These people are not my heroes. They've done nothing but a feat of athleticism. What good does it do, ultimately? Can we not have any priorities?
--Letter to editor, New York Times
Caldwell and Jorgenson's climb of El Capitan's Dawn Wall has drawn gasps of admiration and hearty congratulations from around the world. It has also drawn the predictable negativism.
At this point, the New York Times alone has published 343 reader comments on the accomplishment, comments presenting all possible points of view in a generally more literate manner than comments found on, say, Yahoo News. I won't try to analyze the competing arguments.
Except to say that if "what good does it do?" is the decisive question, we toss away many of the more exciting moments of life, and sneer at many of our humanity's finest aspirational instincts -- our instincts as a species, if not necessarily those possessed by each individual.
Why fly to the Moon or to Mars? Why climb Everest? Why run a marathon, or a 10k? Why swim the Channel? Why sail solo from America to Tahiti?
Maybe the complaints are less about the activity itself than about the barrage of publicity given the climbers' success? "Let them have their fun, but why should anyone else be expected to applaud?"
As one NYT correspondent commented, a funny argument to hear coming from a people so totally focused at present on the NFL play-offs.
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