Farley is more optimistic. Even civilized society, he says, holds ample opportunity for constructive risk taking: investing in a high-stakes business venture, running for political office, taking an unpopular social stand. Farley argues that history's most crucial events are shaped by Big T behavior and Big T individuals, from Boris Yeltsin to Martin Luther King, Jr. The act of emigration, he says, is an intrinsically risky endeavor that selects individuals who are high in sensation seeking. Consequently, countries built upon immigrant population--America, Canada, Australia--probably have an above-aver-age level of risk takers. He warns that much of the current effort to minimize risk and. risk taking itself runs the risk of eliminating "a large part of what made this country great in the first place."
For all the societal aspects of this peculiar trait, the ultimate benefits may continue to be purely personal. "There's a freshness to the [climbing; experience that clears away the weariness of routine and the complexity of social norms," says Seattle climber Bill Pilling. "Climbing brings you back to a primal place, where values are being created and transformed."
