Now that’s what I call euphemism.

Maybe if I’m lucky tonight I’ll get to have a human/ribeye interaction.

Scientists are out on this still, but it appears that chumming has allowed great whites (quite intelligent beasts) to associate food with people. And there have been a subtle increase in shark / human interaction in the past few years.

So it goes.

As a skier, I get what you’re saying. Having worked my way from greens to double blacks (which I no longer try because I think I’m too old and my skills aren’t there any more – it’s possible to be a responsible hedonist, I suppose), I understand the need for a rush as well as the next guy. But while I snorkeled with sharks at the Disney water park in FL (where I suspect they have matters more controlled than tourists think), no one but a fool or damned fool would get into chummed water with ANY shark in the vicinity.

You wrote: “Groh must have thought the sharks wouldn’t have bitten him as a matter of professional courtesy.”

Now that’s just mean…accurate, but mean…

fikshun,

Yes, I’m asking if these people are “canaries in the coal mine” of our culture. I think they are. I think we’re in trouble. When this kind of risk taking has spread from those dedicated to life on the edge to those who live the “sensible” life, we’re at the edge of something sinister, I fear….

Nice reference to “Macomber,” btw. Interesting that this finding of self through exposure to death is a theme throughout Hemingway – as it seems to be with many Xers. And of course we know Papa offed himself. Maybe it is about dealing with primitive urges. Maybe Groh saw himself as “too safe” and felt he had to “prove” himself.

Seems a helluva stupid way to do so, though….

So you’re basically asking “are these vacuous rejects serving as our bellwethers or are they simply those who exist only to provide examples to others of what not to do?” I think for the majority, they’re the latter. But you’re right, as a culture we are moving closer to the precipice.

You bring up the whole “Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber” syndrome that these banal sort must be going through, but maybe it’s something else, too. There’s the old cliche about jocks beating up gays because secretly they have homosexual urges they can’t reconcile. Similarly, maybe these folks are suicidal (as I would argue Hemingway was). Some people lack the ability to injure themselves. When their lives have lost meaning, maybe they require someone else to pull the trigger. Mel Gibson’s character in Lethal Weapon strikes me as an early generation X figure for that sort of “go ahead and kill me, I’ve been trying to do it for ages, myself” persona.

They do that shark chumming thing in my area, and I think it’s irresponsible,and just plain crazy. Groh must have thought the sharks wouldn’t have bitten him as a matter of professional courtesy..

Jeff

The death of an Austrian lawyer who was diving unprotected with feeding tiger sharks raises questions about how our culture drives us to seek danger for sport or entertainment…….

They’re empty vessels when they enter the work force.

But work doesn’t always work. Extreme activities are a measure of how far people will go to find a purpose outside themselves to avoid looking within. Trite, but true.

With regard to your post.

There is something about getting out of your comfort zone – whether voluntarily or involuntarily. When I left a ’safe’ marital existence I went motorbike (speed) crazy for 6 months. I had always been the responsible, think of the children parent before then.

After I got it out of my system…I was Ms Suburbia Domesticity once again.

(Hey – there’s always room for one more metaphor in the mixer….)

I’m one of those annoying “rage against the dying of the light” kind of people when it comes to the really important stuff, and your analogy leaves just a tiny bit of room for that kind of thinking. After all, there’s a very, very small chance that the explosion won’t happen because someone clears away a ventilation shaft blockage before the big boom.

I have another friend, a Russian ex-military guy, who was an advisor in Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war and who has since been sent by his employers to establish media operations in places like Chechnya. His stories are arguably scarier than my other friend’s Vietnam stories.

I guess adrenaline addiction, if that’s what it is in their case, has the same kind of escalating effect that you find with certain street drugs. But what you’re describing is different, isn’t it? I guess I sometimes feel a twinge of the need for something extreme, living as I do in a society that packages and commodifies everything (I knew we’d passed an important milepost when I started seeing commercials for extreme toothpaste flavors). But damn – shark swimming?

I believe this is our collective canary in the coalmine….

All “good” reasons for people to take on extreme sports.

My personal take is that thrill-seeking on that level is clearly an indication of a life that sucks pondwater. See my post, below, on the emptiness of being born rich and of wealth, in general.

I think you said it all when you said he had a need to feel alive.