I just watch a two hour PBS presentation on Teddy Roosevelt's expedition into the Brazilian jungle. Theodore Roosevelt was an ex-president who was a big game hunter in Africa. An expedition into the jungle would seem to be right up his alley. But it took something like three months and it was far more difficult then anyone expected. Three people in the party died. Teddy Roosevelt himself almost perished. He was never the same afterwards and he died about five years later.
Some of the media of the day thought it was just a kind of combination publicity stunt/ego boost conceived by Roosevelt to get attention and that there was no actual benefits to the expedition. When I gave it some thought, that was pretty much my opinion on it. There was really no good reason to go into the South American jungle. In reality, very little was learned, scant little was accomplished.
I got to thinking about the differences of a 1914 Brazilian jungle expedition as opposed to the American expedition to the moon in the 1960s. The lunar landing did not really have any benefits, strictly speaking. We knew most everything about the moon without actually setting foot on it. The difference between the two expeditions is that a whole lot of stuff had to be developed before we could fly to the moon. Propulsion systems had to be made, primitive computers (by today's standards) had to be built and utilized and many other scientific and technological advances had to be conceived. The Roosevelt expedition into the jungle required no such technological progress. The canoes used were no different than ones used thousands of years earlier.
It is kind of a cruel way of putting it, but if Teddy Roosevelt would have stayed home, three men would not have died and unless he was a masochist, Roosevelt would have had a more enjoyable three months of his life and very possibly, a longer life overall.
Here is what can be learned at the individual level... don't climb to the top of Mt. Everest and don't hike across Death Valley in the summer. You will be miserable. It might even kill you. And there is nothing to be gained. If there is some psychological need to do such things, the trip that should be made is to a therapist.
Some of the media of the day thought it was just a kind of combination publicity stunt/ego boost conceived by Roosevelt to get attention and that there was no actual benefits to the expedition. When I gave it some thought, that was pretty much my opinion on it. There was really no good reason to go into the South American jungle. In reality, very little was learned, scant little was accomplished.
I got to thinking about the differences of a 1914 Brazilian jungle expedition as opposed to the American expedition to the moon in the 1960s. The lunar landing did not really have any benefits, strictly speaking. We knew most everything about the moon without actually setting foot on it. The difference between the two expeditions is that a whole lot of stuff had to be developed before we could fly to the moon. Propulsion systems had to be made, primitive computers (by today's standards) had to be built and utilized and many other scientific and technological advances had to be conceived. The Roosevelt expedition into the jungle required no such technological progress. The canoes used were no different than ones used thousands of years earlier.
It is kind of a cruel way of putting it, but if Teddy Roosevelt would have stayed home, three men would not have died and unless he was a masochist, Roosevelt would have had a more enjoyable three months of his life and very possibly, a longer life overall.
Here is what can be learned at the individual level... don't climb to the top of Mt. Everest and don't hike across Death Valley in the summer. You will be miserable. It might even kill you. And there is nothing to be gained. If there is some psychological need to do such things, the trip that should be made is to a therapist.
