I was reading an interesting piece on LSD, which makes a case for relegalizing it for some genuinely medical purposes, including treatment of alcoholism, PTSD, some forms of depression, and for enhancing creativity. I had not realized it, but Francis Crick–who has always said the double helix came to him in a dream–was actually tripping on acid. Apparently, a great many Silicon Valley zip code breakthroughs happened on acid.
Now, I’ve known my share of people who were permanently screwed up as a result of taking LSD. But I have also known some very normal, creative people who did it once or twice and found it very, very useful. Steve Jobs said it was one of the two or three experiences most influential with respect to who he became as a person. As the article says:
Most people enrolled in his study have reported that a single
psychedelic session substantially reduced their anxieties related to
death, while also qualifying as one of their most spiritual experiences.
Now, let’s talk about playgrounds.
That research centers once were permitted to explore the further
frontiers of consciousness seems surprising to those of us who came of
age when a strongly enforced psychedelic prohibition was the norm. They
seem not unlike the last generation of children’s playgrounds, mostly
eradicated during the ’90s, that were higher and riskier than today’s
soft-plastic labyrinths. (Interestingly, a growing number of child
psychologists now defend these playgrounds, saying they provided kids
with both thrills and profound life lessons that simply can’t be had
close to the ground.)
I see people from time to time ask “what freedoms have we lost?” Well, the freedom to determine our own level of risk, for one. In a nanny state, you breed depressed people because they lack the courage of freedom. You can’t handle freedom if you can’t handle deciding how to handle risk, how to make decisions in dynamic non-controlled environments. The less freedom people have, in conditions of safety, the less they value their freedom, and the more dependent and infantile they become.
Here is an interesting article from the New York Times:
“Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” said Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology
at Queen Maud University in Norway. “I think monkey bars and tall
slides are great. As playgrounds become more and more boring, these are
some of the few features that still can give children thrilling
experiences with heights and high speed.”
“Climbing equipment needs to be high enough, or else it will be too
boring in the long run,” Dr. Sandseter said. “Children approach thrills
and risks in a progressive manner, and very few children would try to
climb to the highest point for the first time they climb. The best thing
is to let children encounter these challenges from an early age, and
they will then progressively learn to master them through their play
over the years.”
Sometimes, of course, their mastery fails, and falls are the common form
of playground injury. But these rarely cause permanent damage, either
physically or emotionally. While some psychologists
— and many parents — have worried that a child who suffered a bad fall
would develop a fear of heights, studies have shown the opposite
pattern: A child who’s hurt in a fall before the age of 9 is less likely
as a teenager to have a fear of heights.
It has been my practice for some years to congratulate my kids whenever they skin their knees or fall down. I tell them periodically skinning their knees is their job as kids, and a sign they are doing their job properly. This is how you condition children for freedom and responsibility.
Finally, running shoes. I just finished listening to the well told story of a race in Mexico in Christopher MacDougall’s “Born to Run”. In it, he points out that padding in running shoes only came into being in the 1980’s, with Nike. Our great marathoners of the 1970’s wore almost no “protection”, but ran extremely well.
In a study done in Switzerland, there was found to be a very high correlation between the cost of running shoes and injury. The more expensive the shoes, the more injuries.
What they also found was that the more the padding, the HARDER the foot impact. What was theorized was that our nervous system instinctively wants to feel the stability of hard ground. If it encounters a soft surface, it pushes through, hitting with more force. If you take the padding away, it gets that sensation much more directly.
We need risk, and to the extent it is taken away, we suffer.
Why do the comfortable products of very safe suburban lives get so many tattoos and piercings? Why does so much music focus on pain? When people had objectively hard lives, no air conditioning, long hours, limited choices in food, they listened to happy, even sappy music. Now we have reversed.
Ponder all this.