New Questions

[Dr. Drum]

New current events thread, inspired in the immediate instance by Richard Cohen, I Love Music and the new Paul Simon. The idea for this one is to initiate conversations with questions rather than the grand pronouncements we're all more accustomed to on CE. These can be of a general, sort of "throw this thing out there" nature or more directed queries; whatever is on your mind. Pretty straightforward. Not sure how well this will work but I thought I'd give it a shot.

My first question is probably more relevant to Americans of a broadly liberal or independent persuasion (though you're welcome and encouraged to weigh in no matter where you fall on the political spectrum). Something I've wondered about more than a few times in the last few years, but specifically thinking about Richard Cohen's recent Digital Lynch Mob column in the Washington Post: Do you feel angry when you think about the current state of your country and/or the direction it's headed in? To what degree and if so, how do you channel this? Has it motivated you to do anything specific about it?

[shin]

Are you saying that our anger would stem from Cohen's treatment or the sort of columns he writes that prompted such a response?

[Dr. Drum]

I was actually thinking more of the general situation down there and just using this situation as an illustration. Probably should should have been more general in my question. Guess what I'm really wondering is what is the temperature there right now?

[kmc]

Will try to pass on an answer in the next couple of hours, Drum. So busy now.

[strat-0]

Ditto that. Saw this yesterday and it's a good topic.

[Thorngrub]

In the news: The new Paul Simon album features "sonic landscapes" by none other than Brian Eno.

FYI

[Thorngrub]

(I almost bought it yesterday: instead, I got the new Chili Peppers. It is awesome)

[maarts]

Doc, I'm not sure if this board is good for debating issues like these, but since I'd like to ask the question whether the main person in this story was right or wrong, this board is just about perfect to do this.

One of the most impressive books I've read was Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. It was the story of a mountain expedition gone horribly wrong and where several members of the climbing party perished on the side of Mount Everest.

Last week a New Zealander became the first double leg-amputee climber to reach the top of Mount Everest. Every reason to cheer his determination and give him respect, if it wasn't for the fact that he passed distressed British climber David Sharp on his way to the top- the Brit died later of a lack of oxygen.
This is a transcript from an item about Inglis by a New Zealand press agency.

New Zealand Correspondent Peter Lewis reports.

PETER LEWIS: Mark Inglis has had an obsession with climbing Everest since he was a kid, a dream that seemed to be well out of reach after he lost his lower legs to frostbite in a climbing accident on Mount Cook 24 years ago.

Slowly, he found his feet again. Prosthetic steel and carbon fibre limbs, as strong as his iron will, to go where no double amputee had gone before.

MARK INGLIS: Crikey, it's not just the roof of the world. That's neither here not there. It's actually going up the exit cracks, it's doing all the hard stuff. It's hard, it's just so hard and I now know why you are allowed to scite about doing it. It is just so hard, just to get there. And I can understand, I think I can understand people who just, who really do push it, push it, push it, and then don't get home.

PETER LEWIS: People like 34-year old British Engineer, David Sharp, who shared Inglis' Everest obsession. He'd tried and failed in 2003 and 2004, and had come back again this year.

Sharp was climbing alone and from all accounts last Monday, he made it to the summit. But on the way down ran out of oxygen.

Mark Inglis told television New Zealand his group passes the stricken climber on their final push to the top.

MARK INGLIS: And it was like, what do we do? You know, we couldn't do anything. That's, he had no oxygen, he had no proper gloves, things like that. I believe I've copped a wee bit of…

REPORTER: Well, yes. Someone has suggested that maybe you should have stopped the ascent and rescued this man.

MARK INGLIS: Absolutely. Yep. It's a very fair point. Trouble is at 8,500 metres it's extremely difficult to keep yourself alive, let alone keeping anyone else alive. On that morning over 40 people went past this young Briton. I was one of the first, radioed, and Russ said, look mate, you can't do anything. You know, he's been there X number of hours, been there without oxygen, you know, he's effectively dead.

So, we carried on, of those 40 people that went past this young Briton, no-one helped him except for people from our expedition.

PETER LEWIS: Mark Inglis, who is now on his way home to New Zealand says the whole experience has had a profound, somewhat humbling effect on him.

