Adventure is inconsistent with liberalism today, according to the Portuguese writer and political thinker Bruno Maçães. In conversation with Tyler Cowen in 2018, he discusses how modern Liberalism implies too much control, that it includes the idea of a life plan. Modern Liberalism presumes that we know all the answers so we can spend lots of time preaching about how to live. In contrast, adventure involves not knowing the answers but looking around! This applies equally to physical adventure.
Politically, adventure has an anxiety that there might be a different lifestyle that is passing you buy just because you aren’t looking for it. This is an anxiety that liberalism lacks. According to Maçães, adventure has disappeared from the European psyche (seen, for example, in the EU’s current resistance to technology). Perhaps this is related to today’s idea that today’s heroes must be either accidental or victims.
Physical adventure is deeply connected to Maçães concept of political adventure: it is more than just ‘having a nice time outside’. Physical adventure involves an awareness that we don’t know the answers, that there are other ways of living, and that control is overrated.