Risking Death for Pleasure

"We are living in a virtual, confused, hyper-technological, postmodern world where we're all looking for real experiences."
Orin Starn, professor, Duke University, North Carolina

"You are 100 percent in the moment, hyper-aware of everything and focused on just that job and nothing else."
"It's addictive, that feeling of fear and the reward when you control your fear and land safe. And then you want to go up, like, right away and do it again."
"It's a way for people to burn away these worries about the world that occupy their mind."
"It gives you this rush and that rush makes you feel like you are alive and free and the happiness is that moment makes you think, 'Well, I don't mind if I don't have any more days of life because what I just did, it was so good, I could die right now'."
Carlos Pedro Briceno, 43, DeLand Florida

Hang Gliding

"Efforts to eliminate risk are an obsession in the Western World. We have to make playgrounds and public spaces perfectly safe and there's all this litigation around physical and mental injuries in relation to all kinds of activities."
"That sterile environment is frustrating and makes people crave stimulation and excitement."
Dr. Erik Monasterio, psychiatrist, University of Otago, New Zealand

Carlos Briceno is, if not addicted, then certainly strenuously inclined toward his passion, the sport of wingsuit proximity flying. He is so inclined to repeat the wonderfully pleasurable feeling that overcomes his senses that he is prepared to do that, and little else, making this leisure pursuit the purpose of his life. Assuredly the landscape he is drawn to is majestic and awe-inspiring; not just to view and to indulge in summitting impossible mountain heights but leaping off them.

And nor are other landscape prominences, natural or manmade ignored, cellphone towers would do as well, and the opportunity to glide close to geological massifs and cliffs, challenging and tempting fate adds to the emotions that pervade his senses; fear, ecstasy, triumph. You use the skills you have acquired, and you know that your fortitude, energy and fortune will dictate in the final analysis whether you will have the opportunity to repeat that triumph, or whether circumstances you can no longer control triumph.

You skirt danger and you deploy that parachute. Or not. All the same. The glory is experienced, and sometimes the penalty.

Delaware North, a company managing event concessions commissioned a market analysis that concluded extreme sport participation now demands a larger slice of the personal sport market than conventional types. By 2020, according to the company's forecast, extreme sports will present a challenge to professional and collegiate sports, rating as the most audience-enrapturing category of sports content. Video uploaded constantly to the Internet that leaves viewers agape is partially responsible.

The world's premier jumping, diving, surfing and climbing hotspots located in Switzerland, France, Norway, Australia, Nepal and Brazil have seen a notable increase in destination travel for a singular purpose. The question of why it is and who it is that is attracted to these extreme sports has puzzled psychologists wanting to categorize and group people into neat little challenge boxes. Theories include a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, psycho-pathology involvement, even chemical imbalances (as in low levels of neurotransmitter dopamine) to explain the irresistibility to some.

All of which may play a role in attracting people to extreme sports, but the picture still lacks completion. Research tends to suggest that extreme-sports enthusiasts come from various backgrounds, have diverse biological characteristics and personalities, so all together these variants and propensities may represent as good a sketch of the types that are draw to thrills and dangers as any. And then there are those analysts who feel cultural and sociological factors rate as additional motivators.

As for people like Carlos Pedro Briceno, driven to their sport, just as mountain climbers are driven to theirs, he found his inspiration by viewing YouTube videos of others experiencing first parachuting and then proximity flying. He was a star, alongside his friend Alexander Polli, 32, in a proximity flying (BASE jumping) film released in 2017. The year before that Mr. Polli died, clipping a tree during a proximity flight, following on the death of another base jumper who had crashed into a granite rock formation in Yosemite National Park the year before that.


Despite which, experts maintain that the guiding motivation of adventurous spirits is the wish to feel alive, not a desire to court death. They are committed to channelling their energies and their spirit into an experience that enlivens them, allows them to have experiences that can only be achieved by setting aside concerns for safety. And in so doing, and undergoing that incomparable experience and living to repeat it again and again they find purpose in their lives.


B.A.S.E. JUMPING
BASE jumping is without doubt an extreme sport which uses a parachute to jump from a fixed position. There are 4 categories of fixed object -
Building
Antenna (an uninhabited tower such as an aerial mast),
Span (a bridge, arch or dome),
Earth (a cliff or other natural formation)
- hence the name.