why do you do it? a glance at extremely high risk activities

Why do you do it?

A glance at extremely high risk activities.

I was one of the nuts. I climbed cliffs like El Capitan with no rope. First, you have to understand that a very different kind of person WANTS to climb huge cliffs without any safety equipment, or jump off a cliff holding a parachute in their hands. 

One of my friends used to climb super tall, super hard routes with no rope. Instead, he carried a parachute. Think about it! When he began to fail on the climb, he would push off and try to deploy that chute. I am speaking about Deen Potter in the past tense because he eventually jumped from the  top of a cliff that was not steep enough, and he hit the cliff. So did the guy that was flying with him.

There were not that many 'high adventure' rock climbers when I partook, so i interacted with almost every one. 

I helped Todd Skinner to install his climbing wall just before he went to valley for the last time. I had dinner with he, his wife, and his 3 kids. 

I belayed Dan Osmond for some of his gigantic falls during the filming of Masters Of Stone. 

I climbed with Derek Hersey often, and did a new route in the Cloud Peak Wilderness with his significant other after he got stormed off of the Steck Salathe. I also free soloed that route. It was my most difficult onsight free solo. On sight means that it was my first time on the route, and had someone's hand drawn map instead of memories.

I climbed both pitches of supercrack with Hayden Kenedy and his dad shortly before he had his trouble on a mountain route. I had been climbing with his parents since before he was born, and then, BAM!  he was gone. All of us were left behind in a way.

John Bachar was the rock police all by himself when I learned to put up new routes. He would watch your style of ascent through binoculars, and remove the route if the style was not up to snuff. He liked my style, and began to mentor me.  It was I who trained him up for his still amazing free solo of Father Figure in Joshua tree national monument. John fell from an easy route after sustaining injuries in a pretty serious car accident. 

Indeed, eventually it was thought that i was mentor material, and i had a few proteges. One of them, Andrew Barnes, was one of the better climbers that i had even seen by the time he failed on a free solo in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. His mother became a good friend during the long morning period.

I can tell you, as a survivor, that it is awkward to rub shoulders with the loved ones of a high adventure athelete who has fallen. They were not a soldier, fighting and dying for some cause. But, there was something driving them to take risks. What is that something?

If you are not like that, it is going to be tough to understand. Here is a little history from my mom: Alf was a highly sensitive baby. He cried very readily in response to a light that was not that bright, or a sound that was not that loud. 

To me, the light was blinding, and the sound was deafening. I was always on alert, looking for danger. This sensitivity is great when you need to learn something, or are listening to a great concert. But, it sucks most of the time.

Another feature of this sensitivity is that you can be hypnotized by concentrating on something. So, an ant walking around on a little mound right by one eye might be all that you need for an hour or 2 of amazing entertainment. Do you see it? This trance can be used to block out the constant danger warnings. I have been after the trance because it quiets or  silences the constant  danger siren that otherwise dominates perception.

I know, i am writing it, and this makes no sense. A person such as I have described is the last human on earth that you would expect to take part in extreme activites. Wouldn't they turn off the lights and pull the shades; install earplugs; and curl up into a ball in bed? [i hope that you saw the semi colons!]

Some highly sensitive people do it that way. It does not work though, and those that try it kill themselves after a while. The secret is finding activities that put you into the zone for a long time, without killing you right away. I can attest that climbing a really tall cliff with just your fingers and toes fits the bill! You can zone out in perfect oblivion for hours if you have the right stuff. If you do not have the right stuff, what is the point of being alive anyway?

'Normal' folk work the same equation as highly sensitive people. But, they always come up with 'life is frigging great, please continue!' while the HSP constantly arrives at 'life sucks, it is past time to depart!' They get a break when they lift their violin, or create a sculpture, or pull off their clothes and try to tackle a tall cliff.

Normal people do not do that, because they have plenty of fun eating food and mating and raising kids. They do not require a trance to give them a break from living in a kind of Hell.

I have given quite a bit of thought to physical reasons behind this HSP phenomenon. The brain is actually made up of two totally separate lobes. The corpus colostum, where they join, is a kind of  filter than lets some thoughts through. Some of the really dark times seem like a fight between those lobes. The 'voices' that some hear could be the two lobes duking it out. In some respects, they are two different people.

