there is no unique absolute time, but instead each individual has his own personal measure of time that depends on where he is and how he is moving. It is a subjective view of time – relative time. Riding a motorcycle off-road changes time for the rider; it becomes more intense, or to use Kant’s word: more intensive. More qualia, more color, more butterflies, more bumps, more smells, more memories than the same kilometer one just rode on pavement before going off-road, just like time within the workplace is different from time you spend on your motorbike. It’s quantifiably the same – one minute is one minute – but the experience of time is different. They’re qualitatively different.

The Viking-Poet word for this is zeitqualia. It’s experiencing the flow of time in all its color and texture and magnitude. That’s what one does on motorcycles or mountain bikes. The serious green of the mountains and the cool breeze of the wind and the rogue rocks on the road; they are all part of the qualia of the ride.

It is the kaleidoscope of tactile images that penetrates the veil of the Viking-Poet’s senses when executing an exploit.

Zeitqualia: zeit is German for time, and qualia is the Latin root of the word ‘quality,’ meaning the qualitative, experiential ‘feel’ of a mental state or process. For instance, the redness of a visual experience, the hurt of pain, or the chocolateness of chocolate; taste.

To maximize the zeitqualia of an exploit is the task for our Viking-Poets.

Could one see it as a sensation? Yes. Kant calls it ‘intensive magnitude’ or a degree of influence on the sense. He believed perception contains sensation and that a magnitude of apprehension causes increased intensity in the sensation. By removing the translucent glass protecting you from ontological reality, perceptions become clearer and one becomes in touch with the raw texture of adventure through coordinated movement. There is a synergy one experiences; a high, from the act itself.

Too many choose not to undertake exploits and they lack the essential zeitqualia element in their lives. That’s the point.

Pain, hand-in-hand with joy, reminds the Viking-Poet that he is living. And maybe through his exploits can attain freedom from his pain. If he can immerse himself so deeply into his flow – his zeitqualia – so that he loses his sense of pain and actually skims atop the earth using his momentum to overpower gravity, he is elevated into the realm of the sublime.

If zeitqualia is being in the marrow of the moment, the point zero of incongruity and the flight of least turbulence, then it is the full manifestation of being in the NOW – sliding on the wet ice of time.

Perhaps there is qualia in the Viking-Poet’s pain?

This handbook has been written to enlighten those still slumbering, whose instincts are drowsy, and who have forgotten the thrill of adventure. Deep down one cares for their fellow man, especially when there are sickly. Put it this way, without the outlet of undertaking an exploit, a man with passion will implode from the lack of use of his vital sensibilities that makes a man a man in full.

Give a man a battlefield or playground; it’s the same ancient codebook of behaviour that springs into play. The important thing is to expend that energy so that one may grow. It’s a snowballing action, both in abilities and from the inner glow of accomplishment.

Part and parcel with the accumulation of creative achievement is the fervor of experiencing zeitqualia and the flush of one’s innate infinite goodness – the natural expression of compassion one has for others.

Over time this snowballing glow spills over into creating an urge to spread the goodness around to others. The act of giving is poetic. So manifesting this action only adds to the richness of one’s paintbrush for life, and enhances the aggregate camaraderie of mankind.

Chapter Eleven

Using Inflected Logic

So many of our logical systems in math and science that are used for analysis are simple logical systems that are binary in nature; either 0 or 1. That’s it. There’s no bending of the rules. It’s inflexible by nature. Kant believed that we don’t learn math; instead we discover math. He believes that every person is born with a logical system in their heads and that reading mathematics is discovering a dormant language. Learning math awakens our a priori logical system.

If the logical system is accurately represented by, for example, symbolic logic, then a logical system must be linear in nature. What is called Normative Logic is characterized by parallel and perpendicular lines, but the logic one actually uses in their daily lives has an inherent bending and declension in it. Viking-Poets do not ride in perfectly straight lines nor take corners at geometrically perfect angles, rather they ride in a flow of continual coordinated judgment because of the never-ending bumps and imperfections along their path. Nor does a Viking-Poet motorcyclist ride at a constant speed. Instead there is a need to fill in the gaps and corners where linear logic cannot go. They use intuition in their logic. So when cycling, one must balance between the geometrically crisp logical model with a wise spatio-temporal inflected logic.

