Facing Risks, Finding Control

November 12, 2018 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

Introducing some risk into your life and work can remind you what it’s like to feel alive. Not that we’re sleepwalking exactly, but if “personal comfort” trumps most other considerations, you have probably insulated yourself from anything more serious than inconvenience—and there’s a price for that.

What we do everyday can easily fall into grooves of predictability where there are few occasions to be confronted with anything surprising, let alone alarming. But if we deprive ourselves of occasions where we need to find some courage and “fall back on” ourselves to overcome our fears, what used to be called “one’s constitution” begins to slip away.

Ask yourself: “What would I do if all I had to rely upon were my wits, if I suddenly had to decide between two uncertain outcomes, if none of my insulations were there to protect me—and my only choices were either to crumble or persevere?” I’d argue that it’s good to put ourselves “on the line” from time to time and find out. It gives us a chance to get in touch with “our elemental selves,” to store up some fortitude for the next time, and to recall our bravery and resourcefulness when we could use some inspiration.

Taking some risks, facing your fears and learning something new about yourself and others have been newsletter themes before. As you know, I’m an off-the-beaten track traveler who encountered some sketchy characters in Rome (“What’s Best Is Never Free”) and a genuinely menacing one in New Orleans (“Risk Taking, Opportunity Seeking”). The reward each time was to discover something about these cities and their people that I could not have found out any other way. On the spot, I felt more alive. And where I could have responded better, I thought about how I‘d do things differently the next time I leave my comfort zone.

The upside of taking risks also drove the migration from Asia that settled the Western Hemisphere 15,000 years ago. These new Americans didn’t stop in the first fertile valley they discovered. Instead, they pushed to the edges of nearly every corner of North, Latin and South America with astonishing speed. It was insatiable curiosity and the thrill of conquest that drove them on, despite their having to confront megafauna (really big animals with razor-sharp claws and teeth), the challenges of wilderness travel with children and elders, and a total absence of convenience stores. In his book about it, Craig Childs cited the research for the proposition that an appetite for risk is hardwired into our DNA, giving rise to human progress and the rush of adventure that quickly follow.

Two new stories this week provide additional food-for-thought about our psychological risk profiles and a literally “ground-breaking” documentary delves into the motivations behind Alex Honnold’s “ free solo” climb up the rock face of El Capitan. I hope they’ll contribute to your thinking about staying confident, willful and alive.

Two recent pieces in the Wall Street Journal consider fear-inducing situations from opposite directions. One, called “Using Fear to Break Out of a Funk” argues that you can raise your spirits by confronting something that scares you and building a record for bravery. The other, “Travel Mistakes That Hurt,” is about foolishly throwing caution to the wind when you’re in a vacation state of mind. Taken together, they provide something of a template for healthy risk taking.

It’s amazing what fools we can sometimes be when we’re traveling. Incapacity from drinking too much alcohol or not enough water, injuries from mopeds and other unfamiliar vehicles, assuming wild animals are “cute,” hiking or climbing beyond your physical limits, and falling off cliffs or into traffic while taking pictures of yourself. The “Travel Mistakes” article features an interview with Tim Daniel with International SOS, an organization whose travel coverage includes rescuing people from every kind of harm. Daniel says travel is disorienting for almost everyone and that when we’re inundated with all that new information we can end up focusing on the wrong things and making poor choices.

Some of us go with the first thing we’re told instead of testing its reliability. Other times we’re susceptible to “the bandwagon effect”: if others are jumping off a cliff and into the water then it must be safe for us to jump in too. We may cling to our preconceptions (this neighborhood was safe 20 years ago) whatever evidence there is to the contrary today. Daniel argues that our blind spots always become more pronounced when we travel.

They are one reason it’s helpful to travel with companions who know you well enough to warn you about yours before it’s too late. Or if you’re traveling alone, it helps to think about your worst inclinations in advance and to keep them in mind before they get you in trouble. Navigating the unfamiliar (including its risks) makes travel exhilarating, but to maximize the potential gains and minimize the possible losses, it helps to know the baggage that you’ve brought along with you.

