I hesitate in these times of tweeted aphorisms to write a reductionist essay. In a complex universe where answers, even to physical questions like “What is matter?” are often sketchy metaphors or analogs, we tend toward simplification. There is apparently just too much to know, too many changes to track, and far too many perspectives to reconcile, and without question far too many uncertainties. We can’t even agree on a common interpretation of the past, even though it’s come and gone and locked in immutability. In the midst of such complexity and uncertainty, nothing seems more mysterious than emotions and behavior, regardless of stereotypes we impose and progress psychologists and neuroscientists make in their research. But in a world filled with dangers and, as pop culture likes to label them, existential threats, we should not stop trying to pin down an answer to the question “Why do we engage in risky behavior?” So, here’s my first reduction: There are two kinds of risky behaviors: 1) Active and 2) Passive.
Among the former behaviors, I place addictions to drugs and alcohol because they involve an active pursuit. Addicts initiate their addictions and consciously continue them. True, once hooked on drugs or alcohol, addicts fall increasingly more to control by their biochemical drivers. But obtaining both drugs and alcohol requires a conscious and active effort.
Addictions to drugs and alcohol are well known risks that the non-addicted have difficulty understanding because of an underlying assumption that “just don’t do it” solutions work. That is, people believe the mind can unfailingly control the body and that reason can prevail over physiological responses to chemicals and emotions run awry. If they did not so believe, then there would be no AAA and no rehabilitation programs.
Yes, there is some connection between mind and body, no thanks to Mr. Descartes, but not enough to prevent an abrasion from a fall on gravel. Does the mind’s inability to effect some cures beg this question: Are there addictions other than those connected to biochemistry that yield to the power of mind and reason? What of risks that are without question a matter of mind, risks for which there are avoidances lying within the grasp of reason? Do we tend to live with risk we can avoid but don’t avoid because, as Johnathan Swift is credited with writing, “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion which by Reasoning he never acquired.” Paraphrased by others, Swift’s statement simply implies that one cannot reason someone out of something he hasn’t been reasoned into.
We might argue that boarding a rocket with 30,000 gallons or about 125 tons of highly flammable rocket propellant is “reasonable,” but the underlying assumption that the goal to reach orbit is worth the risk is never derived from reason alone. Going into the dangers of outer space was initially a matter of desire. Remember Kennedy’s 1961 speech in Rice Stadium?
“We choose to go to the Moon…We choose to go to the Moon in this decade…not because [it] is easy, but because [it is] hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win….”
Sure, once we mastered the process and lost nearly three dozen astronaut and cosmonaut lives to accidents, we established a “reasonable” level of risk and a need for reaching orbit that was generated by advancing military and communications technologies. But initially we actively risked the lives of astronauts only to fulfill a desire with an unsure prospect of success.
But remember that I said there was another kind of addiction, a passive one. What about the widespread addiction of millions of people to living in places that pose risks, say, for example, at the base of an active volcano?
Take two of the three active volcanoes in Italy for example. Granted, the deadly eruption of Vesuvius in 79 that destroyed Pompei was a long time ago. No one is around to tell stories of surviving that eruption; we have to rely on Pliny’s accounts. But who reads Pliny? Really. When’s the last time you picked up a Latin text to read first-hand descriptions of events that occurred a couple of millennia ago? So, can we fault today’s residents of Naples and its suburbs for living where they live? Sure, they’ve taken a drive to see the ruins of Pompei, and they look daily at the nearby imposing mountain. Do they really sense a danger; do they believe Pompei’s ancient fate is their own? The famous volcano’s last significant eruption occurred during World War II, now going on eight decades in the past. Or can we fault today’s Sicilians for living in the shadow of Mount Etna, where their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents going back even more generations decided to build their towns at the base of an active volcano?
On March 1, 2021, Mt. Etna erupted with a consequent rain of small volcanic pellets hitting the nearby communities. * Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Etna isn’t known as a monstrous killer, but it has killed. In fact, over the past two millennia the number of deaths associated with Etna’s eruptions is an unknown, but an earthquake no doubt caused by the same tectonic forces that created the volcano killed an estimated 20,000 in the seventeenth century, and others have died by being in the wrong place during an eruption. The March 1 eruption appears to have been just a spectacular nuisance for residents of Catania and other nearby communities.
