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Save to Del.icio.usClimbers should get stipends for keeping the risk-taking gene pool alive
I was reading the National Geographic’s Adventure magazine for May 2008, which had a fantastic article on the legendary mountaineer Conrad Anker.
I found this wonderful thread at the end, which I thought captured my thoughts on climbing quite beautifully:
“What we do as certified risk takers….” The sentence trails off unfinished, but then Anker picks up the thread.
“Kids need to know that there are still some badasses out there, doing incredibly demanding things to their bodies. Most people are so risk-averse. The world’s full of couch potatoes. Hell, we climbers should get government stipends for keeping the risk-taking gene pool alive.”
I couldn’t have put it any better, and that has got to be the quote of the year!
Take it back
Milorad Said,
April 14, 2008 @ 9:22 am
All hail climbers
There are plenty of jobs and passtimes left for the risk-takers. Climbing doesn’t really have exclusive rights to badasses.
Interestingly though, other badasses seem to find activities directly beneficial to society in which to inflate their ballsack, rather than just looking to tap their adrenal glands.
That said… I respect adventurers wholeheartedly, just as long as they pay proper respect to the risk-averse engineers who keep them from falling off those rocks by designing better, lighter and stronger hardware for them to use.
Karthik Narayanaswami Said,
April 14, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
Well, the thing is, compared to a lot of other sports, climbing pushes the limits of not only human endurance, but also survival skills and intelligence (climbing a rock face takes a good amount of problem solving ability).
I get a thrill from climbing that is simply unequaled, and I’d like nothing more than just spend the rest of my life climbing the world’s mountains.
A lot of climbers that I know of are also geologists, so I think from that perspective, climbers find a way of getting to places that others would have trouble getting to. Also, despite technology, you simply cannot go to some parts of the world because of climate and weather patterns. The last frontiers, so to speak. Also, in my opinion, climbing is also one of those sports where the tools and techniques have helped other professions (e.g. construction), which is great.
That said, climbing to me is a unique sport, and one that excites me more than just about anything else (there are two exceptions - women and math/physics).
See, engineers need folks who can test the limits of their works without having to get out of their parents’ basements.
That’s where climbers come in!
Milorad Said,
April 14, 2008 @ 9:27 pm
Hahaha, ok, ok… your points are well taken.
I can certainly appreciate the value climbers bring to the occupational health and safety of window washers
I accept there’s a synergy — in fact, I love the synergy, but I have a strong reaction when I hear how supposedly useless basement-dwelling couch potatoes are.
Climbers and the like may have discovered the world, but the risk-averse have civilised it
Karthik Narayanaswami Said,
April 15, 2008 @ 12:46 am
Hahaha! Hey, the window washers should thank us, man.
On a serious note, I’m not saying that being a couch potato is necessarily a bad thing. I guess my only bone to pick is that being a couch potato is often at the expense of good health - I am not necessarily advocating that every geek out there buff up and aim to climb K2 or Denali. Rather, that everyone should at the very least work out and try to eat healthy, and do something that challenges them outside their comfort zone.
Ironically, I started climbing while working at Los Alamos - a place that’s full of geeks and nerds in hordes (I mean serious geeks and nerds — PhDs in theoretical physics type folk), and a lot of them were surprisingly active. Of course, this was mostly because there was nothing else to do other than get drunk at the local bar where the military folks (i.e. mostly marine types) hung out, or, well, buy your own beer and get drunk and do fun stuff with *other* available geeks (chicks, hopefully) — or do outdoorsy stuff.
The guy who introduced me to serious climbing was someone who used to work under Mark Tilden designing some fantastic robots. I met some of the coolest people climbing, including some of the world’s top scientists. Hell, the last time I went climbing in Eldo, I met a chick who was pursuing a graduate degree at Princeton on evolutionary biology and we had one helluva talk on swarm intelligence while belaying each other.
I guess my point is that a lot of climbers aren’t necessarily exclusive from the brainiacs - most of them tend to be quite smart, and tend to like climbing in the way some people enjoy martial arts or soccer or whatever.
Sorry for the serious answer to a flip remark, but I guess a lot of people don’t see geeks and adventure sports enthusiasts as being the same, but I’ve met more geeks climbing than I have at Lego or Linux meets.
Milorad Said,
April 15, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
No no, it’s good — you make an excellent point, being geeky and physical are not mutually exclusive by any means.
At the risk of this turning into one of those “who would win?” conversations about spiderman and the green lantern, I’m inclined to award the ‘biggest badass’ title to anyone who is both a risk-taker AND intelligent enough to know better
That’s a funky mix you don’t want to mess with.
A lot of my friends, co-workers and clients are quite cerebral folks, but almost without exception, you can find them sweating themselves an injury at least 3 nights a week playing some kind of competitive sport.
I know squash aint climbing, but you’re absolutely right when you say people should invest in their health. I’d do well to heed that a little more myself.
And to bring this full-circle… joking aside, I really quite like the idea of climbing even though I’ve never done more than bushwalk. I quite like the potential it has to completely revolutionise a person’s decision-making skills.
It’s easy to consider yourself a good decision-maker with strong risk management skills, but I’m inclined to believe that climbing really brings those latent self-confidence issues to the surface in a very meaningful and tangible way.
Climbing is definitely something I would get into (and early) if I had a second lifetime.
Bhel Puri & Seekh Kabab Said,
April 20, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
“Hell, we climbers should get government stipends for keeping the risk-taking gene pool alive.” - dude, sorry to join this conversation late, but three thoughts regarding Anker’s comment:
1. it is an example of Lamarckism - climb more, develop the risk taking gene more. Which most evolutionists would classify as absurd, or -
2. He’s saying that climbers’ genes are different to begin with - in which case, if the government does give them a stipend, the government should also insist that the climbers stop climbing forthwith, since ceasing climbing would automatically increase the chances of propagating this risk-taking gene. (Of course, the govt. could just insist on donations to a sperm/egg bank, but that is a whole different conversation). Or-
3. Anker was probably just making a wise-ass comment, one that wasn’t meant to merit this kind of scholarly dissection.