January 25, 2010

 

By Adam Frank

My 15-year-old son and I had just come out of the movie theater. After two hours of the usual explosions and mayhem (I can’t really remember what movie we had seen) I made the mistake of telling him to wait outside while I chatted with a friend. Five minutes later I find him on the theater roof jumping from one large air conditioning unit to the other. “What are you crazy?” I yelled hoping to get him down, and us away, from there before the blue siren’s arrived.

Well, yes. Of course he’s crazy. He’s 15. Ever since we made the mistake of watching District B13 my son has become a fan of Parkour, which is like freestyle skiing without skis or snow or mountains. Practitioners of Parkour (or its variant Free-running) believe that a good time equals climbing straight up the face of impossibly high walls or leaping from the roof of one 10 story building to another (even if there happens to be a city street in between them). It is a mix of gymnastics, rock climbing and insanity. It’s beautiful, graceful and terrifying (if you are a parent). So of course my son loves it and yearns to be an adept. I am trying to guide him to something safer.

Which brings us to today’s question. What is the balance between the hardwiring evolution has given us and the cultural programming we have given ourselves? Read the rest of this entry »