You Bet Your Life

By most measurements of behavior within Western civilization, Maurice Wilson was a certifiable lunatic. Devotees of mountaineering lore and encyclopedic trivia buffs will recall him as the man who tried too climb Mount Everest alone--encumbered by no more than a tiny tent, a pocket mirror to be used to flash signals and a bag of rice. When he arrived at the foot of the peak in the spring of 1934, his climbing experience had been restricted to stairways and English hillocks, and his enterprise was based on faith not in ice axes, ropes and pitons but in the infinite powers of the mind and body. His life deeply altered by the carnage of the First World War, the 37-year-old Wilson had formulated a mystical, Eastern-based philosophy centered on intense, short-term asceticism. Wilson believed that by abstaining from all sustenance for three weeks, one's soul would be purified and the entire man reborn into divine life. His desire to reach the highest point on earth--the summit of Everest--arose from his conviction that such a gesture would demonstrate the powers of fasting and serve as a symbolic launch pad by which his teachings could be spread around the world.

He planned to fly a light plane up through the mists, crash-land it on the slopes of the mountain and climb the rest of the way. He learned to fly, purchased a small aircraft and transported it to India. English authorities in India heard of his plan and had his machine confiscated. Undeterred, he traveled to Tibet, sneaking across the tiny country of Sikkim disguised as a native, and arrived at the bleak, isolated monastery at Rongbuk near Everest prepared to make the ascent on foot.

Wilson left for the heights in the company of three Sherpa guides and a pony. Probing beyond 20,000 feet, where but a handful of men had been before--on any mountain--he was deserted by his companions and left to make the rest of the way himself. This he attempted with courage and resolve, despite his being repelled on repeated occasions by a sheer, wind-hammered wall of rock and ice known as the North Col. He died at the base of this cliff, delirious and frozen; and his rigid body, along with his journal and the fragments of his tent, was found the following year by an expedition of British climbers.

At the time Wilson's life was consumed by the great mountain, four major British climbing parties, supported by tons of equipment and hundreds of men, had attempted--and failed--to reach the summit. They carried with them the sanctions of the British government and the prayers of their countrymen. Some died and were venerated as heroes. Maurice Wilson, on the other hand, was viewed as a zany who had, by his unorthodox beliefs and techniques, besmirched the reputations of the conventional climbers who thrust themselves up the slopes in the name of personal achievement and national honor. In the many chronicles that have been published about the assaults on Everest, Wilson's name is barely mentioned, as if his mission for the sake of abstruse metaphysics were less worthy and meaningful than the transport of the Union Jack to the top of the world.

In a broad sense, Wilson symbolizes every man who has ever risked his life in a nonsanctioned event; i.e., for something he has undertaken in order to serve his own needs and not those of society. Every weekend in the United States and around the world, uncounted thousands of men--median men: bricklayers, engineers, teachers, hardware-store clerks--undertake hazardous enterprises for their own satisfaction. They sky-dive, spelunk, stunt-fly, drive racing cars, rock climb, white-water canoe, etc., without any regard whatsoever for group or social needs. Beyond these hard-core hobbyists, everyday people--men who might even be described as timid--reach occasional junctures in their lives when they are moved to take awesome risks, like driving 100 miles an hour down a narrow road just for the beautiful goddamn exhilaration of it. In terms of the thrust of culture, all such risks are frivolous. If these men are killed, their passing is viewed with ambivalence, as if their deaths might have been more worthy, more tragic if they had died in a car crash on the way to work rather than on a race track, or in a commercial airliner loaded with hustling salesmen rather than alone in an aerobatic monoplane.

