‘In an environment so choked with ulterior motives,’ says outdoor writer, editor and photographer Alex Roddie, ‘I don’t honestly see how any higher purpose can survive as anything but a quaint afterthought. Is it naive to speak of a higher purpose to adventure? Why should it be? Are we really setting our hopes so low?’
- The opinions in the following essay are entirely personal and have no connection to any of the publications or clients that Alex Roddie works with. Photography copyright, Alex Roddie.
I never used to question the time I spent in the mountains, climbing or camping or taking pictures or staring at the stars. It was just what I did, and to seek a deeper purpose would make little sense. But the world was different then. I still had my faith in technology and progress, and things still generally seemed to be moving forwards. It was easy, back then, for our adventures to be about little more than enjoyment.
I think that 2016 was the year when things began to change for me. I’d long been an enthusiastic user of social media, but in 2016 I started to notice that my experience was less positive than it once was – that I was no longer master of my own attention, that I was having difficulties concentrating, focusing on work, even reading. The Brexit vote and election of Donald Trump, both aided by the manipulation of truth via social media, reinforced my growing sense that something was shifting. It took time to figure out what.
Losing my faith
Over the next few years my faith in technology totally evaporated.
I’d once been a tech enthusiast; my degree was in computer science. But as I learned about the reality of the world we live in – our attention and opinions bought and sold by tech titans who use cheap tricks to hook us on websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – I became disgusted with it all. Today, in 2025, these ideas are totally mainstream: that we’re all in an unhealthy relationship with screens and platforms, that democracies are being undermined by billionaire tech bros, that the concept of ‘progress’ no longer even exists for most ordinary people.
Add to this the fact that climate change is really starting to heat up. Since 2017 I’ve seen direct evidence of catastrophic climate change and glacial retreat in the Alps, and closer to home in Scotland winters aren’t what they once were.
Put it all together and there’s a sense that we’re living in uncertain times. Our relationship with nature is tenuous, consumerism is everywhere, capitalism doesn’t seem to be working for anyone but the rich, the promise of technology to improve our lives has stalled, and even the private inner spaces of our minds are no longer sacrosanct because we’re so easily manipulated by algorithms that don’t have our best interests at heart.
The machine
After reading E.M. Forstner’s classic short story The Machine Stops, I became aware of the concept of the machine: the globalised entity of systems that acts as our life support, but also seeks to dominate and replace nature, perhaps even turn humanity into God. It’s an idea that has been explored by many writers, including Nicholas Carr, Brian Merchant, Paul Kingsnorth, Dan Simmons, and Aldous Huxley.
The machine, I realised, opposes all that is human and creative and unique in each of us. It’s an engine of uncaring conformity, replacing the meaning in our lives with control, the tangible embodied materiality of real existence with the numb sterility of the internet.
Perhaps the machine is the great shadow behind our crisis of meaning, the rising levels of poor mental health, our disconnection from nature, even our relentless consumption of Earth’s resources. It’s the engine driving climate change and it might even be pushing civilisation towards collapse. It knows how to consume and grow but it doesn’t know how to nurture or conserve.
Instinctively I realised that a life of meaning can be found by rejecting the machine – not totally of course, because we all depend on it to a degree and I don’t think anyone reading this wants to go and live in a cave, but at least pushing back and trying to limit its influence on us. Doing something to say ‘I’m still human’.
The role of adventure
So what is human and creative and unique in each of us? What stands for meaning over control, material embodied reality over hyperspace, complex emotion over dopamine hits? What frees us from algorithmic and consumerist influences, even if just for a few hours? What nurtures our connection with nature, with our own souls (which we hardly know in the distraction and clamour of online life), with our fellow humans (ditto)? What strengthens our bodies and minds, develops skills that might make us more resilient in an uncertain future?
Adventure.
Or does it?
I believe it can. But I also believe that adventure has been thoroughly compromised by the very machine it stands to offer an escape from. I include myself in this! The outdoor industry keeps a roof over my head, and I’m part of this world – I’ve helped build it. Guilty as charged! And I’m not sorry, because I love the work I do.