Thousands of miles away another volcano, Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala not far from beautiful city of Antigua Guatemala, erupted in February this year. Two other Guatemalan volcanoes erupted about the same time. On March 3, Pacaya, another volcano close to Antigua and not far from Guatemala City, also erupted. ** Fuego killed hundreds in 2018, so it obviously poses a danger. *** Today, some 180,000 people still live in the vicinity of that volcano and a couple of million in the vicinity of Pacaya. Why don’t they move? At a minimum, two reasons. Poverty plays its role in their immobility, and long-held family traditions and close ties pin them to their hometowns and farms and coffee plantations to which they also have an emotional attachment. I argue that their choice to stay where they are is an example of a passive addiction and that the attachment to home is stronger than the desire or reason to leave.
Of course, one could probably apply such an attachment to home to the people in Tornado Alley as readily as to those in a volcanic region, to Californians in fault zones, and to people on coastal plains, where hurricanes pose annual threats. Once fixed in place, we rarely move simply because there’s a potential threat. We move because something somewhere else draws us or because life in the old homestead becomes untenable; we move for commitments made to others, for new lifestyles, or for a new job. I suppose we could also say that some leave their long-standing residences because they convince themselves that their ties to a place have been severed by changing circumstances.
What keeps one in a village at the base of a volcano? Fuego and Etna are stratovolcanoes, potentially the deadliest kind because of their thousand-plus degree pyroclastic flows, associated earthquakes, volcanic bombs, and lavas, all capable of destroying and killing. So, why do people still live near them? Would you? Do you?
Why we don’t learn that we, like our predecessors, can suffer a catastrophic event isn’t a big mystery. Unless dangers are immediate, we tend to ask ourselves, “What are the chances?” “We’ll have time to escape,” we say. “The danger is remote.” Even if an eruption, earthquake, tornado, flood, or hurricane hits the region, we stand a good chance of being elsewhere at the time. We believe statistics are on our side. If, for example, on the day of a picnic there is a 30% chance of precipitation, we can be pretty sure we won’t need an umbrella. We know by experience that if only a third of the region will likely see rain or snow, two-thirds probably won’t see rain. If the chance of an eruption in our lifetime is 10%, we stay. Our math supports our emotions, reasoning, and conclusions that are satisfying until they aren’t.
We don’t learn the lessons of the past because such lessons are essentially meaningless to us. I’ll reiterate what I have said: What isn’t personal is meaningless; or, mirrored, what is personal is meaningful. Those who have never had their lives disrupted during an eruption continue living in the shadow of Vesuvius, Etna, Vulcan Fuego, Pinatubo, Sinabung, and other stratovolcanoes. Potential danger is to them no danger. What isn’t personal is meaningless. So, they stay. They reside in their passive addiction.
But lest you think I’m a hypocrite, I readily admit that I live in an area known for mine subsidence, floods, and landslides. The local river, the Monongahela, gets its name from a Unami word that, according to several sources, means “falling in banks,” “sliding banks,” or just “falling banks.” You get the idea. Landslides are so common that even in pre-Colonial times the locals noted their frequency in northwestern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. And although I don’t live directly on one of the river’s banks, which can stand 300 feet or more above the incised Monongahela, I do know that any hillside in the region of sedimentary rock layers can yield to the force of gravity at any time—though particularly more often after spring snow melts and April rains. So, here I am, in a house perched on a knoll, knowing that there is a landslide potential throughout the region and yet remaining affixed like a picture hanging on a frayed cord over a broken nail. You might ask, “What’s wrong with you?”
In addition, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have lived in a zone with other dangers had I sought in my youth to work elsewhere. What if, I might ask myself, I had sought and acquired a job at the University of Memphis whose property overlies the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 in that fault were in the neighborhood of 7.2 to 8.4 on the Richter Scale. Not many earthquakes are more powerful. Would I have accepted and kept a job where the potential for seismic destruction is so great? If I say “No,” am I just guessing from my temporal vantage point that ascribes more wisdom than I actually had? Am I just ascribing to myself the insight, foresight, and logic that I say others don’t have because they live with higher risks? Am I rewriting a personal history? You know the answer from what I just said: I have remained in the region of “falling in banks.” So, yes, had I gotten a job at the University of Memphis, I might have lived in the shadow of Graceland, hoping for some continuing grace to protect my area and my life from seismic activity. Fortunately, neither subsidence nor landslide has disrupted my life in western Pennsylvania, but I remain in place with no plans, not even an inkling of desire, to move to The Villages in Florida, which by the way, is land not only fraught with the dangers of lightning strikes and hurricanes, but also with the dangers of unexpected sinkholes.