While the legal sanctions against personal risk taking are limited, there are insidious forces at work in most cultures--forces that may intensify as technology replaces the need for physical bravery. Technology, by its very presence, implies the capability to eliminate human sacrifice and privation. Individual risk taking, therefore, poses a dangerous threat to the entire premise of group-think, technocratic progress. Eleven years ago, a scientist climbed into the gondola of a specially designed balloon, was plugged into a complicated network of telemetry and life-support systems and floated to over 100,000 feet. At that point, he jumped out and parachuted back to earth, sheathed in an insulated suit full of oxygen tanks, radio transmitters and other scientific equipment totaling 150 pounds. A worthwhile, heroic act, shrilled America's press--an important plunge toward the horizons of science. But what about the pure amateurs who jump out of airplanes just for the hell of it--men and women who sky-dive for the elemental joy of floating for a few moments in virtual freedom high above the earth? Hardly heroes, and society tends to view them as thrill freaks and clucks its tongue with the wry satisfaction of one who says "I told you so" whenever a chute fails to open.

Less than half a century after Charles Lindbergh packed a few sandwiches into his single-engine Ryan and headed across the Atlantic, one must ponder how society would view such a venture today. Lucky Lindy was just that. He was hopelessly ill prepared in a technological sense; and in the context of today's obsession with the removal of risk from all aspects of life, it is possible that society would label the Lone Eagle a gooney bird. The only redeeming factor might be that he was flying in quest of a $25,000 prize. Sadly, risk taking in the name of money always has been, and probably always will be, acceptable. It is hardly as irresponsible to the at Indianapolis than it is in an amateur sports-car race. Why? Because there is $1,000,000 in prize money at Indy.

Maurice Wilson offered up his life in a cause that held meaning only to himself. His surviving notes indicate that he died with his spirit intact and his beliefs, however assailable on accepted religious and philosophical grounds, as strong as ever. His death came in utter isolation and caused no one else inconvenience or concern. His risk of destruction was self-evident and he accepted the hazards armed with a purity of conviction bordering on the superhuman. Yet he died a fool and a zealot, an embarrassment to his countrymen, a heretic within Christendom and a lawbreaker to the Indian provincial authorities who had tried to prevent his journey. He had, based on all accepted standards of reasonable behavior, violated his right to die.

This lonely figure stands in ironic contrast to another victim of Everest, George H. L. Mallory, whose words, "Because it's there," in reply to a question about why he wanted to climb Everest, serve as the standard justification for all hazardous exploration. Mallory, in company with Andrew Irvine, perished near the crest of the mountain in 1924 and entered the pantheon of English soldiers, explorers and adventurers who penetrated the most obscure corners of the earth in behalf of the Empire. If Mallory had gotten to the summit, he would have struck a red, white and blue flag into the snow and descended to a hero's welcome. If Wilson had made it, he might have been thrown into a nuthouse.

Technology creates Apollo for astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin, then spends millions in public relations to create the impression that they are clear-eyed scientific servants of mankind and not ballsy adventurers who view a moon trip as the wildest flight imaginable. We love them, but the guy down the street who's building a glider in his garage so he, too, can enjoy the delights of being airborne is viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. Society has not yet reached the point where it will send its police to break up his glider with axes, but each day that symbolic threat looms larger. Nonfunctional risk taking is in direct opposition to the needs of a centralized, protective social structure, and while deviationism today is merely the source of scorn and isolation, it is hardly inconceivable that the day will come when civilization will become so perfect, so protective, so paranoid that it will tolerate no individual risk taking whatsoever.

All societies reserve the pre-emptive right to preserve the lives of their members--and to risk them--as they see fit. Mallory operated within the accepted realm by trying to advance national prestige, and therefore the loss of his life was viewed in the context of corporate visions, which authorized his heroism, as opposed to Wilson's private visions, which produced ridicule. Civilized cultures often encourage death for their individual members, provided it fulfills a group need. In war, men willingly throw themselves into hopeless military assaults, as at Ypres or Verdun, and enthusiastically volunteer for missions in which death is a certainty. Children's crusades aren't restricted to children.

