Interview with Dr Richard Harris

LAH: Dr Harris, when I relayed to my Sixth Form class in February your view that there is not enough sensible risk-taking in teenagers’ lives these days, I saw them perk up. They all agreed. They feel curtailed by parental pressure to live overly sheltered, sanitised lives, and see themselves as victims of what Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt call ‘safetyism.’

What these young people feel is an acute loss of freedom and the thrill of outdoor play. To fully develop as humans, sensible risk-taking needs to be encouraged from an early age. Not everyone wants to climb K2, sure, but everyone should be allowed to do the things that challenge them or could be either psychologically or physically dangerous.

LAH: You were raised in a family where risk-taking was supported and encouraged?

Whether it was my family or whether that was just the norm for the time, I am not sure. I suspect my life was quite normal for a kid in the late 1960s and 70s.

Pictured: Dr Richard Harris at the recent Ithaka Lecture

The kids in the Thailand cave were clearly all survivors from day one. They had a cheerful outlook, which was reinforced by their 25-year-old coach Ekkapol Chantawong who had spent time in a monastery with monks. He had learned to meditate and positively visualise his future, and he was able to impart that mindset to the boys in the cave.

Also, the Thai boys were tough country kids. One sees this in young kids here in Australia who grow up on a farm, where they learn to drive a ute when they are ten or eleven, or are given responsibility to check troughs or ride motorbikes. These experiences clearly come with a risk of physical injury, but they also teach self-esteem, self-responsibility and self-confidence.

There is also the sense of community that one gets in the country – a powerful sense of looking after one another – whereas in the city one can become paranoid even about one’s neighbours over the back fence. At university, a similar trend has emerged. When I went to Flinders University [in South Australia] I was part of a tight group of people who spent intensive face-to-face time in a medical course, sharing countless hours together. And love them or hate them, I felt part of a family. Nowadays, half of university life is online. And that has its consequences: students do not socialise much, they do not go to the bar afterwards, they do not play up together. All these things are destructive of young people’s development.

Pictured: Ancient Greek Heroism

LAH: I want to ask you about heroism. You have always denied that you are a hero, even though what you did in Thailand is the very definition of the ancient Greek concept of heroism, which is triumphing against seemingly insurmountable odds.

I do understand why people refer to us as heroes: it was an event on the worldwide stage, young people’s lives were saved, and the perception was that we did something dangerous in our cave diving. But cave diving is something I do every weekend if I can – for me, it is my happy place. There is an element of danger in cave diving, yes, but that risk is carefully managed. When one plans and executes something complex and does it safely, it gives one a huge sense of satisfaction. The juice is worth the squeeze.

RPL: Does it come down to the business of risk-management rather than risk-taking?

Well, I had thought through everything that I could think of before I went into the cave. At the time I genuinely believed that most of those children would die in the attempt to bring them out, but I found the courage to go ahead anyway. In the heat of the moment, I was able just to quarantine that concern and say, ‘ok, let’s give it a go.’

Pictured: Dr Richard Harris signing his new bookThe Art of Risk

RPL: Are you a classic example of the person who ‘feels the fear and does it anyway’?

That is the definition of courage for me: being afraid of something and then doing it.

RPL: Summing up, if you were advising schools about what to do about risk-taking, is there anything you can think of we should be doing?

It is hard to make a general policy. Maybe my new catchphrase ‘What is safe enough?’ should be on the topic list for all risk management meetings at schools. I have been met with gratitude from teachers and parents when I put forward these ideas; they tell me how refreshing it is ‘to have someone say it out loud.’ But agreement at schools might be elusive because educators are personally responsible for the care of the pupils they oversee. It is easy for me to say bold, provocative things because I am in no position of authority, and I do not have anyone to be responsible for. It is much harder for schools. Tough decisions might be required to ensure adventure and sensible risk-taking remain intrinsic parts of pupils’ lives.