Podcasts · Stream of Subconsciousness
Sporting Dreams... and Delusions (podcast $)
· 7:18
Episode Sporting Dreams... and Delusions (podcast $)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit mindstrengthbalance.substack.com
“How adventure sport participants make decisions in very challenging, ever changing natural environments… has implications for how people make decisions in finance, medicine, and other fields.” — Audun Hetland (Stringer 2023), psychologist at The Arctic University of Norway
Seeking Adventure
I’m an explorer and I’m working on a book about people who are drawn to do things beyond what’s safe and familiar. The book will be about the motivations and rewards that drive alpinists, BASE jumpers, and backcountry skiers. These are three sports that have expanded our notion of what’s possible and, in the process, resulted in a lot of dead alpinists, jumpers, and skiers.
I’ve been interviewing people who do these things, reading academic studies about extreme sports and the memoirs of introspective practitioners. The mindsets of these people have much less in common than you might think but, once you think beyond simply taking risks, this makes sense.
“These people are not reckless… Risk is not the main motivation but rather something that pushes them to focus and achieve mastery in their activities.” — Erik Monasterio, MD (2019) Christchurch School of Medicine, New Zealand
It will take me quite a bit of time and many words to explore the question of why people do these things. The more I read, the more I appreciate how much has already been said, and how little I might have to add. I’ve gradually been led to take a different tack.
I want to explore what these sports have in common with things that normal people do, which is take risks, seek exuberance, creativity, reward, and generally advance our world view. The risks and rewards are obvious, and while they make for exciting stories they don’t explain anything. I’m most interested in the question of how we expand our thinking, and that invites the question of what real change these sports offer, if they offer any.
Links in the notes 1
Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.