Put to the test

“We're all put to the test. But it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?”

--David Mamet, The Edge

In the film The Edge, the two main characters are well-off guys, scouting locations for a high-fashion photo shoot in the Alaskan wilderness. But their small plane hits a flock of geese and crashes, killing the pilot, and stranding them in the middle of nowhere—lost, exposed, afraid, with only the clothes on their backs, their wits, and a single good pocketknife (the titular ‘edge’—geddit?).

They resolve to head back whence they came rather than await the uncertainty of rescue. They cut wood to make a fire their first night, but one of them accidentally cuts himself with the knife, putting the scent of blood in the air. A grizzly bear gets the scent, and the rest of the film is about how they respond to the bear’s relentless, remorseless, inexorable pursuit of them as prey. The grizzly cannot be reasoned with, negotiated with, will not tire, wants only to eat them alive.

The survival test they are put to was, one of them remembers, a rite of passage for young Amer-Indian boys. In order to become a full-fledged ‘brave’, an unprovided Amer-Indian boy had to go out into the wilderness and kill a bear. Only then could he be considered fit to take his place as an adult in the tribe. Many of course did not survive the ordeal. Those that did were fundamentally changed, fully ‘grown up’. There are many such rites of passage among indigenous people. The walkabout. The vision quest. Even young Massai warriors today have to test their mettle by approaching a lion, and slapping it on the backside.

Each of the two guys are carrying, of course, their own personal insecurities, delusions, and agendas. The older of the guys really gets that the situation is ‘do or die’. They cannot flee for long without food or shelter. They must kill the bear or the bear will kill them—there is no third way. They must focus on doing what is required to achieve this single, vital goal. What is being tested here is their character as supposed grown adults. At one point, they fail to catch the attention of a search plane. The younger of the two insists it will come back. The older of the two knows they cannot rely on this happening in time, and returns to the mission. The younger one says, “But can’t we think that...?” “No,” says the elder. Denial will not avail, only what you do and don’t do matters.

We no longer have formal rites of passage as a culture that clearly demarcate childhood from adulthood, rituals so scary that they amounted to a death-and-resurrection of the individual’s character. In place of a single ritual guided by ancestral wisdom, contemporary adulthood is supposed to develop after a drawn-out and tortuous period of adolescent psychodynamics. It is said the average teen experiences in a single day, all possible psychological states, including so-called ‘abnormal’ states. The ordeal of Year 12 exams is not the same. If you fail, you can pack up your life like a board game and play somewhere else, living to fight another day. No real harm, no ultimate foul. With no clear, testing demarcation between youth and age, it’s not surprising that we see in our culture so many childish behaviors in people who are outwardly adults. Bullying, lack of boundaries, risk-taking, sociopathic tantrums, status games.

Like all institutions and individuals across the world, this year has put us all to the test at a point and in a way we would not have preferred. We have been pursued by an implacable force of nature. Who the adults in the room already were, has become pretty evident. For many, this year was the rite of passage. Some have been changed by it. Some still flee in denial. And some, of course, have not survived.

In the film, the guys do manage to kill the bear, exactly as the Amer-Indian youth used to do. The edge—the knife itself—was useful, but was not what gave them ‘the edge’ over their gruesome adversary. What gave them the edge was their essential humanity—the ability to work together focused on their mission, despite their differences. Indeed their common urgent mission made their differences irrelevant.

Be it known, I have never mentioned COVID in this post.