Free climbers [Part II]
[Part I here.]
I have come to conceptualize many of the people who are drawn most powerfully (and obsessively) to these extreme activities this way: they don’t want to live without them. And for some of the most extreme practitioners, engaging in these things is the only time they feel alive—during the activity and preparing for it both mentally and physically. Ordinary life holds no special charms for them (or for some, perhaps no charms at all). For such people, ordinary life is barely living (that’s why Wallenda said that life is on the wire and the rest is just waiting). So risking their lives is an easy decision to make, because without these activities they don’t really have lives at all.
Why they are this way I don’t know, but I think they are and for them that’s that. So their calculations make sense, and that’s why the deaths of so many friends cause them grief but do not stop them from engaging in the same activities.
Plus, they increase the risks by small increments over time. They get hooked on the activity itself immediately. But as they pursue it and practice it, they get better and better and soon activities that once seemed very risky seem very basic and simple to them and really aren’t all that risky. And all their friends are doing it; do they even have friends that don’t engage in the same activities?
So over time—and I’m talking years, ordinarily—they incrementally increase the risk factor to get the same high (to coin a phrase) and the same feeling of challenge. Along the way they must conquer any feelings of fear that they have, so they have become skilled at conquering fear and then at some point the usual calculations don’t kick in because by then they are so adept at conquering fear. From Potter again:
Potter was joined by a new companion on recent adventures: his miniature Australian cattle dog, Whisper. Bringing along his pet made him realize the danger of his calling, he said.
“It wasn’t until I started having to think through the likelihood of something happening to Whisper that I finally got it,” Potter told the Denver Post last month. “This is really serious stuff that we do.”
Whisper was not with Potter [when he died].
So perhaps Potter had reached the point where he had trouble assimilating the idea of risk for himself. Only for another being—his dog—could he see it.
Potter also wrote the following after a good friend had died base-jumping, indicating again that it was only through perceiving risks to other people that he could see the sport’s true riskiness:
“Though my body is warm inside the nylon suit I start to shiver and wonder if what we’re doing is right,” Potter wrote in the blog. “Wingsuit BASE-jumping feels safe to me but 25 wingsuit-fliers have lost their lives, this year alone. There must be some flaw in our system, a lethal secret beyond my comprehension.”
People who love these sports love the physical and mental challenges, but what appears to drive them is need. It is defined as a need for freedom, a need to pursue what one loves (from a piece about Mario Richard’s death):
Empinotti added that everyone in the BASE jumping community has been to the funerals of friends who succumbed to the risks of the sport. Richard had no illusions about his chosen activity, she said.
“This is your happiness and you have to pursue happiness and we are the kind of people who are not afraid to pursue happiness, though we know that the cost is high ”” if you get hurt then you get hurt badly, or you die,” she said.
“He wasn’t just out there not caring about his life or his life with his wife. You leave this tsunami behind you when you die, so you need to be aware of that, and he was.”
Puzzling that one over, it seems to me that it contains a contradiction. They know that it’s risky. There is not the slightest room for a mistake, and even the best (and Richard was one of the very best) can make mistakes if they jump enough. But the key to the whole thing is “this is your happiness.” Is it really their only happiness? Is there no other way for them to be happy? How do they define happiness? Does ordinary life not hold joy for them? Or is the joy that comes from free-climbing or base-jumping just so much greater that other joys pall, and they will risk everything—again and again and again—to feel that happiness again?
This poem by Yeats is about something quite different: a death in war. And yet I kept thinking of it as I read these articles and contemplated the state of mind that drives people to free-climb and base-jump. It seems to me that the poem expresses that state of mind perfectly [emphasis mine]:
AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
“So risking their lives is an easy decision to make, because without these activities they don’t really have lives at all. . . . They get hooked on the activity itself immediately. . . . So over time—and I’m talking years, ordinarily—they incrementally increase the risk factor to get the same high . . . .” [Neo]
You didn’t say it Neo, but I will. It sounds as though you’re describing a drug habit. With your expertise in counseling, do you see parallels here or not? Are we talking about similar mindsets, but two very different means of practice?
There are genetic markers for high risk behavior.
There is even some evidence of the specific gene.
And again, in this expanded group, she found the same association between the variation of the DRD4 gene and a willingness to take risks on the slopes. The variant’s overall effect was slight, explaining only about 3 percent of the difference in behavior between risk takers and the risk averse, but was statistically significant and remained intact, even when Dr. Thomson and her colleagues controlled for gender and sport expertise.
In essence, the findings suggest that some people might have an innate, inherited need to turn to risky activities to reach “their optimal level of arousal,” Dr. Thomson said, even if their parents are quiet, respectable types. (The DNA from each parent can contain different portions of the variant, Dr. Thomson said, which can combine in the child to create a slopestyle medalist.)
