Even in the past, most people did not face death on a daily basis. But they did have to make constant effort to survive. Today, survival is all but assured. People need challenges to give them a sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, many people choose shallow, essentially pointless causes.
It is easy for causes to be pointless when it is not a matter of survival. It is a paradox: we have the freedom to choose epic causes or simple attunement, and that same freedom is an almost insurmountable obstacle for so many. Does the cycle demand a return of hardship, which looks likely? Or will enough people engage meaningfully to prevent a return to the primeval? Maybe that will always be the human question going forward.
I often have the thought that we might no be able to maintain the level of technology that we have, if not enough people learn to maintain it. "Après moi, le déluge"
I think you give too much credit to “many people”. They don’t choose, they fall into a rut. It’s easy to do and hard to undo. Rinse and repeat, day after day after day, year after year, decade after decade.
I was sort of there myself, many years ago. I broke loose. I have no problem with people who prefer a predictable rut. It's that they don't even know they've chosen it. Major aspects of their life become someone else's responsibility.
I've been in China to see relatives for the past few days and only recently came back to Switzerland. I did marvel at the technology, the crowds and the scenery that I saw in China, like I do every time I go there. But in the end, nothing made me feel as serene and content as when I walked up the nearby hill in Switzerland, sat down on the gravel and listened to a sparrowhawk's call. It might be harder now, but I still feel like nature is everywhere as long as you keep looking for it!
This is a great case for attunement Kai. I have unfortunately never been to China, but I was just in NYC yet again, and felt something similar. Central Park is epic, but no match for a park with not one other soul except maybe a mutt and some fish and birds. It is wholesome. Savor those sparrowhawks...
I love the word ‘attunement’ for same reasons you describe. I’m working on a Stack on listening that connects to harmony with nature. Harmony is ideal, but dissonance is more the norm. Lot’s of competing sources of sound. Modris Eckstein’s book, Rites of Spring, on cultural changes taking at the beginning of the First World War as it marked the end of the Romantic era, and the beginning of the Modern era in art and music. Dissonance and rhythmic chaos in the soundscape demands we listen for the underlying harmony. Describes the world we are in now. I can imagine being out in a sub-zero weather, I used to walk in it when I lived in Wyoming - my favorite season - listen to the quiet. The snow pack dampened all sound. Harmony with nature in those moments are treasured today as I live in the midst of the sounds of a downtown neighborhood. Attunement is an under appreciated facet of life. Thank you.
I am genuinely looking forward to your piece—the focus on dissonance is brilliant, and seems to focus on turning what might be thought of as a problem into an asset. Thank you Ed.
Unfortunately I lack the ear for jazz. But with baroque and classical, a war around the edges of dissonance, I know where you're going and it's excellent.
It is wild. I read his memoir and for whatever reason it did not cut as deep as this novel. It is truly unimaginable how much combat he faced. Remarkable.
I think the distinction I would make is between attention and meaning.
Mortal danger compels attention because error has an immediate consequence; it strips away irrelevance, but it does not necessarily tell us what anything means.
A sniper’s attention may be exquisitely attuned, yet it remains instrumental: snow, breath, wind, terrain, and even another human body are read according to whether they conceal or expose death. The walk you describe requires another kind of discipline; not the reproduction of wartime intensity, but freedom from the demand that everything be useful to our survival. The grackle, the fig leaf, and the person beside us become fully visible when we attend to them without needing them to save us or serve us.
Perhaps, then, peace does not ask us to bring worst-case meaning into a best-case world. It asks us to learn what danger teaches forcibly without importing danger’s logic: that existence is finite, that perception matters, and that no ordinary second is guaranteed to remain ordinary. War makes attention compulsory. Peace leaves it free... and that freedom may be the more difficult discipline.
Side note: Häyhä is credited with killing more than 500 Soviet soldiers, not 500 Soviet snipers, or am I confusing?
Good catch on the "sniper" "soldier" wording. I was thinking "sniper" so much I wrote the wrong word.
The distinction you're laying out here is core to the essay unless you have a different vein you're taking, or maybe you're just reemphasizing it? The gift of freedom is no-one is trying to harm us while walking in nature. The burden of freedom is the exact same gift: we must choose attunement and meaning as a way of life, not to stay alive a few more minutes.
I was reemphasising it, but perhaps placing more pressure on the paradox itself. Under threat, attunement is imposed: inattention has an immediate cost, and the world becomes charged with consequence. In freedom, nothing compels that degree of presence, so attention must become a chosen discipline rather than a survival reflex.
Nature can provide the conditions for that attunement, but it cannot choose it on our behalf. That is why your formulation of gift and burden strikes me as exact: safety releases us from the circumstances that force meaning upon us while leaving us responsible for cultivating the attention through which meaning becomes possible.
