“They (heroes) come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.”
--Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
In 1998 the IMAX production Everest became a very popular film. A documentary on the climbing of the tallest mountain, the film showed the travails of climbers who suffered the dangers of wind chill factors (-100oF), avalanches, and storms to reach the top regardless of the costs. Those costs were great. Some died; others suffered terrible frostbite; and one endured the risks on his honeymoon, taking his wife part way up the mountain.
Envision the romance of the place. No, not the romance of a honeymoon. I mean, instead, the meaning of the word romantic in the sense of the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century writers and artists who saw raw Nature in a geography of all that was antithetical to living in cities. Because of philosophers, painters, and poets, many of us carry that romantic and ideal perspective in our collective consciousness. Mountainous regions are, in that sense, “Nature in the raw.” Among the rawest of such earthly environments, Mt. Everest is a special place because it was unconquered until the middle of the twentieth century when Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay scaled the peak, becoming famous in the process. If there is a place associated in the collective mind as an environment for the Noble Savage, the Yeti, or the intrepid and undaunted hero, Everest is it. Why, there’s even a roller coaster ride at Disney World that provides an ersatz experience. Most people might not be able to point to the mountain on a map, but most people have a mental map of the place drawn by imagination and stored in the collective mental map library through hearsay and folktale.
For most that saw the IMAX film, the mountain climbers were daring and strong. They had both strength of will and physical strength. Think, however, about the perspective under which they undertook their risks. What they were driven to accomplish cost lives, limbs, and, in one instance, a marriage—an off-the-screen reality. For one climber’s wife, her husband’s leaving her for months, his suffering the loss of fingers and toes, and his desire to reach the peak of Everest, meant one thing: he cared more for conquering Everest than he cared for her and their long-term relationship.
Perspectives vary: In a world suffused by art, literature, and folk history with romantic notions of Nature and heroes, do we now deem heroism in the context of The Unnecessary? Or, was the “hero” mountain climber a “jerk” who shirked his responsibility to his marriage? Who determines that the cold space at the top of the world’s highest mountain is a more heroic space than the space in the home of a good marriage? If we subjectively romanticize a place, do we change its reality? Certainly, risks multiply on a cold and forbidding mountain, but what of the risk to a marriage? The climb affects the climber, but it also affects those left behind, risking any emotional and financial support a healthy, devoted spouse might give for decades.
Years after his receiving knighthood for climbing Mt. Everest, Sir Hillary attempted to climb K2. Fortunately for him, the younger climbers were able to carry his ailing body wracked by altitude sickness down the steep slopes in time to save his life. The personal distance to the top of a mountain apparently changed for Hillary midway in the climb. His perspective probably also changed when life was precariously dependent upon the ability of others to get a sick person down a mountain, others who had to risk their own lives for his safety, and others who had to alter their own plans for a climb.
In the instance of the IMAX Everest expedition, the film’s producers deemed the climbers’ efforts worthy of a documentary film for viewing on the largest of all screens. In the context of a collective mind that embraces the romantic notion of risk in “wild” Nature, such a movie had a ready audience of vicarious climbers and risk-seekers. Sir Hillary’s K2 climb was also the subject of a documentary viewed by many. Even before audiences view such films, they are already primed by more than two centuries of inculcation to focus on the “heroism” of the movie’s subjects. Disney’s Everest will always have long lines of eager riders. But should those who voluntarily seek the dangers of such extreme adventures as climbing the real Everest be praised for their efforts and emulated by the rest of us? Before you answer, however, remember that this is not a practice life.
The climbers in the two documentaries endangered themselves, some of their fortune, and some of their relationships. Risk is a part of living, but extraordinary risk for its own sake, for fame, or some other purely voluntary purpose outside of necessity can have deleterious consequences. Here’s one more example to drive the point: If you search National Geographic’s website, you will find a photo taken by Subin Thakuri of Utmost Adventure Trekking that shows climbers struggling to ascend the Hillary Step on May 19, 2012. With the photo is the caption that says some climbers, in their attempt to scale the mountain, “spent as long as two hours at this 40-foot rock wall below the summit” of Everest. On that spring day 234 climbers reached the mountain’s top. The caption for the photo ends in an unemotional statement: “Four climbers died.”
Necessary risk is, however, another story. Firefighters face risk (on average 98 die annually in the USA). Policemen also face it as they battle the uncivilized elements of our society (160 deaths in 2010). War is the least civilized circumstance that makes my point that this is not a practice life. Soldiers face risk. By choice, some soldiers face extraordinary risk. We mourn those who take such risk for the sake of others because they do so in the knowledge that life is not practice.
