Publish at July 09 2018 Updated January 07 2026
The wikipedia definition indicates adventure as a series of actions forming a story or an exploration of the unknown.
"An adventure (in Latin, adventura) is a series of twists and turns, most often forming the framework of a fictional or real story; it can also be a chance event of a singular or surprising nature, involving one or more people. Milan Kundera defines adventure as a "passionate exploration of the unknown". The experience of an adventure can create psychological and physiological excitement that can be interpreted as negative (e.g. because of fear) or positive (e.g. feeling alive)".
Wikipedia: https: //fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aventure
The adjective "felt" is the key to the solution. And what if adventure is a feeling that oscillates between passion and candor?
"The adventure object, more than any other, in fact requires this rediscovered "candor", insofar as adventure is, first and foremost, a representation. At the beginning of the 20th century, Georg Simmel - one of the first to consider how adventure might contribute to a "philosophy of modernity" - forcefully suggested adventure's place in the field of representations. If, of two events whose assignable contents are not very different, one is felt to be 'Adventure', the other not, then it is this difference in relation to the whole of our life that makes this meaning fall to the one and deny it to the other".
Une histoire des représentations : l'aventure lointaine dans la France des années 1850-1940 by Sylvain Venayre - Cahiers d'histoire - 2001 - https://journals.openedition.org/chrhc/1856
In this case, the notion of feeling is cultural. Adventure is a freedom of action that can only be felt in its own context.
"On April 12, 1961, the young lieutenant Yuri Gagarin, aboard the Vostok 1 capsule, completed the first orbital flight around the Earth in 1 hour 48 minutes. On his return, he was promoted to the rank of major and, in a press conference, provided the confirmation that the directors of the museums of atheism (brightening up the dreariness of the Soviet republics) had been waiting for: "God doesn't exist, I haven't met him...
For, in the absence of relevant facts, the declaration of non-existence itself proves rich in information. In particular, it reveals the thoughts of a Soviet hero faced with the possibility of his own demise. From this point of view, the God whose non-encounter the future major reported could only take the form of the one imagined by the popes of Gjatsk, Gagarin's native village. We can make out a dark, piercing gaze, surrounded by a shaggy beard, albeit of the finest effect. It's easy to see why young Yuri had no trouble sensing his absence. It's also easy to see how his declaration is in line with the obscurantism he intends to confound."
Gagarin's Candor by Francis Martens - 2010 - http://www.revuenouvelle.be/La-candeur-de-Gagarine
"That said, the unity of the imaginary of adventure in the 1850s-1940s was not based solely on representations of distant spaces. It also embodied certain values which, while they may have evolved throughout the period, were always present.
The first is individualism. From 1850 to 1940, adventure was unthinkable without the exaltation of individual initiative. In this respect, a study of the discourse on war adventures is edifying. Throughout the period, war was perceived as an opportunity for adventure only when it left ample room for individual autonomy. The discourse on adventure thus stemmed from the exaltation of the self that was one of the consequences of Romantic aesthetics.
The second is the valorization of the quest for mortal risk. Throughout the 1850s-1940s, the discourse on adventure was unthinkable without reference to the brush with death: death, to use Jankélévitch's phrase, was "the precious spice of adventure". Mortal risk was exalted as a means of living intensely - and one of the moral virtues of intense living was that it enabled us to rediscover our love of the simplicity of life, once the danger had passed.
CF Une histoire des représentations: l'aventure lointaine dans la France des années 1850-1940 by Sylvain Venayre
Distant spaces, dreamt of far from everyday life, provided the framework for adventure.
"These distant spaces were defined first and foremost by their remoteness from Europe, to the extent that it would be futile to attempt a precise list of them, even if certain places were sometimes of particular importance, such as Mexico, visibly over-represented in French discourse on adventure around 1850. But this necessary condition was not enough. Above all, Europe was negated as the space of civilization. That a civilization was recognized elsewhere, and the space that welcomed it, in turn, was absent from the discourse on adventure: this explains the silence on Japan, for example, in the works of Jules Verne or in the adventure novels published by the Journal des Voyages (1877-1915). It also explains why colonial space, insofar as it was a space in the process of civilization, was not an attractive pole in the imaginary geography of adventure...