MARK INGLIS: You don't conquer Everest. You know, you get a window where you've got the privilege to be able to stand on the top. For me it was stretching the limits of a double amputee. You know, it's…there it is.

For me personally, I believed I could stand on the summit of Everest. A couple of us came off the mountain, we looked back, you can look up and it's just like looking up at Cook, and you go, ah, done that, no-one can ever take that away from you.

But here it's even more. It's like you've done something so huge in mountaineering that you can relax. It's… my next Everest won't be another mountain.

MARK COLVIN: Mark Inglis, the first double amputee to reach the top of Mt Everest ending Peter Lewis' report. I don't know about you, but I find the thought of a man dying on the mountain while 40 others mountaineers somehow manage to find reasons not to help him down, fairly haunting.

[maarts]

This in today's papers, the response from legendary climber Sir Edmund Hilary, the firt man to conquer the top of Mount Everest:

Attitude to Everest 'horrifying'

Sir Edmund Hillary has questioned the actions of New Zealand climber Mark Inglis, who left another climber to die on his way to conquering Mt Everest.

Inglis, a double-amputee, was one of many climbers who passed British climber David Sharp, 34, on his way to the top of the world's highest mountain a week ago. Sharp, a 34-year-old engineer, later died on the mountain.

"In our expedition there was never any likelihood whatsoever if one member of the party was incapacitated that we would just leave him to die," Hillary, the first climber to conquer Everest, told the Otago Daily Times.

On Monday night, Inglis said his own party was the only one to stop and help Sharp from among a stream of about 40 climbers who walked on past Sharp as he lay in Everest's "death zone" above 8000m. Other climbers reported seeing Sharp trying to work on his oxygen system, but Inglis said the Briton had no oxygen. Sharp had climbed alone, after two previous unsuccessful attempts in 2003 and 2004, without oxygen. Both times he was forced to turn back at 8470m. This time, he apparently reached the summit with the help of two four litre oxygen bottles from a trekking company.

Hillary said that on his expedition there was no way you would leave a man under a rock to die and that people had completely lost sight of what was important.
"There have been a number of occasions when people have been neglected and left to die and I don't regard this as a correct philosophy," he said.

He said the difficulties posed by operating at high altitude were not an excuse. "I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mt Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top," he said. "They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die."

A scientist who has studied oxygen use on Mt Everest told the Otago Daily Times he believed the life of the British climber could have been saved. University of Otago scientist and mountaineer Dr Phil Ainslie said it might have been possible to revive the climber with bottled oxygen and even get him down to safety. However, he said that one chance of making the summit would have dictated events. Many on the mountain had paid upwards of $US75,000 ($A99,000) and were effectively being dragged up by guides, he said.

So the question goes: would you have saved James Sharp even though by the tale of Inglis he was close to death anyway and he would be a drain on your own limited oxygen supply?

Regardless of everything, the thought of the dying climber watching helplessly 40 climbers pass by and leaving him to die is haunting.

[sisyphus]

This is a great thread....questions are so much more open for dialogue/discussion... into thin air is the one john k. book i have not gotten around to reading yet, but i hope to soon.

[kmc]

Finally, Drum, let's get to work:

As a liberal who spent the first half of his life in Brazil, I have very mixed feelings about the state of this country, if only because I understand that America is populated by the center-right and because of that, truly liberal ideas only take hold in history book defining moments (like the New Deal, or the Scopes Monkey Trial). Liberals fight an uphill battle in America.

That said, I am not ashamed or disheartened by America because I don't believe in America as the freest or greatest or happiest country on earth. I could see myself disappointed if I grew up here believing that things were generally great for the majority of the population here, and that things were always trending toward fairness for the disenfranchised. I don't believe this is the case. As such, I tend to view the current administration as the status quo. Of course Bush is President. Of course we're at war with Iraq. Of course Social Security is in danger, and Exxon is turning massive profits, and No Child Left Behind is bust, and gays are second class citizens, and few real measurable results exist to justify the expenses of this administration. Of course! If people wanted progressive thinking, they would elect progressive people.

The only real disappointment is the disappointment at the acceptance of torture and mistreatment of fellow human beings.

[chrisfan]

maarts said:

So the question goes: would you have saved James Sharp even though by the tale of Inglis he was close to death anyway and he would be a drain on your own limited oxygen supply?

