Recklessness
Recklessness describes a character trait that enables one to take extraordinary, extreme risks. It can be a pathologically exaggerated, irrational act that goes beyond what is rationally meaningful and useful. In a positive sense, however, it can also represent the willingness to cope with a highly dangerous task, such as extremely difficult assistance in an emergency situation. Recklessness is the extreme opposite of cowardice .
Word meaning
The compound recklessness is made up of the word parts “Toll” (<ahd / mhd tol , ags. Dol = simple-minded , presumptuous <got. Dwals = foolish , Greek tholeros = confused , crazy , insane ) and “boldness” (from ahd kuoni , mhd küene = daring , courageous ) together. The word “great” results in a combination of words that is intended to indicate an excess of what is regarded as normal, which originally had negative connotations. The standard work of the lexicographer Gerhard Wahrig lists a series of parallel slang idioms that show the figurative range of meanings today. They each label a phenomenon that lies outside of normality, such as: a daring (= crazy) deed, a great (= highly attractive) woman, a great (= very extraordinary) book, a great (= very personable) guy, a great (= exciting) party, a great (= unbearable) noise, a great (= excellent) idea, etc. The variety of meanings also characterizes the assessment of the recklessness of derogatory labels such as "totally crazy", "pathological", "unreasonable" via neutral labels such as " extraordinary ”,“ enormous ”,“ daring ”to admirable statements like“ great ”,“ fantastic ”,“ unbelievable ”,“ heroic ”,“ excellent ”. The linguistic form of expression chosen in each case indicates the different evaluations of actions associated with the daring.
motivation
The willingness to take daring actions arises from very different requirements, situations and motives: According to the psychoanalyst Michael Balint , it has an inherent basis, which he calls philobatic . The philobatist's temperament tends to act extremely risky. In contrast to his counter-type, the oknophile , his endeavors are aimed at success and the expectations of success are more pronounced than the fear of failure and its consequences. According to Balint, the actions of the philobatist are driven more by instinct than by reason. Like those of the opposite type, he classifies them as pathological. For the venture researcher Siegbert A. Warwitz , the choice of actions and their meaning are based on certain personal values in addition to the beneficial character traits. These can be guided to very different degrees by reflection and carried by a sense of responsibility, but can also only arise from a desire for validity and spontaneous arrogance, such as in so-called balconing . The sociologist Horst W. Opaschowski sees the tendency towards extreme tests of courage and extreme sports to be a “time phenomenon” and an indication of an increasingly boring youth in an over-secure society. Extreme athletes like Iris Hadbawnik openly confess their fascination with oversized risk and extreme sports because they enrich their lives.
Manifestations
Recklessness in leisure and sport
The social networks are today with their Internet penetration already teach children the way to deal with so-called selfie present in the self-portrait as a daredevil heroes: They posing in high-risk snapshots on the tracks in front of a oncoming train on a suspended bridge railing or at the edge of the The rocky slab of the Pulpit Rock in Norway sloping 604 meters vertically into the Lysefjord .
In aviation sports, so-called acro maneuvers have become established that demand the utmost from both the pilot and the aircraft, such as the so-called "tumbling" in paragliding acrobatics , in which the pilot does not just fly over the glider with a classic loop. Rather, after a corresponding build-up of energy, for example through high wingovers, the glider is thrown under the pilot. Body loads of up to 7.5 g were measured. In a record attempt, a total of 568 tumbling overturns were achieved after a helicopter jump from a height of 5800 meters.
Base jumping has developed from parachuting as an extreme variant , in which people jump from bridges, skyscrapers, towers or cliffs. Between 1981 and 2015, 253 people died as a result of such a so-called "object jump". In the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland, which is very popular with base jumpers, between 15,000 and 20,000 jumps are counted per season.
A special form of base jumping is flying with wing suits, so-called wingsuits . The object jumper usually does not carry a reserve parachute, as this could not have a saving effect in an emergency anyway. It is characteristic of the most extreme sports such as free climbing or wingsuit flying that they allow almost no mistakes and are heavily dependent on incalculable risks such as the nature of the rock, wind currents or weather.