Regardless of the futility of the individual act and the barefaced consumption of human life it involves, this sort of death rite is accepted and condoned simply because it serves as a powerful, collective gesture of bravery and faith. The individual's option to accept death under the circumstances of warfare or group violence is primeval and, according to British sociologist Stanislav Andreski, increases as a society becomes more sophisticated. With the development of weaponry has come not only a greater potential for inflicting damage on one's enemies but a concomitant danger of retaliation if the thrashing is not severe enough. "Under such circumstances," says Andreski, "it is safest to kill one's enemies. Anyway, in all fighting where weapons are used, some of the participants are likely to get killed. So we are justified in saying that the prevalence of killing within our species is the consequence of the acquisition of culture."

In examining man's fascination with warfare, the renowned author and essayist Arthur Koestler has commented, "We are thus driven to the unfashionable and uncomfortable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an overdose of self-asserting aggression but an excess of self-transcending devotion. Even a cursory glance at history should convince one that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite insignificant role in the human tragedy, compared with the numbers massacred in unselfish love of one's tribe, nation, dynasty, church or ideology." In this context, the disposal of one's life is a laudable and often desirable gesture, and missions of exploration to remote places such as the summit of Everest or the South Pole (both of which are certainly quasi-military in the sense that they have powerful overtones of nationalism and the extension of influence and prestige) are likewise expected to consume lives. George Mallory, like that great tragedian of British explorers Robert F. Scott, died in an assault against nature--a valid replacement for live A adversaries during those boring lulls in warfare called peace.

Andreski notes that peace can be a drag especially when times are hard. "For a vigorous man," he says, "war may appear very attractive as an alternative to exhausting, monotonous work and grinding poverty." The same could be said for climbing mountains, driving race cars, fighting bulls or engaging in any one of a dozen other hazardous enterprises, provided they receive cultural sanction.

There is no arguing that men who risk death in accepted fashions are subjects of esteem. No civilization is without its elite warrior class, and few advanced cultures exist without powerful tests of valor for its males; everything from the heady fumes of machismo within Latin-American societies to the German dueling clubs, to the Mohawk Indians' attraction to "high steel" construction, to the widespread involvement of young English gentlemen in motor racing to the now-fashionable posturing of American youth in the name of revolution and confrontation (which may, in the light of history, turn out to be not political protest but another form of expressing ascendancy to manhood).

Several years ago, an Englishman was heard to comment, "Sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one, each young man may attempt to kill himself. (continued on page 92)you bet your life(continued from page 86) If he survives this self-imposed ordeal, he will feel prepared to enter manhood. The act will be unconscious and will manifest itself in some wild, desperate act of high risk such as driving a car at great speeds or scaling a cliff, but he will do it and his motivation will come not from within himself but rather from the forces of a culture that still place a great priority on physical courage."

We haven't come all that far. Despite several thousand years spent trying to tranquilize our own libidos, we remain the toughest, feistiest, most aggressive animals on earth. This propensity for violence is generally interpreted as our greatest flaw, near the very root of original sin in fundamental religious terms. Utopians look to the day when we will no longer shed our own blood, but that seems nothing more than mad fancy in the face of our consistently poor record. What's more, war and the closely associated trait of risk taking may be critical elements in man's development.

Andreski notes, without enthusiasm, that violent conquest seems to be the only viable method whereby groups of tribes can be bunched into small states, which are in turn hammered into larger states--and advanced civilizations. "It is an unpleasant truth that, human nature being what it is, civilization would be divided, without war, into small bands wandering in the forests and jungles," he says. Furthermore, war may very well have powerful social implications in the sense that it fulfills an important outlet for a test of self through missions of risk and adventure involving pain, privation, injury and death. There lies within the psyche of man a powerful fascination with violent group action, be it in the flame and thunder of actual battle or in the mob actions that sweep so many people into action in America at the moment.

