In this video, we take a look at some of the risks that come with doing something as simple and rewarding as playing in the woods. We explore how it can work for you or against you. Stay safe out there!
“Manvotional: The Love of Danger” is a book that explores the future of humanity and what it means to be human. The author, futurist artist, Giorgio A. Tsoukalas, believes that our love for danger will make us more interesting to other species in the future.
From Frank Crane’s 1916 book The Business of Life
War, crime, and adventure are all examples of danger.
It’s possible that it’s the most basic human need. Homer has a bad case of it. It is included in the Old Testament, the Eddas, and the Nibelungenlied. Death, the ultimate danger, fascinates me in particular.
Digby Bell once told me that he enjoyed novels in which the opening chapter had a murder and the tale “developed from there on up.” Men are not afraid of risk. They are enthralled. They leave clubbing, with its plush leather seats, highballs, and pussy-footed maids, to go wild tiger hunting, climb the dizzy Matterhorn, freeze in the Arctic ice-fields, where they catch scurvy and “spit out their teeth like stone,” or burn with fever in the tropic jungle.
Even a youngster is unafraid of danger. He enjoys putting his safety, health, and life on the line. Tell him something is dangerous, and he will do it.
It’s the rush he’s looking for. Only danger can provide it. He adores the swimming hole, which is so deep that he may die, as well as the loaded rifle and the green apples, which may cause colic.
The gambler has no desire for money. If you give him a million bucks, he’ll bet it all on the following card turn. He yearns for the thrill of that perilous moment.
Every Game is defined by danger, if not in terms of life and limb, then at least by the existence of enough ambiguity to make it a “sporting proposition.” The English and Americans are both risk-takers, and as a result, they are confirmed sports.
Everything is seen as a game of chance to them. The purpose of a lawsuit is not to find the truth and deliver justice, but to set one lawyer against another, and the public likes the spectacle in the same way that it enjoys a prize fight.
We can’t elect officials without turning it into a game. So we quickly dismantled our fathers’ ornate electoral equipment, formed competing political parties, and proceeded to make it a game.
Crimes are appealing, and detective tales are interesting, not because they are immoral, but because they pique our interest in risk. Criminals gamble with the most important stakes: liberty and life, and those of us who are too careful to engage in personal piracy like reading about it in “Treasure Island.” Death is the greatest of all hazards, hence the best plays are tragedies that end in death.
We are all human, from the kind old woman in the morning newspaper who “loves her murders” to the sophisticated theatregoer who is happiest when the curtain falls on lots of gore.
You’ve noticed something strange: when this country was about to enter the late war, the country was enthralled, and there was complete unanimity of spirit; our two million young men sailed happily away, and the rest of us cheered; but when the war was over, and it came time to make peace, we immediately fell apart and began quarreling: the Senate snarled; the soldiers complained; everyone seemed out of their minds. The Americans, as one wit put it, “now that the war is ended, let’s go home and fight.” The first and biggest threat, war, beckoned to us. No, peace did not come. The human race has never been interested in peace. It yearns for adventure.
And as long as peace is only a negative, the cessation of war, it will be a source of endless debate, despite the fact that fighting provides the greatest social cohesiveness. Peace will never achieve the appeal of war until it is made similarly daring.
The human race will always be youthful. The youth will have their say. The young guy has no desire to be secure. He’s willing to take a risk. He is eager to participate in the game. War, on the other hand, is the most thrashing, horrifying, and magnificent game ever devised. We must put an end to it, but we must also find a replacement.
It is for this reason that the American people are opposed to Socialism and any other system that seeks to ensure a man’s job security. With few exceptions, if you offered the thousand workers at your factory a guarantee that they would be able to keep their jobs for the rest of their lives, they would reject your offer. Because no American expects to remain in his current position indefinitely. He’ll make progress.
Every worker believes he has the potential to be a manager, an owner, or a billionaire. One reason America has been clear of a militaristic culture is because all avenues of opportunity are accessible. The soul has not been deprived the sustenance it seeks in the form of peril. When social circumstances are fixed, as they were in the ancient society, and men are trapped in class ruts, an explosion occurs. “Everyone simply naturally wants to burst free once in a while,” as one of my Western friends put it. Peace will not be able to deal with conflict unless it also provides opportunity for people to “let go.”