Great stuff, Sam! 👏 I like your use of the word “attunement”. Everything I’ve read about sniper training (ANS control, long periods of stillness, intensity of focused attention, diligent refinement of craft/skill) chimes with the best practices of zen cultivation of mind. There does seem to be this meta-paradigm for living the good life in the real world, but we each need to discover and learn/practice it. We are all grasshoppers (“Kung Fu” TV show reference)!
Thank you! Sniper school was my childhood dream fulfilled, times ten. Though at the time I would not have known what you were talking about when it comes to "zen", I fully appreciate it now as I relearn the same skills without low crawling through fields.
Bravo man, turns out I needed this essay. I was getting bloated and vague in the past few weeks, small things like asthma or distractions like the stock market taking over more precious space in my awareness. I’ve had an infection so I didn’t have the BJJ to keep my sense of being a respectable member of a physical group. Kettlebells gave me the handhold to pull back from the trends into the ever-raising human noise floor.
Hill runs will always be the goat. For me atm , 16 minutes of the Simple+Sinister workout give me the best substitute time can afford: 100 swings in 5 minutes (the sprint), 10 Turkish getups in 10 minutes (the meditation) and the goal (doctrine is every man should be able to do this with a 70lb KB). The combo of heart pounding swings followed by staring at an iron ball at a fatal height above one’s eyes was enough to reorient the rest of me.
I always love and value reading your first-hand experiences in combat, it roots the timeless philosophies in words worth heeding.
The holy grail is finishing the minimal necessary mortal risk to impart the same seriousness and presence. It’s a weird comparable but I think of the Chinese, Korean and Indian teenagers who get their One Big Test moment that determines the rest of their lives. This is an intellectual form, and only works because of the social pressures and aspirations that would make young men and women treat a paper test like a fight for their lives.
In the US we need a “Realness movement” that values excellence and striving, anti-values modern traps of slop and illusion, engineering those primal moments of either public physical challenge and intellectual critique.
I would sign up for this Realness Movement, or if possible, I would enjoy creating it. We can have many versions depending on the individuals interest: intellectual, physical, some savage combination. This is excellent...
The infection sucks, but doing Simple and Sinister on top of it achieves something health never can: the actual health of overcoming. This is profoundly Nietzschean. Nietzsche with a kettlebell.
I'm stoked you enjoyed it. The lessons of war and worst case are universal and more important now than ever.
Thank you brother, and for the book as well. As far as the writing / fire differential, a madman would choose the fire, but the fire made me far more alive than anything else I could ever imagine. The writing is the closest thing yet, by a long shot, and it is a long shot away from the fire. So strange...
Thanks Sam. The point about the alive while under fire is so true. It’s hard to explain to people. Most people believe war is a horrible thing, and it is (and isn’t) but the feeling while in combat is indescribable and addictive. Adrenaline is a drug.
I’m curious about your love of hill sprints. I do hill sprints, I can’t say I love them, but I do them because I need them. Where I’m weak though is not going uphill, it’s the damn downhill. Do practice going downhill fast?
I read that downhill never gives the major hip flexors the brief rest that each step uphill does. So it is less challenging to the cardiopulmonary system but places MORE demands on the skeletal system. Hence the trembling muscles at the bottom of the hill!
A drug indeed, got at a high price, which you and your helicopter know well.
So my hill sprints should probably be defined. I'm no longer in an endurance or competitive game, so I stay between 20m-200m with a slow walk back. I want short explosively mixed with the slow pace of rucking. I rarely run downhill but it was a skill I always had and used to good effect in Xterra racing. I can do it, but I rarely train it. But in my opinion it absolutely should be trained, like a skill, and it can make or break many racers. When it comes to skiing though, is this necessary? Or are you focused on the skill itself?
Well right now I’m in the mountains of Switzerland. So I’m going up about 2000 m a day and 1500 to 2000 m down. The up is not a big problem, the down is challenging. It’s steep. It’s irregular with often substantial step downs and lots of loose rocks to trip you up, with unstable footing. My knees complain. I should’ve done more training on the downhill.
That is a lot of downhill... I think the answer is there is not much you can do for that amount of volume besides walking downhill an insane amount. Given your strength, your body will probably adapt in no time.
Even in the past, most people did not face death on a daily basis. But they did have to make constant effort to survive. Today, survival is all but assured. People need challenges to give them a sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, many people choose shallow, essentially pointless causes.
It is easy for causes to be pointless when it is not a matter of survival. It is a paradox: we have the freedom to choose epic causes or simple attunement, and that same freedom is an almost insurmountable obstacle for so many. Does the cycle demand a return of hardship, which looks likely? Or will enough people engage meaningfully to prevent a return to the primeval? Maybe that will always be the human question going forward.