It is ironic that the campus protesters who were making such an earnest and strident outcry against war operated under the same risk-adventure syndrome that has stimulated man to go into combat for centuries. We dig violence--all of us, from the gentle priest whose hackles rise in fascination at the sight and sound of battle on the Late Show to the bookish professor who's an expert quail shot and feels no greater moment of consciousness than when that 20-gauge thumps his shoulder and a bird falls dead in the brush. Or what of the confirmed pacifist who knows true satisfaction only through his prowess at chess (a game of war) and those exquisite moments of symbolic destruction contained in checkmate?

This preoccupation with war, adventure and death is generally interpreted as a simple delight in violence for its own sake; but the motives are much more complicated than that. If we loved violence--raw destruction--we would spend more time doing it and less time fretting about why we keep engaging in it generation after generation. In pragmatic terms, constant mass violence or warfare poses a genuine threat to survival of the species; and civilized history is spotted with cycles of conflict and peace that in a human sense are as natural as the coming of the solstices. Sadly, warfare may be as normal a state for man as is peace. Paradise, for all we know, may resemble Valhalla more than Eden.

There may be within each human being a deep yearning to test himself in a purely physical sense. Athletics, which have been described as substitute warfare, seem to be valid expressions of this hankering. This testing act never ends, compelling man to reassure himself, both individually and culturally, about his courage and physical prowess. In this sense, all forms of risk may relate much more closely to the mysterious magnetism of natural selection rather than simple ego drive or the desire to extend power, wealth and prestige. As in nature itself, domination is temporary.

Audacity is a unique trait of Homo sapiens. This quality has been with man for millenniums and has caused him to probe and penetrate hostile places with an energy and eagerness unknown in other species. It is an important strength and one that would appear to be carried on, in a genetic sense, through risk taking. Like many of man's traits, his audacity is a contradiction in terms of good and bad; without it, our ability to kill and get killed in various adventures would be severely limited, but so would the great acts of social, political, religious and geographic exploration that have brought us our supreme moments.

We are audacious, and as individuals we seek to test ourselves in a constant series of physical and mental adventures. The motivations for these adventures are obscured in a maze of behavioral traits that date to the time our ancestor Ramapithecus decided for no clear reason to stand his ground against his first saber-toothed tiger. But they exist--as strongly in the scholar as in the jock--and there is little that man, as a civilized, perceptive, egocentric animal, can do about it except to muse over its presence and to try to create enough harmless outlets so that it will not destroy him entirely.

Organized society is prepared to offer up its members in a test of audacity at practically any given moment. For nothing more than national honor or a few square miles of territory, it will destroy its young men in battle and expose its noncombatant citizenry to bombings, plague and starvation without compunction. Observers of the human condition tend to view this as a natural state; and after they have made reflexive denouncements of war and the debasement of humanity it involves, they carry on, seemingly resigned to the fact that no force of thought or morality seems able to temper this fury. The will to adventure is part of a species' psyche; that is acknowledged, but what of the individual? If a society can risk the lives of its members, why can't individuals engage in potentially lethal adventures of their own choosing?

Mallory and Wilson. One an extension of national will, the other an expression of individual needs. One a heroic legend, the other a madman. Both buried within a mile of each other at the top of the world. While it appears incumbent upon society to preserve the lives of its members so that they can be utilized or exploited most propitiously, there remains a strong drive among individuals to risk their lives as they see fit. Men do it for a variety of reasons--often for the simple accumulation of wealth and fame, sometimes for the simple satisfaction of engaging in a hobby or a vocation that coincidentally happens to be dangerous. Many men who participate in truly dangerous activities like motor racing simply do not believe they are engaged in a hazardous occupation. Part of this may be defensive, but many top drivers steadfastly maintain they would rather spend an afternoon on the race track than an equivalent time on the open highway. Nonetheless, a vast number of people view racing drivers as partially mad, with no creditable regard for their own lives. This is simply not the case, because within most daredevils is a powerful desire for life. "I don't think a man really understands the reward of life until he has risked it," said three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Wilbur Shaw. Jean Behra, the French champion, put it in a more mordant fashion: "Only those who do not move do not die; but are they not dead already?"