On a more positive note, it turns out that “amping up the adrenaline to get out of an emotional rut” is also a prescription with some science behind it. This is the kind of “funk” we’re often trying to leave behind when we seek a break from our daily routines. Sociologist Margee Kerr has written about what happens when we face our fears about loss of control in challenging situations.

When we’re terrified, our sympathetic nervous system, which is in charge of that flight or flight response, floods the body with adrenaline and the brain with neurotransmitters such as dopamine and norepinephrine. Our blood vessels constrict, to preserve blood for muscles and organs that might need it if we decide to run. And our mind focuses on the present. The physical response lasts a few hours, but the memory is what we draw strength from.

The woman who wrote “Using Fear to Break Out of a Funk” is also a scuba diver. She explored the theory’s immediate and long-term benefits by choosing a particularly demanding dive in Iceland, between the continental plates that separate North America from Eurasia. During the dive, she confronted her fears multiple times “but pushed through by refusing to acknowledge that quitting was an option.” As soon as she did so, she felt “strong, brave and happy.” Moreover, the memory of that experience was even stronger. Whenever she’s struggling to get through a bad day she says: “I go back to that place where I can do anything.”

Finding your control when risks give rise to fear is exhilarating at the time and empowering for as long as you can relive your resourcefulness.

This photo, along with the shot that tops this post, are of Alex Honnold climbing the sheer, rock face of El Capitain in Yosemite National Park without ropes or safety gear. 3000 feet of sheer granite, thousands of hand and foot holds, it took him 3 hours and 56 minutes. What’s known as “Free Solo,” his climb was a first in the annals of rock climbing, and is the subject of a documentary that’s in theaters today.

I’m not good with heights and so far have been afraid to see it. But somebody named John Baylies was brave enough, and he described his experience this way in an on-line forum:

I judge this the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. Impossible not to get personally involved. Two big questions loom. What disease does this man suffer, that he has no fear and what the hell were the guys in animal costumes doing 1000 feet into the climb? If this were fiction it was a perfect comic relief for was the tensest 20 minutes on film.

However curious I am about the animal costumes I may just have to read about it, but the buzz around his climb got me interested in Honnold so I tracked down a TED talk he gave along with an extended interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast since the documentary came out. I think you’ll enjoy them too.

The highly informal Honnold-Rogan exchange provides several glimpses into the type of person who would train for 20 years with the goal of finding control while facing a succession of nearly overwhelming risks to his personal safety. Watching and listening to Honnold talk was fascinating. Humble. Direct. Thoughtful. Articulate. The farthest thing from a daredevil, much of what drives him was revealed by Rogan’s question about all those people he must have inspired to follow in his footsteps. Honnold says simply that he guesses he would be pleased to inspire people if it were “to live an intentional life” like he has: knowing what he wants and working to achieve it.

Honnold’s TED talk elaborates on what living that way means for him. In it, he contrasts a free solo climb he completed at Half Dome (also in Yosemite) which proved unsatisfying with his encore at El Capitan, which he describes as “quite simply the best day of my life.”

At Half Dome in 2012, he never practiced beforehand and had the cocky over-confidence that he would somehow “rise to the occasion” and make it to the summit. Then he reached a point in his climb, almost 2000 feet up, where he could not find his next hand or toe-hold. Honnold knew what he had to do (a tricky maneuver) but was overcome with fear that he’d execute the move incorrectly and would likely die. After much deliberation, he did manage the move successfully and reached the top safely—but vowed that he’d never be that reckless again.

Five years later at El Capitan, Honnold worked for months on its rock face finding and memorizing every hand and foothold so there would be no surprises on the day of his climb. He removed loose rocks along his path, carrying them down in a backpack. He anticipated everything that was likely to happen and how he would respond to it in what became a highly choreographed dance.

The way that Honnold managed his fear was to leave “no room for doubt to creep in.” Always knowing his next move, his mental and physical preparation made the actual climb feel “as comfortable and natural as taking a walk in the park.” Why did he succeed at El Capitan when he felt so much less successful at Half Dome? “I didn’t want to be a lucky climber, I wanted to be a great climber,” he said.