Is complacency the reason some of us remain where we have lived for years? Isn’t complacency just the euphemism for a human weakness? Is all human behavior reducible to one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins? Then one reason we stay where we are, regardless of danger, is Sloth. Picking up and moving requires a big effort. But what if we think positively instead of negatively because we are happy with our lives? What if our current circumstances provide us in situ with all the comforts we desire that satisfy our addiction to place. Or, is another Deadly Sin, Avarice, the reason for staying? How about the ultimate Deadly Sin: Do we stay where we are because of Pride? Moving might be equivalent to admitting we made a big mistake in our choice of location. To acknowledge a need to move is a blot on esteem, an embarrassment for us in the community, and, of course, a matter of pride.
You might argue that happiness for some people is rooted in stability. Those who live in the shadow of a beautiful conical mountain with fertile soils to cultivate are happiness incarnate. “If you’re happy and you know it, stay where you are,” the lyrics might go. Why move when no immediate risks threaten? Life is good until it isn’t.
Even when effort and costs associated with moving are insignificant, we can fall back on the statistics of disasters. Let’s see. San Francisco was hit hard in 1906 and again in 1989. That’s 83 years between major earthquakes, and the average lifespan nowadays is in the neighborhood of 70 years. This is 2021, that’s only 32 years since the last big one. What are the chances?
Obviously, Vulcan de Fuego’s eruptions pose a seemingly more frequent danger than San Andreas’s earthquakes. In the last 100 years it has erupted nine times (1932, 1974, 2004, 2007, 2012, 2015, 2018, and this past week, February, 2021). Mount Etna has been active in every decade since World War II. Back in 1669 it obliterated 15 villages and part of Catania. Yet, people stay.
I stay. And maybe you stay. Comfortable until we aren’t. Is it Sloth, Avarice, Pride, or just the simple passivity of our mindset that keeps us where we are or others where they are? If you are saying, “None of this applies to me,” you might be right, or you might be drawing on the same passivity that has kept so many affixed to the foothills of an active volcano.
Notes:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10Y-NbaXW8 and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofGBwLPtnjc Accessed March 2, 2021).
**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxOD6nMsuJs Accessed March 3, 2021.
**Vulcan Fuego’s most recent eruption (as of this writing):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1KnE57VVyA Accessed March 2, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck6j_MEyH48 Accessed March 2, 2021.
See also the March 2, 2021, eruption of Mount Sinabung at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiaME3aM7Nw Accessed March 2, 2021. Interestingly, in the video one can hear laughter, maybe an indication that only that which is personal is meaningful.
Among the former behaviors, I place addictions to drugs and alcohol because they involve an active pursuit. Addicts initiate their addictions and consciously continue them. True, once hooked on drugs or alcohol, addicts fall increasingly more to control by their biochemical drivers. But obtaining both drugs and alcohol requires a conscious and active effort.
Addictions to drugs and alcohol are well known risks that the non-addicted have difficulty understanding because of an underlying assumption that “just don’t do it” solutions work. That is, people believe the mind can unfailingly control the body and that reason can prevail over physiological responses to chemicals and emotions run awry. If they did not so believe, then there would be no AAA and no rehabilitation programs.
Yes, there is some connection between mind and body, no thanks to Mr. Descartes, but not enough to prevent an abrasion from a fall on gravel. Does the mind’s inability to effect some cures beg this question: Are there addictions other than those connected to biochemistry that yield to the power of mind and reason? What of risks that are without question a matter of mind, risks for which there are avoidances lying within the grasp of reason? Do we tend to live with risk we can avoid but don’t avoid because, as Johnathan Swift is credited with writing, “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion which by Reasoning he never acquired.” Paraphrased by others, Swift’s statement simply implies that one cannot reason someone out of something he hasn’t been reasoned into.
We might argue that boarding a rocket with 30,000 gallons or about 125 tons of highly flammable rocket propellant is “reasonable,” but the underlying assumption that the goal to reach orbit is worth the risk is never derived from reason alone. Going into the dangers of outer space was initially a matter of desire. Remember Kennedy’s 1961 speech in Rice Stadium?
“We choose to go to the Moon…We choose to go to the Moon in this decade…not because [it] is easy, but because [it is] hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win….”