This sort of outlook on life is difficult for the timid to comprehend. The following exchange, for example, was recorded several decades ago between the volatile Italian Grand Prix driver Tazio Nuvolari--thought by many to be the greatest of all time--and a citizen who was appalled at the danger and violence inherent in racing. "How can you bring yourself to risk your life in such a mad, grotesquely dangerous sport?" he asked Nuvolari.

"Have you thought about the manner in which you would like to die?" Nuvolari snapped.

Caught off guard, the man blurted, "Of (continued on page 192)you bet your life(continued from page 92) course. I want to die peacefully, in bed."

Nuvolari laughed, then said, "Well, then, my friend, please tell me where you find the courage to go to sleep each night."

Ironically, Tazio Nuvolari died in bed, an old man.

There is little evidence of sadomasochistic traits in men who risk, their lives in dangerous sports or occupations. Andreski notes, "Sadism, i.e., the desire to inflict pain, should not be confused, as it often is, with pugnacity, i.e., the desire to fight." To pugnacity might be added the desire to compete, wherein men are attracted to highly dangerous endeavors out of the simple desire to win something. The biggest victories come in the face of the biggest opponents, so men with the greatest courage and skill are naturally attracted to the most imposing challenges. Count Wolfgang von Trips, a fine German racing driver who was killed in the 1961 Grand Prix of Italy, put his desire to compete with the best in stark, pragmatic terms: "I feel I am a good driver and I seek out the best competition. If one is a good skier, he doesn't want to spend his time on the beginners' slopes."

To counter matter-of-fact statements like Von Trips's or Mallory's, some devotees of psychology often dredge up the old death-wish syndrome, which they claim infests anyone who engages in a more hazardous activity than croquet. "That's bullshit," says one top racing driver. "If I want to kill myself so badly, why do I work so hard trying to stay alive?"

While the death wish is a substantive mental-health symptom, there is disagreement among psychiatrists as to how it relates to men who engage in dangerous activities. In fact, the entire question of suicide is the subject of widespread argument within academic circles, and few clear-cut answers exist about the motivations for such acts. Certainly there is a relationship to culture. Most nations with high suicide rates (West Germany, Japan, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Hungary, Sweden) have low homicide rates, while nations with high homicide rates (Colombia, Mexico) have low suicide rates. Some psychologists have speculated that countries with strong social cohesion, as in Scandinavia, may force individuals to be more strongly self-accusing and therefore inclined to punish themselves rather than their fellow citizens. Whatever the answer, it appears to be tangled in a fiendishly complicated web of social relationships that defy simple explanation.

Regardless of culture, does an individual have the right to take his own life? In Japan, where the self-accusing syndrome is deeply woven into the fabric of life, it is socially acceptable. In Western nations, it is considered illegal, immoral and ungodly. As late as 1823, there is a recorded case of a group of Englishmen disposing of a suicide victim by burying him at the roadside with a stake driven through the body. Here again, the powerful self-preservation instincts of the group become evident and suicide is censured because it is an individual act that is in opposition to group needs and an eloquent exposure of the fallibility of the society in which it takes place. In the strict confines of the Judaeo-Christian ethic, it is a negative act of self-will that simply cannot be tolerated. But there is a substantial argument in favor of suicide, based on the simple law of survival of the fittest. If there is such a thing as a death wish, is it not desirable to permit this negative psychic trait to be weeded out of the breed? It can be argued that each time society thwarts a suicide, it is monkeying around with natural selection and most certainly with an individual's right to die. As John Stuart Mill said, "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

Does this sanction complete freedom in disposing of one's life as he sees fit? Not totally, because few single acts can be isolated in society. A suicide victim may leave a destitute family as wards of the state and a burden to others. By leaping off a building, he may pose a threat to innocent bystanders or prompt unnecessary risks on the part of the police, medical personnel and others responsible for public welfare. Under these circumstances, society does have a franchise in controlling individual destiny. But if the act is voluntary and has no apparent effect on others, there seems to be little justification for preventing it. In sanctioning freedom of will, Mill said, "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.... The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant."