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Finding the calm and mastery of control in the face of risks—as big as Honnold’s or as small as any of ours might be—is always a function of preparation. To extend yourself and overcome a new challenge takes planning and visualizing what you’re likely to encounter along with understanding yourself, the mistakes you are prone to make, and the strategies you’ll employ to avoid them. In Honnold’s words, “it takes intentionality” beforehand. You have to want to do it in the right way.

The upside in taking risks and pushing your envelope isn’t found in the speculation that you’ll be able to handle whatever comes your way. You may end up being lucky, but just as likely, a group like International SOS may be coming to your rescue. On the other hand, when you’re ready to assume the risks, the rewards are becoming fully and completely alive in the moment that you face them and the recollection of your bravery and resourcefulness whenever your confidence flags.

This post is adapted from my November 11, 2018 newsletter.

Morality Play

May 24, 2014 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

Many who watched Frontline’s The United States of Secrets (May 13 and 20, 2014 on PBS) did so wanting to learn what happened before Edward Snowden’s massive disclosure of documents about the warrantless surveillance of American citizens. It was certainly the promised backstory—the bits and pieces gathered over the years and now stitched back together—that made me want to watch. But even more than the story itself, I was repeatedly overtaken by some of the characters in it. There are Shakespeare plays have had less courage, duplicity, guilelessness, arrogance and decency on display.

You can watch and judge for yourself.

Still from The United States of Secrets — Still from “The United States of Secrets”

When you do, keep an eye on 3 characters in particular, all of whom will interrupt the sidelong glance you’d usually cast in the direction of government bureaucrats:

Diane Roark, long-time staff member of the House Intelligence Committee;

Thomas Tamm, attorney and Justice Department liaison to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; and

Senior National Security Agency manager Robert Drake.

On a stage filled with dissemblers, careerists, and preening journalists, it is hard to take your eyes off of them. However you view opponents of our government’s surveillance programs, there can be no argument that each of these individuals risked their jobs, along with the quality of their future lives, to stand up for what they believed in the face of terrible odds.

Truly terrible odds.

Prevention of another 9-11 is what propelled the US reaction (or over-reaction) in the ensuing years. After more than a decade with no major terrorist incident on our soil, it is easy—much too easy—to discount the concerns that we all had much closer to that terrible day about the reasonable costs of our personal safety in a free and open society. Indeed, the courage in this documentary is directly proportionate to a threat we could all barely fathom on 9-12, and in the weeks, months and years that followed. The question could not be more important. What should you do (and those we rely on to protect us) do or not do, when caught up in the grip of fear?

By saying that the U.S. could not break its own laws to confront this threat, Roark, Tamm and Drake each challenged those they worked with in the government, as well as everyone in their chains of command (like vice-president Cheney) who were convinced that the fate of the nation would be undermined by their dissent. In order to do their jobs, these individuals were not only prepared to lose them, but also to be accused of having “blood on their hands” if their quibbling about legalities and moralities opened a fatal breach in the new “safety net” that was soon being assembled around us.

What they personally risked was like the excommunication that a former teacher of mine was threatened with when she encouraged a new dialogue within the Church about the nature of love; when she was told, in essence, “you cannot write about these things and be part of us anymore.” But being seen as “a Heretic,” “a Traitor” or “a Potential Murderer” didn’t stop (perhaps couldn’t stop) any of them, because they were not overtaken by their fears. Something even more basic and bedrock than that was involved, for better or worse.

You can catch a glimpse of these basic building blocks in Roark, Tamm and Drake. Because it is hard to speak from your conscience and easy to stay silent and go along, it can always be instructive to look in the faces of fairly ordinary and usually invisible people when they have simply refused to yield to larger forces.

My personal hope is that I can see in them something of my better self too.

Individuals who are working at the top of their games often learn about things that are far above their pay grades. Diane Roark was one of them, and in the immediate wake of 9/11 she started hearing about NSA surveillance of American citizens conducted without judicial sanction (that is, after a warrant arguing probable cause had been submitted and approved). She knew this was illegal, and began an impassioned harangue of her Congressional bosses. She argued with them. She documented what she kept learning and peppered them with memos. People connected to the government kept talking to her, because they were concerned too.

What Roark didn’t know was that the White House was also briefing her bosses on the House Intelligence Committee. She didn’t know that once these Congressional leaders were told about the new surveillance, how many of them felt that they could no longer exercise oversight, because the specter of having “blood on their hands” effectively silenced them.