But I struggle with the consumerism that underpins this industry. I would love for most of the money to come from people directly supporting the writers, photographers, filmmakers and artists who create stories of real value. Human stories that nourish us and provide meaning, not content for clicks. But that isn’t where the money comes from. It (mostly) comes from gear brands selling the latest waterproof or other widget. And when so much of the attention in the outdoors space is siphoned towards Instagram, an advertising platform incentivised to aggressively keep people on Instagram and buying things or thinking about buying things, we’ve got issues.
I’m not saying there was ever a time when outdoors media was perfect, but I do think we’re at a particularly tricky point just now. Investment in the good, wholesome stuff (the films, books and long-form journalism) is not exactly abundant, while brands are throwing money (and free gear) at the legions of bottom-of-the-barrel influencers who might be able to shift product. I scroll through Instagram and every third post on my feed is an ad, either overt or undeclared. And let’s not forget the attention dynamics at play – the entire structure of the app designed to hook users, keep them scrolling and liking and swiping. Whether they actively want to or not.
In this realm, we ourselves are nothing more than content. Our shadow digital selves are alien beings that superficially resemble us, but are also so very strange; half human, half machine homonculi.
In an environment so choked with ulterior motives, I don’t honestly see how any higher purpose can survive as anything but a quaint afterthought. Is it naive to speak of a higher purpose to adventure? Why should it be? Are we really setting our hopes so low?
Increasingly I wonder if sharing our adventure on any of the usual channels can be done without falling foul of these moral quandaries, because the medium shapes the message (tip of the hat to Marshall McLuhan), and I think the incentives do matter. The machine, in other words, has a will of its own – and it doesn’t necessarily match ours. Maybe sticking up some Instagram stories while we’re wild camping contaminates the experience in some fundamental way. I don’t want to overstate my case or attack anyone for doing something they enjoy, and I certainly don’t have any direct concrete evidence for an idea as woolly as this, but it’s something I’ve felt instinctively for some years now.
Maybe you have too. Over the last few years I’ve seen these ideas repeated more and more often. They don’t feel quite as fringe now as they used to.
So what higher purposes can adventure serve? And how do we get there?
1. Resistance
At the core of our humanity and individuality is human experience. Real, embodied, material. Unmediated by screens or algorithms or consumerist incentives. And adventure has the potential to be one of the most vivid human experiences we can have.
If physical experience is what makes us human, the thing that sets us apart from the digital avatars we curate and which increasingly curate us, then maybe adventure’s important. Maybe it’s one of the most potent tools we have left for standing up and saying: ‘All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say: “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!”’ (tip of the hat to Network, 1976).
Maybe if we don’t nurture this sense of physical reality then the algorithmic voodoo doll version of yourself (the machine version of you that lives on the internet and keeps buying odd things on Amazon) will get steadily stronger. We’ve all found ourselves acting in ways that don’t align with our true values, especially perhaps on social media (cough Twitter flamewars cough).
Maybe adventure can help us resist that. It can help remind us who we really are, what we really want from life, what we truly value – and maybe it can help us keep seeing the humanity in other people too.
2. Recovery
Modern life is so exhausting, isn’t it? The emails, the screen time, the different accounts that must be checked and updated, the ever-increasing demands of making a living. But despite this, most of us still have physically undemanding lives compared to our ancestors. The stresses are intangible now. We aren’t being chased by a sabre-toothed tiger, we’re seeing an email marked ‘URGENT’ at 2am.
A few generations back, our forebears sought recovery from physically demanding jobs through relaxation. Today the tables are turned. Most of us already have more options for relaxation than we know what to do with. A weekend glomming out on Netflix after a week working at a computer is unlikely to genuinely satisfy. Instead, to relieve the intangible pressures of modern life we must engage with the physical: controlled challenge for our body and mind, ideally in a natural or wild place. Hello, adventure weekends!
Engaging with nature deepens our connection to it, and helps us see it as something other than a resource to exploit. There’s another debate as to whether outdoor recreation genuinely leads to better conservation, but I do honestly believe that adventure can make us better stewards of the natural world. And that can only be a good thing as far as nature recovery and the fight against climate change goes.
