Instant Gratification: The Chilean Miner Rescue and Western Man’s Freedom Fantasy

The Chilean mine rescue has captivated the entire world. Across the globe, channel after channel, press and pundits are debating the meaning, significance and breadth of this incredible endeavor. Why? It’s not about the Chilean miner’s mistress. It’s because Western man longs for freedom.

We humans have quite the fascination with rescue attempts: from baby Jessica in that darned well to the Iranian hostage situation and, just last month, a bus hijacking in Manila, humans love a good rescue story. But why?

My colleague Alex Moore suggested earlier today that the Chilean rescue mirrors Joseph Campbell’s hero archetype. “The rescue was a triumph of human spirit that not only caught our eye because it so fully conformed to the classic hero myth, but but because it drew the broader world into the story,” wrote Moore. While I agree with the “broader world” argument, I must respectfully disagree with the “heroics” angle.”*

There are no heroics in this story; not at the moment, at least. Sure, you could describe the rescuers as heroes, and I suppose they are, in a way, but they’re also just doing their job. Financial exchanges and heroics are mutually exclusive; they cannot overlap.

And, yes, I suppose one could be linguistically loose and call the miners “heroes” for surviving their ordeal, but, again, the “heroic” label is ill-fitting. The miners had no choice in being trapped; this was not an elective experience.

The heroics come after the rescue attempt, in hearings and protests about better safety regulations. If a miner stands up to say, “Hey, executives, you’re putting innocent workers in danger,” that would be heroic. Selling a script, however, takes little heroism, so that argument, I argue, can be tossed.

So, this brings us back to the original question: why do we care so much about how many miners have been rescued in Chile, and their quest for freedom? Well, the answer’s in the question.

“Rescue” is a bit of a strange word. Unlike other lexemes, “rescue” doesn’t have a straight-forward history. There’s no true Latin root, because the word “rescue” comes from two other terms: “re,” which means “again,” and “excuss,” a since-discarded word that meant “to shake off,” or “get rid of.” So “to rescue” means to “shake off again,” an idea that plays on a particularly Western fascination.

Western man has been shaped by one dominating thought: freedom. The democratic experience has shaped generations of Americans, Mexicans and other peoples living under the one man, one vote system. We thirst for sovereignty, for autonomy, for unhindered movement.

Whether it be Chilean miners or helpless tots, stories of restriction awaken within the Western mind a collective longing. If someone’s being held against their will, by man or nature, then we respond with sympathy and compassion. If someone or something has taken an individual against their will, we respond with scorn and contempt.

We Westerners want to be free, yet so often find ourselves restricted by common trappings, whether they be financial, cultural or social. We’re reduced to our jobs, our sexuality or our race. Freedom, as Janis Joplin would say, becomes just a word for “nothing left to lose.”

The path to freedom remains complicated and convoluted, peppered with pitfalls and challenges we must navigate. So, when presented with a story about an easy route to simple freedom, we Westerners become enamored, because few news stories sum up a universal longing in such a neat, human interest package.

*Alex, I hope you don’t think I’m picking on you, especially in light of that entire “Does Alex Moore’s crotch smell?” thing…