Letters to the Editor
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What Drove Steve Irwin ?
In mourning his death, fans of Steve Irwin are paying tribute to, among other qualities, his courage. Do we have the courage to face the truth about his death and reactions to it?
If we do, we might start by noting that no one really believes that what Irwin’s performances primarily were about was protection of the animals he filmed. (Let’s see, how about a show in which a brave, dashing man encounters exotic and potentially reactive women. He intentionally pushes emotional buttons, yet always narrowly escapes without being slapped or yelled at. That would probably change some attitudes and increase respect for women, right? Female battering by men and unfair salary differentials likely would decrease. Right.) We don’t really believe it, but we pretend to, because if we don’t pretend we are faced with a discussion on what his performances really did represent.
There seems to be little disagreement that Irwin intentionally took risks to titillate his audience: dangerously swinging the cobra, narrowly avoiding the jaws of the croc. But that agreement is where our willingness to face ourselves ends, as immediate reactions to his death have shown. Check out the websites and news accounts. What is telling is the speed of the denial that Irwin was in any way threatening the stingray that killed him, an animal not easily provoked. The denial came before there was time to digest accounts and videotape of what might actually have happened, and continues. Yet what emerged early from reports is that the ray went into a defensive posture after being closely followed, then stung Irwin, who was directly above the animal. Officials deny any evidence that the ray was threatened or provoked; meanwhile all available evidence, including reports of videotape footage and everything we know about the animal’s biology tell us that the ray struck precisely because it was threatened.
Also telling is the extent and vehemence of the online reactions to any suggestion that Irwin’s risk-taking or provoking of animals could have been responsible for his own death. There is anger and attack in these reactions, as if his fans, like the animals he provoked, feel threatened. But that’s absurd, isn’t it? Why would Irwin’s defenders feel personally attacked by such a suggestion? Because they know unconsciously that if Irwin provoked and took risks with deadly animals, he did so precisely because that is what his audience expected and needed, something Irwin was fully aware of – “The audience loves it when I almost die.” Having failed to perpetually get that fix and cheat the inevitable, we now attempt to avoid facing what drove the risk-taking behavior.
We don’t honor Steve Irwin or his family by denying the obvious, but we might by courageously confronting the meaning of these events and reactions. Irwin had a great need for attention which was met for him by his audience. In a symbiosis, their needs were in turn met by his performances, in the primal and vicarious experiencing of starring down death, of narrowly, dramatically and triumphantly escaping deadly, poisonous threats to survival. There are lots of ways to get attention, and nature shows survive without hosts provoking deadly animals, antics that can go wrong in ways that leave us shaking our heads over a “senseless” death. Why take the chances?
What may be most uncomfortable yet important to face is the apparent paradox that, like all men, this man being mourned as a hero and warrior was afraid. He was afraid of fear, more accurately of admitting fear to himself or to others. One way to react to fear is to acknowledge it, access it, and learn ways to integrate it adaptively into choices and behavior. Applied to the real dangers in the natural world, this approach might lead to attitudes of caution, respect, “live and let live”, and the avoidance of senseless deaths. But paradoxically, it takes a great deal of courage to be afraid, maybe more than to swing a cobra by the tail. This is so because of the way men evolved. Survival and leaving offspring depended on fighting for and keeping claim to the resources necessary for survival and reproduction, through aggressive encounters with other males. Telegraph signs of weakness, vulnerability, doubt or incompetence? You’re doomed: as in bottom-of the-pecking-order, denied-resources-for-survival, you’re-screwed, dead “doomed”. This is why it requires a major act of courage for a male to ask directions, cry, or acknowledge fear. We are more likely to see a man taking risks with a poisonous snake than crying.
We can overcome genetic dispositions, but often fear of fear gets pushed to extremes. Many men, likely reacting to past or present threatening environments, respond to fear by attempting to avoid experience of it through denying or disowning, a reaction that gets expressed as bravado, risk-taking, self-destructive behaviors, and aggression, often driven by audiences and often with tragic consequences. All to attempt to disown something that is natural, potentially protective, and in the end cannot be disowned any more than hunger or thirst can. Steve Irwin, like all men, was conflicted in his attempts to find the real meaning of courage: “I have no fear of losing my life.” versus “Fear helps me from making mistakes.” The false and dangerous bravado of “NO FEAR” versus the courage to admit and integrate fear.
The common metaphor for genetically driven behavior is “hard-wired”, which is unfortunately inaccurate in leaving out choice. A more accurate metaphor would acknowledge that our history has loaded software which the system itself is capable of evaluating, unloading, and replacing with new, more effective software. That process requires awareness, insight, and most of all courage. It may be that if we are ready to learn, Steve Irwin’s unfortunate death can be his greatest lesson.