Exaggerated perceptions of control can open people up to taking risks. If your purpose in life is to avoid danger at all costs, such exposure to risk is bad. But a completely risk-avoidant existence also forecloses opportunity. In many cases, when it comes to bouncing forward after a trauma and doing great things, it may take a bit of overconfidence and a slightly skewed perception of risk. Many of us are “smart” and never attempt half the crazy things supersurvivors do. But we also never achieve their elevated successes, even though we might be perfectly capable of it.
In April of 2009, Casey was struck by another big idea. Along with the stunt work, he had established his own company, AMP’D Gear, to promote the ingenuity of amputees in sports. Looking to take this business concept to the next level, he pitched a concept for a documentary television show in which he created prostheses for all kinds of extreme sports. Intrigued, a producer asked to see a tape. Casey made a short reel, and eight months later the pilot for Bionic Builders aired. “Only once, and that’s it,” Casey says. “We were late turning in episodes, we were over budget, and our executive producer left. The show was canceled.” As Marshal Goldsmith discovered, however, the most successful people try many different things. Casey is now pitching a repackaged version of the show for Spike TV. It’s a smarter show, he says, “more motivational and transformative.” Casey knows full well that the first attempt was a failure, but he also is absolutely sure the next one will succeed.
This may seem delusional—until, like so many things in Casey’s life, overconfidence and persistence make it happen.
4
The World We Thought We Knew
It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world.
—SØREN KIERKEGAARD
Mother’s Day 2003 would be forever fixed in Paul Rieckhoff’s memory as the day he became a killer for a cause he didn’t understand. The U.S. Army First Brigade, Third Infantry, was stationed in Baghdad’s converted Medical City complex. At six feet two with a low, intense stare and a head shaven smooth as a boulder, Paul, the platoon’s leader, was an imposing guy. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would be stupid enough to pick a fight with him, even a gunfight. When the enemy started shelling, Paul sprang into action. After running to the front of the building and taking cover behind a retaining wall, he angled his rifle and squinted through the scope, scanning the city. From this high vantage point, he could see past downtown buildings all the way to the banks of the Tigris River. There was movement under the base of a small bridge two hundred meters away. He took two quick breaths, aimed, and squeezed his trigger.
Paul’s grandfather fought in World War II, and his father served in Vietnam. Given this proud history, Paul had good reasons to enlist. But by the time he found himself in Iraq, these reasons seemed a faded memory. Four years earlier, he had just graduated from Amherst College with six-figure job offers in hand. But he turned them all down to join the army. He carried an unusually strong burden of privilege. His gratitude for a life of prosperity fueled a strong desire to give back to the country that had given him so much.
“People didn’t think much about patriotism, especially not in the liberal collegiate well-heeled part of Western Massachusetts where I went to college,” he writes in his 2006 memoir, Chasing Ghosts. “But that’s why I wanted to join. I loved my country. I had been afforded tremendous opportunities in this country and I wanted to give something back.” Since childhood, Paul had believed in the ideal of the noble warrior fighting bravely for what was good and right. He also fantasized about being the ultimate American badass. So in January of 1999 he arrived at Fort McClellan, Alabama, for basic training. Shortly thereafter, he enrolled in Officer Candidate School, got his commission, and joined the infantry. It was peacetime, but when bad people did bad things in the world, Paul hungered to be part of the solution. It’s what he calls his social accountability to a nation that had given him and his family so much. It was his duty to serve his country and the just principles for which he was sure it stood. So, in the spring of 2003, Paul didn’t hesitate when he was tapped to become part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the mission to strip an “Axis of Evil” nation of its weapons of mass destruction and make the world safer.
His platoon was stationed in Kuwait. Paul was awaiting orders to deploy to Baghdad when President George W. Bush announced aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, beneath a banner reading “Mission Accomplished,” that Operation Iraqi Freedom had been a success. Apparently the war was over, and Paul had missed it.
