According to the Platonic perspective, skiing reality can be categorized into two distinct categories: the reality provided by the senses and the reality of ideas or concepts. Plato asserted that nothing that exists in sensible reality remains, as we cannot trust our senses, since they often distort reality.
As we progress and enhance our tekné, it is evident that our sensibility is undergoing a transformation. The same happens when we feel differences in snow texture from one slope to the other, or on the same slope if we ski on the shady side or the sunny side, early in the morning or late in the afternoon.
The perception of snow varies from skier to skier: some find it normal, others find it too hard, and others feel it soft. Hence, it can be inferred that the senses cannot be relied upon as they are not universal, similar to how skiers may not perceive the same snow in a white hue. Sensory abilities vary from skier to skier, but the only thing we can be sure of when skiing is our reason. Plato would say that reason is the same for everyone but…do we really reason the same?
Plato believed that there must be a reality behind the “world of the senses,” and he called it “the world of ideas,” in which there are model images of all things and phenomena.
According to the theory of ideas, concepts determine the form or model of what a skier is like and determine his way of skiing. In other words, they establish the idea of a skier and the idea of skiing. The idea of a skier is a person gliding over the snow on a pair of boards. Although the method of doing it is different, the model is the same.
This idea of skiing is known as a movement image, which is a platonic model image, and is used to learn and improve a ski technique. And what is the purpose of preserving this image of movement? It is used to continue practicing the skiing model after the lesson is completed.
Most skiers hold on to the reflection of ideas in their sensory world, but many others are only imperfect copies of the movement image, the idea of skiing, or the skier’s mold. The sensitive images of other skiers on the slopes are merely shadows, as the real skiing lies in the idea that is expressed in the efficient technical concept.
The idea of skiing is the truth and we, as skiers, are imperfect shadows of a perfect technical mold. However, many skiers are satisfied with skiing as imperfect shadows, with skiing in the shadows as shadowy skiers -flawed copies of a pure idea- that is, true skiing, the efficient one.
The majority of skiers exhibit efficacy through their ability to glide; however, a select few achieve efficiency through an intelligent approach and the determination to reach optimal performance via the principle of least effort.