Corporal John Henry Pruitt from Fayetteville, Arkansas entered the U.S. Marine Corps to serve in the First World War. Cpl. Pruitt, in defense of his company, single-handedly attacked two machine guns, killing both men operating the guns at Blanc Mont Ridge in France. Running toward two firing machine guns was a risky business, born of the necessity of battle and the need to save the lives of those around him. That he received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his risk is an acknowledgement of his heroism. Facing two machine guns would be enough risk for a lifetime one would think, but the corporal did not stop. After quieting the machine guns, he then captured 40 Germans in a nearby dugout. The young marine also received the Navy Medal of Honor for his acts, but, alas, war is risk; war is in Hegel's terms, "uncivilized conditions." War is not practice. Cpl. Pruitt was killed by an artillery shell shortly after his heroic acts, and he received both medals posthumously. There are many stories like those of Cpl. Pruitt in the annals of the Congressional Medal of Honor, the annals of individual military units, the annals of firefighters, and the annals of police. Their stories emphasize the reality of this website's title and the truth in the quotation from Hegel that begins this essay.
Billions of individual humans have lived and died, maybe as many as 100 billion since our emergence two- to three-hundred thousand years ago. Trillions of individuals of other species have also lived and died. The planet sustains us, but it also poses risks—from other organisms (lions, bacteria, drunk drivers, viruses, and terrorists) and from inorganic processes (earthquakes, storms, floods, and trips down the stairs). If this life were practice, then there might be a good argument outside of war and protection of the public or family for placing ourselves in extraordinary jeopardy—just to see how risk makes us feel, to see what it feels like to stand on Mt. Everest, skydive, or stand up on a roller coaster, and to receive the accolades of the adoring public. But this life isn’t practice, and we have responsibilities to ourselves and to those who love and rely on us.
We have long sought the stories of heroes, and we have long tried to emulate heroes both real and imagined. Our music, art, literature, filmography, philosophy, myths, and folk traditions have infused us with notions of heroism and with romanticized natural settings. By the time we have become independent adult thinkers capable of questioning our fictional notions of heroism, many of us are already too steeped in the teas of tradition to break free from them.
Are heroes born of necessity? Are they still heroes when they purposefully seek, in Hegel’s words, “uncivilized conditions”? Should we equate the accoladed “heroism” of Sir Edmund Hillary and his ilk with the forgotten “heroism” of Corporal John Henry Pruitt?
The next time you stand in line awaiting your turn to ride Disney’s Everest, think not of Hillary, but of Pruitt.
--Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
In 1998 the IMAX production Everest became a very popular film. A documentary on the climbing of the tallest mountain, the film showed the travails of climbers who suffered the dangers of wind chill factors (-100oF), avalanches, and storms to reach the top regardless of the costs. Those costs were great. Some died; others suffered terrible frostbite; and one endured the risks on his honeymoon, taking his wife part way up the mountain.
Envision the romance of the place. No, not the romance of a honeymoon. I mean, instead, the meaning of the word romantic in the sense of the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century writers and artists who saw raw Nature in a geography of all that was antithetical to living in cities. Because of philosophers, painters, and poets, many of us carry that romantic and ideal perspective in our collective consciousness. Mountainous regions are, in that sense, “Nature in the raw.” Among the rawest of such earthly environments, Mt. Everest is a special place because it was unconquered until the middle of the twentieth century when Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay scaled the peak, becoming famous in the process. If there is a place associated in the collective mind as an environment for the Noble Savage, the Yeti, or the intrepid and undaunted hero, Everest is it. Why, there’s even a roller coaster ride at Disney World that provides an ersatz experience. Most people might not be able to point to the mountain on a map, but most people have a mental map of the place drawn by imagination and stored in the collective mental map library through hearsay and folktale.
For most that saw the IMAX film, the mountain climbers were daring and strong. They had both strength of will and physical strength. Think, however, about the perspective under which they undertook their risks. What they were driven to accomplish cost lives, limbs, and, in one instance, a marriage—an off-the-screen reality. For one climber’s wife, her husband’s leaving her for months, his suffering the loss of fingers and toes, and his desire to reach the peak of Everest, meant one thing: he cared more for conquering Everest than he cared for her and their long-term relationship.
Perspectives vary: In a world suffused by art, literature, and folk history with romantic notions of Nature and heroes, do we now deem heroism in the context of The Unnecessary? Or, was the “hero” mountain climber a “jerk” who shirked his responsibility to his marriage? Who determines that the cold space at the top of the world’s highest mountain is a more heroic space than the space in the home of a good marriage? If we subjectively romanticize a place, do we change its reality? Certainly, risks multiply on a cold and forbidding mountain, but what of the risk to a marriage? The climb affects the climber, but it also affects those left behind, risking any emotional and financial support a healthy, devoted spouse might give for decades.
