“I gotta feel alive even if it kills me.”
~ Drake “Light Up”, 2010
Today hundreds of men and women will board flights to return home to their mundane desk jobs after having completed an activity that is, no doubt, featured on the bucket lists of countless adventure-seekers throughout the globe. July 14th marked the final day of the Spain’s annual San Fermin Festival, which is best known for the bull run or encierro that proceeds through the streets of Pamplona at 8:00am each morning throughout the 8-day event. Over the past century 13 people have been killed during the running of the bulls and every year hundreds are injured, some severely.
So what would motivate these otherwise reasonable people to take part in such a dangerous and apparently aimless activity? I would hazard to guess that the vast majority of the bull-run’s participants fit into a specific social archetype that might offer some insight into what drives them. I think you’ll find that the vast majority are white males from privileged backgrounds. While there will certainly be a few exceptions, I’d be willing to bet that you won’t find any poor black or aboriginal men flying to Pamplona to try and outrun an 800lb bovine. And not just because they don’t have the financial means, but to put it plainly, this group doesn’t need to cross the Atlantic the experience the threat of existential peril.
This idea is hardly a novel one. Many people have observed that bull-runners, like BASE jumpers and skydivers, often use the thrill provided by these extreme activities to disrupt the life-draining monotony of their privileged, middle-class existence. But one group of people that needs to be added to this list is that of the so-called anarchists, who wreaked havoc on the streets of Toronto during last month’s G8/G20 protests. Like skydivers and bull-runners, this group of wannabe revolutionaries is disproportionately comprised of privileged white youth seeking adventure and life-affirmation.
The fact that these “activists” are free to decide the terms (i.e. where and when) upon which their confrontations with law enforcement take place is a testament to their privileged status. Furthermore, the ability to ponder and philosophize about these geopolitical issues in the abstract is a luxury that many people don’t have. In addition to the thrill and the prestige enjoyed by the protesters among their comrades, these acts of resistance offer a means of assuaging whatever empathetic guilt they may harbour as a result of there good fortune in life. By engaging in these demonstrations, the protestors are afforded an opportunity to momentarily forfeit a portion of their privilege and perhaps even transfer a sliver of social capital to the wretched souls who are most heavily impacted by the policies they’re fighting against, even if their causes are nebulously defined and watered down to the point where people have no clue what their protesting against half the time.
However, the hooligans that dominated the G8/G20 protests are not to be confused with the international activists who travel to the Occupied Palestinian Territories each year to stand in solidarity with Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators as they launch their peaceful protests against Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation. Many of the above criticism (vis-à-vis privilege and guilt management) also apply these solidarity activists. Moreover, there can sometimes be a voyeuristic aspect to these western youth travelling to the Middle East to observe an indigenous population being humiliated and subjugated. However, the primary difference between these activists and the G8/G20 protestors - and part of what makes the solidarity movement so noble - is the fact that these activists’ lives are truly in danger. Given the Israeli Defense Forces’ well-documented penchant for wantonly executing peaceful Palestinian and international protestors, one can only marvel at the courage of these young men and women1. In fact, since the start of the second intifada, the IDF has killed more international solidarity activists than the number of people that have died in the running of the bulls during the same period, to say nothing of the thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians that have also been killed.
In the case of both the solidarity activists and the anarchists, the benefits conferred to the protestors, whether it’s adventure, voyeurism, or a chance to allay ones guilt, shouldn’t take away from the virtue and importance of their deeds. This effect is explained by what I call the kindness paradox. If you peel back enough layers, all altruism can be found to perform some self-serving function, even if it’s just to produce that warm, fuzzy feeling we sometimes get when we do something nice. So if these people have found a way to get that feeling and fulfill their need for adventure while advancing a good cause at the same time, then more power to them. But I can’t say I’ll be joining them any time soon.
1It should be noted that this courage still pales in comparison to the courage and resilience displayed by the indigenous Palestinian population who’ve valiantly endured 43 years of a brutal occupation without the luxury of being able to return home to an industrialized state where they enjoy the full rights of citizens.