So it seemed strange to him that, the very same day, his platoon was ordered to Baghdad. Paul expected to arrive in a newly liberated country, one whose grateful citizens would greet his platoon with open arms, as the architects of Operation Iraqi Freedom had promised. What he found, however, was a disorganized American military facing a very dangerous situation.
There were too few vehicles, not enough ammunition, and a shortage of medical supplies. Many days, Paul’s platoon patrolled the streets of Baghdad in one hundred and twenty-degree heat with only a single bottle of water per soldier. His men lacked crucial body armor, which left them to dodge bullets in Vietnam-era flak vests. The constant shootings, killings, kidnappings, and robberies took their toll. Paul’s platoon waited endlessly for U.S. and allied troops to fill the city and for military police to line the streets, for foreign aid to arrive, for interpreters to show up, and for supply lines to get fixed. From Paul’s perspective, the army had done too little to prepare him and his fellow soldiers for the realities on the ground, and a lack of government planning had set them up for failure.
The mission had clearly not been accomplished. In fact, it was only getting started.
Enduring the Mother’s Day battle at the Tigris River and the dozens of other attacks he survived left Paul’s world shaken. Upon returning home, he was diagnosed with the nightmares and flashbacks so common to posttraumatic stress disorder. Though these acute psychological wounds would heal with time, a more long-lasting one would remain: Paul began to question his most precious beliefs about duty, justice, and the values for which his country stood. “What they didn’t tell you was just how hard it is to come back,” he says.
In previous chapters, we examine the importance of realistic thinking to finding real hope. In this chapter, we look beyond hope and to a certain type of faith, the kind we experience every day in our lives. When we think of faith, spiritual and religious convictions naturally come to mind. We know it takes faith to believe in God, but we sometimes forget how much faith it takes to believe in truth, justice, goodness, and even love. Trauma challenges this faith, and in some cases shatters it into tiny pieces. We are left groping around on the floor for the ruins of our once-unquestioned beliefs.
Even the most jaded people carry around some pretty benevolent assumptions about the way the world works. Research by University of Massachusetts psychology professor Ronnie Janoff-Bulman suggests that, on some unspoken level, most people believe three important assumptions: that the world is basically good, that good things happen to good people, and that they, fortunately, are good people. Collectively, she refers to these three beliefs as our assumptive worldview.
It’s easy to doubt Janoff-Bulman’s theory. “After all,” many people respond, “I read the newspaper. I know the world isn’t always a good place.” True, on a conscious level, at least. Nonetheless, Janoff-Bulman makes the case that most of us act as though these assumptions were true even if we superficially deny them. And actions speak louder than words.
Despite what we see in the newspaper about crimes, victimizations, assaults, and even terrorist attacks, we leave our houses every day without fear. We jump in large steel deathtraps and hurtle ourselves down hard cement highways surrounded by other steel deathtraps. We even speed. In many cities, motorcycles with exposed and often unhelmeted riders zoom between cars, riding painted dividing lines, inches from vehicles to their right and left, the riders apparently oblivious to the very real risk of death or paralysis. It’s even
common for otherwise upstanding citizens to have a couple glasses of wine or a few beers then casually jump behind the wheel and assume that everything will be fine. Don’t they know the statistics about drinking and driving? Don’t they read the newspaper? Don’t they know the law?
Of course they do. But they assume it won’t happen to them. Most people know superficially this isn’t right. But on a deeper level, we are genuinely surprised when something bad happens to someone whom we know to be good. Whenever a dear loved one dies, someone asks, “How could this happen to such a good person?” This isn’t denial; they’re genuinely perplexed because, deep down, most of us believe in Janoff-Bulman’s assumptive worldview
Most of the time, it’s healthy for us to believe that the world is good, that good things happen to good people, and that we are good people. These beliefs help us function well, avert fear, and live happy lives in a world that could otherwise be pretty scary. Could you imagine how terrible life would seem if we thought the opposite—that the world is dangerous, that bad things can as easily happen to good people as bad people, and that we are not good people? So, the brain fights hard to maintain these assumptions.
