I love walking and there are many parks next to where I live. However I am never able to fully enjoy it or indulge in any longer thinking activities as most of the time I'll be interrupted by either elderly people asking me "to go back where I came from" or random ID checks by undercover police. This happened a lot (5x times) over the last year when I decide to go and walk in a park, once even during an online call with my team. I live in a medium sized city in Germany and come from North Africa / France and it might show a bit too much.
As a mitigation I once seriously considered changing how I look by for example dressing more like a dad or walking the neighbors dog as an alibi for being "normal". Maybe it would have interested the old ladies too, who knows.
For the time being I'll keep at walking on streets or inside the city as it's less strange to see foreigners there. Can't wait to have my private forest :')
Interesting post, when I worked in Vienna I had a guy who was from Nigeria on my team, his dad was a diplomat to the UN, I believe. One day he told me how long it took him to walk back and forth to work, but it didn’t make sense it took that long. He said because he was African the cops in certain districts stopped him every day to search him, claiming he was a drug dealer and basically just to harass him. So he took the extra time to avoid that district. What an eye opening conversation, to see that racism really does show it’s ugly little face everywhere, even in countries that aren’t really known for it. He was well dressed and worked in tech, mental gymnastics would be required to assume he was slanging drugs.
I would like to encourage you to make your experience (semi-)public in your local community. In times of campaigning, talk to people at campaign booths. Tell the members of the city/local council of different parties about it. Go to the mayor's public office hours.
And look for a group of people who want to something about it. There are also a large number of Germans who find the racist discrimination by the police scandalous and think that it is high time to do something about it. Best not individually, but collectively.
Then attitudes can change, even in conservative circles. I come from a place that recently elected a mayor with a Turkish background who was supported by the conservative party (CDU). Something like this would hardly have been conceivable twenty years ago, but I hope that it will now become the norm.
A friend of mine who is white also was checked by the police a lot (in Germany), simply because he had a certain jacket that was apparently associated with drug dealers or trouble makers (checks can include anal probes for hidden drugs, apparently).
So maybe dressing for the occasion could work. Sorry for your ordeal. You'd think police would know you after the umpteenth check.
This advice is warm spirited and practical and I endorse taking actions to make oneself safer. But, also, it's disgusting that anyone should be harassed by police and feel unsafe walking where they live. That is a terrible status quo and the GP deserves better, full stop.
I know what you mean, but I would think it's also racist a lot of times. I know of a case where a friend who is german, born in Germany, just that one of the parents is an immigrant. He has a C-level job at a medium sized company and he was stopped together with a colleague while going to have lunch, while dressed as someone at that level would dress, because some old lady said that some foreign looking people were acting suspiciously (it wasn't them). They put them through some humiliating experiences, not believing they work where they work and harassing them.
In the same time I also have some "hacker" type friends that were constantly being stopped by the police, even though they were white, but they just have a questionable fashion taste compared to the general population.
That was heartbreaking to read. I’m sorry. It really surprised me when I read Germany. Shame on those people and the politicians who allow police to harass you. Shame on them!
I was also very surprised when I read that it was in Germany.
When it comes to police checks, it is important to know your rights: https://anwaltauskunft.de/magazin/gesellschaft/strafrecht-po...
The police is not allowed to discriminate against you just because you look foreign. Always demand that they tell you why you were stopped and that they show their badge.
When it comes to racists, I personally would reply with irony and humor to make them look silly. But ignoring them can also be a viable strategy.
Your problem is not that you are North African, but rather that you are living in an area controlled by a group of people who feel that this is a smart policy to have, which of course it is not.
Come to the USA-- for all of our problems, you can at least walk in a park without encountering police.
As a person who walked 8/15 hours for two months straight I can relate to most of the statements written by the author. I believe that listening to music or other recordings takes away from the experience and the mental gains that walking provides, and this is why I skip the headphones during my adventures.
