Radical Risk & Alex Honnold
At the top of his game and as a pillar of his craft, Alex’s accomplishment stands for the exact opposite of complicity toward this administration.
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Yesterday, I watched Alex Honnold complete his gnarliest feat to date, no-rope climbing the 1,667 foot Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan. After free-soloing El Capitan in the historic documentary Free Solo 8 years ago, he decided to take on the largest urban climb in history, live on Netflix1. He’s a true marvel of physical and mental fortitude and his irreverent lens on fear is a reminder of the obligation for courage, at a time when resistance is our most powerful weapon.
You might be shaking your head in angst and fear at the mere thought of someone doing such an “unnecessary” thing, I certainly did while watching. But Alex Honnold sees that instinct as a sign of society’s lack of risk comprehension. Climbing Taipei 101 was his longstanding objective and thus intensely necessary, despite the obstacles, and it’s one he approached with so much joy and optimism you could’ve told me he was going on a family camping trip.
When discussing his thought process before the attempt, he called upon a simple parallel: vehicular danger. Every time we step into a car, we are opting into risk of death or severe bodily harm, yet we hardly interrogate those costs before we get behind the wheel. Monotonous risks like these are infinitely more likely to materialize, especially because the activity is far more frequent. A highly preparatory endeavor like Alex’s might have high consequence, but it also comes with extensive pre-reckoning. After all, he scouted Taipei as a potential dream climb over 10 years ago and leveled up his training to meet that challenge ever since. Pre-conceived risk like this is highly underutilized. Comfort is cool. It’s steadily reassuring and tends to transmute into deeper and deeper levels of comfort seeking. The opposite is also true and it’s exactly what cycle carried Alex through the journey, with the intense calm required to complete something so unprecedented.
Watching the stream was a terrifying, conflicting experience, but remembering Alex’s optimistic sensibility about the whole thing made that easier to temper. He’s not concerned. He’s ready. He’s capable. But in a different case, these human instincts of trepidation can’t help but pierce through. It’s the feeling that overtakes me while watching ICE commit heinous, unconscionable murders in the streets of Minneapolis as I sit in my childhood home in Texas feeling useless. The rage pacing through me is aimless, until I remember my resources.
These sickening images coming out of Trump’s racist slaughtering troops impose a cognitive alignment of abilities and responsibility. On the same devices we watched Renee Good get shot 3 times and Alex Pretti get pummeled and shot even more while exercising their right to protect their neighbors, we have access to a network of organizers and points of action. Organization that is the difference between business as usual and imposed transformation.
Here’s just a few: Artists Against Apartheid, Party for Socialism & Liberation, Democratic Socialists of America, BLD PWR.
The fight doesn’t start or stop with organizing and coalition building, but pressure and collective power is built in the in-between and it’s sustained with the same resilient optimism that keeps the wheels turning after every fascist blow. Doing what we can with what we have grants us control where there is none and it’s everything our communities need in the here and now.
By the end, seeing Alex standing on the top of the summit, with his wife waiting euphorically below to meet him, I began to weep. I thought about what things humans can accomplish when motivated by ambition and restless agency and the sacrifice those things demand. The general protest in Minneapolis is another promising proof. With everything to lose, Thousands of people played hooky from their jobs to use their voice against an ongoing and boundless misuse of power. Solidarity is one of our strongest tools. If your head is turned the wrong way, it’s easy to think of anger as immobile. Remember your channels. Fight with the tools you have then seek more.
Netflix undoubtedly jumped to get their grubby hands on a project like this, and for all the distaste I hold for a great heap of their decision making, they did do their part to facilitate a safe climb and for that, I’ll back off today and appreciate the large-scale platform afforded to this inspirational hero.