What Counting Coup Teaches Us About Risk-Taking
Embracing free play and counting coup for the existential risks of our time
What then? has now grown to over 1,000 subscribers in 46 states and 66 countries.
I am genuinely grateful to all of you for joining me in this mission to reframe the ancient mind in the modern world and what we can do about it.
Let’s get into today’s thinking piece.
My sense is that a culture that hates risk-taking is a culture that hates mankind.
We had steel monkey bars when I was in elementary school. One day, a girl was high on life while swinging from rung to rung, when suddenly she lost her grip. I watched as she slowly fell to earth and her leg folded and broke beneath her. The next day the monkey bars were gone. I still remember the smell of the wood chips used to fill in the barren ground the dreaded bars once occupied and feeling bitter at the senselessness – and injustice – of it all.
The restriction on free play is worse for Gen Z than it was for my generation and all that came before. My hunch is that an assault on free play in the name of “safetyism” is in essence an assault on risk-taking. The apostles of safetyism shudder at the prospect of “… falls, scrapes, insults, alliances, betrayals, status competitions, and acts of exclusion…” even though these dangers are what allow a child to become “physically and socially competent.”1 The result may be the soaring rates of depression and anxiety that are festering in Gen Z.
But the war on risk-taking may extend far beyond mental anguish. I believe in my bones that in the name of keeping people safe from everyday risks we make them unprepared for existential risks – for comets, nukes, pandemics, and Sauron-level tyranny. So how did we get here? And what do we learn of ourselves?
Let us place Red Cloud up to the light for a different perspective.
Life for the warriors of the Plains Indians tribes was centered around counting coup. This meant being the first fighter to strike an enemy by getting so close that the risk of being hacked by a tomahawk, shot by arrow, thwacked by a bullet, or scalped by a blade is at its highest. The more risk, the greater the proof of the fighters self-mastery under duress. Red Cloud and several other Oglala warriors set up an ambush on two Shoshone fighters. Once the Shoshone rounded the hill in front of them, Red Cloud sprinted out and “had the opportunity of gratifying the crowning ambition of an Indian warrior’s life…”2 He took it. Red Cloud was the first warrior on the field to strike the Shoshone fighter with his tomahawk.
Red Cloud was a risk-taker unlike those who tore out my monkey bars. He had to be. Warriors painted black and red on studs of roan rode north, south, east, and west of his family’s camp beneath both sun and moon. If the Oglala did not fight, the Oglala would not exist. In his world, it made sense that a child became a warrior though little more than free play. Some say that this is one of the reasons why we evolved to play in the first place. Shooting arrows from little bows, hurling tiny spears, swimming in freezing rivers alongside hunks of ice, wrestling, sparring, and stunts on horseback – these were the joys of a child.
What then? I am not saying we need make counting coup great again. I am saying that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.
Red Cloud had two different modes of mind: camp-mode and war-party-mode. Camp-mode was laughter, dancing, drums, and feasts. War-party-mode was hand signals and whispers, silently stalking in starlight through the “lowest valleys and deepest gorges, and along the edges of timbered creeks, while scouts were continually creeping about the highest points…”
My point is that the anti-risk-takers only know camp-mode. They think that collapsing empires and men who measure their worth in scalps sowed on their sleeves are only found in movies, history books, and far corners of the globe, and that deadly, violent risks “will never happen here.” In this frame of mind, they demonize war mode under the assumption that risks will never need to be taken.
But even modern children know this is wrong. A child’s natural urge is to take risk. A boy or girl standing at the foot of a flight of stairs is to stand at the foot of Mount Doom. Making it step by grueling step to the summit of these stairs is to cast Isildur’s Bane into the fire and undo the might of Sauron. It is to save the world. Life seems vigorous and full of possibility. Who would want to crush this? And why? “It would be wrong to let them get hurt,” an anti-risk-taker says.