Years after his receiving knighthood for climbing Mt. Everest, Sir Hillary attempted to climb K2. Fortunately for him, the younger climbers were able to carry his ailing body wracked by altitude sickness down the steep slopes in time to save his life. The personal distance to the top of a mountain apparently changed for Hillary midway in the climb. His perspective probably also changed when life was precariously dependent upon the ability of others to get a sick person down a mountain, others who had to risk their own lives for his safety, and others who had to alter their own plans for a climb.
In the instance of the IMAX Everest expedition, the film’s producers deemed the climbers’ efforts worthy of a documentary film for viewing on the largest of all screens. In the context of a collective mind that embraces the romantic notion of risk in “wild” Nature, such a movie had a ready audience of vicarious climbers and risk-seekers. Sir Hillary’s K2 climb was also the subject of a documentary viewed by many. Even before audiences view such films, they are already primed by more than two centuries of inculcation to focus on the “heroism” of the movie’s subjects. Disney’s Everest will always have long lines of eager riders. But should those who voluntarily seek the dangers of such extreme adventures as climbing the real Everest be praised for their efforts and emulated by the rest of us? Before you answer, however, remember that this is not a practice life.
The climbers in the two documentaries endangered themselves, some of their fortune, and some of their relationships. Risk is a part of living, but extraordinary risk for its own sake, for fame, or some other purely voluntary purpose outside of necessity can have deleterious consequences. Here’s one more example to drive the point: If you search National Geographic’s website, you will find a photo taken by Subin Thakuri of Utmost Adventure Trekking that shows climbers struggling to ascend the Hillary Step on May 19, 2012. With the photo is the caption that says some climbers, in their attempt to scale the mountain, “spent as long as two hours at this 40-foot rock wall below the summit” of Everest. On that spring day 234 climbers reached the mountain’s top. The caption for the photo ends in an unemotional statement: “Four climbers died.”
Necessary risk is, however, another story. Firefighters face risk (on average 98 die annually in the USA). Policemen also face it as they battle the uncivilized elements of our society (160 deaths in 2010). War is the least civilized circumstance that makes my point that this is not a practice life. Soldiers face risk. By choice, some soldiers face extraordinary risk. We mourn those who take such risk for the sake of others because they do so in the knowledge that life is not practice.
Corporal John Henry Pruitt from Fayetteville, Arkansas entered the U.S. Marine Corps to serve in the First World War. Cpl. Pruitt, in defense of his company, single-handedly attacked two machine guns, killing both men operating the guns at Blanc Mont Ridge in France. Running toward two firing machine guns was a risky business, born of the necessity of battle and the need to save the lives of those around him. That he received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his risk is an acknowledgement of his heroism. Facing two machine guns would be enough risk for a lifetime one would think, but the corporal did not stop. After quieting the machine guns, he then captured 40 Germans in a nearby dugout. The young marine also received the Navy Medal of Honor for his acts, but, alas, war is risk; war is in Hegel's terms, "uncivilized conditions." War is not practice. Cpl. Pruitt was killed by an artillery shell shortly after his heroic acts, and he received both medals posthumously. There are many stories like those of Cpl. Pruitt in the annals of the Congressional Medal of Honor, the annals of individual military units, the annals of firefighters, and the annals of police. Their stories emphasize the reality of this website's title and the truth in the quotation from Hegel that begins this essay.
Billions of individual humans have lived and died, maybe as many as 100 billion since our emergence two- to three-hundred thousand years ago. Trillions of individuals of other species have also lived and died. The planet sustains us, but it also poses risks—from other organisms (lions, bacteria, drunk drivers, viruses, and terrorists) and from inorganic processes (earthquakes, storms, floods, and trips down the stairs). If this life were practice, then there might be a good argument outside of war and protection of the public or family for placing ourselves in extraordinary jeopardy—just to see how risk makes us feel, to see what it feels like to stand on Mt. Everest, skydive, or stand up on a roller coaster, and to receive the accolades of the adoring public. But this life isn’t practice, and we have responsibilities to ourselves and to those who love and rely on us.
We have long sought the stories of heroes, and we have long tried to emulate heroes both real and imagined. Our music, art, literature, filmography, philosophy, myths, and folk traditions have infused us with notions of heroism and with romanticized natural settings. By the time we have become independent adult thinkers capable of questioning our fictional notions of heroism, many of us are already too steeped in the teas of tradition to break free from them.
Are heroes born of necessity? Are they still heroes when they purposefully seek, in Hegel’s words, “uncivilized conditions”? Should we equate the accoladed “heroism” of Sir Edmund Hillary and his ilk with the forgotten “heroism” of Corporal John Henry Pruitt?
The next time you stand in line awaiting your turn to ride Disney’s Everest, think not of Hillary, but of Pruitt.
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