It would take great imagination to figure out how he could get out of that position. It would take an even greater amount of imagination, calculation, and speculation to figure out how and why he got to that position in the first place. All of his belongings, including a huge bag of gold coins were left at the foot of the tree. His body showed no bruises (except his blackened lips) or any signs of external harm. Besides, this place was very much deserted. All things considered, the man seemed very calm and content despite the implied direness of the situation. But without troubling myself unnecessarily with the thoughts, I asked him directly, "What are you doing?" 

No response. This encounter was truly unprecedented; I had never seen anything remotely like this in my whole life. A life-changing encounter, verily! This situation was completely novel and had yet to be reached by the human collective consciousness. It needed a name, a concept, and a host of new adjectives to fully capture the scene as well as the psychology of the characters within it. Indeed, the dangling man himself knew it best, and it was wise for him to say nothing. 

The first step to understanding what it is, is to inquire how it comes to be. All things are bounded by the laws of causality; knowing the causes is both sufficient and necessary for knowing the caused. For example, in order to understand water, it is sufficient to know its fundamental structure and the chemical elements that cause it to be. So, I asked the man, "How did you become like this? What brought you to this situation?"

No response. I started to doubt my line of inquiry. Is it possible that after knowing all the fundamental causes, the Situation remains elusive? True, his teeth were what allowed him to remain in this Situation: without the incredible strength of his teeth, he would have fallen and this entire Situation would never have occurred. The same goes for his mouth, his neck, his skeleton, and all the materials that make up his body. 

Now suppose I could list all the preceding events leading up to this Situation, one to the next: like he went out of his house; he carried his belongings with him; for some reason he thought it necessary to bring lots of gold; then he went to this particular tree and tied himself up there - assuming that he somehow managed all of that by himself. It still tells me nothing about the nature of this Situation. Certainly, there is something more in this unique Situation than that mere sequence of events. 

Ah, perhaps I made the mistake of assuming the true reason for this Situation was set in the past, somewhere to be found in the chain of events. Maybe it's best to characterize this Situation by the man's intention, and what he wanted to achieve in the future. Maybe knowing what it could become could shed some light on what it actually is. So, I asked him, "What do you want? What are you about to do?" 

No response. From the look of it, he was not in a position to be doing anything. The only muscle that had any choice of movement was his mouth. There were practically only two prominent outcomes: either he would die or live. If he wanted to live, then it was very inconvenient for him to do so in that position. If he wanted to die, then there were more convenient methods than this. Was he trying to demonstrate something? Was there anything about this Situation that compelled him? But that would require me to know this peculiar Situation in the first place, how can a man be compelled to do something that he does not know?

I sat down at the tree, exhausted of any meaningful possibilities. All I could come up with was an empty tautology: the Situation is essentially the Situation, and nothing else but the Situation itself. Then suddenly an idea came to me. The Situation was already like this, always had been, and always would be. The man was born like this, lived his entire life like this, and would probably die like this. That would explain how he was very calm and relaxed all this time. 

I took a deep breath, rested my back against the tree, and started contemplating this newfound hypothesis. 

A year passed. Another man climbed up the hill and came across this place. Noticing the peculiarity of this situation, he asked the dangling man, "Do you need help?" 

"Yes, please," responded the dangling man. As he finished his sentence, he fell off the cliff, impaled by the spiky stones, to my horror. Enraged, I turned to the other man, "Fool! You fool! Look what you've done. Why couldn't just stop and think for a moment, try to understand the Situation, before committing such a disastrous act!"