It is also associated with gambling and drug use.
Adrenal glands can become overworked and thus grow–hypertrophied is the word, I think–and keep doing their thing even when not being used. Thus, the body–or the mind–gets used to a certain level of adrenal production. So, yes, like drug addiction is one good possibility.
Many of these activities are quite involved. Have a friend who’s a fairly straightforward spelunker. He spends a lot of time looking at catalogues and getting just the right equipment. Knows the difference between one manufacturer’s thingamajig and another’s. From what I can tell, base jumpers are also heavy on equipment, rigging, so forth.
So they don’t just have to do the thing; they can anticipate it, work at it, visualize different ways of doing one thing or another.
That said, I found jump school a cross between boring and annoying. I was in great shape out of OCS and so that wasn’t an issue. The day of our first jump involved a weather delay. I fell asleep in the equipment shed.
Never done it before, so it was kind of fun the first time. After that…don’t care if I do it, don’t care if I don’t. Depends on what I have to do to get someplace. And looking back, all those scary rides at amusement parks….nada. Various times I’ve had the physical manifestations of adrenalin was after whatever it was was over. I almost wonder if I have a disadvantage by not having what the adrenalin does for you when I need it.
Thrillseekers. This seems like such a luxury to me.
Thus, the body–or the mind–gets used to a certain level of adrenal production. So, yes, like drug addiction is one good possibility.
I’m not so sure about that. Surgery is an adrenalin stimulant. A friend of mine, an older vascular surgeon, once let a cardiologist put a blood pressure cuff on his leg when he was doing a carotid endarterectomy. That’s a pretty stressful operation. Hs BP went to 300/200 at a couple of crucial stages. The same thing has been found in pilots flying fighters close to the ground, etc.
Pheochromocytomas are tumors that secret adrenalin. I’ve operated on a couple. You can’t touch the tumor until the vein is tied off. The anesthesiologist can pretreat the patient with beta blockers and alpha blockers but you still can’t touch the tumor.
I don’t think anybody can get used to the effect. It can be addicting to the right person but it is more than adrenalin.
Mike K….300/200…wouldn’t a blood pressure that high, even for a few minutes, have a long-term adverse impact on his health?
Arthur Koestler has written about ‘the tragic and the trivial planes’ of life. As explained by his friend, the writer and fighter pilot Richard Hillary:
“K has a theory for this. He believes there are two planes of existence which he calls vie tragique and vie triviale. Usually we move on the trivial plane, but occasionally in moments of elation or danger, we find ourselves transferred to the plane of the vie tragique, with its non-commonsense, cosmic perspective. When we are on the trivial plane, the realities of the other appear as nonsense–as overstrung nerves and so on. When we live on the tragic plane, the realities of the other are shallow, frivolous, frivolous, trifling. But in exceptional circumstances, for instance if someone has to live through a long stretch of time in physical danger, one is placed, as it were, on the intersection line of the two planes; a curious situation which is a kind of tightrope-walking on one’s nerves…I think he is right.”
Mike K. My psychology is half a century behind me. I recall there were issues under stress than adrenalin. I recall being told that voodoo death is real if the cursed one believes it because of adrenal hypertrophy over a long period leading to various physical results which will kill him.
If true, there’s a lot going on.
There are adrenalin junkies in war. Mad Jack Churchill is one of the few who was a ground pounder. Most of them are pilots who sleep in a bed with somebody else watching the perimeter, drinking potable water, eating decent food, etc. Not infantry.
I’d be interested in your surgeon friend’s recreational activities.
However, the people neo is writing about seem to have a drive for high adrenalin. I didn’t get whether there was any kind of withdrawal except for not being high.
wouldn’t a blood pressure that high, even for a few minutes, have a long-term adverse impact on his health?
He died a few years ago at 90.
I don’t think I have heard of adrenal hyperplasia from stress or high risk activity. You can create hyperplasia of beta cells (islets of Langerhans) by high calorie glucose infusions as in Total Parental Nutrition. That’s why you have to taper those patients off high glucose (25% IV) infusions gradually. Those cells make insulin. There are also diseases of adrenal hyperplasia and even islets hyperplasia.
I guess you can do it in rats.
Collectively, these results demonstrate that increased adrenal weight after CVS is due to hyperplasia and hypertrophy that occur in specific adrenal subregions and is associated with increased maximal corticosterone responses to ACTH. These chronic stress-induced changes in adrenal growth and function may have implications for patients with stress-related disorders.
CVS is Chronic Variable Stress.