The decision-making process when riding is not rigid; it takes into consideration the conceptual application of a linear system onto a non-linear world.

Kant says that man has a natural intuition of time and space, and that time is quanta continua, meaning it must be looked at as continual because otherwise time and space would just be an empty point. An instant in the time continuum can only be a point, and a point in time by definition is void of any length of time. Therefore points of time would be 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0. Time therefore must always be considered as duration. Kant says ‘the continuity of time is ordinarily designated by the term flowing or flowing away,’ (Critique of Pure Reason). So Kant gets it. So a point in time becomes an instant merely at the beginning or end of a finite duration.

The problem with this is that we are forced, it seems, to define the present as the end of the past and the beginning of the future. The NOW would then be void, so that’s why it must be duration. And in that duration there should be zeitqualia. But this begs the question: How can one see both duration and points in time?

Kant calls it transcendental schema. It is the ‘magical function’ we have in the imagination that bridges between instants in time and the sensibility of time as duration. He says this schema is the synthesis of perception with the representation of time. Schema is the orderly arrangement of parts, as in a philosophic system. It’s the rover force that makes time, as defined as an infinite series of instants, intelligible as a quantum flow. Kant writes that it is ‘art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely to ever allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze,’ (Ibid.)

But Kant never undertook exploits. In fact he never traveled more than forty miles from his home during his lifetime, so that’s why it was never revealed to him. But it has been revealed to the Viking-Poet from empirical data: Kant’s transcendental schema is that faculty in us that inflects logic. If this transcendental schema is a product of the imagination, like Kant says it is, then it could be that thing that bridges one’s sense perception and bends one’s innate logical apparatus to understand the sense data in the natural non-linear world.

So then what does inflection means precisely? Think of the word ‘flex.’ Inflection is an angle or bend, or a modulation in the voice. It is a change in a plane curve from convex to concave. It’s a pattern of change in form undergone by words to express grammatical and syntactical relations. To inflect is to vary the tone of pitch of the voice, or modulate. It is to turn from a straight or usual course, and to bend. To inflect is to give or recite the inflections of a word by conjugating or through declination. It is to alter the form of a word by inflection. Comes from the Latin inflectere, meaning ‘to bend.’

Thus the bent lines in the Inflected Matrix of Mountainbike Logic sketch:

The way a Viking-Poet actually intuits logic from the empirical world is with this organic, time-sensitive bendable logic. And it’s this transcendental schema that Kant mentions that is the bending agent.

So what does all this mean? It highlights how traditional normative logic that the 21st–Century Man uses falls short by revealing the form of logic Viking-Poets use while engaged in an exploit. This motorcycle logic takes into consideration the quantum phenomena not considered by traditional linear logic. The random oddities of an exploit cannot fall outside of the domain of inflected motorcycle logic.

This dynamic of inflection allows the ride to become a flow.

It means the 21st-Century Man who sacrifices quality at the cost of time has a lower degree of inner magnitude. It means to have a weak inflection muscle is to have a ‘blind spot’ or, more harshly, is to be missing the middle part. This explains why the couch-potato man cannot see what Viking-Poets can see and experience.

It means that having excellent inflection increases the magnitude of quality through time.

It means that one’s rationale isn’t purely logical or purely poetic; rather one’s rational foundation has the pillar of logic and the pillar of poetry that are balanced using inflection.

It means that one shoe is straight and one shoe is curved, so that one who does not go forth and engage the empirical world will have a limp.

The illusion of a perfect match eluded even Kant, the keenest of logicians, because Professor Kant never rode a motorcycle and endeavored into the empirical world on a motorcycle. He never was able to fill in the corners. And being empiricists, Viking-Poets concur with the Scotsman David Hume when he wrote: ‘causes and effects are discoverable, not by reason, but by experience,’ (Hume, Op. Cit.).

Chapter Twelve

Bending Grammar

So if there are two shoes, one straight and unbending like a mathematical equation the all are born with, and another shoe of logic that is bendable, then the Viking-Poet is master of both through necessity, otherwise his life would indeed be short. For this the Viking-Poet needs his motorcycle logic because it’s an intuitive rationale that is logically inflected in nature. It enables one to see and read between the lines of what binary logic leaves out.

