I rarely take the time to watch TV news (with the exception of recording and watching the major stories of the ‘evening news’), but tonight was an exception. I had the privilege - well, at least the occasion - to watch John Stossel on ABC’s 20/20, with some family members who are visiting from out of town.

Stossel did a segment on risk-taking and the American fascination with danger, as part of his larger “Worry in America” series. During this segment he interviewed a psychologist who defended risk-taking and argued that experiencing danger was vital to our humanity. The segment argued that, from being a soldier in combat to base-jumping and various extreme sports, from firefighting to the exploits of “Jack Ass,” it’s all part of the human need to take risks in order to feel alive, complete, etc. It puts us in touch with a part of ourselves and even reality that we otherwise couldn’t experience. (Foucault called these “limit experiences,” but that didn’t make it onto 20/20.) After showing a clip of a man jumping from the Eiffel Tower with a parachute, they showed pictures of the Revolutionary War, noting that this was all part of a great American tradition of taking risks and feeling good about it. It’s the American way of life, they argued.

Does anyone else think this is ridiculous? Does anyone notice a slight difference between taking risks because one believes he is fighting for the freedom of his people — or any principle that transcends oneself — on the one hand, and just taking risks for the hell of it — to feel better about myself — on the other? Even if you wish we were still English colonies, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that the soldiers in the Revolutionary War were fighting simply in order to experience an adrenaline rush. I guess in a sensate culture, which is motivated by the need for more and more cycles of extreme elation and relaxed comfort, we are prone to interpret the aims and actions of previous eras in the same vein.

If we do this consistently, we’ll make history as boring and void of meaning as our own lives often are — the very condition that often leads to the extreme risk-taking and search for the adrenaline rush. I’m not an antiquarian longing for the good ‘ole days, but I’d prefer to have a past that can speak a word of hope and passion and self-transcending belief into the solipsism of the present.

(Another great irony in all this is that, as I understand it, one of Stossel’s aims in the show is to argue that Americans are too afraid, too worried about too many of the wrong things. This is true, of course. But it’s true because we’re afraid of those things that can interrupt our cycles of elation and comfort. Giving people statisical information about why they shouldn’t fear the things they are fearing will only shift the earthly object feared (e.g. a bike accident instead of a terrorist). It’s a problem with the soul. People worry too much because they are too turned in upon themselves, not because they don’t have good enough information about what dangers to avoid. As long our hopes are set on a pain free, adrenaline-infused existence, we’ll have morbid fear of anything that can take that away.)