So what do the disciples of the anti-risk creed do? Some condemn violence and yet watch 4K war porn on their phones while true trench warriors slay orcs across the scorched fields of Ukraine. Others write blood-boiling political comments on social media while the risk-takers run campaigns and non-profits and volunteer their time to better their country. Still others hope the reusable rockets that an eccentric billionaire built from scratch will explode while he dedicates his life to making our species multi-planetary.
It seems the wisdom of our children runs deeper than that of their adult overlords. But what about the children who were told “No” when it came taking everyday risks? We know all too well. Some college students now need milk and cookies to endure the horror of democratic elections. How then will these students handle existential risks? What will they do when the climate continues to change? Or when a comet like the Chicxulub impactor hurtles towards earth and finds not Velociraptors but us? Or when a pot-bellied despot with a nuclear arsenal presses the Big Red Button? Where, then, will they find milk and cookies?
One of the reasons Elon Musk wants to occupy Mars is because existential risks are real. It will be the modern versions of Red Cloud who save us all. Those who want to count coup, not on Shoshone fighters with feathers in their hair, but on comets and warheads. Those who are thought of as unsafe, overboard, and madmen, those who endure ridicule and insults and risk it all – these are those who will go down in history as the prime movers of mankind.
So we arrive back at our paradox: through over-safety we are made un-safe. The fatal flaw in safetyist ideology is that not only does it demand the world to be what it is not (safe), it also demands children to be what they are not (inert). On the other hand, the Oglala accepted both their children and the world for what they were. They lived, as Epictetus would say, according to nature.
We are cultural animals, and yet we are witnessing a culture that is repelled by animals. It wants to turn us into machines. It wants to turn our veins into wires, our blood into electrical currents, and our brains into hard drives. But will this work? How can it? A machine cannot develop depression and anxiety. Gen Z can – and is.
Is it any surprise that a bit of danger, pain, and uncertainty might not only cure anxiety and depression, but prevent it? Why would we care for phantoms of the mind when red-dyed men with tomahawks are galloping towards our tipis and we have spent our lives training for a good fight?
I imagine it is due to risk-taking that we earned our namesake Homo sapiens, the wise apes. It is wisdom that defines us, but wisdom only comes from experience. How do we gain experience if not by taking risks? If we remove risk-taking, we may remove the wisdom and go the way of Homo rudolfensis and Homo ergastor. Reigning in risk-takers was the problem of the pre-state. Getting out of their way is now the problem of the State.
What, then, can we do about it? Let us turn to one of my greatest mentors, Gandalf the Grey: “It’s a dangerous business, walking out one’s front door.”
We should lean into this danger. Not flee from it.
If you enjoyed this, please hit the like button, share it, and share your thoughts.
This is how more readers are able to find my work.
See you for the next essay on Tuesday.
Haidt, Jonathan, and Greg Lukianoff. The Coddling of the American Mind. Penguin Books, 2019.
Allen, Charles Wesley, Red Cloud, Sam Deon, and R. Eli Paul. Autobiography of Red Cloud: War Leader of the Oglalas Montana Historical Society Press, 1997.
I often reference our pets. They have a great life, fed, housed and cared for with no need to think of anything themselves. I find that many people are fine with being the Nanny State's pet. Many are not.
I gave up an easy, secure career for life, as a teacher, in order to step into the unknown and find who I really was. Decades later, I'm still finding out. There can be no real reward without risk.
I've always wondered if the modern approach to bullying in schools hurts the victim the most. Going to a teacher isn't really an option for the victim, and even if they do, the intervention will almost certainly fail. Adults can't see the thousand little signs of torment being perpetrated on the victim. Often, physical force is the only way to escape. But physical force is the one thing that will always be noticed and punished the most severely.
"My hunch is that an assault on free play in the name of “safetyism” is in essence an assault on risk-taking. The apostles of safetyism shudder at the prospect of “… falls, scrapes, insults, alliances, betrayals, status competitions, and acts of exclusion…” even though these dangers are what allow a child to become “physically and socially competent.”