My limited understanding of the history of wing-suit flying is that it started with airplane jumps, progressed to BASE jumps, and then moved to BASE jumps with flights very close to rock walls or other structures. It is not uncommon for participants to tether helium balloons 10 or 20 ft. above cliffs or similar, and then hit them at 200+ mph while flying.
The problem with wing-suit flying from an airplane drop is that there is no indication of relative speed, other than the wind in your face. The problem with skimming rock structures is that it is fantastically dangerous. The idea that this risk can be greatly mitigated with skill and knowledge is wishful thinking. Mostly mitigated yes, 95+ % mitigated no.
Why take the risks of activities like base jumping or free climbing? It is activity that has no monetary or social value. There is a small amount of fame. There is adulation among a small portion of humanity. Why climb mountains at all? Maybe it is as Edwin Hillary said, “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” When we can control our fear, when our fitness is equal to the challenge, it is a personal attainment of value mainly to ourselves. To be close to the edge and control our nerve is the goal. And the reward is a feeling akin to being immortal. A feeling of being alive and happy beyond all other times. It is much, much stronger in the few who keep pushing the limits. I know the feeling, at least a bit. So, it does not mystify me. Had I been younger and without responsibilities, I might have been a full time climber.
The climbing scene is attractive if you like the mountains, love the outdoors, like being fit, and are into pushing yourself. Healthy people all motivated by the same thing. There’s even a uniform of sorts. In my day it was white painter’s pants and rugby shirts. There’s gear – biners, chocks, nuts, slings, kernmantle ropes, five tennies, tape, chalk, and books with route descriptions. Nights in camps with tales of climbs and gallows humor, all raucous and good fun. So, there’s that side of it as well. I loved it. It is akin to a good military unit that is all volunteers.
I don’t question why they do it. But I know that, like my son, some of them will not live long lives. That saddens me, but I understand.
Firstly, I agree with T about this being akin to substance addiction.
Back in mid-20s I decided to try sky diving. The first jump I made was simultaneously one of the scariest moments of my life and one of my greatest highs. I think that perhaps the most important thing I learned was that a human being can be trained to do ANYTHING. Even things that appear contrary to survival. Trust me, when I say that jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is not a natural thing to do. It requires a lot of repetitious reinforcement to overcome our instincts. But, just a few hours after I started that training, I hurled myself into the void. Crazy, huh?
At the moment, it was the coolest thing I had ever done and I wanted to do it again. I ended up jumping four more times before I decided that it wasn’t as fun as it was the first time, but still as scary. So, I retired from the sport, knowing that, if for some reason I ever had to overcome that level of fear again, I could.
But, for a lot of people in that diving club, it was a way of life. Their entire social life and self-identify was attached to sky diving.
Yeah. The social life. When we have guests who’ve been in the service–whatever branch, whatever war, whenever, from the conversation you’d think we were in the big house on some Juncker’s estate ca 1910 or something. “where” “who?” “Remember?” “what did you do/think?” “when I was in” “my father/uncle/brother” “in [country/province/fight}” “should have seen”
No other soldier…never a word about such things.
The saying goes, “It takes all types, to make a world.” The most decorated soldier of WWII, Audey Murphy, was a totally unremarkable man before the war. Somehow, war brought out in him a unique set of talents. If you have never heard the story, google it. It’s interesting. After the war, Hollywood tried to convert his war fame into stardom and he made several westerns. After that he faded back into obscurity.
The point is that the natual human range of talents and abilities cover a wide spectrum BECAUSE they are all needed at different times, even if those persons could seem like or be a liability to society in normal times.
The excessive avoidance of risk can also carry its own risks. I am frequently reminded of a passage from Walter Miller’s great novel, ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’
“To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”
“The point is that the natual human range of talents and abilities cover a wide spectrum BECAUSE they are all needed at different times, even if those persons could seem like or be a liability to society in normal times.”
Roy Nathanson, what an excellent observation.
My brother-in-law is an extreme sports participant – not so much the dangerous things any more (he’s in his mid-40s and has a baby now – we’ll see if he goes back to danger when she’s older and his caregiving can be less minute-to-minute), but the ones that are highly physically demanding. He’s also a stereotypical southern California health nut. I’ve conceptualized his life as a religion of the body: what goes into it must be pure, and what it does is spiritual.
But he is not a productive member of society (except insofar as he is currently the primary caregiver for his daughter – the most pro-social thing he’s done in years, IMO). His wife is, which enables him to practice his religion. I love him, and I admire his commitment to that religion, but I do wish he were committed to something… better.
Naturally he is an environmentalist, but that doesn’t fit the bill for me: to be committed to “the environment” because you are so disgusted with the human society in which you live. Traditional religions do for the bill for me, because they implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) view human life as a creation of something bigger and better than than humanity, but something that values or loves humanity anyway.