I often have the thought that we might no be able to maintain the level of technology that we have, if not enough people learn to maintain it. "Après moi, le déluge"
I think you give too much credit to “many people”. They don’t choose, they fall into a rut. It’s easy to do and hard to undo. Rinse and repeat, day after day after day, year after year, decade after decade.
I was sort of there myself, many years ago. I broke loose. I have no problem with people who prefer a predictable rut. It's that they don't even know they've chosen it. Major aspects of their life become someone else's responsibility.
Yes! Not making a choice is a choice.
Primal. That's the word that I think brings this to a full circle. Fantastic post!
Let's go. Thanks Uri. The tone of this piece struck me as a sort of refined savagery.
I've been in China to see relatives for the past few days and only recently came back to Switzerland. I did marvel at the technology, the crowds and the scenery that I saw in China, like I do every time I go there. But in the end, nothing made me feel as serene and content as when I walked up the nearby hill in Switzerland, sat down on the gravel and listened to a sparrowhawk's call. It might be harder now, but I still feel like nature is everywhere as long as you keep looking for it!
This is a great case for attunement Kai. I have unfortunately never been to China, but I was just in NYC yet again, and felt something similar. Central Park is epic, but no match for a park with not one other soul except maybe a mutt and some fish and birds. It is wholesome. Savor those sparrowhawks...
I love the word ‘attunement’ for same reasons you describe. I’m working on a Stack on listening that connects to harmony with nature. Harmony is ideal, but dissonance is more the norm. Lot’s of competing sources of sound. Modris Eckstein’s book, Rites of Spring, on cultural changes taking at the beginning of the First World War as it marked the end of the Romantic era, and the beginning of the Modern era in art and music. Dissonance and rhythmic chaos in the soundscape demands we listen for the underlying harmony. Describes the world we are in now. I can imagine being out in a sub-zero weather, I used to walk in it when I lived in Wyoming - my favorite season - listen to the quiet. The snow pack dampened all sound. Harmony with nature in those moments are treasured today as I live in the midst of the sounds of a downtown neighborhood. Attunement is an under appreciated facet of life. Thank you.
I am genuinely looking forward to your piece—the focus on dissonance is brilliant, and seems to focus on turning what might be thought of as a problem into an asset. Thank you Ed.
Yes. I agree.
I think the desire for harmony alone is really an escape from reality.
It is like listening to Thelonious Monk for the first time.
Here's him playing Brilliant Corners - https://youtu.be/0TLEPQZIVOg?si=gTqHNKSg-_VqdY9j.
This is attunement between the musicians. Makes me smile.
Unfortunately I lack the ear for jazz. But with baroque and classical, a war around the edges of dissonance, I know where you're going and it's excellent.
Love this piece! Fascinated with the white deaths story.
It’s fantastic to read the (peaceful) responses that a sniper post (worst case scenario) produced.
This is a paradox worth loving.
It is wild. I read his memoir and for whatever reason it did not cut as deep as this novel. It is truly unimaginable how much combat he faced. Remarkable.
I think the distinction I would make is between attention and meaning.
Mortal danger compels attention because error has an immediate consequence; it strips away irrelevance, but it does not necessarily tell us what anything means.
A sniper’s attention may be exquisitely attuned, yet it remains instrumental: snow, breath, wind, terrain, and even another human body are read according to whether they conceal or expose death. The walk you describe requires another kind of discipline; not the reproduction of wartime intensity, but freedom from the demand that everything be useful to our survival. The grackle, the fig leaf, and the person beside us become fully visible when we attend to them without needing them to save us or serve us.
Perhaps, then, peace does not ask us to bring worst-case meaning into a best-case world. It asks us to learn what danger teaches forcibly without importing danger’s logic: that existence is finite, that perception matters, and that no ordinary second is guaranteed to remain ordinary. War makes attention compulsory. Peace leaves it free... and that freedom may be the more difficult discipline.
Side note: Häyhä is credited with killing more than 500 Soviet soldiers, not 500 Soviet snipers, or am I confusing?
Good catch on the "sniper" "soldier" wording. I was thinking "sniper" so much I wrote the wrong word.
The distinction you're laying out here is core to the essay unless you have a different vein you're taking, or maybe you're just reemphasizing it? The gift of freedom is no-one is trying to harm us while walking in nature. The burden of freedom is the exact same gift: we must choose attunement and meaning as a way of life, not to stay alive a few more minutes.
I was reemphasising it, but perhaps placing more pressure on the paradox itself. Under threat, attunement is imposed: inattention has an immediate cost, and the world becomes charged with consequence. In freedom, nothing compels that degree of presence, so attention must become a chosen discipline rather than a survival reflex.
Nature can provide the conditions for that attunement, but it cannot choose it on our behalf. That is why your formulation of gift and burden strikes me as exact: safety releases us from the circumstances that force meaning upon us while leaving us responsible for cultivating the attention through which meaning becomes possible.
