Just this week I read a story about Henry Worsley who died trying the same thing: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-dark.... After reading, I wonder if you have to a certain level of insanity for doing something like this.
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?"
We would have better leadership if it wasn’t such an objectively terrible job.
I'm proud when I set a new PR time running, but it's not exactly interesting.
Challeninging yourself, and doing something unique is interesting. I can hardly believe I'm wasting my time typing this out.
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?
That’s the decision that’s leading to declining birthrate in western nations, isn’t it? Why give up your freedom and increase your stress by creating obligation by having children?
I personally can't understand these ongoing Bernoulli experiments, surely something in these people's mind differs profoundly from mine.
"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."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/el-capitan-my-el-...
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.
It's fun.
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...
[1]no, I have no good definition for this word
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.
Extreme adversity can be a opportunity for tremendous amounts of learning and personal growth. Some people value that.
If crossing the Antarctic has meaning for you, by all means, go ahead! But just in case, be prepared ;)
https://m.facebook.com/louis.rudd.7
Him and Colin set off on the same day, 1 mile apart on the ice.
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.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/tragic-teen-gamer-d...
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-death/...
The indirect benefits of such expeditions have not been measured. If someone did, I'm quite certain, a ton of benefits will crop up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Antarctic_expeditions#...
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.
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.
Rene Daumal
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).