I can attest that after 10 days of continuous autonomous movement the mind switches to a "primordial" state that, as a non academic, I believe can be very easily attributable to our nomadic, hunter-gatherer past.
Attention gets sharper, acumen rings free, the range of senses expands, creative impulses flourish and it's easier to perform tasks in unexpectedly smart ways.
I suggest those who would like to give it a try embark on a walking adventure that is at least two weeks long, either on pilgrimage routes (which offer great views and allow one to save money thanks to the hospitality options available) like the Camino de Santiago de Compostela / Fatima or long trails such as the Appalachian Trail.
None whatsoever aside from the usual post-adventure depression.
I've met several persons lost on pilgrimage routes due to mental breakdowns. It's a know problem, people find happiness and an alternative life during a pilgrimage and keep on walking the routes back and forth through Europe until they run out of money and then become homeless. At the beginning of the French route towards Santiago de Compostela you might still find some mental health counseling offices.
I mostly agree but I don't think avoiding to listen to stuff all the time is great either. I walked the pct for 5 months and listened to plenty of books and podcasts and they gave me many good ideas. I would often lose myself in the ideas and the podcasts would just ramble on in the background like white noise. My only regret is not noting not thoughts down.
Yet another great mind (also an infamous introvert) who used to take long walks to refresh his mind was Paul Dirac. From his 1963 interview [1] with Thomas Kuhn, he describes how a decisive Sunday walk made him see the analogy between commutators in quantum mechanics and Poisson brackets in classical mechanics:
> "I used to take long walks on Sundays and get away from the work altogether, and at the end of those walks I would perhaps go on with my work a bit in a refreshed state of mind. And after one of these Sunday walks it occurred to me that the commutator might be the analogue of the Poisson bracket, but I didn’t know very well what a Poisson bracket was then. I had just read a bit about it and forgotten most of what I had read, and I wanted to check up on this idea, but I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have any book at home which gave Poisson brackets and all the libraries were closed. So I just had to wait impatiently until Monday morning when the libraries were open to go and check up on what Poisson brackets really were. Then I found that they did fit, but I had one impatient night of waiting."
I am not on the autistic spectrum, but in my experience walking does help a lot with thinking things through. Part of it is certainly the lack of distractions, but there is something about the movement too. I'm not sure why you've brought autism up.
I agree 100% with this article - I do my best thinking when walking. It is the combination of light exercise that gets the blood moving (to the brain!), but not too strenuous that our minds must devote mental energy to the act of phsyical exercise, the oxygen from the fresh air, the feeling of _wandering_ and letting our minds wander.
Sometimes I struggle with deep thinking at my desk - its too quiet / stable. A little bit of distraction helps. Not to say I don’t think while at my desk, I just think walking is a great compliment and in our sedentary lives, better to think on our feet and leave the desk to implementation / coding.
We took in an older dog who had worked for 10 years at a hunting lodge. He’s incredibly well trained, doesn’t need a leash, doesn’t go wild or bark his head off under any provocation, and is happy going for long walks at a slow pace with random pauses.
I’ve lost track number and quality of excellent solutions I have come up with on these walks, including three provisional patents filed and a major contract saved. He’s earned increasingly indulgent treats.
I enjoy walking very much and I can understand that it might increase overall health and therefore the quality of one's thoughts. But I never have good thoughts while walking. My brain seems to be occupied in the state of walking itself. To get into deep thought I need to be sitting down with no distractions.
For a long time, the scholarly consensus was that you are born with a fixed number of neurons and then start losing them over your lifetime. Now there is good evidence of adult neurogenesis and it seems to be linked to endurance exercise, such as walking. These links can be a starting point for reading up on it:
>For a long time, the scholarly consensus was that you are born with a fixed number of neurons and then start losing them over your lifetime
It's worth pointing out that this is one of those old-school ridiculousnesses that many scientists believed in for much longer than the available evidence ought to have afforded. Much in the same way that North American hospitals used to refrain from analgesics when performing minor surgeries on very young babies, as they were assumed to not experience pain (?!), up until the late 80s, so too was the mounting evidence (Merzenich in the 80s, etc) of adult neurogenesis generally dismissed because reasons.