In my case, i have very high eye pressure, and always have. My mother had the same. Gloucoma is the scary medical word. It is swelled up eye balls. Well, the eye balls are just a part of the brain that can be seen, and that sees. Who needs conspiracy theories with reality is this tripped out? Anyhow, i now believe that swelled eyballs indicate a swelled brain.

I looked at a bunch of new scholarly papers about canabis. It is the only natural substance that immediately brings down the swelling in the eye, and perhaps in the brain. It was funny, because the researchers also pointed out that it lowers brain size. They totally missed the point, because they seemed to be trying to prove that cannabis was a very dangerous thing to ingest. I suggest that the brain along with the brains light sensors are a bit swelled up in folk like me. It sure as heck feels like that too!

So, for people who are extreme examples of the Highly Sensitive Person, seemingly absurd risk taking actually prolongs life. Each climb or jump or whatever is like a suicide attempt that will not be considered suicide. If it is sucessful, there is a wonderful respite from pain, and a glow that lasts for a day or 2. If not, well, you are gone, and do not have to clean up the mess => You are the mess!

Each interesting occasion resets the clock, making life well worth living. Ordinary life does not have that effect. It puts the HSP further and further in the red, where a tremendous amount of fun is needed to 'break even'.

HSPs are not mentally ill. Their brains are different than normals, but they are not damaged. In fact, too much sense information gets through the filters, and that is what is unpleasant. HSPs make up roughly 15% of each species of animals. For deer, it is the skinny one with no mate that is always looking around nervously while the others are mating and gorging themselves on branches.

A researcher named Dr. Elaine Aron studies HSPs. When I typed the letters 'hsp' into google, she was the second entry from the top.

If you want more information, or wish to see if I made this HSP stuff up myself, you can look online. And in case you were wondering, i do have suggestions that can help HSPs to feel a greater sense of reward from life. It is possible to mitigate the worst risks, and to use mental tricks to put off the seemingly necessary semi-suicides, but an HSP can not practice, or try really hard,  and become a  'normal'. HSPs live short, very interesting lives. You know them, because the ones who survive long enough become your favorite actors/actresses, authors, film makers and artists. The need for the trance is a stronger motivation than money, fame, love, or anything else.

End of  'Why do You do it?'

by Alf Randell

alfrandell@gmail.com

angry hornets. epidemic ethics

A masking sketch.

My experience at the landromat in Twisp, Wa on Thurday is very typical of what is going on. The business was at about 80% use, and has added brand new machines to help with the workload. 

When I tried to enter [wearing new surgical mask and face shield, i could see unmasked people milling by the front door. I went around to the back, and used a machine near the back door.  I noticed that the mask users were all sitting in their cars, with the engines running to provide heat. I stood outside while the washer was going, and went back in to use the dryer. The 2 non maskers got into a loud conversation while I got my stuff into a cart. I noticed that the conversation was about the uselessness of masking. I opened the back door, and opened 3 dryers for transfer. The landromat owner entered with no mask. He closed the back door, and closed the 3 dryers that i had opened. I explained that i had opened the door for my own safety. When asked about the lack of masks in the business, he stated that one only needed a mask when within 6 feet of another person. He was very polite, but 100% incorrect; Tragically incorrect. 

Covid 19 has mutated so that it is much more contagious. Folks who are going about their normal lives without a mask will be increasingly offering swarms of particles to the rooms that they spend time in. 

We are trying to affect the transmission rate of the virus statistically, so that each secret, [no symptoms] case of Covid causes less that one new case. Even without testing and tracing, this plan of distancing and masking and hand washing can eventually eliminate the infection from our community. We are looking forward to this, so that we can save the masks for big fires and the next epidemic. We want all the kids to go to school. We wish to pack into buildings and enjoy fun community events. 

So, is it OK to stay by the door in a busy and essential business like a landromat? Is it an expression of the personal freedom that we value so highly? Is it an excelent expression of free speach to converse loudly about the futility of masking and distancing?

I suggest that such behavior represents selfishness and bullying. One does not have freedom to hurt another person. This is not a hoax, with the smart people ignoring lockdowns, masks and health rules that they believe are of no use. The people who are breathing through a well fit mask in public spaces 100% of the time are not fools that have been brainwashed by a political movement. The folks who are staying home and skipping visits with their family are not cowards. They do not lack money or courage. Those folks who are distancing and masking and staying at home believe in SCIENCE.

