To Be Woody in The Typhoon

There is one thing that watching way too much “Star Trek” does for a person. It makes a person feel like a coward. While we must assume that days, or even weeks go by without so much as a red alert, it seems that the near death adventures fuel the life of Kirk rather than threaten it. This could appear as a dramatic twist on human nature, where the immediate threat of death would logically be terrifying rather than attractive. When we think about this a little further though it makes sense, not only that we like to watch Kirk defy the odds, but that in reality truly dangerous situations become less stressful than the existential malaise of everyday life. The ability to survive is after all the instinct that allows us to survive, and is why we face cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is one of a long list of seemingly bizarre contradictions between what we think should be and what really is. That is, during times of great risk we become calmer. This isn’t just an instantaneous response that would be expected during a traumatic event, though it is that also. It is also the perception of danger. A study, for instance, showed that  French people living near nuclear reactors were less fearful of melt down than those living far away. It appears that the fears die away with every passing day of safety in an otherwise perceived unsafe environment. More obvious of this is something that Noah Gray describes as “The Typhoon Effect”. This states that the closer one is to the center of a disaster the less they fear the immediate danger. (for more on this read here.) So it is both in cognitive dissonant scenarios and acutely dangerous ones that we feel most alive, because our survival instinct is attuned to reality, not the weighted cortical baggage of routine.

Discussions of risk are often very macho in tone from business leaders and successful entrepreneurs who talk of the need for risk, and the likelihood of many failures before a great success. Yes, that is a certain type of risk. Financial risk can ruin a person’s reputation or marriage. I question though rather it is really more terrifying to face this type of risk, that is the ones that won’t kill you, than known true risk as there is no active cognitive dissonance in fund raising and product prototyping, just generalized anxiety. I call this (though who knows someone may have already coined it), “The Woody Allen Effect”. That is constant existential dread, with many worries, but no immediate threat.

There are areas in science being worked on where the necessity to take life or death risks could be real and present. The film “Contagion” speaks of one such risk, when the doctor developing a vaccine for the pandemic referred to in the title takes the vaccine she has created herself before it has undergone significant trials. This ends in a rather Hollywood style scene with her infected father, where the two talk about a real life risk taken by Dr. Barry Marshall in his experiment to prove that peptic ulcers were not caused by stress but instead by the bacteria  H. pylori.  This heroic act won him a Noble Prize, and lead to a new understanding of an illness. There are other examples of this in history. One that comes to mind is Marie Curie who spent her life working on the discovery of radium with her husband Pierre. The radiation from this work left Pierre so weak, that he collapsed in the street and was crushed by a carriage. Certainly Madame Curie knew that it was the radium that was to blame, yet she continued on with her research, which eventually lead to her own death, which she must have known it would.

Our society is understandably risk adverse when it comes to such life or death scenarios; at least in the abstract. Our survival instincts are different when presented with potential life threatening risk than when they are actually occurring. It would seem to be a normal survival tactic to keep us from danger. Perhaps people risk their lives when there is immediate danger, such as a “Contagion”, but what about when that risk is not apparently imminent? What is the time and distance threshold by which our fears become less fearful, and we start to act as calm creatures experiencing a version of “The Typhoon Effect”? When are we more likely to be left with “The Woody Allen Effect”? This is not an unimportant question as aggregate societal decisions depend on calm bravery much before the metaphorical typhoon strikes. This is true for contagious diseases, which are not in movies. Shouldn’t a brave doctor somewhere inject herself like the doctor in “Contagion” far before a virus has become an epidemic? Shouldn’t we all jump into the oceans of danger to save the acidic sea before it is too late? The thing is that I am not sure we can. Perhaps this is where longevity requires a new philosophical outlook. The longer we live the farther we are from personal immediate threats, and the more likely we are to live in anxiety. This is so counter-intuitive that I don’t even know if I believe it myself. This may however explain the ability for someone to commit suicide for instance. I am not referring to the kind of panicked suicide that can occur, but calculated calm suicide.

In the famous Goethe novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, Werther takes his life from an overall disillusionment with an unpleasant changing world, and more importantly a recent revelation that he will not be able to be with the woman he loves. Werther plans his suicide very calmly, and writes a final letter explaining why he cannot go on. In what is perhaps the most memorable part of this to me he orders from his servant a bottle of wine, and pours himself a glass. He takes just one sip, and then soberly shoots himself.  It is Werther, fictional though he is, that transcends “The Typhoon Effect” and the “Woody Allen Effect”, and makes a truly risky decision.  

I am not of course saying that as we continue to live longer we are left with the ultimate Sisyphean Dilemma of whether to choose life or end it, but in a less literal way I find that it does ring true. Most of us  are not like Werther, and sadly for me, not Captain Kirk either. Instead we struggle with time, and uncertainly for most of our lives, and only face the calm of the Typhoon or the moment of death once. This is likely what causes people to ride motorcycles, and ski dangerous terrain. It is the possibility to be calmly in danger as many times as possible.

I have no solution or even suggestion, just a new open challenge to us as we live longer. If we are lucky we will realize that useless risks, even business ones, are not the ones that make us feel alive. We will also recognize that dangerous sports are fleeting as a solution. Instead our risks will become noble ones. We will be anxious without them and we will be driven to cure disease, improve the state of world and maybe even to boldly go where no man has gone before.