Book Review and Analysis: 180° South: Conquerors of the Useless
An Environmentally and Socially Conscious Business Book in Disguise
180° South: Conquerors of the Useless makes a great accompaniment to documentary of the same name. The book takes readers behind the scenes of the film made by Chris Malloy. The book goes into a much greater depth about Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins, who made the original overland journey to Patagonia in 1968, then the film did. It also chronicles the sequence of events and experiences that inspired Chris Malloy and Jeff Johnson to remake the incredible journey, but also make it their own. Included are 100's of pictures by Jeff Johnson and the Doug Tompkins Archives, making this an excellent coffee table book.
To move 180° is to do an about face, to turn completely around. The essence of this surfer's story is that to move ahead, we need to do an about face and turn around. What ‘turning around’ means, can be anything. What is for certain is that everything happens in cycles. Whether we want things to turn around or not, those forces have already been decided. Corrections are always in order. Human life is a continuous feedback loop of interposing forces constantly correcting themselves, adapting, evolving.
Even if you’ve never surfed or rock climbed in your life — I haven’t — this book really has a universal appeal. I highly recommend both the book and the film. What I particularly appreciated about this book was how it jumped from adventure narrative, to conversation and banter, and on to reflection. Along with the beautiful photography by Jeff Johnson, there are gems of wisdom from Yvon, Doug, and Chris on nearly every page.
Some of my favorite passages from the book and my personal thoughts and reflections on each:
Doug has said that spending so much of our formative years in close proximity to the beauty of nature allowed an appreciation for it to enter our bones. Appreciate something for long enough and you learn to love it. And anytime you love something, you also want to care for it and safeguard it.
Some universal wisdom from Doug Tompkins early in the book. For me, ‘Showing gratitude for something’ is a good substitute for the phrase ‘appreciate something’. When you show gratitude and accept something, imperfections and all, you grow to love and cherish it.
we wrote the company mission statement still used to guide our decisions: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”
This statement from Yvon is a reflection of a turning point for Chouinard Equipment and Patagonia when they were still struggling to find meaning. At a time when it seemed that his business was only a means to an end — pay for the next adventure- Yvon decided to pivot and blaze ground as a socially and environmentally conscious entrepreneur.
Our company has become an attractive place to work for anyone who cares about the fate of the planet, and this in turn has made it easy to recruit good employees.
A result of blazing ground as a conscious business, Yvon’s tribe started to form. This is a good example of how leadership can be effortless when all of your employees become practitioners of extreme ownership.
By the late ’50s America had gone from the “land of the free” to the land of the “nine-to-five” — with nothing seen as worthwhile unless it turned a profit or provided security.
This what Yvon didn’t want for his company. Profit and security are often quick to follow when you have a passionate tribe bounding into work every morning.
They traded middle-class prosperity and security for adventure, self-reliance, and a connection to the natural world. The two tribes, largely unknown to each other, lived similar lives. They were all dead broke, building and inventing their own gear as they went along.
Yvon when discussing the two tribes: surfers and climbers in the 60’s and 70’s. A similarity to this theme is the growing location independent entrepreneur community. Building and inventing a lifestyle as they go.
Yvon Chouinard once said, “It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong.” As much as I like this quote it has always bothered me in a way, robbing me of my own adventures.
I love this one. It reminds of me of a 50 mile mountain bike race I did a few years back that became a battle of bike versus mud and rider versus cold. Despite the misery and my overwhelming joy of it ending, I look back at it fondly. Memory has a way of sanding down the rough edges of adventure.
But it was here — floating in a river on the very edge of Patagonia — that I realized home is not a physical reference to a specific place on earth, but a broadening of the consciousness. Home is, after all, where you are.
This passage by Chris references his getting lost on a rafting trip gone awry with Jeff Johnson. Despite that chaos, there is an overwhelming beauty in the grandeur of nature and vast open spaces.
“You get to the top and there’s nothing up there. If your primary goal is the summit, you are missing the whole point. The purpose of climbing is to effect some sort of spiritual and physical gain, but if you compromise the process, you’re an asshole when you start out and you’re an asshole when you get back.”
Another one of my favorites. I hate goals and the ideal, the lust, for racing to the end. It reminds me of an episode on the Rich Roll podcast where he questions what the point of ‘life-hacking’ is. You start the life mission as a complete novice. The purpose of the struggle, of the chaos, and the hardship is to develop, to grow, to create purpose. When you try to shortcut, to hack your way through, you miss out. You end up with no purpose. You start as a novice and you end as a novice.
“How do you two do it?” I asked Doug and Yvon. “Most people your age aren’t climbing mountains and they tend to get more conservative in their political ideals — all that radical stuff just a phase they went through.” After a long pause — as with all questions I had asked — Doug answered, “Don’t hang out with old people.” They laughed. Then Yvon, slapping his knee, chimed in, “Always make sure you are the oldest person in the room.”
Solid life advice from Doug and Yvon. If you want to stay hungry and keep growing surround yourself with like minded people. Goes well with the Jim Rohn quote ‘you are the average of the 5 people you are around the most’. Tim Ferriss swears by this concept and once said it should be the billboard for his book ‘Tools of Titans’. Also another book reference to the importance of tribes.
Chris: Yvon, what’s the difference between success and failure when it comes to climbing? Yvon: What’s important is the effort. We put in a lot of effort on Corcovado. I mean, three days of just trying to get there. If it’s important that we climbed it, made a second ascent, and wrote it up for history books, then we failed. But if we were out for a good adventure, then we were successful.
Success and failure are not polar opposites and most certainly not discrete concepts they’re made out to be. This statement by Yvon also reiterates why going through the process is so important. Enjoyment of the effort, the work, the process of climbing is a success, regardless of the outcome. Approach your business ventures like this and you’ll never fail.
Doug is more bothered about the end of society and the end of mankind than I am, because he wants to do something about it and stop it. I’m just a laid-back Zen Buddhist about it. I say, wow, I’ll do what I can and so be it. We have the same view of the world and where it’s going, but a different approach.
In this case, I’m more of a Yvon then a Doug. Although for me it’s a stoic philosophy and not Zen Buddhist. Realize and do my best with what is in my control, accept what is not. This idea is well captured in Ray Dalio’s book ‘Principles’ — and his unwavering belief in radical honesty and acceptance. This isn’t to say that we should give up, as we have the ability to grow our sphere of influence so long as we are willing to put in the work to do that.
As I see it, that’s the dilemma of social movements focused on the future and the plight of our planet. We have to go far beyond thinking that we can simply reform the system. I know this is revolutionary talk, but there is going to have to be some kind of revolution to change our current direction.
This captures the real essence of the book and Yvon’s life work. 180°, taking an about face, turning around. The impassioned plea to turn around and go in the opposite direction. Doug states that as a society in order to move ahead, we’ll need to completely turn around and take one step. If as a business or even as an individual, you're not prepared and on the leading edge of this shift, momentum alone will cast you into oblivion.
Nobody knows when or how this (revolution)shift will take place. I think it is happening now with the rapid growth of technology, AI, global economic growth, and a (mostly) global peace. These forces are going to compound upon each other and lead to a global societal shift that will take our current state of affairs, but 10x or 100x things.