Because Roark was unaware of this, she kept trying to convince her Committee members and, in an expression of frustration, was finally told to take her suspicions up with General Michael Hayden, who ran the NSA. Her bosses knew it was a dead-end, but the evasive answers she received and the assurance she finally got of authorization “from the top” made her more concerned than ever. She redoubled her efforts to convince somebody, anybody, that this program was “unethical, immoral, politically stupid, illegal and unconstitutional.” That was her job, after all. You can still hear the disbelief in her voice that the government she was working so hard to serve was acting in this manner. Roark resigned in frustration a year after 9/11, having dared to raise her voice, both loudly and clearly, when our leader’s fears were at their highest.

Thomas Tamm was the Justice Department attorney who submitted requests for warrants made by federal investigators to the special court charged with either authorizing or rejecting the surveillance of American citizens suspected of terrorism. In other words, he was literally one of the lynchpins in the pre-9/11 safeguards that had been established to protect citizens from being monitored by their government without probable cause.

Tamm came from a family of law enforcement professionals. His father and grandfather both held senior positions at the FBI. Like Roark, Tamm also started hearing about surveillance reports that were not tied to any standing warrant.

His immediate superior was repeatedly unresponsive when he raised his concerns with her (although she talked about probable illegality in a telling aside). Months passed and he went “outside his chain” to a Congressional staffer involved in government oversight but was stonewalled again. It was clear that the government was going around the job he was trying to do with a secret and unauthorized program. Unable to get any kind of response to his concerns from within the government, in a fateful move Tamm called a reporter covering post-9/11 security issues at the New York Times before, in the words of the narrator “disappear[ing] back into the bureaucracy.”

Angry about leaks to the press, Vice President Cheney’s office started a “manhunt for leakers” during this time, an initiative that continued under President Obama (despite assurances while he was campaigning that there will be “no more ignoring of the law when it is inconvenient on my watch”). His home as well as Roark’s were ultimately raided by the FBI, and both had their documents as well as computers seized. Both left their government jobs and endured years of uncertainty (and in Tamm’s case depression) facing possible arrest, although neither ultimately was. In the documentary, Tamm’s quiet sadness about these events is easily as compelling as Roark’s agitation.

Senior NSA manager Robert Drake was also alarmed when he started to suspect that his own agency was conducting warrantless surveillance. It was his job to find existing capabilities within the NSA that could be mobilized post-9/11.

The National Security Agency was chartered after World War II to ensure that there were no more surprises like Pearl Harbor, so it was not surprising that it had developed a program called “Thin Thread” that could eavesdrop on every American’s electronic communications, but with the built-in privacy protections mandated by law. (All personal data that the program captured was encrypted until a judge deemed that it could be read upon presentation of a warrant.) When Drake told his superiors about Thin Thread, he was surprised when they told him they were “going with another program.” He soon discovered that the other program was essentially Thin Thread without the legal safeguards.

If possible, Drake was even more dogged than Roark or Tamm in his efforts to convince his superiors to stop the warrantless surveillance. Unlike them however, as he continued to raise concerns his job duties were taken out from under him. He bypassed his chain of command and wrote directly to General Keith Alexander, by then the head of the NSA, that the warrantless surveillance program was “out of control” and needed to be “reigned in.” In the meantime, his worst fears were being confirmed by the New York Times’ reporting.

For 4 years, the stonewalling continued and his frustration festered. Drake ultimately reached out to a reporter at the Baltimore Sun. Before long he too was caught in the same dragnet for leakers as the others. When the FBI raided his home, for hours all they wanted to talk about with him was the press reports, and all he talked about in return was how law enforcement should be pursuing lawbreakers elsewhere in the government.

Prosecutors decided to make an example out of Drake, indicting him in 2010 under the Espionage Act because he allegedly had classified documents in his home. He exhausted his financial resources on his defense. After repeatedly threatening him to plead guilty, his attorneys successfully argued that the documents in question had previously been made public by the government itself. On the eve of his trial, all serious charges were dropped. Drake was required to pay a $25 fine for misuse of his government computer.