For a million years, our ancestors, even long before Sap, likely had an adrenalin flood at least daily. We must have adjusted. What happens when you don’t have one in any given month?
My risky behavior was sailboat racing. Pretty tame but we did long races to Mexico and Hawaii. On one Mexican race we went through a small hurricane. Wind speed pegged at 60 all night.
That’s enough for me. Going to Hawaii, we had some big squalls at night. Scary for the helmsman but exciting, too. I did a video clip on my own blog a few years ago.
I was navigator and that is pretty stressful.
My whitewater kayaking son told me, after attending the funeral of a friend who had drowned in the river, this is the life we have chosen to live and we all know that the next time out could be our last.
Those who pushed the envelope and found themselves on the wrong side of it don’t get to pass on what they learned from the process. It seems that you have to do so many things absolutely right to survive and doing any one of then wrong will kill you. Not good odds in the long run.
They probably have the right attitude to be soldiers IMO. No life without doing their duty.
Also; probably no ptsd. Rather they’ll save some brass or enemy flag or something to stir the memory down the line. They’ll want to remember it.
I can testify to the social aspects of both hang-gliding and big wave surfing, but the actual act of flying or surfing is its own reward, and no doubt the endorphin rush is a big part of that. At some points in my life I could not imagine NOT flying or paddling out on the North Shore, but age among other things has removed the compulsion, if not the desire.
Hermann Goering was an accomplished rock-climber, and at age 13 made it to the top of the 12,000 foot Gross Glockner by way of the most hazardous route. He “put his shoulder out” while swinging around an outjutting rock, reset it while dangling from the rope, continuing the climb while disregarding the pain.
“I have no fear of heights. They stimulate me.”
Goering was praised by the Karlsrue Military Academy: “He is not afraid to take a risk.”
For those interested in the progression of rock climbing since the 1930s, this article from Outside magazine is informative. It explains how advances were made – better equipment, psychological barriers overcome, and ethical considerations (moving away from the use of pitons and bolts toward “clean climbing,” which requires more free style climbing.) It also introduces the names of many of those who were in the vanguard of progress. It was a real tip toe through the tulips for me.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2075501/25-greatest-moments-yosemite-climbing-history
miklos000rosza on August 27, 2018 at 1:39 am at 1:39 am said:
Hermann Goering was an accomplished rock-climber, …
Goering was praised by the Karlsrue Military Academy: “He is not afraid to take a risk.”
* * *
You always have the most interesting tidbits of information!
He risked everything on supporting Hitler, and almost won.
A bit more from Wikipedia –
“A veteran World War I fighter pilot ace, he was a recipient of the Pour le Mérite (The Blue Max). He was the last commander of Jagdgeschwader 1 (Jasta 1), the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen.
An early member of the Nazi Party, Göring was among those wounded in Adolf Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. While receiving treatment for his injuries, he developed an addiction to morphine which persisted until the last year of his life. “
David Foster on August 26, 2018 at 11:01 am at 11:01 am said:
The excessive avoidance of risk can also carry its own risks. I am frequently reminded of a passage from Walter Miller’s great novel, ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’
“To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”
* * *
Great book.
Every virtue can be pushed past its limits to become a vice.
However, I have never really understood why “Goldwater’s Maxim” attracted so many venomous rebukes.
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”
I guess it depends on what “extremism” encompasses: that the Left allows Antifa to be its public face pretty much cinches the implication that they were envisioning a Republican analog if Goldwater won.
The second phrase, I believe, is now demonstrably correct.
The FBI and DOJ were certainly “moderate” in their pursuit of justice in re Clinton Inc.
Some more Goldwater – the first real GOP casualty of the Leftist collusion.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater
“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”
Acceptance Speech as the Republican Presidential candidate, San Francisco (July 1964)
“It is a fact that Lyndon Johnson and his curious crew seem to believe that progress in this country is best served simply and directly through the ever-expanding gift power of the everlastingly growing Federal Government. One thing we all know, and I assure you I do: that’s a much easier way to get votes than my way. It always has been. It’s political Daddyism, and it’s as old as demagogues and despotism.”
As quoted in “The Underdog Underdog” in TIME magazine (6 November 1964)
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”
However, he had some positions that probably caused him some grief from the social conservatives, and got no credit for supporting them from the Left.
“You don’t need to be ‘straight’ to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.”
Statement of 10 June 1993, as quoted in “Goldwater Backs Gay Troops” in The New York Times (11 June 1993); also quoted in Barry Goldwater (1995), by Robert Alan Goldberg, p. 332
“Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.”
Op-Ed essay “Ban On Gays Is Senseless Attempt To Stall The Inevitable” in The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times (1994)