It is wild. It lies at the core of everything we're doing here in civilization. Fun to think about, and at times terrifying to see.
Great post.
Thanks for digging in, Michael.
Great post, as always, Sam. And Winter Warriors is a great book.
Thank you brother. It is stunning how understated the warriors of the past were.
Great stuff, Sam! 👏 I like your use of the word “attunement”. Everything I’ve read about sniper training (ANS control, long periods of stillness, intensity of focused attention, diligent refinement of craft/skill) chimes with the best practices of zen cultivation of mind. There does seem to be this meta-paradigm for living the good life in the real world, but we each need to discover and learn/practice it. We are all grasshoppers (“Kung Fu” TV show reference)!
Thank you! Sniper school was my childhood dream fulfilled, times ten. Though at the time I would not have known what you were talking about when it comes to "zen", I fully appreciate it now as I relearn the same skills without low crawling through fields.
Bravo man, turns out I needed this essay. I was getting bloated and vague in the past few weeks, small things like asthma or distractions like the stock market taking over more precious space in my awareness. I’ve had an infection so I didn’t have the BJJ to keep my sense of being a respectable member of a physical group. Kettlebells gave me the handhold to pull back from the trends into the ever-raising human noise floor.
Hill runs will always be the goat. For me atm , 16 minutes of the Simple+Sinister workout give me the best substitute time can afford: 100 swings in 5 minutes (the sprint), 10 Turkish getups in 10 minutes (the meditation) and the goal (doctrine is every man should be able to do this with a 70lb KB). The combo of heart pounding swings followed by staring at an iron ball at a fatal height above one’s eyes was enough to reorient the rest of me.
I always love and value reading your first-hand experiences in combat, it roots the timeless philosophies in words worth heeding.
The holy grail is finishing the minimal necessary mortal risk to impart the same seriousness and presence. It’s a weird comparable but I think of the Chinese, Korean and Indian teenagers who get their One Big Test moment that determines the rest of their lives. This is an intellectual form, and only works because of the social pressures and aspirations that would make young men and women treat a paper test like a fight for their lives.
In the US we need a “Realness movement” that values excellence and striving, anti-values modern traps of slop and illusion, engineering those primal moments of either public physical challenge and intellectual critique.
I would sign up for this Realness Movement, or if possible, I would enjoy creating it. We can have many versions depending on the individuals interest: intellectual, physical, some savage combination. This is excellent...
The infection sucks, but doing Simple and Sinister on top of it achieves something health never can: the actual health of overcoming. This is profoundly Nietzschean. Nietzsche with a kettlebell.
I'm stoked you enjoyed it. The lessons of war and worst case are universal and more important now than ever.
“Thus meaning is now a discipline, a choice made not once, but every moment of our lives.” Love it Sam. Beautifully written.
How does a single second while writing compare to a second under fire?
Thank you brother, and for the book as well. As far as the writing / fire differential, a madman would choose the fire, but the fire made me far more alive than anything else I could ever imagine. The writing is the closest thing yet, by a long shot, and it is a long shot away from the fire. So strange...
Thanks Sam. The point about the alive while under fire is so true. It’s hard to explain to people. Most people believe war is a horrible thing, and it is (and isn’t) but the feeling while in combat is indescribable and addictive. Adrenaline is a drug.
I’m curious about your love of hill sprints. I do hill sprints, I can’t say I love them, but I do them because I need them. Where I’m weak though is not going uphill, it’s the damn downhill. Do practice going downhill fast?
I read that downhill never gives the major hip flexors the brief rest that each step uphill does. So it is less challenging to the cardiopulmonary system but places MORE demands on the skeletal system. Hence the trembling muscles at the bottom of the hill!
A drug indeed, got at a high price, which you and your helicopter know well.
So my hill sprints should probably be defined. I'm no longer in an endurance or competitive game, so I stay between 20m-200m with a slow walk back. I want short explosively mixed with the slow pace of rucking. I rarely run downhill but it was a skill I always had and used to good effect in Xterra racing. I can do it, but I rarely train it. But in my opinion it absolutely should be trained, like a skill, and it can make or break many racers. When it comes to skiing though, is this necessary? Or are you focused on the skill itself?
Well right now I’m in the mountains of Switzerland. So I’m going up about 2000 m a day and 1500 to 2000 m down. The up is not a big problem, the down is challenging. It’s steep. It’s irregular with often substantial step downs and lots of loose rocks to trip you up, with unstable footing. My knees complain. I should’ve done more training on the downhill.
That is a lot of downhill... I think the answer is there is not much you can do for that amount of volume besides walking downhill an insane amount. Given your strength, your body will probably adapt in no time.