Countering this sentiment is the powerful Calvinist feeling infesting Western civilization that claims the one great offense of man is self-will: "Whatever is not a duty is a sin." Is it a sin, therefore, for a great bullfighter like Manolete to become a legend in his own "lifetime, then lose his life by goring? Was the death of the great driver Jim Clark against a tree trunk on a German track-side a violation of our moral code? Was the expenditure of 31 lives in trying to reach the 26,620-foot summit of the Himalayan peak Nanga Parbat an affront to civilized behavior? On the contrary, it would seem that these audacious acts symbolize the courage and diverse spirit in mankind that, if tempered or bred out by an overprotective society, would create future generations as fearful as moles. On the other hand, we have the overt profit seekers, such as Niagara Falls barrel riders, who have made bumbling attempts to gain credibility as heroes and have thereby imperiled the lives of their rescuers. A bad scene for a gang of sorry grandstanders; but at the same time, it seems that the risk and adventure experienced by both the barrel rider and his rescuers is a valid expression of the human spirit. We lament the fate of the poor guys who have to save foolhardy or unlucky adventurers until we recall that they, too, as a vast majority, carry out their work as enthusiastic volunteers.

Dr. Sol Roy Rosenthal, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and medical director of the Research Foundation in Chicago, is taking a hard, scientific look at what he calls "risk exercise." Dr. Rosenthal, an avid horseman and fox hunter, discovered some years ago that he found a greater sense of exhilaration by engaging in strenuous sports involving physical hazard than he did in participating in equally rigorous but perfectly safe activities. Trying to pinpoint this sense of "euphoria," as he calls it, Dr. Rosenthal embarked on a detailed but as-yet-incomplete research project into risk exercise. His thesis is this: For millenniums, primitive man was equipped, in a physical and mental sense, to risk his life in the routine activities of gathering food and protecting his family. But as more refined civilization evolved, the risk factor became a less necessary part of man's normal life style. As a substitute, he created artificial risk exercises. In fact, Dr. Rosenthal is inclined to believe that calculated risks, either physical or mental, are key factors to a normal life. They may, he conjectures, be intimately connected to physical and mental health and even to the very process of human aging and evolution.

After questioning thousands of participants in risk-exercise activities, Dr. Rosenthal found that a very large percentage reported a sensation of elation or euphoria upon completion of the exercise. At the present time, he is expanding his research in an effort to ferret out the biochemical reasons for this stimulation. Like the well-known liberation of adrenaline as a reaction to fear, or the release of adrenal-pituitary hormones into the blood stream during various stress situations, it is possible that certain biochemical changes take place in the body during risk-exercise activity. If Dr. Rosenthal can isolate this substance or substances, it may have widespread medical applications in the treatment of depression and other mental problems. Whether or not this can be done, Dr. Rosenthal still feels he has accumulated sufficient evidence to support his concept and maintains that some kind of risk exercise is essential to the well- being of all balanced individuals.

• • •

Our space adventures have been decried as extravagant wastes of money, as doubtless there were denunciations of Magellan's expedition, every polar trip and each individual act of risk involving a test of man against self or nature. In this regard, the German philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt noted the "individuality of power and development" within men and claimed that "individual vigor and manifold diversity" combine themselves in a critical expression of "originality"--certainly a human trait that should never be eliminated.

Protesting what he referred to as "the tyranny of the majority," John Stuart Mill gives a powerful endorsement to the entire question of risk taking and an individual's right to die in a manner he finds appropriate by saying "that mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, are principles applicable to men's modes of action, not less than to their opinions."

Surely, if Maurice Wilson and George Mallory could speak from their graves on the heights of Mount Everest, they would heartily agree.