I don't know, but it's an interesting thought. What drives someone do to this? I'm in awe of it. It seems to me that it has to be tied to finding meaning in life one way or another.
I have to wonder though, how long does it take for the afterglow of such a massive accomplishment to wear off and to start asking yourself "what now?"
I have the same thought when I see presidential campaigns. I don't think a balanced person would put themselves and their families through that. You have to be some kind of crazy to do this. Maybe we need these extreme people, but I am not sure we should take them as something to aspire to.
That's an interesting point about Henry Worsley - he was clearly an excellent leader but he couldn't rise in the UK military (and I suspect this is the case with many organisations) because above a certain point the job is about politics rather than leadership.
"fMRI testing at the Medical University of South Carolina tilted the scales toward precisely that explanation — an underactive amygdala, not a negligent mother — by confirming that Honnold’s fear circuitry really does fire with less vigor than most."
Honnold seemed pretty down to earth during his last few interviews. He seemed very willing to acknowledge that he doesn't have a good idea of what might be next for him, and that El Cap may end up being his last "big" challenge. Granted, his perspective may have changed with a little more time for reflection.
If you have not yet seen "Free Solo", it is an interesting movie because it delves into the relationship between him and his "I just want to be happy" girlfriend which touches on some of his mindset to pursue perfection.
Having been part of the Ironman community for a while now, I can say endurance folks are definitely different than your average person. Often very humble, they like meaningful, big, challenging goals that redefine “normal.”
Do they get a kick out of overcoming suffering,.doing something really difficult or what drives them? In the end they don't achieve anything useful. I can relate to it somehow. When I did kickboxing I sometimes wondered why I let myself get beat up for no money, fame or any other reward. Never really understood my motivation other than that I had it.
Is it really that weird? We are all going to die eventually someday. If you want to risk your life doing something you love I think that’s your call, as long as you don’t risk hurting other people in the process.
I mean, what do you think you keep after you die anyway? Does it really matter in the end if you sat at a desk for 40 years and then died quietly in your bed as opposed to falling off a mountain at 40something?
Everyone I know has different reasons. Some are more altruistic than others. Sometimes it’s done in honor of others who cannot do it, eg disabled, fallen vets, etc. Sometimes just because people want to be more than a desk jockey.
On the (unfortunately) few, rare occasions I've actually pushed myself to my limits (physical, mental, emotional, or otherwise), I've felt more of a sense of accomplishment and a drive to push further, in any of those domains, not just the one I pushed in, than I've ever had before. I certainly wouldn't claim to have anything figured out in the realm except on a personal level, but for me, every time I achieve something that seemed unachievable it's like it unlocks something in every other part of my life.
I think the interesting part is that any extreme scenario requires very specific and likely innovative solutions — its a difficult optimization problem that any engineer would recognize as strangely santisfying. Actually executing the task with your own life at risk is outside of the standard engineering experience, but to have both must make success outstandingly satisfying
well you go up and down some mountains, see strange ice formations that don't exist anywhere at all, get to tweet out sappy tweets every evening, go where no/few men/women have gone before and all.
It's interesting to explore, it's interesting to endure, it's interesting to experience new physical, mental, and emotional states of being conferred by these unique circumstances.
If you look at the history of it, it puts him in the same league as the polar explorers of the "heroic age." I think the what now part is two parts: write a book about it; do the motivational speaker circuit.
Thinking a lot does that. It's not just searching for meaning of life and a higher purpose but also realizing how this is the only life you get to have and it is very short. I'd compare people who do this to suiciders,they've both contemplated their current lives intolerable and found a way out: One way is through it,the other is around and both routes are one-way.
> I wonder if you have to a certain level of insanity for doing something like this.
My assumption is that people want and need some level of "excitement"[1] to feel like living a meaningful life. Say, in scale 1-10, if you only get exposure to level 1 excitement, you kill yourself to avoid a boring life, occasional level 5 keeps your life interesting, 7-8 starts to be so uncomfortable that you rather avoid and 10 is so much that you rather kill yourself than expose yourself to this level of excitement.
