Say mister, is that a real fire?
This question is, perhaps surprisingly, very common at living history events. When I first heard of the question I had a good laugh, it was, frankly, funny. How could it be anything else? Of course, it’s a real fire, anyone can see that. Sadly, the reaction from the living historians was a laugh and a comment about morons who can’t tell a fire from a hole in the ground.
But I’m convinced there is more to it than the words indicate. Why even suspect an artificial fire? Is this some sort of quest for validation of their observations? Are visitors simply convinced that everything in the display is artificial? Or is it something even more simple and universal? A mismatch between reality and one’s inner narrative.
Given the amount of attention given to quieting the inner voice, I suspect that all humans experience a personal monologue; I know I do. The little voice in our head expresses a contiguous narrative of our life experiences. However sometimes the voice gets confused. Confusion comes in a wide degree of levels culminating in cognitive dissonance; a mismatch between what is expected and what is observed. As I’m sure you have, I remember falling prey to this several times.
Once while visiting her beautifully restored Victorian home, a friend showed us her ‘new’ curtain nails. She and her husband had found them at a large antique sale and she was thrilled that they matched the set she owned.
Curtain nails are decorative works of art were made in the 19th century to attach a curtain retaining tie to the wall while in use; they give the curtains that lovely Victorian drape.
I was very taken with the intricate design and the glass covering. But I was unclear on how they could be driven into the wall without breaking the glass (the decorative portion unscrews from the nail for installation). Before I consciously formed the thought, I asked ‘What kind of plastic are they made from?” I instantly realized that I had asked another form of “is that a real fire?”
So, what does this have to do with experiencing the wild and being prepared?
Today, most First World people experience life predominantly digitally through television, movies, internet videos, and video games. On the weekend they might get outside, but all week they are in front of the video interface device of their choosing. This makes the majority of their experiences vicarious. All of these devices present, not reality, but carefully edited depictions, most designed to elicit a pre-scripted emotion from the viewer. Their response is planned and controlled. Often, the viewer doesn’t even realize their emotions are being manipulated. Regardless, their minds treat what they’re viewing in the same manner as objective reality.
When the viewer encounters a similar event in daily life, their brain draws upon memories from its pool of experiences, most gained from watching scripted videos, in the same manner as it accesses memories from actual experiences. This is what makes video simulators so valuable as training devices. However, when the script of the video fails to match life, a cognitive dissonance can result; a mismatch between reality and their personal narrative. The mind believes, based on the results of its ‘training,’ that a certain sequence of events should transpire and they aren’t happening.
The same thing happens when a repeated training meets real life. Martial artists practice moves repeatedly. It is fairly common for them to follow the intended action with an unintended post move action. For instance, this story of a Finnish police constable who after disarming a subject returned the gun to him; just as he had done over and over in practice. He followed his inner narrative even when the conditions of the world had changed. It worked out for him.
However, many times it doesn’t. Laurence Gonzales in his book Everyday Survival notes that about 20% of the deaths from falls into the Grand Canyon are associated with photographs. “Oh, you’re a bit too close, just take one more step back.” That, apparently, is the last thing some photographers say to their subjects right before they back off the Canyon’s edge. Both the photographer and the subject have built narratives over countless successful repetitions of posing and taking photographs. However, add one factor, the cliff, and the result is as fatal as it is unforeseen.
Of course, my readers would never do anything so silly as to back off a cliff without a contingency plan; right?
Yet every year, dozens of people succumb to mismatches between their personal narrative and reality. We all build narratives that define our actions in life, it seems to be an essential part of being human. However now, unlike in most of human history, the penalty for building a poor behavior model is reserved for large infractions. Most of the time it just doesn’t matter, we say or do the wrong thing and the worst penalty is embarrassment. We get away with behavior patterns that not long ago would have killed our ancestors.
These cognitive mismatches compromise an individual’s response by preventing or delaying action or even suggesting an inappropriate action.
Failing to act in the face of impending disaster is actually quite common. It can take the form of the freeze response of a deer in the headlights; one fails to move out of the way of the coming bus, train or avalanche. Or, more interestingly, the individual fails to connect their observations with real consequences. They’ve never seen an avalanche so have no idea how fast and how far it moves, so they just watch.
When Mt St. Helens erupted in 1981 many people went around the police barricades to get a closer look. When the mountain blew they, and hundreds of square miles of trees, were killed. They apparently failed to connect the ongoing volcanic activity with a threat to their personal survival. Having never seen a volcano before, they were not prepared to experience a deadly strike from 25 miles away.
In our local mountains, almost every year someone loses a family member while hunting, cutting Christmas trees, or naked spiritual questing (I guess that is a thing). Perhaps the lost person was tired, perhaps bored. In their personal narrative they were simply out for a walk and perceived no more danger than they would experience walking downtown. After all, they’ve been on many walks and nothing untoward has ever happened before. Their narrative has failed them.
To be dangerous it need not lead you off naked into the woods. It might just temporarily freeze your actions, resulting in a delayed response. Sometimes that is enough to put you in a situation from which it is impossible to escape.
Every time I fly on a commercial airliner I’m astounded by how many people ignore the safety briefing at the start of the flight. There is a reason why they always point out the oxygen masks, how they work, and issue a caution to each passenger to look after themselves first. At cruising altitudes in excess of 35,000’, depending on your physical condition, you may have 30 seconds to get that mask in place before you are unable to do so; ever. And in the case of a cabin fire you should count on less than 20 seconds to exit the aircraft; so it pays to know the location of the nearest exit door and how to get there. In these cases, delays are likely to be fatal.
Personal narratives can also result in inappropriate behaviors. A couple years back, a fire started in the home of an acquaintance. Apparently, he had exited his burning house but reentered it presumably after remembering something. His burned body was recovered after the fire. We can never be certain but it may be that he died from a terminal case of cognitive dissonance. How many times had he safely entered this home? We will never know why he chose to go back inside.
Since we can’t practice for every contingency, it’s reasonable to consider behavior patterns to mitigate these occurrences. We have to build into our everyday behaviors a mindset of questioning the narrative against reality. Japanese Buddhists suggest mindfulness as a cure. In The Unfettered Mind Takuan Soho encourages the development of No-Mind, the state of being in the present, not thinking of either the past or the future:
When this No-Mind has been well developed, the mind does not stop with one thing nor does it lack any one thing. It is like water overflowing and exists within itself. It appears appropriately when facing a time of need.
He suggests that pausing the internal narrative and evaluating the present as it unfolds allows the swiftest reactions. I’ll explore this in a future post.
Every time I enter the woods I consciously slow down and take a drink of water. I listen to the rhythm of the woods, check the weather, look for birds and tracks, and settle my mind. I do this from habit but the habit was built to cultivate awareness and energy conservation while in the woods. This pause also gives me the time to check my personal condition against the environment. Is my narrative still in alignment with reality? Why not? What’s changed since last time? What’s changing right now?
It’s vitally important to constantly question the assumptions you have built into your narrative. Practice questioning, slow down, take a drink of water. It will keep you grounded in reality; perhaps enough to reduce the number of times that you ask: “is that a real fire?” Or even prevent an unintentional communing with a steep drop.