Sociocultural determination and effects of pedestrian practices: an appeal to authorities

The subject of the study is the socio-cultural conditionality of walking practices that exist in world religions and were used by world-famous philosophers for health and personality-building purposes, who turned their walks into self-knowledge, ritual, meditation, a way to activate creative abilities and a political gesture. In particular, the article examines kinhin and kayhege as meditative pedestrian practices of Buddhism; Christian interpretations of pedestrian movement and its manifestations in the forms of pilgrimage, pilgrimage and walking through prayer labyrinths are also studied; information about walking presented in the Koran, Sunnah and Sufi literature is analyzed. The article considers the goals and consequences of regular walks in nature by J. J. Rousseau, F. Nietzsche and G. Thoreau; urban hiking by I. Kant and S. Kierkegaard, as well as political campaigns (marches) by M. Gandhi. The research methodology is a set of coordinated scientific approaches, namely: holistic, historical and dialectical. The principles of research include the principles of consistency, historicism and objectivity. The research methods used are theoretical analysis and synthesis, historical and systemic methods. It is determined that walking has the potential to achieve the integrity of human existence as a unity of body and mind, and it also ensures the unity of man and the world. The practices of meditative walking emphasize the existential restlessness of a person, his wandering supranationality. Walking is often a marker of liberation from the oppressive pressure of society and civilization. Prolonged walking in an optimally selected individual rhythm, in the case of regular repetition, forms an environment of fronesis as embodied in everyday practical reason. A moving body is more noticeable. Because of this, group walking (marches, hikes, etc.) is used as an effective form of demonstrating a political position, and since prolonged walking has a calming effect, it contributes to the embodiment of the critically important ethics of biophilia and nonviolence in promotional political walking. The creation of pedestrian infrastructure is a visible manifestation of the humanization of the settlement environment, and the popularization of walking and the systematic use of walking instead of traveling short distances by transport are a contribution to solving environmental problems, health problems, as well as to ensuring sustainable development.

walking, sociocultural determination, flanking, wandering, dynamic meditation, political marches, fronesis, pilgrimage, the prayer maze, humanism