they could be heroes...

Let me begin far away from my usual icy haunts on a night in 2012 when contrarian comedian Bill Burr took on the cult of Steve Jobs.“Nerd Jesus died in the last year!” Burr announces to his charity show audience, then procedding to demolish Jobs’s much-fêted legacy, replacing it with the story of a megalomanic bossy pants whose tech empire was built on the ingenuity of invisible technicians and the labour foreign sweat shops.

“I know, this is always uncomfortable," Burr falsely consoles, "I know, you bought into it.” The "it" he refers to is Apple's “Think Different” campaign, according to which “the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” Burr has a field day with these ads, which uses historical footage of famous artists, thinkers, politicians, and activists of the twentieth century, to associate Apple, and its frontman Jobs, with the idea of changing the world. “Jesus, Ghandi, Me!,” screams Burr, “Muhammed Ali, John Lennon, this guy!… New phone can’t fit the old charger, this is your hero!?”

What does Burr's raging humor have to do with mountains and ice? The physical structures themselves? Truth be told, not much. But it has everything to do with stories we tell about science and technology, and mountaineering. In the wake of his death, Steve Jobs was memorialized as a visionary who through entrepreneurial gumption turned his visions into realities; realities that changed the world (cue inspirational music). He was made a modern-day hero of science and tech. The scientific hero is more than just a smart person or someone who puts science and tech in service of a greater good; he is the distillation of things we value —perseverance, ambition— and the tremendous intellect of a genius who shapes his own destiny and the course of history. Anyone come to mind? Isaac Newton? Benjamin Franklin? Einstein? We lionize these men as ones who, driven by a fiery mania and a love of truth, saw deeper, conquered New Worlds of the mind, and changed everything.

Hero stories in science and tech share a few structural characteristics. They often subtract the people and structures supporting the hero, leaving him the sole shaper of his fate and the world. They tend to downplay unsavory aspects of the hero’s personal life. When we think of Einstein we don’t recall his less-than-stellar track record as a husband. And, nine times out of ten, the hero is male. It’s not that women can’t be heroes, but that the ways we talk about heroes fit awkwardly with common conceptions of "womanhood." Hero is a gendered noun that draws on particularly ideas about masculinity. Its feminine counterpart, heroine, is a derivitive; we don't speak of "heroinic" qualities; and subscribing heroic traits to a woman —or to men that don't fit its particular account of masculinity— doesn't always work out.

This is not to say that a woman can’t be heroic, or that there aren't female scientific role models. Just this month, geologist Robin Bell told Nature that as a graduate student she found little to relate to in the homosocial expeditions of glorified polar heroes like Scott, Admunsen and Shackleton, but during her time as professer she has observed changes in the demographics of polar science. It is now home to more women, and, importantly, ideals of the quintessential scientist are broadening to include women and non-white men.

She is correct, however, that the field sciences like geology have historically been particularly susceptible to hero worship. They are and were closely associated with practices of exploration, another likely place to find heroes. The explorer-scientist, in addition to seeing deeper, must also be stalwart, possessing courage and endurance to face the trials of the field or voyage. These values permeated the ideologies (by which I simply mean background systems of ideals that inspire and motivate) of many field sciences for a long time.

Hero status can be useful. British mountaineering naturalists of the nineteenth century were quickly cast in the role of heroes and used this role to their professional advantage.

One of the more heroic images of 19th-century climbing, Gustave Doré's "Ascent of the Matterhorn," from Edward Whymper's Scrambles Amongst the Alps.

John Tyndall, a physicist and science popularizer, who claimed the first ascent of the Weisshorn in 1861, wielded his mountaineering creds against fellow mountaineer-naturalist James David Forbes in public debates over the nature of glacial motion. Men like Tyndall and Forbes attained hero-like status by portraying their feats as manly struggles in which they pitted their bodies against wild nature. In the nineteenth century, this story could only be told about the male body, as the normal female was regarded as biologically incapable of such exertions. They leveraged this status to support their scientific authority; clearly a man who would go to such lengths for science must be an authority on such matters.

Tyndall and Forbes were heroes of both mind and mountain. Today, we typically separate these categories; casting one as an explorer of the intellect, the other a master of the body. Yet, the heroic mountain climber trope shares many characteristics with the scientific hero: masculinity, the ability to push boundaries, work harder, and commit completely to his craft. The true mountain climber, like the truly passionate scientist, is motivated only by a love of his calling. The French climber Maurice Herzog captured the essence of this idea in his description of the first ascent of Annapurna, a remote peak in the Himalaya first climbed by Herzog and his team in 1950. Climbing, he wrote, is an “acte grâtuit,” a free act, motivated solely by its own self-sustaining but ultimately inscrutable logic. Real climbers climb because they are driven to, not for any other reason; either you get it, or you don’t. You can hear echoes of this idea in portrayals of the objective scientist who pursues truth for the love of truth alone.

The mountaineer's heroism stems in part from his passion and his courage in exposed situations, but also from his irreverence, his rebellion against what are believed to be limits on the human capacity for verticality. The heroic history of mountaineering, like that of science, presumes a narrative of progress that is pushed forward with each new heroic act. The history of climbing as a succession of ever more audacious feats of physical mastery appears often in media portrayals of the sport. Take, for example, Tommy Caldwell’s and Kevin Jorgensen’s free ascent of the Dawn Wall in 2014.

The Dawn Wall on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park; photo credit: Jarek Tuszynski

Prior to the accompanying media frenzy, most people wouldn’t have known the Dawn Wall from the Great Wall, the Nose from their own schnoz, or free climbing from any other form of climbing (free climbing means they didn't use mechanical aids to move upward, but relied only on their own physical abilities). National Geographic Magazine opens an article on the pair:

To take climbing to the next level, you have to innovate, which is just what Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson did to complete one of the most significant ascents in climbing history. The achievement represents the realization of Caldwell’s vision to find a way to free climb the Dawn Wall—widely considered too steep and too difficult for free climbing.

Progress, innovation, realization of one man's vision, leaving a mark on history; all the elements are there. It is another chapter in mountaineering’s progressive history of heroic limit-pushing and, like other hero stories, it is inspirational and uplifting. Their achievement represented the values of determination, strength, athletic brotherhood, and American (let’s not forget where these boys are from) exceptionalism at a time when the news was flooded with gloomy economic forecasts, futile searches for Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501, and the Boko Haram massacres.

I am not a hero hater. Hero stories perform important functions. Heroes inspire, uplift, raise the clouds hanging over the grey landscapes of daily life; many of them did indeed accomplish extraordinary achievements. But these tales also glorify, and this glorification isn't innocent. Every story has its angle: newspapers and magazines want to sell their product; climbers and scientists alike these days need to secure funding. Stories of prodigious abilities and limit pushing sell. Whether or not Jobs, Einstein, Herzog, or Caldwell were or are heroes is less to the point than the questions: why focus on them? And what do gain or lose by narrating them thusly? Each was (and is) an individual, capable of great things, but also vulnerable to the whole range of follies and foibles characteristic of our species.

In the case of Jobs, should we really be surprised that the new phone doesn't fit the old charger?