How the lack of danger in your life can lead to the take over of your mind by the government, by corporations, or even by a sneaky neighbor.Author and engineer William Gurstelle, knows from risk. This is, after all, a guy who builds flamethrowers and makes gunpowder with items purchased at the Home Depot--and gives us step-by-step instructions on how to do the same.
In his latest book, Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously just released by Chicago Review Press, Gurstelle wonders, are people who take risks happier than those who do not? The answer he concludes, is yes.
My discovery of this book earlier today came in a flash of synchronicity. Just before hearing him interviewed this morning on our local NPR affiliate, I had been telling my husband that lately, I had been pondering the nature of risk. Why had I been compelled to stay in chilly ocean water the day before, without a wet suit, in order to boogie board for hours over big and fast waves at the Jersey shore? I didn't think I'd had any sparkling insights, but was curious as to why this somewhat risky adventure had left me paradoxically relaxed and invigorated. Keep in mind, when I say big, fast, waves in chilly water, it was on a gloriously sunny day when the beach was crammed with shore goers, but only a handful of us braved the water.
To think only about how to ride each wave as far, high, and quickly as I possibly could, there wasn't much time to consider anything else. As I paddled, floated, judged the waves, and then decided when to "launch" so that I would catch the swell at just the right moment was, like meditation, a way to disconnect by being fully engaged.
And it was thrilling! No wave was the same; I had to read each one and react accordingly. This meant I had to rely on the experience I had from riding the preceding waves, as well as think about the waves in spatial terms as they presented themselves in the moment. In other words, I had to develop my skill if I were going to continue enjoying myself--either because I would get bored from not really moving fast or far enough, or because I would get hurt.
At the end of the day, I felt like I had accomplished something. Huh? Yeah--I felt this weird, crazy, mixed up peace of mind like when you get the hormone high of a runner whose just made her best time, combined with the way a run in the snow feels prickly-great on your skin, combined with knowing you just aced a really tough physics exam and you're getting an A for the semester. And I don't think it was just the cold water either (65 degrees to a girl who grew up swimming the Atlantic beaches of southern Florida is nippy!).
It was that my brain felt exercised.
And here's where, without even realizing it, I had dovetailed with the carefully researched findings of Gurstelle: by "goofing off" in a risky way--in a sense, disconnecting from the norm, I was actually growing my brain, and experiencing a deeper connection to life itself.
It was this "connection" thing I had been discussing with my husband. I had been intrigued with how I had felt peace and a sense of mattering, of aliveness, after steering myself through those waters. Why? I wasn't sure. And do we all have the capacity to feel this way, or am I just wired differently, considering that I often take on bigger risks than others, including my husband, who, content to sit in his beach chair reading a Robert Ludlum novel, didn't get in the water at all. ("Too cold," he'd said.)
According to Gurstelle, the thrill-seeking impulse does vary from person to person, but it can be either activated and encouraged, or thwarted and discouraged, depending upon the messages society and our communities give. Currently, says the self-professed danger lover Gurstelle, we're not living enough on the edge. Not the mondo bizarro edge of Hunter S Thomspon, which with his shotguns and LSD was more like chaos than risk, but the edge that comes from a healthy day of wave-riding, for example.
This riskless world is not good for our brains.
Gurstell points to research done on sea squirts as proof. When the sea squirt is done reproducing, it attaches to a sea rock, and then eats its own brain. Why? Because it's done its job, and is therefore no longer in danger of anything. In other words, whether he lives or dies just doesn't matter anymore. This means dumping the brain because that's the organ of mattering and meaning. Says Gurstelle, "If you don't have any danger in your life, you don't need a brain."
As for growing our brains through vicarious dangers, such as in a Ludlum novel, Gurstelle says that's not good enough. To him, living dangerously is an art, and does require skill, and so can only be learned by doing. But, to be fair to my husband, as a retired opera singer, he already knows what it's like to live on the edge, where you must sing on cue, on pitch, and on stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people, in a foreign language and loud enough to be heard over 150 musicians. He's earned the right to sit on the sand.
Nevertheless, if as Gurstelle intimates, we're living in a society filled with more namby-pambies than kamikazis, I have a new question:
Who among us are the ones willing to take risks that grow us up, or just grow us at all? I am having difficulty reconciling advancement as a nation to one where we are fixated on making the world "safe" our single governing principal. This worries me especially when the ones I observe as having all the plans to make us "safe" tend to be the ones whose own interests seem far more "safe"once the rest of us pay a small cost for this improved security. That small cost inevitably ends up as the surrender of control over a portion of our life.