According to classic research by psychologist Melvin Lerner, our need to maintain our rosy worldview, particularly our belief in a just world, is one of the major causes of victim blaming. The logic goes something like this: When we hear that something terrible has happened to someone, this presents a challenge to our most basic assumptions about fairness. It forces us to doubt that the world is good and just. We may start to wonder if we could fall victim to a rape, assault, robbery, or attack just like that person. So, to comfort ourselves and maintain our sense of safety, we psychologically separate ourselves from the victim. The victim must have done something to invite the tragedy. That rape victim must have been wearing provocative clothing. That robbery victim must have been stupid enough to be in the wrong part of town. That assault victim must have been associating with the wrong people. Maybe she was trying to buy drugs at the time. Maybe he was doing something else illicit. Surely these victims were bad people or at least were doing something bad; that’s why something bad happened to them—and, so the logic goes, that’s why it won’t happen to me. I’m a good person.
Obviously, this self-deceptive strategy works only when the trauma hasn’t happened to us. But even if we are the victims, we may still try desperately to maintain our worldview. That’s because it contains our most cherished beliefs and values, most of which fall into Janoff-Bulman’s three assumptive worldview categories, which encompass our beliefs about duty, God, decency, friendship, and just about everything else.
Deep patriotism was an important part of Paul’s worldview. “It’s patriotism in the old-school sense of the word,” he says. “It’s understated, subtle, a sense of loyalty that’s to be expected in every American, the way my grandparents were patriotic. They were immigrants. There was no question of proving your patriotism back then. It was a different kind of social accountability. They gave me an appreciation for what this country has, and it greatly shaped my point of view and my worldview.”
He truly believed in the values that most American schoolchildren are taught their country stands for. To Paul, the United States sought to reward and to strengthen democracy and human rights. It used its military might only for the purpose of bolstering those values and justly punishing those who violated them. All it asked in return for this great service was its citizens’ faith and obedience. And Paul took his part seriously, forgoing personal gain to join the military.
But what happens when the other end of the bargain isn’t upheld, when we begin to realize that our worldview may not be accurate?
Adam Savage is a kind of expert in questioning people’s assumptions. He is a host of the Discovery television series MythBusters, and it’s his business to disassemble and apply scientific pressure to the world’s most deeply ingrained urban legends and popular lore. Can a cocktail of Diet Coke and Mentos make your stomach explode? Can plugging your finger into the barrel of a gun cause the weapon to backfire? Can cell phone usage really cause a gas station to blow up? For more than ten seasons to date, MythBusters has put seven hundred–plus such beliefs to the test.
In one of its most infamous episodes, the show tested a hypothesis that was the subject of contentious debate. The question goes something like this: Imagine that an airplane sits atop a large conveyer belt instead of a runway. The plane begins to move in one direction while the conveyor belt moves in the opposite direction, its speed matched perfectly to that of the aircraft. Can the plane actually take off?
“It’s one of those weird things. Both sides of the physics argument adamantly stand by their theory. Some say no plane on a conveyor belt can take off if the speeds are matching in opposite directions. The other side says the plane will take off,” says Savage from his studio in San Francisco.
This might not seem like a hot-button issue to you, but it has become just that for thousands of people. Numerous websites have hosted vitriolic conversations devoted to this question. So, in 2008, MythBusters rigged a massive conveyor belt and maneuvered a four-hundred-pound ultralight plane onto the makeshift airstrip. “Most of the time the show has at least an idea how an experiment will turn out,” Savage says. “In this case, we were equally divided. We had no idea what would happen.”
With the two mechanisms perfectly synchronized, the pilot started the plane. The propeller whirred. The ultralight plane accelerated and, to many people’s surprise and chagrin, lifted effortlessly into the sky. Here’s why: Unlike with, say, a car on a conveyor belt, an airplane’s thrust acts upon the air, not the ground. It’s a simple, clear answer supported by a simple, clear empirical test.