Roark, Tamm and Drake raised concerns about warrantless surveillance and assumed the attendant risks because the proper handling of intelligence gathering was at the core of their jobs. It was their business to know what was legal and illegal, and unlike most others in the government, they raised their voices and never bowed before the strenuous efforts that were made to stop them from doing so.

Whether they deserved what their principled tenacity brought them or suffered in vain is not for me to decide. On the other hand, when your work—your very job description—brings you knowledge of wrongdoing, you essentially have two choices: to raise your voice and assume the risks, or to remain silent and go along. The morality play that is The United States of Secrets is really about some of the ordinary characters who made the more extraordinary of these two choices.

The Glimpse of a Better World on a Snow Day

February 16, 2014 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

Snow. Snow. More snow.

Disasters can bring out the best in people, but our wintry circumstances here in The City That Loves You Back have not gotten that bad yet.

We’ve not had that much snow in Philadelphia.

But while “record-breaking” exaggerates our hardship, there have certainly been kindnesses and conversations that would not have occurred without our almost daily 3, 6 or 12 inches. Unfortunately, glimmers of community are less apparent than the impatience and irritability that have begun to feel like a tantrum.

It’s probably been more encouraging in pockets where snowy conditions produced clearer disasters. For example, where a cohort of drivers, thrown together by chance and icy roads, responds to their shared misfortune by helping one another, sharing their water, groceries and first aid kits, and finding a laugh in what they could not change.

Did the drivers in all those cars and trucks below just sit tight and assume the authorities would come and straighten everything out? How long do you think it took them to turn to one another for a helping hand and camaraderie during the slow sorting out?

crash 634x423 — 100 Vehicle Pile-up on PA Turnpike near Philadelphia on February 14

In A Paradise Built in Hell: the Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit looked into natural and man-made catastrophes like the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina and found remarkable evidence of community re-building by victims from every station in life. Her argument is that “in the suspension of the usual order and the failure of most systems, we are free to live and act another way.” People rise to the occasion and become more generous, more enterprising and (paradoxically) more light-hearted than they were before.

For example, Solnit recounts dozens of individual stories after the 9/11 attacks, including that of Tobin James Mueller, who starts a single table donut dispensary for aid workers that expands dramatically into a way station for hundreds of firemen and ambulance workers on Pier 59 over the ensuing days.

Everyone here was rejected by the city’s official [emergency relief] sites. I accept anyone who wants to help and anything anyone wants to donate. We find a place for everything and everyone. A hopeful would-be volunteer comes up to me and asks if there is anything she can do. I give her a task, and that’s the last direction I need to give. Each volunteer becomes a self-motivated powerhouse who does whatever it takes to get the job done. Then they find a hundred more jobs to do. There is so much to do. It’s so much fun to participate in. I forget to sleep. Many of my volunteers have been working for over 36 hours. It is difficult to bring oneself to go back home. The thought of closing my eyes makes me tremble.

The people Solnit celebrates in A Paradise Build in Hell are not “nasty and brutish and short” and in need of managing by official society. Overwhelmingly, they are people who know perfectly well how to act when the social order has ground to a halt and they are free to rely on their resourcefulness and shared humanity.

Time and again, in post-disaster zones, she finds that it is representatives of the broken social order (such as the police and the military) who resort to violence because of their erroneous assumption that victims will quickly devolve into savages once society’s “safeguards” are removed. Solnit’s message throughout is that nothing could be farther from the truth. In philosopher William James’ observation during the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake: “energies slumbering” are awakened, and suffering and loss are transformed when they become shared experiences.

On this snow day, the questions are really quite simple.

-Why can’t problem solving in our everyday communities be more satisfying, resourceful, engaged and light-hearted, so that “disasters can just be disasters” and not the random opportunities for liberation that they are today?

-Why don’t our fleeting experiences of a better world after disaster give us the confidence to come together and build a more humane society?

-Why didn’t the solidarity so many of us experienced after 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, the terrorism at the Boston Marathon or the massacre of first graders in Newtown have a more permanent half-life?

-Why do we revert so readily to fear instead of to trust?

It is the middle of February. There hasn’t been enough snow in Philadelphia yet.

But we still have a few weeks left.