Like it or not, SCIENCE is back in as the guiding principle of our society. It is difficult to believe in semi living particles that you can not see, but that can fool your very own body into rejecting your very own lungs. By rights, these particles should be the size of hornets, and they should make a loud sound. It would be easy to distance from a person whose nose and mouth issued streams of loud, angry hornets.

Since the particles are invisible and have no odor, it seems like an act of faith to believe in them. Further, it seems rediculous to some people to take an uncomfortable action that seems to impinge on their rights. It only seems rediculous because we have not had a health crisis of this magnitude in the US since 1919. And, in a century, your culture forgets it's fear of epidemic disease.

I am not suggesting a fear based response. People have an ample load of economic and behavioral health worries. I am suggesting a science based approach based on the advice of people like Anthony Fauci and Paul Edward Farmer. During our year of illness, These scientists have been apportioning scarse PPE, ballancing the benefits of lockdowns with suicides from cabin fever, and working out health mandates that slow the spread, but allow food to be grown and distributed.

I will post this on my blog under the title 'angry hornets', so when some critic of my inteligence has this thread taken down, you can still read my nonsence! Text or write to me for a link so that you may read as much nonsence as you wish.

Thanks for reading!

The start of things. Symetry and the big bang.

 The big bang, as I see it.

I used to be quite disturbed by the fact that the universe was expanding, and seemed to be doing so forever. That is not a cycle, and cycles are pretty standard in nature. Rarely does a natural thing happen once without repeating.

A lot of things seem to breath, or to do something cyclic to keep existing. In our case, breath in and breath out, eat and poop, etc. Even the Judeo-christian notion of heaven and hell does not work for me. It does not make sense that a soul comes from nowhere, lives a short time on this planet, and then is filed in one of 2 places for eternity. That is not a cycle, and it is not sustainable. It would not keep going.

Everything in nature is in equalibrium. Births and deaths eventually ballance. Matter and energy are recycled forever, with no new matter/energy created, and none lost. So, how can the universe explode one time from a single point, and grow forever? There is no symetry and no ballance to that. It is not beautiful, and it does not make sense.

I started to think a lot about the arrow of time. Processes in the particles realm have no preference about the direction of time. Every single process can happen in either direction. For instance, a particle of Matter and one of anti matter can collide and change into energy. When there is enough energy present in an area, some of it can turn into a particle of matter and a particle of anti matter. 

Bigger objects are collections of many particles. With macro objects, there is a direction of time. Eggs break but they never unbreak. The arrangement of the particles is really important for something like an egg. An unbroken egg is a very organized item, and a broken egg is much less organized. Organization follows a law, so that a given isolated system is always becoming less organized. If you are thinking of the creation of a child, that is far from a closed system. Creating a new human being causes the disorder in the universe to increase. Organization increases in the child, but a larger amount of disorder is created outside the child.

How does this apply to the early universe? There is so much matter in the universe, and so many complicated structures. So the arrow of time is assured. The entire universe will become less and less organized as time proceeds. Matter is scattered farther and farther afield, and energy degrades to ever less condensed forms. 

So, if we follow the history of the universe backwards, we expect to see more and more organization, and more condensed energy. Times arrow remains locked in by this complexity and organization, until the entire universe is in one location. A single universe sized black hole would not give out any light. It could not rotate, because there is no other matter to rotate in reference to. It would be, in effect, a single particle without motion or temperature. There is only one way to arrange that matter, so the 2nd 'law' of thermodynamics no longer holds. Events can happen in either direction in time, exactly like they do in the particle realm. The big bang is free to occur in both directions of time.

If my notions of symetry are correct, there would be no difference in the 2 directions of time. There could be people and other highly organized arrangements of matter in both directions. I believe that people would experience the flow of time in a similar way in either direction. There is no forward and back in this scenario. No one is living 'backwards'. And both universes are free to expand forever, loosing organization. This symetry is enough to make me comfortable with the endless expansion and disorganization of our universe. There is no need for a god, or for any miracles. An endless explosion, taking place in both directions of time, is a ballanced and elegant system that i can hold on to. Otherwise, i need it to eventually condense and explode, again and again, in an endless cycle.