The stratospheric jump of the Austrian extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner from a helium balloon on October 14, 2012 , in which he reached a speed of 1357.6 km / h from a height of 38,969 meters in a free fall of 36,402.6 meters and thereby in a pressure suit broke the sound barrier. In doing so, he lost control of his flight position for more than 40 seconds. Although the sponsors also put forward scientific arguments for the daring experiment, the main interest, especially of the actors, was likely to have been in achieving four planned sporting and aeronautical world records and a corresponding marketing effect.
Recklessness as a job
High wire acrobats , aerial acrobats , stuntmen or stunt women have made their willingness and ability to be daring their profession. The word stunt comes from English and means "particularly skillful or daring feat". In the entertainment industry, they meet a need of sensation-hungry audiences and, with their professionalism, relieve the potential risk of actors in action films. In order to increase the market value for sponsors and assert oneself against the competition, there is a tendency to increasingly daring feats:
Flying showmen, known as Barnstormer , traveled through the United States in their aerobatic double-deckers in the 1920s. They offered their viewers an eccentric aerial acrobatics that was more spectacular and no longer solely on the mere Wingwalking ( German wing walk ), moving the aircraft airfoil , limited. So was u. a. the transition from a moving car to an airplane or ship and the jump from airplane to airplane were demonstrated. Tennis was played on the wings. (see web link). Since these stunts often resulted in deaths, the American civil aviation authority was finally forced in 1936 to ban wing walking below 1500 ft . Since the wingwalkers were no longer recognizable above this height, the interest in this acrobatics initially died. But it lived with the modern air shows and sometimes devastating mass accidents such as the Ramstein air show on August 28, 1988, at which there were 70 deaths and almost a thousand injured.
Recklessness in War
The military leader Alexander of Macedonia dared to create the largest territorial power on earth at that time, the world empire of the Persian king Darius III , with an army of only 35,000 Macedonians and Greeks . to attack. Besides being a brilliant strategist, he also distinguished himself as a daring warrior who fought his way to the center of the Persian superiority in order to face his main adversary, the Persian king, personally. His flexible war tactics repeatedly contradicted current military doctrine and took the enemy by surprise. In the famous Battle of Issus (333 BC) he drove the enemy, who was three to four times superior in numbers, to flee with his strength of attack. The admiration for his military successes finally earned him the addition of "the great". Due to his u. a. The excesses described by the Roman philosophers such as Cicero or Seneca and historians such as Livius or Orosius , Alexander left posterity with an ambivalent character image to this day.
The Roman general Caesar was also aware ("iacta alea est" / "the die is cast") that when he dared to cross the border river Rubicon with his Roman army, he crossed a red line that unleashed a civil war and he according to the principle “All or Nothing” was putting his military career and life at risk. With his ambition to become sole ruler, he challenged the democratically minded senators of Rome, which he did with his assassination in 44 BC. Chr. Had to pay. The military and political successes made the name "Caesar" not only part of the titles of all subsequent Roman rulers, but also the namesake for the empires up to modern times and the desired rulership title for potentates all over the world ( emperor , tsar etc.) . However, according to modern genocide research, Caesar's fame remains burdened by the charge of genocide, after he, according to his own statements, died in 55 BC. 430,000 people of the leaderless Germanic tribes of the Usipeters and Tenkers , who had already surrendered, had brutally slaughtered.
In command companies in modern wars, which are associated with a high risk of death but promise great career leaps and high awards, volunteers and at the same time professionally trained elite soldiers are usually used. For their extreme readiness to fight and suffer, they must also have a high degree of self-control and intelligence. They are usually recruited from special military units such as the German Special Forces Command (KSK) or the British Special Air Service (SAS). In public they are often seen as elite fighters shrouded in secrecy
Recklessness in the spirit of science
The courage and willingness to take risks of extreme athletes are partly thanks to the significant progress made by mankind:
The entrepreneur and researcher Otto Lilienthal became a pioneer of flight with his groundbreaking flight tests with self-made flying machines. He proved that, contrary to the general belief at the time, humans can move in the air with suitable aircraft and learn and practice flying. However, he had to pay for his daring idea of human flight after many thousands of short gliding flights with an early accidental death on August 9, 1896. The inscription on his tombstone reflects his attitude towards life: sacrifices must be made .