I have found that I have my best (and worst) ideas by changing mental states. For example I’m usually sober so when I’m intoxicated I usually have garbage ideas, but every now and then I think of something truly incredible/useful that I would never have had insight into sober. The same applies to being sleep deprived, it leads me into a different mental headspace where I can think differently than normal (though I try to avoid being sleep deprived cause it’s miserable)
There is something about sleep deprivation that makes me so vividly visually creative, things and image flow in my mind like they otherwise never do. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to trigger this any other way, so my only real creative moments tend to happen in the middle of the night where they aren't much use to anyone.
I'm guessing the added visuals come from hypnagogia, the state between waking and sleep where you can see imagery related to dreaming. I'm especially aware of this state because I have aphantasia and thus have no other method of seeing imagery in my head that doesn't pass through my retinas first. I've seen it when I thought I was awake, but later realize I wasn't fully awake. I also used to dabble in lucid dreaming, and spent a lot of time trying to ride the line between being awake and falling asleep. I'd suggest learning how to lucid dream, because that's another environment where you can be visually creative.
AFAIK sleep deprivation is discussed as a short term treatment of depression. I don't have any exclusive papers on hand (I'm not an expert), but if you are interested, please do your own research.
Recently I had to wake up at 3am and drive for a couple of hour. Something I never do. I had the strangest and most interesting insights! It was very similar to what you describe, a different mental state.
However, unfortunately I forgot many of the insights since I was so endlessly tired! Should have taken notes while driving with just 3h of sleep…
I've seen some people using a dictaphone for this kind of thing. I'm sure these days you can get a phone app that would even auto-transcribe your 3AM ramblings. :)
Very interesting you said that here. I regurarly walk aimlessly, I regurarly have this impression that i have to skip a day of sleep to be exceptionally productive, and i also used to be obseessed with digging large holes especially when i was younger and able to dig like that in my parents garden.
I have ADHD and without my medicine begin walking obsessively. In college, i would walk from one end of campus to the other over and over. When i lived in downtown Dallas i would walk from the West End to Deep Ellum (that's petty far on foot) and back over and over as well. It was good exercise i guess but took a lot of time/energy. Plus, on weekdays i would do it at night which is not the safest thing.
Now on medication, I still walk but not near as much, maybe a mile a day. And, like others have said, i've solved many problems while walking so it's not a total waste of time.
For more / additional information, check out Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. Like Jeremy DeSilva, the author of this Lithub article, Pang discusses Darwin and others who consistently walked to think.
The short story is that Pang went and read through the diaries of many notable thinkers, artists and creative types going back to the 19th century. Walking is one tool in the tool box. There are others, including getting enough sleep and taking naps.
Readit News
And look for a group of people who want to something about it. There are also a large number of Germans who find the racist discrimination by the police scandalous and think that it is high time to do something about it. Best not individually, but collectively.
Then attitudes can change, even in conservative circles. I come from a place that recently elected a mayor with a Turkish background who was supported by the conservative party (CDU). Something like this would hardly have been conceivable twenty years ago, but I hope that it will now become the norm.
So maybe dressing for the occasion could work. Sorry for your ordeal. You'd think police would know you after the umpteenth check.
In the same time I also have some "hacker" type friends that were constantly being stopped by the police, even though they were white, but they just have a questionable fashion taste compared to the general population.
When it comes to police checks, it is important to know your rights: https://anwaltauskunft.de/magazin/gesellschaft/strafrecht-po... The police is not allowed to discriminate against you just because you look foreign. Always demand that they tell you why you were stopped and that they show their badge.
When it comes to racists, I personally would reply with irony and humor to make them look silly. But ignoring them can also be a viable strategy.
