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I recently traveled to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I took long walks up and down the towering dunes, where hang gliders launched not far from the hill from which the Wright brothers first took flight. Jockey's Ridge State Park has the tallest sand dunes in the eastern United States, some of them 100 feet high. But many were more modest hills, and in places they crowded together, creating networks of shadowed pathways that led into wooded areas or out onto great tumbling expanses of sea grass and live oak and even prickly pear cactus. Catbirds called from the loblolly pines, and lizards left twisted trails that looked like an ancient language scratched in the sand. More than a few times as I hiked, I realized that I had no idea where I was. I was, in fact, lost. But the entire park is only a mile long and three-fourths of a mile wide, wedged between U.S. Highway 158 and Roanoke Sound. I knew that I could make my way out. Nevertheless, I had a hunch that this was a good place for people to find their own kind of trouble. So one day I stopped a park ranger and asked him if people ever had to be rescued there. He laughed. “About 20 nights a year I'm out here looking for someone,” he said. Debo Cox was his name, and he was a broad man with a low center of gravity, all muscle. He went on to describe the astounding failures of mind that he had witnessed on this tiny spit of land. He told me about a group of people he'd found on top of the tallest dune in the park. They had noticed that they could see the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the park and asked Cox if the water to the west was the Pacific. He said he had rescued numerous people who'd become lost and were unable to find their way out, despite the fact that you can hear the cars on the road. He told me that I'd be surprised at the number of people who ask him how far it is between the mile markers on Highway 158. Cox seemed to take it all with good humor, but he also seemed a bit in despair of the human condition. Referring to the numerous injuries that occur on the biggest dune, he said, “Yes, gravity still does apply here, even when you're on vacation.” He told me that people come here suffering from what he called “a vacation state of mind, where all the old rules are suspended.” We live in a culture that encourages us to adopt that sort of thinking—or perhaps more accurately, of not thinking. As human beings, we have big brains that are capable of complex rational thought. But we're also saddled with a lot of legacy systems that tell us whether or not our behavior is good for our survival. For example, if we do something that rewards us with food or a good feeling, then we're far more likely to do it again. We don't have to think about it. The behavior is automatic. In a modern technical culture we're rewarded almost all the time, no matter what dumb things we do. The unconscious conclusion we draw is that our little corner of the world is safe, and that we've got this thing wired. This culture of plenty keeps us permanently in a vacation state of mind. |