Consider the relationship between skateboarding and destruction in terms of "common sense of behavior".

The common question is what is common sense?

Some of the things that are used in everyday life and become skate spots are benches, stairs, and handrails. A bench is a place to sit on, and the central part of the body for movement is the legs and lower back. There is not much focus on the upper body if you are on a bench with no backrest. The stairs are centered on the legs, and the handrails, of course, are arms and hands. These tools had a "purpose of being made", such as resting or going up and down, and they developed according to the body parts that were central to carrying out these actions. When sitting on the ground without a bench, use your whole body and sit down. When climbing a steep slope, step on it with your legs and raise your thighs wide to avoid slipping and falling. If there's no handrail, she grabs something around her and pulls her body up with her arms. The meaning given to a tool is one that streamlines or reduces the action to be performed, and it has developed in that direction. Appropriate tools focus on the parts of the body that are central to the movement when carrying out the purpose, and differentiate and lead to appropriate movement unconsciously.

In order to perform efficient movements, it is necessary to input and accept appropriate sensory information in each posture and movement of daily life and in each moment. [...]. The sense of touch is necessary to perform elaborate movements of the hand, but it cannot be controlled by the sense of touch alone. It is necessary to control the shape of the hand and the strength of the force during the operation based on the appropriate recognition of the information of the object to be manipulated, but these are often done unconsciously. The somatosensory cortex plays an important role in controlling these functions. Manipulative dexterity can be increased with repeated motor learning and experience. It will be possible to carry out an even smoother operation in the light of past experience.
Atsushi, GOTOH. "Postural Change due to Sensory Input." J. Kansai Phys. Ther. 10: 5-14, 2010:6-7.

When the body uses objects, it is able to make subtle unconscious force adjustments, which enables it to use objects smoothly even if they require fine movements.Thanks to these abilities, we can live without wasting our physical strength and time, but society reflects this and considers things that can be used smoothly with the minimum necessary strength to be good. It's "common sense" that scissors weighing 1kg are "insane", and it's "common sense" that a bench whose seat is only 10cm high off the ground is "insane". This "common sense" is self-evidently determined by body size and cultural lifestyle. For example, chopsticks are different in length and material in Japan, China and Korea. The "common sense" of the material of chopsticks for Japanese people cannot be said to be iron. For those accustomed to the Western way of life, a knee-high one might conjure up the image of a chair, but for those with a lifestyle of sitting on the ground without a chair, the image of a table might come to mind. When things are made, they are often made because they are necessary for life but do not exist, or because even if they do exist, they are inconvenient.

Through repeated use of the tools around us, our bodies become adapted to them, and eventually it becomes common sense to use tools of that size and weight. If there is any inconvenience, we will change it little by little, and after 10 or 20 years, you will notice that the "common sense" has changed. What changes "common sense" may be something that occurs in the creator's mind, or it may be something created in the past that encourages change.

As exemplified by Bergson's le escheme moteu and Ponti's schème moteur, these human senses that produce efficient and smooth movement and the objects designed to interact with these senses create a "common sense of behavior" that says, "It is natural to use this tool in this way. There is a purpose to carry out an action and appropriate tools to accomplish it efficiently, and as inefficient tools are eliminated, we unconsciously think that it is natural to use these tools in order to do this action.

When people use benches, stairs, and handrails, they don't think about how to use them each time. To be able to use it unconsciously is due to "common sense of behavior", but to be able to use it unconsciously means to follow "common sense of behavior" unconsciously.

Skateboarders can go outside of that "common sense of behavior".
Skateboarders don't follow the "given meaning" and play it as a skate spot, riding on benches, jumping down stairs in one fell swoop, and jumping on railings in the same way.

As can be seen from the fact that the station turnstiles are designed for right-handed people, the "common sense of behavior" that follows the "given meaning" of an object is established based on a group of people who share the same sense of ease of use. Not only the use of things, but also the contours of a successful society are considered to be rules, which a large number of people must follow in order to live in a way that prevents problems from occurring as much as possible. By following the rules and living within these "common sense of behavior," a general social concept is born.

Skateboarders skateboard with an awareness that they are doing things they shouldn't do out of common sense (like jumping on the bench and scraping the edges) because another "skateboarding concept" prevails over this "general social concept" when skateboarding. The two exist as double-logic in the skatboarders with contradictions.

The two are not at odds with each other, nor are they like the flip side of a coin where only one of them represents a face. The principle of action changes depending on which of the two becomes dominant in a given situation.


Skateboarders have been destroying the "given play" and creating their own ways of playing.

The destruction that skaters do when they skateboard is purely for the sake of skateboarding, but that destruction is the "conceptual destruction" that manifests itself in the very slight physical destruction and the re-reading of the "given meaning". To slip with a pool, a bench, or a flower bed is to re-read the "given meaning" and this is the destruction of the concept of how to use things. Skateboarding with pools, benches, and flowerbeds re-reads "given meaning," but it destroys the notion of how to use things. There are some things that we should not do, more or less, as mentioned earlier, and sometimes they appear as [pattern of crude and unruly self-advocacy].

It's the obliviousness that suddenly grips a person. This dizziness is easily related to the normally repressed preference for chaos and destruction. It is a pattern of crude and unruly self-advocacy.
Caillois, Roger. Play and Man. p62-63

It is a common trend for skaters pay attention on destruction. Skateboarding more or less destroys benches, flowerbeds, etc., and as a result, the fun of skating is combined with the destruction. Nearly all skaters have a sense of favoritism towards doing destruction and watching them be destroyed, and this can be counted as one of the expressions of skater-specific sensations. The reason for this is that skateboarding videos often have scenes of people deliberately destroying things. The scene of destruction serves as a foretaste of the skater's destruction of "given meaning" and "concept", just as the prologue plays a role in developing the main story. The prologue can be considered a ritual to break down the boundary between the rule-bound world of reality and the world of play and to step into the world of play. It also serves as a lingering reminder of the skateboarding world.

For example, TVs and computers that are dropped from factory roofs and second floor windows just for being interesting, windowpanes of abandoned houses that are smashed for no reason, and dolls that are wrapped with firecrackers and blown up. Various things are destroyed and they are used as a means for the skateboarders themselves to express their skater-ness. 

By the way, there are two types of skateboarding: street and freestyle. A sense of fun to destroy does not arise from freestyle, but that is due to the lack of a medium through which the fun of sliding and destruction can be connected. Skaters who skate on the street feel that their vandalism is similar to skateboarding, but this is because they know with their bodies that they have destroyed the skate spot, that they have destroyed the "general concept of society", that they have created a new play by destroying a fixed play. Of course, purely vandalism isn't acceptable and shouldn't be asked for it. At best, it should be done in a controlled environment for the introduction of the film.

Skateboarding has found and growth skate spots by subverting the concept.

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