Regardless of everything, the thought of the dying climber watching helplessly 40 climbers pass by and leaving him to die is haunting.

That is a great moral delimma Maarts. I'll readily admit that I do not understand enough about mountain climbing, let alone climbing Everest, to fully understand the issues at hand. (the extent of my Everest climbing knowledge is a single viewing of an Everest I-Max film).

I think the essential question is whether or not more lives would have been put into danger in saving him. To me, that is more important than whether or not Sharp was properly equipped for safety in the climb. It's also more important than whether or not Sharp would have survived if helped, or was beyond help. Even if he was guaranteed to die even if helped, it just is not showing any respect to human dignity to leave a dead body out in the middle of nowhere, without the proper respect being showed. To me, it all comes down to a question of whether more men would have died in the attempt to help him.

I agree with you that the thought of watching people pass you by leaving you to die is too haunting to really entertain in the mind.

[strat-0]

That is quite a story. I'm no expert on mountain climbing either, but as I understand it, climbing parties strive to bring home even their dead, if possible. But he wasn't in a party. I think one of the cardinal rules is that you never climb alone. That's nuts. Also, above a certain altitude, all are in danger, and you are on borrowed time and trusting a lot to luck. The altitude, the lack of air, the cold, the sneaky bad weather, the terrain - might as well be on Olympus Mons on Mars. It holds no allure for me, personally.

[strat-0]

I just read Cohen's article, and I think he makes a very good point. I can sort of relate to where he's coming from, too.

Do I feel angry when I think about the current state of my country and/or the direction it's headed in? Absolutely. And I empathize with Cohen, because sometimes I take some guff for not being vehement enough in voicing my opposition to the administration, and ergo, I'm perceived as being in support of it. So, I'll take this opportunity to state again that a) I have never voted for GWB and I'm proud of that (and I did vote), and b) that I loudly opposed getting into this Iraq mess before it ever started. I'm proud of that, too, but I sincerely wish I had been wrong.

How do I channel it and what do I do about it specifically? Well, I do vote, and I express myself to friends, family, associates, and I post on some goofy online forum, but frankly, I've taken the sentiments of the Serenity Prayer to heart and sort of withdrawn from worrying too much about politics. It can be unhealthy. I still love the ideals of my country; indeed, I love my country, but I don't subscribe to the "My country, right or wrong" philosophy at all. I believe in the ideals of individual freedom and personal liberty and responsibility, among other things, and I hold those values very dear. I see them threatened (and it bothers me), but not severely endangered yet. I see terrible mistakes in policy being made on both sides of the political ideology every day, but I can't do much about it - not even on the local level. Wish I could. So I try to keep a clear conscience, stay informed, and do what I feel is right. That's all I can do.

[limitdeditionlayla]

So the question goes: would you have saved James Sharp even though by the tale of Inglis he was close to death anyway and he would be a drain on your own limited oxygen supply?

Cheers for posting that article, Maarts.

Sean (my boyfriend) is an obsessive climber - is actually planning to climb Everest within the next year, to which I am opposed, the one bone of contention in our relationship, and every debate on it invariably ends with him telling me each time I go for a surf I am "asking" for a shark to bite me in half, while I pull out my world facts & figures book & quote the various stats on Everest, height, number of deaths etc. Grrr.

Strat is right, you dont' climb alone. If you do, most climbers will suggest you deserve what you get, in event of injury or death. And yeah, from various stories I've heard & what Sean tells me, their own little code of honour compels them to stop at nothing to bring hurt members of the team back to safety or even bodies back home.

Keep in mind though, teams of climbers tend to be good mates. They're not generally carting back a stranger's body, so the personal investment is quite high.

I think the crux of it is the extent of risk to anyone else in the team. We've all seen Touching the Void? (If not, I strongly recommend). There comes a point -in all such situations, I'd say - where your own drive for survival becomes the one priority for you, and sometimes at the expense of others. Thats just how we're programmed. Helping others in times of duress is something we generally feel we must do, but at the risk of causing our own death or grievous harm? No way Jose.

So yeah...that story is particularly sad. There is indeed an overwhelming desire to finish the Everest climb, but maybe we could give the climbers a little benefit of doubt, that perhaps they thought he was already dead as they passed by?