In 1929, the German doctor Werner Forßmann set a milestone in cardiac surgery and medical history by personally guiding a catheter through the left arm vein into the atrium of his own heart in a highly dangerous self-experiment under local anesthesia and the assistance of a nurse checked a mirror held up behind a fluoroscopic screen himself. He thus became a pioneer of the method of cardiac catheterization practiced everywhere today . The self-experiment, regarded by his specialist colleagues as insane, was honored with the Nobel Prize in 1956 after the general recognition of its importance for medical progress .
Test pilots are particularly experienced and trained pilots who, with an extreme willingness to take risks, make themselves professionally available to test aircraft that are still in the research stage. The prototypes of new paragliders, hang-gliders or powered aircraft they have flown are brought into extreme situations in order to discover technical weaknesses and make them safer for general sport and aviation . The pilots constantly move in border areas where safety is not guaranteed. The astronaut Neil Armstrong successfully crowned his career as a test pilot with the mission to be the first person to step on the moon.
Recklessness to save life
Daring missions to save acutely endangered human life are undisputedly considered to be ethically particularly high-quality human achievements, because here the consideration for one's own life and one's own health is put aside in favor of those in need of help.
The British polar explorer Ernest Henry Shackleton gained worldwide fame and recognition for his superhuman rescue service in the Antarctic: after the failed expedition to the South Pole and the loss of his ship Endurance , in November 1915 he and his crew were far from any human contact, in the sea ice of the infinite continent caught, near certain death. However, he managed to reach the island of South Georgia with five selected companions in a tiny boat in a week-long journey through the storm-lashed South Atlantic and from there successfully organized the rescue of all 22 comrades left behind on Elephant Island .
With the so-called Operation Entebbe , a military liberation operation on the night of July 4, 1976 at Entebbe airport in Uganda , elite Israeli soldiers ended the week-long hijacking of an Air France passenger plane by Palestinian and German terrorists. The 105 aircraft occupants, most of them Israeli, were held hostage and had to face their murder by the terrorists. The difficult, highly risky operation was well prepared. Nevertheless, the ninety minute flash action was characterized by imponderables that hardly allowed for mistakes. The head of the command, three hostages, the six terrorists and twenty Ugandan soldiers were killed in the action. In the aftermath, the humanitarian operation was heavily criticized by various international lawyers under formal legal aspects. On the other hand, the preservation of politics from international complications in the event of the release of the detained serious criminals was welcomed. The magazine Der Spiegel summed it up: Because neither in domestic politics nor in front of the global public could the Germans, with their past, afford to bear joint responsibility for the murder of Jews again .
October 18, 1977 stood for the German government a similar decision in the international spotlight to: Since October 13, 1977 was a ( Boeing 737-200 of Lufthansa ) with 87 persons on board by four Palestinian terrorists on an odyssey through several countries to Mogadishu kidnapped in Somalia in order to ransom like-minded prisoners in Germany and Turkey. In the martyrdom, which lasted almost a week, the passengers and crew members were exposed to a risky landing due to a lack of fuel, the psychological torment of the constant threat to life and the physical torture of the machine heated up in the scorching heat of the equator. In an unprecedentedly precise, daring seven-minute nightly intervention, the hostages of the Landshut aircraft were finally freed by the special unit GSG 9 of the Federal Police without any losses of their own.
Ethical evaluation
In ancient Greece, recklessness was already understood by Aristotle , the teacher of Alexander the Great, as an excessive manifestation and classified as an extreme point of contrast to the equally extreme character peculiarity of cowardice . Probably also with a view to his pupil who was prepared to take military risks, he remarks in his state-political pamphlet The Political Things : " Bravery in connection with power leads to recklessness." "Manhood", "efficiency" translates. In his doctrine of mesotes (μεσότης, Greek middle ), above all in his work Nicomachean Ethics , it is presented in detail and ethically classified. According to Aristotle, the intellectual virtue of prudence (phronêsis) is responsible for judging measure . In the same work, however, Aristotle weakens his normative thesis insofar as he only assigns a certain "flawedness" to the extreme forms: "Because one of the extremes is more, the other less flawed." δ᾽ ἧττον •)
Standing in ancient and Christian tradition, the central figures of the heroic poetry of the High Middle Ages are already approaching the ideal of moderation (the mâze ), which courage and boldness only made sense within the framework of the knightly code of honor .