Dead Comment
Then I read about your experiences and count myself lucky. I can say nothing other than, I hope things get better over time.
Casual racists comments and jokes fall into the micro-aggression category.
Next time, I hope you build up the courage to tell your aggressors that you are not ok with racist comments.
Deleted Comment
Unfortunately comments like mine (and yours) don't make things better. Possibly they make things worse.
Dead Comment
And by that I mean actual sports clothing, not the archetypical tight Adidas tracksuit that the average European troublemaker wears.
Come to the USA-- for all of our problems, you can at least walk in a park without encountering police.
I can attest that after 10 days of continuous autonomous movement the mind switches to a "primordial" state that, as a non academic, I believe can be very easily attributable to our nomadic, hunter-gatherer past.
Attention gets sharper, acumen rings free, the range of senses expands, creative impulses flourish and it's easier to perform tasks in unexpectedly smart ways.
I suggest those who would like to give it a try embark on a walking adventure that is at least two weeks long, either on pilgrimage routes (which offer great views and allow one to save money thanks to the hospitality options available) like the Camino de Santiago de Compostela / Fatima or long trails such as the Appalachian Trail.
I've met several persons lost on pilgrimage routes due to mental breakdowns. It's a know problem, people find happiness and an alternative life during a pilgrimage and keep on walking the routes back and forth through Europe until they run out of money and then become homeless. At the beginning of the French route towards Santiago de Compostela you might still find some mental health counseling offices.
> "I used to take long walks on Sundays and get away from the work altogether, and at the end of those walks I would perhaps go on with my work a bit in a refreshed state of mind. And after one of these Sunday walks it occurred to me that the commutator might be the analogue of the Poisson bracket, but I didn’t know very well what a Poisson bracket was then. I had just read a bit about it and forgotten most of what I had read, and I wanted to check up on this idea, but I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have any book at home which gave Poisson brackets and all the libraries were closed. So I just had to wait impatiently until Monday morning when the libraries were open to go and check up on what Poisson brackets really were. Then I found that they did fit, but I had one impatient night of waiting."
[1] https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral...
...and a person who likely had ASD[1][2][3][4] (aka Asperger's, being on the spectrum, etc).
As did Charles Darwin (see my other comment in this thread).
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539373/
[2] https://www.quora.com/Did-Paul-Dirac-have-Asperger-syndrome
[3]https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jan/07/autism-...
[4]https://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/11/dirac-autism-au...
Sometimes I struggle with deep thinking at my desk - its too quiet / stable. A little bit of distraction helps. Not to say I don’t think while at my desk, I just think walking is a great compliment and in our sedentary lives, better to think on our feet and leave the desk to implementation / coding.
I say this after two productive walks today :)
I’ve lost track number and quality of excellent solutions I have come up with on these walks, including three provisional patents filed and a major contract saved. He’s earned increasingly indulgent treats.
Who rescued who?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4425252/https://www.npr.org/2011/02/04/133498136/growing-a-bigger-br...
It's worth pointing out that this is one of those old-school ridiculousnesses that many scientists believed in for much longer than the available evidence ought to have afforded. Much in the same way that North American hospitals used to refrain from analgesics when performing minor surgeries on very young babies, as they were assumed to not experience pain (?!), up until the late 80s, so too was the mounting evidence (Merzenich in the 80s, etc) of adult neurogenesis generally dismissed because reasons.
However, unfortunately I forgot many of the insights since I was so endlessly tired! Should have taken notes while driving with just 3h of sleep…
Now on medication, I still walk but not near as much, maybe a mile a day. And, like others have said, i've solved many problems while walking so it's not a total waste of time.
Was surprised to see my comment initially downvoted a lot.
For all who feel like they need walk to think about things, looking into ADHD/ASD could improve y'all's lives.
The short story is that Pang went and read through the diaries of many notable thinkers, artists and creative types going back to the 19th century. Walking is one tool in the tool box. There are others, including getting enough sleep and taking naps.