But a funny thing happened. “We did not change a single person’s mind,” says Savage. A typical MythBusters episode gets ten pages of viewer comments on the Discovery Channel website. For this episode, however, they received six hundred pages. “A thousand people immediately jumped online maintaining a plane rigged to a reverse conveyor belt at linked speeds would result in the plane just sitting there. Our evidence was absolutely clear. But people still got intensely argumentative. They were looking for flaws in experimental setup and our methodology. We still get notes and letters with people refusing to believe it.”
The show’s executive producer, Dan Tapster, has a theory about why. “People hold on to certain ideas for so long and so absolutely that even in the face of irrefutable proof to the contrary, it’s easier to think the evidence is wrong instead of thinking they were wrong the whole time,” he says.
Or, as Adam Savage succinctly puts it, people are stubborn. “They hold on to preconceptions. It’s a basic human thing. We do have the ability to have our minds changed, but why do it when the burden of proof is always on the disbelievers?”
Urban legends are a lot of fun, but they rarely have real-world consequences beyond the speculative. Life as we know it is not going to end if a commonly held belief is suddenly dispelled.
But what if it actually did?
We can think of our assumptive worldview as a kind of personal myth, only this myth has weight and potentially devastating consequences attached to it. If a myth about an airplane on a runway causes this much upheaval, imagine what might happen if a myth were affixed with real-world weight—say, everything you believed about yourself, your country, and even the world. In this scenario, there’s no online forum and nobody to debate with. There’s just you.
Paul was standing on an airstrip at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, there to test his own personal myth. LaGuardia was a world away from the American-occupied Saddam Hussein International Airport and free of bullet-riddled terminals and bombed-out Iraqi tanks.
An official presidential campaign plane touched down in the distance. As it taxied in, Secret Service agents began looking busy around Paul. A handler placed Paul at the end of a row of veterans from different wars, who stood like a living timeline of service to a country
supposedly worth dying for.
Three months prior, Paul had returned to the United States from Iraq a changed man. In the war, he’d seen men fatally wounded, a parade of victims carried in and out of Baghdad hospitals, even a squad leader who’d lost both his legs. Thankfully, all thirty-nine men in Paul’s platoon had come home alive, though six hundred other soldiers at this point in the war had not.
Back at home, Paul reconnected with his girlfriend and tried to settle back into life as he’d known it before the war. But some things still troubled him, kept him up at night, and ate at him from the inside. “I had problems with the way the U.S. fought the war,” he says. “There were never enough troops on the ground. Officers and soldiers in the field were being deployed with no training in Iraqi culture and customs. They received little direction from above, and were vulnerable to attacks. Far more troops were dying in the peacekeeping phase than had been killed during the invasion and defeat of Saddam’s military. I was certain about my assessment of the war. I knew that it was the wrong battle, fought at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.”
He’d gone to Iraq to fight for justice and to hold bad people responsible for their misdeeds. It all seemed clear enough, at first: the U.S. soldiers were the good guys; the ones fighting for Saddam’s dying regime were the bad guys. Only, by this time, Paul realized that the good guys had sent him to fight under erroneous, even false pretenses. All this challenged his notions that the world was basically safe, that good things happened to good people, and that his country stood for those good things and good people.
Paul decided he had to set things right. It was an election year, and he thought that both parties were equally poorly informed about the realities of the war. Though it was a long shot, he reached out to the Bush and Kerry presidential campaigns, offering his services to set the record straight. To an outsider, this might have seemed like an audacious, bigheaded move. But Paul had always been a confident guy; some might even say he had the advantage of the positive illusions of control discussed in chapter 3. This confidence paid off when a Vietnam vet from New York who worked for John Kerry’s campaign returned Paul’s call. “He asked if I’d like to meet the senator,” Paul recalls. “He felt that Kerry, a war vet himself, should meet guys like me who had actually served in the war.” Paul’s a smart guy. He knew this would be little more than a photo op for the senator. Still, he wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity.
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