Because It's There

In response to an Outdoor Education class movie we watched today about professional rock climbers, I began to ponder one of the thoughts brought up during the movie: why do people do such dangerous and physically strenuous activities for little to no benefit?  My teacher told us (unsurprisingly to most) that rock climbing as a profession is not filled with fame, money, or luxury.  These guys live out of their cars, so climbers do what they do for personal fulfillment mostly, it seems.  But over time, their fingers get messed up, and ultimately they each have a close encounter with death or terrible injury at some point during their careers.  Is personal fulfillment a good enough reason to do such crazy things?

On the New York Times home page, I found a video about an ice climbing competition in Colorado which was quite similar to the video I saw in class today.  In it, one of the competitors says, "When I rock climb, I feel like I'm moving up to the true potential of a human being.  You know, it's like I'm not bound by the money I have, or the house that I live in, or the car that I drive.  I'm allowed to be free in such a primal way.  I feel like it's just living."

People feel an intense passion to explore their abilities through conquering nature.  In a somewhat like-minded idea, it is commonly believed that British mountaineer George Mallory said the words "Because it's [the mountain] there" to justify his love for climbing, and the phrase has turned into a kind of mantra in the climbing world ever since.  It succinctly, yet somewhat incompletely, epitomizes the need for humans to climb mountains and do whatever else in nature that might be taxing or dangerous.  I always associated the ideas behind climbing, skiing, and other sports as similar to those of industrialization, but after hearing some of the thoughts from the New York Times video, I'm beginning to have some second thoughts.  For instance, some believe that the world was created with obstacles that were meant to be conquered, and the best place to look for these obstacles is in nature.  Just look at recreational hunting; it's mankind showing dominance over the wild.  But it seems as though people don't climb to conquer, as with hunting, but more to be free.

Whether you agree with hunting or not, is it right to adamantly try to declare superiority over our surroundings in other ways?  In America we see it distinctly; skyscrapers have sprouted up in places where there were no established buildings in less than a couple of centuries, and after a mere 28 years since declaring independence, Lewis and Clark set out to explore the West.  That West was then settled and established as a part of the United States culturally homogeneous to practically the rest of the country in less than 150 years.  If I were to go to Wyoming, there would be Wal-Marts, supermarkets, Chuck-E-Cheeses, and shopping malls.  If I were to go to Delaware, there too would be Wal-Marts, supermarkets, Chuck-E-Cheeses, and shopping malls all identical to the ones in Wyoming.  All of these societal locales have replaced what used to be open land, uncivilized wilderness.  This conquering of wilderness has always been one of mankind's greatest intentions, but also one of its greatest controversies.

If you listen to the video, it's hard to not sense the true, unhindered love of life the climber feels when he says the quote written a couple of paragraphs above.  Do you feel that for this reason (or another reason) it is justified for human beings to live above nature instead of with it?  Or do you think that rock climbing and other activities are examples of people becoming one with nature?  Although there are clear, unmistakable differences between rock climbing and "civilizing" nature, do you think that they embody the same kinds of ideas, or are they completely different in terms of their rationales?  Should we cut down a tree to build a building because the land is there?  Should we climb a mountain simply "because it's there"?