In today's public, there is no unanimous assessment of the foolhardy character. Due to the extensive media coverage of spectacular accidents, the daredevil is often seen as a headless daredevil who ignores the potential danger of his actions and is driven by a craving for recognition. The sociologist Horst W. Opaschowski believes he can see destructive moments in the steady increase and increase in high-risk sports, born out of a boredom with excessive socially induced securities. The adventure educator Ferdinand Bitz understands the phenomenon in a similar way as an unsatisfied need for tension, risk and adventure. Actions such as the filmed flying under a cable car by a military jet with dozens of deaths, self-photos of young people in risky exposed situations or the popular balconing in holiday resorts seem to confirm these assessments. The risk researcher Siegbert A. Warwitz points out, however, that the reprehensible forms of “playing with life”, which rightly meet with harsh rejection, are on the other hand spectacular actions to free hostages and heroic acts of rescue by children and the elderly collapsing burning houses, which not only require courage, but also recklessness because of the extreme danger. For their part, they are respected and highly admired. Warwitz explains the divergence between inhuman and humanitarian recklessness with the fact that the philobatic human character trait, unlike Balint, who classified it as pathological, as such defies ethical evaluation: a reckless act can cause damage, but also good cause. It can present itself as “useless doing”, but it can also produce high-quality services. He attributes this to the fact that recklessness is initially only an extraordinary, sensational, but value-neutral, purely formal characteristic that only becomes meaningful and accepted through a value orientation. The value-neutral, formal ability justifies and evaluates itself according to Warwitz only through its meaning. In his opinion, the extreme act, which goes beyond the normal and moderate, even gains in value if it not only occurs spontaneously and once, but also arises from a basic attitude to help, if it has systematically built up competencies and is ready to make possible sacrifices. In this respect, today's venture research does not question the Aristotelian doctrine of the “virtue of the middle” (Mesótes), but does relativize it. It states that in extreme situations, extreme character traits and actions can also be required and are accordingly to be ethically valued. In such situations, the old terms “heroism” and “admirable heroism” can still make sense for the actors. According to Warwitz, a hero is more than just a courageous person, even in the historical understanding of the term, as reflected in heroic poetry and the heroic sagas of the peoples. The positive assessment of recklessness is indicated early on in a sentence that the historian, poet and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) wrote in his 1521 History of Florence (“Istorie fiorentine”): “Where the need urges, then recklessness turns into cleverness. ”With this, Machiavelli follows the tradition of so-called Renaissance humanism .
Quotes
“Because one of the extremes is more, the other less flawed. (Τῶν γὰρ ἄκρων τὸ μέν ἐστιν ἁμαρτωλότερον τὸ δ᾽ ἧττον) "
"Whoever flees and fears everything and cannot withstand anywhere becomes a coward, but whoever fears nothing and attacks everything becomes foolhardy"
"Wherever need is urgent, recklessness turns into cleverness."
literature
- Michael Abrams: Birdmen, Batmen and Skyflyers: Wingsuits and the Pioneers Who Flew in Them, Fell in Them, and Perfected Them. Three Rivers Press, New York 2006, ISBN 1-4000-5492-3 .
- Michael Balint: Anxiety and Regression. 5th edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-608-95635-2 .
- Ferdinand Bitz: Adventure and Risk. On the psychology of staged danger. Edition Erlebnispädagogik, Lüneburg 2005, ISBN 3-89569-066-X .
- Renate Wahrig-Burfeind: Brockhaus. Truly. German dictionary. 9th, fully updated edition. Wissenmedia in Inmedia-ONE, Gütersloh / Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-577-07595-4 .
- Iris Hadbawnik: To the limit and beyond. Fascination with extreme sports . The workshop, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89533-765-9 .
- Richard P. Hallion: Test Pilots. Frontiersmen of Flight. Smithsonian Press, Washington DC 1988, ISBN 0-87474-549-7 .