Sure, once we mastered the process and lost nearly three dozen astronaut and cosmonaut lives to accidents, we established a “reasonable” level of risk and a need for reaching orbit that was generated by advancing military and communications technologies. But initially we actively risked the lives of astronauts only to fulfill a desire with an unsure prospect of success.
But remember that I said there was another kind of addiction, a passive one. What about the widespread addiction of millions of people to living in places that pose risks, say, for example, at the base of an active volcano?
Take two of the three active volcanoes in Italy for example. Granted, the deadly eruption of Vesuvius in 79 that destroyed Pompei was a long time ago. No one is around to tell stories of surviving that eruption; we have to rely on Pliny’s accounts. But who reads Pliny? Really. When’s the last time you picked up a Latin text to read first-hand descriptions of events that occurred a couple of millennia ago? So, can we fault today’s residents of Naples and its suburbs for living where they live? Sure, they’ve taken a drive to see the ruins of Pompei, and they look daily at the nearby imposing mountain. Do they really sense a danger; do they believe Pompei’s ancient fate is their own? The famous volcano’s last significant eruption occurred during World War II, now going on eight decades in the past. Or can we fault today’s Sicilians for living in the shadow of Mount Etna, where their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents going back even more generations decided to build their towns at the base of an active volcano?
On March 1, 2021, Mt. Etna erupted with a consequent rain of small volcanic pellets hitting the nearby communities. * Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Etna isn’t known as a monstrous killer, but it has killed. In fact, over the past two millennia the number of deaths associated with Etna’s eruptions is an unknown, but an earthquake no doubt caused by the same tectonic forces that created the volcano killed an estimated 20,000 in the seventeenth century, and others have died by being in the wrong place during an eruption. The March 1 eruption appears to have been just a spectacular nuisance for residents of Catania and other nearby communities.
Thousands of miles away another volcano, Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala not far from beautiful city of Antigua Guatemala, erupted in February this year. Two other Guatemalan volcanoes erupted about the same time. On March 3, Pacaya, another volcano close to Antigua and not far from Guatemala City, also erupted. ** Fuego killed hundreds in 2018, so it obviously poses a danger. *** Today, some 180,000 people still live in the vicinity of that volcano and a couple of million in the vicinity of Pacaya. Why don’t they move? At a minimum, two reasons. Poverty plays its role in their immobility, and long-held family traditions and close ties pin them to their hometowns and farms and coffee plantations to which they also have an emotional attachment. I argue that their choice to stay where they are is an example of a passive addiction and that the attachment to home is stronger than the desire or reason to leave.
Of course, one could probably apply such an attachment to home to the people in Tornado Alley as readily as to those in a volcanic region, to Californians in fault zones, and to people on coastal plains, where hurricanes pose annual threats. Once fixed in place, we rarely move simply because there’s a potential threat. We move because something somewhere else draws us or because life in the old homestead becomes untenable; we move for commitments made to others, for new lifestyles, or for a new job. I suppose we could also say that some leave their long-standing residences because they convince themselves that their ties to a place have been severed by changing circumstances.
What keeps one in a village at the base of a volcano? Fuego and Etna are stratovolcanoes, potentially the deadliest kind because of their thousand-plus degree pyroclastic flows, associated earthquakes, volcanic bombs, and lavas, all capable of destroying and killing. So, why do people still live near them? Would you? Do you?
Why we don’t learn that we, like our predecessors, can suffer a catastrophic event isn’t a big mystery. Unless dangers are immediate, we tend to ask ourselves, “What are the chances?” “We’ll have time to escape,” we say. “The danger is remote.” Even if an eruption, earthquake, tornado, flood, or hurricane hits the region, we stand a good chance of being elsewhere at the time. We believe statistics are on our side. If, for example, on the day of a picnic there is a 30% chance of precipitation, we can be pretty sure we won’t need an umbrella. We know by experience that if only a third of the region will likely see rain or snow, two-thirds probably won’t see rain. If the chance of an eruption in our lifetime is 10%, we stay. Our math supports our emotions, reasoning, and conclusions that are satisfying until they aren’t.
We don’t learn the lessons of the past because such lessons are essentially meaningless to us. I’ll reiterate what I have said: What isn’t personal is meaningless; or, mirrored, what is personal is meaningful. Those who have never had their lives disrupted during an eruption continue living in the shadow of Vesuvius, Etna, Vulcan Fuego, Pinatubo, Sinabung, and other stratovolcanoes. Potential danger is to them no danger. What isn’t personal is meaningless. So, they stay. They reside in their passive addiction.