Here's a general example of what I mean (I'm not giving specifics this time, read on to find out why) : if you're represented by politicians who've told you all the reasons why you still need a tax hike, i.e., why you must suffer for the greater good, while they up their own pay at your own expense, you know what I am talking about. If you take ten seconds to think about it, I am sure you can easily identify something in your local community that mirrors this kind of power grab at your expense.
We like to say our actions when it comes to things like negotiating peace treaties or nuclear disarmament talks, ensuring equal access to healthcare, or regulating comestibles and other ingestibles, is all about removing citizens from harm's way. And while there is a valid argument to be made that government's chief responsibility is to keep its citizens secure from attack, that doesn't mean government is supposed to keep individual citizens safe from themselves. After all, there is a little thing called personal responsibility. It goes hand in hand with freedom. It certainly goes hand in hand with maturity.
And besides, isn't all this jabberwocky really more about making things "fair"? That's the obvious conclusion when all rhetoric is couched in terms of "equality" and "apportionment." The problem is that when you think everyone wants to be equal, you ignore that not everyone is "wired" the same. Some of us are willing to take risks others might not take.
There are two basic categories of this:
Some of us are risk takers with a conscience. Others of us don't give a damn about how our risks impact anyone else.
As for the first category, you might consider them self-centered or eccentric, but they're the ones like Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison, who willingly hang outside the standard mean in order to pursue something "risky," i.e., something that might fail, something which might make them look foolish, but which might also deliver enormous returns. Take another ten seconds and think about anyone in your community who risks this way: the artist, the entrepreneur, or in the case of a person I know--the steeple jack. They're certainly people who have been a topic of conversation in your community, right? But they go ahead with their plans anyway. And if they fail, what's it to you? But if they succeed--then you have electricity and a fairly comprehensive explanation of the universe. In other words, you have progress.
As for the second category, consider the dictators among us. Easy examples include North Korea's Kim Jong Il, the mullahs of Iran, or whomever else in your community who has been a topic of conversation, probably because they want something you don't, but if they get it, you're going to somehow have to pay for it. They're probably looking for a way to push their agenda past you, right? Because they don't think you know what's best for yourself and the community, but they do. If they fail--they'll try again, and you'll need to stay vigilant. If they succeed, you'll be the one at risk somehow, and you'll need to adjust. Maybe that's no big deal. But maybe, as in the case of nuclear war or healthcare, it's a very big deal.
The point is this: the consequences of believing that we all want exactly the same thing is not risky, it's stupidly dangerous. In the U.S., our Constitution says we're all created equal. It doesn't say we're all created the same.
Gursteller's research indicates that to assume we're all predisposed to agree about anything that involves risk, like oh, I don't know--living a life--is to run the unnecessary risk that we'll miss opportunities to arrive at very real solutions to very real problems. Think about it: one group's perceived danger can be used to manipulate others into thinking they are also in danger, even if that is not actually true. But once you give away your power, well, just try and get it back.
Put another way: if the world is fair, on whose terms is "fair" decided? What matters to me might not matter to you. What matters to one group--say religious fanatics who also happen to be despots and dictators--might not matter to others in power. But if the despots get their way because we willingly ceded our power to them, we're all in their thrall.
This is not to say our nation's policies should be one thing or another. Clearly, global nuclear immolation is a threat I take seriously. Lack of proper healthcare is a threat I take seriously. Poisonous drugs, food, or other things we might swallow, I take seriously.
What I am asking you to consider is how happy a nation of individuals will we be, and thus effective as a unified country, if we allow our thinking to be done by others, to outsource it in corporations, or to centralize it in government, all in an effort to eradicate danger and risk.
At what point will we citizens no longer need our brains?
I am not going to take a side on this. That would defeat the entire purpose of your having graciously read all the way to the end. I am much happier taking the risk that you will be the one to engage your brain, consider what matters to you, and so arrive at your own conclusion about what poses the greatest danger to you--I just hope that it's not thinking for yourself that scares you the most. But if it does, then surf's up, dude. It's time you catch the wave, or else get swept up in someone else's tide.
###