- Eric Müller, Arnette Carson: Flight unlimited '95. Penrose Press, 1994, ISBN 0-620-18774-3 .
- Horst W. Opaschowski: Xtrem. The calculated madness. Extreme sport as a time phenomenon . Published by BAT Leisure Research Institute . Germa Press, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-924865-33-7 .
- Siegbert A. Warwitz : Search for meaning in risk. Life in growing rings. Explanatory models for cross-border behavior . 2nd, expanded edition. Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1620-1 .
- Siegbert A. Warwitz: From the sense of the car. Why people face dangerous challenges. In: DAV (Ed.): Berg 2006 . DAV, Munich / Innsbruck / Bozen 2006, ISBN 3-937530-10-X , pp. 96–111.
- Frank Worsley: Shackleton's Boat Journey. Pimlico, London 1999, ISBN 0-7126-6574-9 .
Web links
- Barnstormer playing tennis on the aircraft wing
- What drives the devil . - Interview with Deutschlandradio, October 12, 2012
Individual evidence
- ^ Renate Wahrig-Burfeind: Brockhaus. Truly. German dictionary. 9th, fully updated edition. 2011, column 3575/76.
- ↑ Michael Balint: Anxiety and Regression . 5th edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1999.
- ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: From the sense of the car. Why people face dangerous challenges. In: DAV (Ed.): Berg 2006 . Munich / Innsbruck / Bozen 2006, pp. 96–111.
- ↑ The dangerous holiday trend "balconing". In: RP Online. June 23, 2013.
- ↑ Horst W. Opaschowski: Xtreme. The calculated madness. Extreme sport as a time phenomenon . Germa-Press Verlag, 2000.
- ↑ Iris Hadbawnik: To the Limit and Beyond. Fascination with extreme sports . Verlag die Werkstatt, 2011.
- ↑ A good description of various acro maneuvers
- ↑ 568 Rolls - Official press release
- ↑ BASE Fatality List , list of people killed in object jump (English)
- ↑ Visit to the pilgrimage site of a sport in which only mistakes are forbidden , Tages-Anzeiger Online / Newsnet, May 29, 2012.
- ^ Karl Julius Beloch: Greek History. 2nd Edition. Volume 3.2, p. 361; see. also Siegfried Lauffer: Alexander the Great. 4th edition. Munich 2004, p. 77.
- ^ Suetonius: Divus Iulius. 32 f.
- ↑ Caesar: De bello Gallico 4, 15
- ↑ Ben Kiernan: Blood and soil. A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press, 2007, p. 58.
- ↑ faz.net , accessed on August 29, 2008.
- ↑ Werner Forßmann: Self-experiment. Memories of a surgeon . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, pp. 102-104.
- ↑ Richard P. Hallion: Test Pilots. Frontiersmen of Flight. Smithsonian Press, Washington DC 1988.
- ^ Frank Worsley: Shackleton's Boat Journey. Pimlico publisher, London 1999.
- ↑ Hans Schueler: Terror without end. The Entebbe campaign was a godsend. In: The time. July 9, 1976, p. 1.
- ↑ Hard means massacre . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1976, p. 21-25 ( online ).
- ↑ Politics ( Greek Πολιτικά )
- ↑ Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics . Translated by Franz Dirlmeier. Reclam, Stuttgart 2004.
- ↑ Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics II, chap. 9, 34, 1109a
- ↑ Horst W. Opaschowski: Xtreme. The calculated madness. Extreme sport as a time phenomenon . Germa-Press Verlag, 2000.
- ^ Ferdinand Bitz: Adventure and Risk. On the psychology of staged danger. Lueneburg 2005.
- ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Risk must want the essential. In: Ders .: Search for meaning in risk. Life in growing rings. Explanatory models for cross-border behavior . 2nd, expanded edition. Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, pp. 296–311.
- ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: The theory of life in growing rings. In: Ders .: Search for meaning in risk. Life in growing rings. Explanatory models for cross-border behavior . 2nd, expanded edition. Verlag Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, pp. 260–295.
- ^ Wolfgang Kersting: Niccolò Machiavelli. 3. Edition. Beck, Munich 2006.