Fundamentally defined by its remoteness from Europe and civilization, the space of adventure was therefore first and foremost a dreamed-of space, an entirely imagined space - and not a lived space, a representation produced from the experience we might have had of its reality. A distant space, it was an elsewhere defined, in a hollow way, by the rejection of the forms of civilization. It was, by definition, a space that was imprecise to the point of being unknown - which, in the end, was best represented by the geographical "blank map". At the same time, it was a guessed-at space, the most exotic space, the one charged with representations the furthest removed from everyday reality."
CF Une histoire des représentations : l'aventure lointaine dans la France des années 1850-1940 by Sylvain Venayre
Adventurers are no longer paper, they're real, and we experience their daily lives in settings that are often exotic or atypical, but very real.
"Who are the new explorers of the 21st century? Great reporters, writers, photographers, they immortalize their journeys in their own way and claim the heritage of the heroes who marked their childhood. Here is a small selection of these free men and women, who all share a desire to share the beauty of the world...".
The New Explorers of the 21st Century: Discover 5 Dream Smugglers of 2018 by François - 2018 - https://www.unmondedaventures.fr
"To rediscover the pure sense of adventure, we need to go back to basics and get rid of everything that clutters us today. Go back to simple pleasures, like riding a basic motorcycle, navigating with a road map, paying with hard cash, sharing room and board with casual friends or makeshift companions, inventing our route as we make impromptu changes of destination. Wander, get lost and find yourself again. If adventure is a "passionate discovery of the unknown", it's also an opportunity for warm reunions with friends, but above all with oneself. Measuring how far you've come to get from where you are to where you want to be. What a program!
Is adventure still adventure? Or is it just an empty concept? by Didier Constant - 2016 - http://motoplus.ca
First books, then the Internet have changed our relationship with adventure. Reinforced by television, then video games, the notion of static adventure has become natural. Adventure has become synonymous with intellectual escape, and has turned us into supermen.
"The results, communicated on Tuesday by the UNIGE, are unequivocal: people playing action video games saw their cognitive abilities increase by a third of a standard deviation compared with the control group. "This research, carried out over several years and all over the world, proves the real effect of action video games on the brain, and paves the way for their use as developers of cognitive abilities," sums up Benoît Bediou, researcher at the UNIGE's Section of Psychology".
Action video games develop the brain's cognitive abilities - 2017 - https://www.rts.ch
Tomorrow's adventure will be educational.
"Innovation also brings into play a form of thinking that invites adventurous transgression, called creative rationality. Rehabilitating creative rationality in the education system is no small challenge. It requires us to reconsider the Western metaphysical tradition that has disqualified this type of thinking in favor of analytical rationality. Integrating creative rationality forces teachers to invent a pedagogy that sees knowledge not as the object of duplication, but as part of a journey that requires students to set their certainties in motion and transform them.
This pedagogy, which can be described as "adventure pedagogy", breaks with the conception of school as a place where rules must be obeyed, in favor of a representation of school as a territory of adventure. In so doing, it militates for the indiscipline of students and teaching".
Vers une pédagogie de l'aventure, by Joëlle Forest in mensuel 531 - 2018 - http://www.larecherche.fr/
What if young people fed on video game adventures wanted to enter reality with both feet through entrepreneurship?
#1 Find your dreams and express them!
"Some of you have conscious dreams, but others don't know you have them. The first thing to do is to find out what your dreams are. Once you've found them, express them! If you have several dreams, put them in order so that they become a guideline to be transformed into actions and results."
#2 Turn your weaknesses into strengths
"Even if you have dreams, everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Turn them into strengths. For example, if you're reluctant to start your own business because your age is too high or too low, remember that every age has its advantages and disadvantages. Diversity and intergeneration will be a source of new ideas and combined skills."
#3 Take the long view
"Ask yourself what your ambition is. Do you want to pass on your business to your grandchildren, or sell your start-up within four years? Do you want to change the world? You need to ask yourself these questions to visualize your ambition and be able to set the right fundamentals: depending on the nature of your project, you won't communicate, surround yourself and finance yourself in the same way.""
Comment passer du rêve à l'aventure entrepreneuriale by F. Clavel - 2017 - https://business.lesechos.fr
Yesterday's "shoot the guns" replaced by entrepreneurial adventure. Adventure will be a daily occurrence, with thrills, successes, failures and no doubt social changes to come to cushion the falls of our adventurers of the future.
Illustration : Pixabay Free-Photos
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