3. Resilience
We’re moving towards a more unstable world. The decline or even collapse of civilisation within our lifetimes is possible. We still don’t really know exactly how bad climate change is going to get. Even with a more optimistic stance, you don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict political, economic and climatic turmoil. I think we can also count upon a future in which AI increasingly undermines human agency and meaning, reducing our engagement with the real world and pushing us towards an ever more immaterial, screen-mediated existence.
No matter how things unfold, adventure can help us become more resilient. Power cuts don’t look quite as scary to the seasoned wild camper. Adventure of all kinds can better equip us to deal with natural disasters or extreme weather. Long-distance backpackers know all about how to make the most of scant possessions and resources. Adventure also helps us to know ourselves and build stronger relationships with our fellow humans.
Even if life carries on much as it is now, just with more algorithms and screen time, I have a hunch that the future will belong to the people who cultivate valuable skills that are resistant to automation. Those skills might not be easy to come by, but I’m certain of one thing: adventure helps us to nurture critical and creative thinking, especially under pressure.
Silent adventure
But how can we seek the ‘right’ motives for our adventures? How can we really be sure we’re doing it for ourselves and not the ‘gram (which is shorthand for ’I’ve been conditioned to seek validation from people I barely know, and am motivated by dopamine hits delivered via an app’)?
Again, I don’t want to belittle anyone or tell them they’re doing things the wrong way – all I can do is set out my own framework for trying to find purpose in adventure. We’re all on our own path. I’m not saying that my way is the only way, or that I’m perfect. Sometimes a bit of online validation can be what you need… as long as you’re aware of the system and how it influences you. And, honestly, social media isn’t all bad.
Maybe it doesn’t really matter, and I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do know that something inside me feels freer, clearer, more real, when I put separation between what I’m doing and the online world of ‘the outdoors’. I’m an outdoor writer and photographer, so that’s hard to do! In turning human experience into content for the machine I believe we are undermining ourselves, though – feeding the insidious idea that we ourselves are nothing more than content.
So make the experience more real!
Free it from the incentives and desires of the machine. Go and have an adventure just for you, or for you and some friends. No internet connection, no phone in hand, no content. If you write, take pictures, or make art, do the creating just for you and the people around you in the real world. Communication with yourself and real people, strengthening bonds and conveying real ideas, not feeding the digital homonculus. At least for a while! I’m not saying never post about it; often I’ll give myself a week or two and then post something. But never everything, and I’ll try to keep its essence back for myself, and for me the separation is everything.
The gap helps me to understand the true meaning of the experience. If I post as I’m doing it, the meaning is mediated by the incentives of the platform – and therefore the meaning feels spoiled by the likes and social affirmation.
In the gap I can be real, and can know who I am again.
Tips
Analogue tools inherently create distance between an experience and any possibility of online content, and are therefore ideal for the practice of silent adventure. They allow you to record and create in a slow, meaningful, mindful way, free from the online hum of other minds and distractions – while still keeping the door open for published work later on if you want.
I recommend writing in a paper notebook with a pen or pencil. It could be a trail journal, rough notes, vignettes, poems, ideas. You could also keep a sketchpad for drawings or paintings.
A film camera is ideal for pictures because you have to develop the photos before you can even see them, which automatically creates distance. But any standalone digital camera will do the job, adding several steps before you can post pictures online. Taking pictures with a real camera instead of a phone is also a more engaging, tactile experience – all the better for getting back in touch with your embodied self. And the pictures will look better, too.
Try navigating with map and compass instead of an app! Again, it’s about being more engaged with what you’re doing.
Finally, don’t compromise safety. I often advocate for switching off your phone while on adventures of this kind, but if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, consider installing an app blocker such as Freedom (which lets you block problem apps for a period of time). Or you could stick your SIM card in that old Nokia dumbphone lurking in your bedside table drawer…
Alex Roddie is a professional editor, writer, and photographer active in UK outdoors print media. He’s editor of the magazines Sidetracked and Like the Wind, and regularly writes for The Great Outdoors. He’s also the author of several books, including The Farthest Shore (Vertebrate Publishing), about his offline hike of the Cape Wrath Trail in winter. Alex is passionate about analogue photography although rarely dares take his vintage film cameras out for a spin in winter conditions. He’s based in Scotland with his wife Hannah.