Now, the problem is that same things give very different levels of excitement. There are people for whom game of Monopoly is level 5 excitement. And there are people for whom game of Monopoly is solid level 1 excitement.
With this model you see why some people decide to take risks some other find outright stupid or insane. So next time you think someone is doing something insanely risky, you might want to think how fulfilling your life would be if the things you do to get emotions would be stripped from you before calling the persons with pejorative adjectives...
To me, the whole point of doing something like this is that there is no point. It matters, at the moment, to the guy doing it and that is all that matters.
A couple of years back, I rode my motorcycle for 18 hours with only fuel breaks. 8 hours of the ride was in 40+ degree Celsius heat and the next 10 hours I had to endure the monsoons. I loved the whole experience. What did I gain from it? In the grand scheme of things, nothing. Will I do it again? Yes, already planning another trip.
Life seems pointless to me. I just try to have some fun along the way.
>>To me, the whole point of doing something like this is that there is no point. It matters, at the moment, to the guy doing it and that is all that matters.
Extreme adversity can be a opportunity for tremendous amounts of learning and personal growth. Some people value that.
This level of insanity is not as foreign as you might think. The feeling of accomplishment I get from climbing a mountain, finishing a marathon or a long bike trip is comparable to the feeling I get after taping out a chip, shipping a major software release or delivering first-of-a-kind hardware to a customer.
For some of us, getting Tetris to work in Conway's Game of Life is insanity. For other people, walking across a continent is insanity.
That's way too harsh to describe a man's personal quest for adventure. It's not just vanity. You have no idea how many young minds have been influenced by this adventure. How many potential new startups will come about because someone somewhere out there thinks 'well this guy just gave up his life trying to cross the Antartic, what stops me from doing something perhaps tiny in comparison, but monumental in value, or something that I can undertake'. This is true of all adventurers who seek to accomplish something beyond perceived abilities - free diving, climbing k2 or summitting Mt.Meru on the shark fin route.
The indirect benefits of such expeditions have not been measured. If someone did, I'm quite certain, a ton of benefits will crop up.
I'd agree but if you were talking about going to Mars or something, but for this particular quest, that seems a bit much. Just look at this list of "first person ever to do X from Y to Z" since 2000:
I'd liken this more to climbing Mt. Everest: challenging and personally rewarding, sure, but of ever-diminishing inspirational value to the rest of the world.
I understand the appeal of such adventures and excitement that goes with it, but lets not pretend they are doing something useful. There is no real value in people free diving, climbing k2 etc. People do it for themselves and that is fine as far as it goes and interesting.
It can inspire people to train a bit or visit nature or something of the sort. If watching expedition makes you start startup, then it is odd as caring about business makes physical training harder.
You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
That's why I watch pro football. Honestly I'll bet there's quite a few people who have the physical and mental stamina to cross the Antarctic, just nobody else wants to.
I thought it was a real adventure, an extreme form of hiking in a very extreme and cold environment, as well as an exercise in managing risks. I have the impression that he did it just to see if it can be done, as a kind of personal adventure, as a way to win a victory over himself.
I recently read an interview of a retired ex-paratrooper who lost his friend to Piteraq in Greenland (similar katabatic winds exist at Antarctica), the tent broke, exposing the people and they froze to death. With winds up to ca. 80 m/s and double-digit subzero temperatures, the wind chill effect is insane and a new shelter must be up within minutes.
It was a dangerous undertaking, no doubt. But then again so was Thor Heyerdahl with his raft, and Apollo 11 with the flight to the Moon, and so on.
Tip: if you want to concretely experience extreme cold, and the sheer brutalness of it, look up a cryotherapy room. -110 C or so for a few minutes while wearing swimming gear (and some cover for the extremities) felt like a hopeless, prolonged open ice swimming without the immediate endorphin rush (which eventually did come sometime later).
I have to wonder though, how long does it take for the afterglow of such a massive accomplishment to wear off and to start asking yourself "what now?"