But lest you think I’m a hypocrite, I readily admit that I live in an area known for mine subsidence, floods, and landslides. The local river, the Monongahela, gets its name from a Unami word that, according to several sources, means “falling in banks,” “sliding banks,” or just “falling banks.” You get the idea. Landslides are so common that even in pre-Colonial times the locals noted their frequency in northwestern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. And although I don’t live directly on one of the river’s banks, which can stand 300 feet or more above the incised Monongahela, I do know that any hillside in the region of sedimentary rock layers can yield to the force of gravity at any time—though particularly more often after spring snow melts and April rains. So, here I am, in a house perched on a knoll, knowing that there is a landslide potential throughout the region and yet remaining affixed like a picture hanging on a frayed cord over a broken nail. You might ask, “What’s wrong with you?”
In addition, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have lived in a zone with other dangers had I sought in my youth to work elsewhere. What if, I might ask myself, I had sought and acquired a job at the University of Memphis whose property overlies the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 in that fault were in the neighborhood of 7.2 to 8.4 on the Richter Scale. Not many earthquakes are more powerful. Would I have accepted and kept a job where the potential for seismic destruction is so great? If I say “No,” am I just guessing from my temporal vantage point that ascribes more wisdom than I actually had? Am I just ascribing to myself the insight, foresight, and logic that I say others don’t have because they live with higher risks? Am I rewriting a personal history? You know the answer from what I just said: I have remained in the region of “falling in banks.” So, yes, had I gotten a job at the University of Memphis, I might have lived in the shadow of Graceland, hoping for some continuing grace to protect my area and my life from seismic activity. Fortunately, neither subsidence nor landslide has disrupted my life in western Pennsylvania, but I remain in place with no plans, not even an inkling of desire, to move to The Villages in Florida, which by the way, is land not only fraught with the dangers of lightning strikes and hurricanes, but also with the dangers of unexpected sinkholes.
Is complacency the reason some of us remain where we have lived for years? Isn’t complacency just the euphemism for a human weakness? Is all human behavior reducible to one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins? Then one reason we stay where we are, regardless of danger, is Sloth. Picking up and moving requires a big effort. But what if we think positively instead of negatively because we are happy with our lives? What if our current circumstances provide us in situ with all the comforts we desire that satisfy our addiction to place. Or, is another Deadly Sin, Avarice, the reason for staying? How about the ultimate Deadly Sin: Do we stay where we are because of Pride? Moving might be equivalent to admitting we made a big mistake in our choice of location. To acknowledge a need to move is a blot on esteem, an embarrassment for us in the community, and, of course, a matter of pride.
You might argue that happiness for some people is rooted in stability. Those who live in the shadow of a beautiful conical mountain with fertile soils to cultivate are happiness incarnate. “If you’re happy and you know it, stay where you are,” the lyrics might go. Why move when no immediate risks threaten? Life is good until it isn’t.
Even when effort and costs associated with moving are insignificant, we can fall back on the statistics of disasters. Let’s see. San Francisco was hit hard in 1906 and again in 1989. That’s 83 years between major earthquakes, and the average lifespan nowadays is in the neighborhood of 70 years. This is 2021, that’s only 32 years since the last big one. What are the chances?
Obviously, Vulcan de Fuego’s eruptions pose a seemingly more frequent danger than San Andreas’s earthquakes. In the last 100 years it has erupted nine times (1932, 1974, 2004, 2007, 2012, 2015, 2018, and this past week, February, 2021). Mount Etna has been active in every decade since World War II. Back in 1669 it obliterated 15 villages and part of Catania. Yet, people stay.
I stay. And maybe you stay. Comfortable until we aren’t. Is it Sloth, Avarice, Pride, or just the simple passivity of our mindset that keeps us where we are or others where they are? If you are saying, “None of this applies to me,” you might be right, or you might be drawing on the same passivity that has kept so many affixed to the foothills of an active volcano.
Notes:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10Y-NbaXW8 and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofGBwLPtnjc Accessed March 2, 2021).
**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxOD6nMsuJs Accessed March 3, 2021.
**Vulcan Fuego’s most recent eruption (as of this writing):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1KnE57VVyA Accessed March 2, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck6j_MEyH48 Accessed March 2, 2021.
See also the March 2, 2021, eruption of Mount Sinabung at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiaME3aM7Nw Accessed March 2, 2021. Interestingly, in the video one can hear laughter, maybe an indication that only that which is personal is meaningful.
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