Risk Your Life – Win Ten Million Dollars!

11 Comments so far

1. Vlasta Diamant 04.24.08 at 9:04 am

   There are different types of risks. If Werner Herzog did not have a good stomach, he may have died or seriously injured himself eating his shoe! If explorers didn’t have this need
   “to break out” + monetary incentives and hopes, America may not have been discovered or much later than it was. Since the space is our new frontier, I think, we, the Earthlings have an obligation to take care of it, not to pollute it as we did and are doing to the Earth. I think we should have an Ecco-Universe day. As we know, the debris is floating in the Universe already. So who wants to fly into the Universe, because they have been everywhere else here on Earth, let them, but go there responsibly, as ecco-tourists!

2. Vlasta Diamant 04.24.08 at 9:27 am

   Space-flight, Part 2

   Perhaps, there should be a list of people to be sent to outer space: people in public office or domain who are so weighted down by their egos, that the public and themselves would benefit from the experience of weightlessness, freedom from their egos. . . and perhaps a space in them would open up for the love and concerns of others!

3. Bill Fenwick 04.24.08 at 12:00 pm

   Peter,
   Far too little dialogue exist about societal inhibitions generated by hyper-risk averse attitudes. Everyone wishes to maximize safety but when one occurrence in a specific circumstance is perceived to pose some type of threat to safety far too many solution providers look to public policy makers to act and outlaw the circumstances believed to generate the risk without a careful analysis of the potential benefits (or solution) those circumstances provide in other contexts. I applaud your view that sane people should be permitted to assume risk solely to themselves, if they think the adventure is worth the toll.

   So much of what high tech provides today has a geneology where WWII was its grandfather and NASA was its father.

4. sandy 04.24.08 at 8:11 pm

   The question becomes for this society, other than potential lawsuits, why don’t we want people to “become determined and break through to the otherside”? Dr. D. it would be interesting to learn the factors in your environment and background which propels you to take such risks? Were you a risk taker from a young age? I’d really like to hear more. Thank you Valley Zen for bringing us this snapshot of an extremely important issue. Our society is dying from complacency.

5. Drue Kataoka 04.24.08 at 8:24 pm

   @ Sandra — This is an excellent question. What is in the soil of those young saplings that eventually reach for the stratosphere? How can we encourage young people to dare, to risk, to dream — so they cultivate that Zen spirit to “break through to the other side.”

   @ Vlasta — Great to point out that the spirit of discovery in today’s explorers is the same spirit in those fearless ones who came before them.

6. sandy 04.26.08 at 4:44 pm

   Drue, perhaps you can answer this question also. Look what you’ve done yourself at such a young age. I’m just thrilled when I see young people with such energy. By contrast, there are lots of people just hanging out everyday and throwing their life away. Trust me(56 years old) when I say: life is truly short. You can’t take any of this stuff with ya when you leave this planet; so you might as well enjoy the process. It’s about the process and not the end result. One of the greatest impediments, I think, is mindlessly sitting and watching tv, or having non-sensical discussions for hours on end on the phone. Socializing is fine, but one must have balance. And it’s equally important to associate yourself with those of “like mind”.

7. Drue Kataoka 04.26.08 at 7:51 pm

   @ Sandy

   Thanks for your thoughts. As an artist I have always been captivated by spaceflight. (BTW – I attended SpaceCamp in Huntsville Alabama as a kid. Later on a separate occasion, I had the opportunity meet and write about Space Shuttle Atlantis Crew STS-44 with Story Musgrave and Tom Hennen.)

   How do we encourage risk-taking in youth?
   How can cultivate a Zen spirit to “break through to the other side”?

   One of the major issues is that this kind of RISK has been purposefully confused with a different kind.

   The RISK of intellectual daring and irrepressible dreams has been replaced with the RISK of the quick adrenaline rush:

   –a girl bearing it all on an internet video or
   –a guy performing a home-made stunt hurting himself or others for internet video.

   Even the word RISK is used to negatively describe young people who are not performing or are lower-income. These youth are called “AT RISK.”

   If you are AT RISK, or taking RISKS for the right reasons, I believe that should be a good thing.

8. sandy 04.26.08 at 9:05 pm

   Whew!…never thought about it that way. Words are powerful. “At risk” youth (mmm…something to think about) I remember watching one of the Judge shows and the Judge sentenced a young “at risk” youth to spend a day with an entrepreneur who challenged him to learn how to start his own business as a car detailer. I’m not sure if you saw this show; but I wish you could have seen the face of this young man after he made his first 100.00. He decided to pay back the person he stole from and more importantly he learned that taking the real risks involved setting a goal and being willing to deal with the consequences of that action. This was much more rewarding than “ripping” someone off. Do you know if such programs exist in the valley for wayward youth? If you can find some programs which are teaching people how to create real value in society I’d be interested in that also. Another thing, for some children, especially so-called at risk children they are taught to seek security in “jobs” and or opportunities which are safe:for example, the traditional college degree. A standard college education is seen as the way to get ahead in life, and many of us know that is not the case. I think time is better spent in showing one how to be creative, finding their authentic self and learning to make lemons out of lemonade. What’s your thought on this?

9. Vlasta Diamant 04.27.08 at 6:43 am

   As an inveterate risk-taker, and a ‘lemonade maker’ since I came to this country, I agree with Sandy, that kids shouldn’t look up to education as a guarantee of a good job/living. I have taught art/masks in schools for “Youth at Risk”; as in any other school, kids who had a spark of creativity in them caught the flame! Art wasn’t a way out of the stultifying atmosphere of the institution, which was there to help them. The value of education should be looked at in a non-utilitarian, tangible way, but a spiritual one. An educated person looks at him/herself and the world differently, forms an independent, informed judgment (re:choosing/voting for a candidate) about events and people, i.e. all of this from a perspective. Education can give a person a perspective on themselves and the world, not as an implied quality, but a greater possibility. Education ennobles the spirit like an opera sound soaring above the prow on a stream amidst the Amazon jungle!

10. Singularity Summit – Enlightened Machines, plus an Exclusive Interview with Peter Diamandis 11.12.08 at 12:51 am

    [...] is The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself! (See our previous ValleyZen post on Peter Diamandis and X Prize. He gave a rousing presentation at the culmination of the conference. “Why do we explore space? [...]

11. john rankin 11.01.10 at 12:59 pm

    I always thinking about space flight but their is one problem I don’t have the cash for it but if I did it would be a dream come true

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