Motorcycling is sculpting a stream with a subtle lean of the shoulder and creating a new wave with only a slight of hand. Temporal orientation is fundamental to a coordinated brake and turn, and a lane change, not to mention overcoming cracks in the roads from the long winters. Motorcycle logic must to be temporal in nature. Just as a motorcyclist rides in a flow of space and time, the coordination of how one rides is the way logic is used. Same with sailing and the various other vehicles used in exploits known to the Viking-Poet.

But not to leave things here, it could be suggested that the fundamental logic of inflection is found in the structure of languages. Language structure and language logic is a mirror of man’s a priori logical apparatus. It is not the inflexible normative logic presumed by Kant and used by logicians and scientists. Therefore we could use that skeletal structure in language and grammar to create a better logical system to analyze the natural world.

Also, if we could ever apprehend and decipher and duplicate the inherent logical structure of a language, then we would have a blueprint of our fundamental cognitive logical structure. After all, languages are human creations.

One must allow some room to bend the language, to bend the grammar, to overcome the linear rules of the inherent logic in language. For example, there isn’t just one past tense in English, there are seventeen different tenses, most deviations from the past particle. “I was going to have a drink of chocolate milk,” is a good example of the bending of logic that Kant doesn’t acknowledge. Instead of Kant’s belief, which has been shown to fall short of logical realities when riding a motorcycle, it is suggested here that the logical structure of a language is a mirror reflection of man’s a priori logical apparatus. The rules of grammar for example, are lines of logic that show us how we naturally think.

The logic in language can be bent, or more importantly, is bendable.

Chapter Thirteen

In Summary

The Viking-Poet Handbook has connected the two poles of logic, and discovered that one of the biggies in Western philosophy Immanuel Kant had missed the importance of time in the Socratic project: the art of living. In this investigation it has been shown that the off-roading time for the Viking-Poet motorcyclist for example, as a metaphor for living life and overcoming life’s non-linear obstacles and road blocks, is different than the 21st–Century Man sitting on his couch watching the television. His divorce from healthy vibrant instinct and his toggle logic has negated his full participation in the empirical world and therefore he sits waiting, soft-bellied and bewildered by the Viking-Poet’s zeal, yet cannot help respecting the man-of-action’s power of self, centered and firm-footed and born from his knowledge of the world and of his true and original character.

It is hoped that this small handbook will be the impetus the flimsy-legged man needs to go forth into the realm of the unknown that is fraught with danger. It is hope he will go forth with vigor and grace, with his eye on the poetry previously hidden from view that is in the fabric of each day, and with the knowledge that only from valuing the finite nature of time can he truly harness the gift of life he has been given by providence.

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,

Now I wash the gum from your eyes,

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light &

of every moment of your life.

– Walt Whitman

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Appendix

The Philosopher:

An Aristocratic Animal Attaining Art

And Achieving Accelerated Aesthetics with Accent,

Assuming Analytical Assessment And Analysis

Of All Accidental Actions and Allegorical Axioms.

After All Available Axes Are Attuned and Analyzed,

Arrogant Erudite Ants Attain An Always-Ascending Affinity

To Affirm the Affiliation of Ancestry And Affected Anatomy

In An All-encompassing Astuteness to Anchor

Our Already Anarchic And Apocalyptic Answers

Against Appropriate Appraisal And Aphorisms of Adventure.

All Agreeable Apprentices Are Amphibious Amoebas

Awry in An Abstract Aquarium of Aerodynamics,

Apprehending And Attaching Apperceptional Amendments

And Amassing Additional Atoms of Arbitrary Action

Around An All-illusive Academic Apical;

Attaining Awareness into the Architecture of the Aphonic Absolute.

All Adding Adjectives to the Anatomy of our Ancient

And Active Abstract Agriculture and Anthropology

Applying Additional Anthropological Arithmetic

To Accepted Astronomy And Archaeology,

Accumulating Amalgamated Ambition And Ascension,

All Assembling At the Academy of Arts.

– The Amateur Author (bending grammar)

About the Author

Peter Higgins was born in Vancouver but grew up in Toronto, graduating from Queen’s University in 1990 and then with a master’s degree from the University of Hong Kong in 2004. Mr. Higgins worked as a professional writer in Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong for ten years before he returned to Canada to write. He currently lives with his family on Manitoulin Island, Ontario Canada.