“Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.” This is a line from a famous country and western song by Waylon Jennings. It’s pretty good career advice for a lot of reasons, some of which I will mention shortly. But the mythology of the Old West is the only mythology that is truly American, which makes it important if we are to understand how we got where we are as a nation, for better or worse. Like all myths, ours is chock full of prejudice, lies, and factual inaccuracies. I’ll admit that up front before the whining about how myths are chock full of prejudice, lies, and factual inaccuracies starts. Any student of human nature recognizes the duality of the human condition—the existence of love and hate, peace and violence, kindness and selfishness, logic and illogic, the ability to seek truth and at the same time lie even to ourselves—that thrives inside each individual. Those that create myths are no different than those of us who are entertained, maybe even educated, by them.
In America’s heyday immediately following World War II, a new media called TV brought us Roy Rogers, Hop-a-long Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Texas John Slaughter, Cisco Kid, Matt Dillon, Paladin, Tom Mix, The Rifleman, and a dozen or so different characters played by John Wayne and Ward Bond and Ben Johnson—this list could probably continue, even be extended, to include more cowboys for the length of the page and added with a few cowboy dogs like Rin Tin Tin. What do they all have in common? They were my boyhood heroes when television was first introduced into every home during the nineteen-fifties, and archetypal representations of the attitudes and actions that made American males great.
I’m not going to try and make a politically correct case for these TV and movie characters today, some based on real men and some fictitious. They were all white and they all fought the Injuns. The leitmotif that ran through these early TV cowboy shows was strongly influenced by racism, misogyny, a false concept of patriotism, and one could reasonably argue cultural appropriation. I’m going to acknowledge that their characters reflected the negative nationwide ideas of the white majority at that time as most literary or film characters would from history’s perspective and then, try to get to the positive aspects of their heroics that are actually worth considering in our 21st century age of moral relativity. In other words, I’m not going to throw away penicillin because it comes from mold. I’m going to use the qualities that make me healthier and try to learn what I can as I discard the poison.
Most importantly, these mythological characters exhibited some inalienable and inherent moral standards of right and wrong in common. I’m not talking about strict religious standards, but rather human ones that even religious fanatics recognize exist outside doctrinal boundaries. The Apostle Paul says, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the [Mosaic] law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law…” (Romans 2:14).
My childhood heroes were these men, the ones who did by nature the good things required of them for the collective betterment of the world around them, at least in stories if not in reality. They all exhibited a conscience on screen, which is what Paul is referring to. Questions such as how do my decisions affect other people, what is valuable beyond the material, are we really free without accountability, among others were asked and answered in the actions these story-book heroes took. They were answered symbolically in the superhuman activities against metaphorical evil undertaken successfully, and in the ability to survive dilemmas ordinary people could not withstand.
Consider the code of one of the most successful legends in media history, The Lone Ranger, published in an article by National Public Radio on justice outside the law:
I believe…
- That to have a friend, a man must be one.
- That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.
- That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself.
- In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for what is right.
- That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.
- That ‘this government of the people, by the people, and for the people’ shall live always.
- That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.
- That sooner or later…somewhere…somehow…we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.
- That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.
- In my Creator, my country, my fellow man.
Even though a fictitious mythology, there are some principles included in this value system that, when applied, could make the world a better place for everyone. Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, actors who played The Lone Ranger and Tonto in the original series, believed it was up to them to set a good example as role models around their young fans by attempting to follow these rules. Closer scrutiny of the plots involved and dramatic outcomes for most of the early celluloid cowboys will show that these concepts were generally accepted as part of the heroic code and defined what was meant by the term “a good man.” Yes, they had faults as characters and as actors representing those characters, but I will not fault them for trying to be better than most of society, particularly white society, at the time.
For most of my early life cowboys controlled the corral of American social mores. I was required to be polite around my elders, treat all women as ladies, defend the helpless, fight injustice, share with others, and be willing to serve in areas of greatest need. Those ideals were a prime motivator when I enlisted in the Marine Corps and went to Vietnam, and Vietnam, for me, was where the value system that had served me well as a young man began to fall apart. It did for many of my friends as well. The reality of an unjust war and the finality of three million dead brought to light a moral relativity that had existed for centuries in the shadows and behind closed doors. Because we called Vietnam “Injun” country and ourselves cowboys did not make us right and the Vietnamese people wrong. Behind the cowboy mythology of my youth was an insidious agenda controlled by people who profit from making illusions seem real. The illusory code I chose to believe in and live by was not the real code that generated our actions.
My country had become increasingly under control by a military-industrial complex of corporations that existed for one reason, to make a profit. These entities were and are amoral. The concepts of right and wrong do not exist within their mission statements. The cowboy code in films, on TV, and in books morphed into a value system through which expediency began to dominate, the boundaries between right and wrong blurred, and the characters themselves in an attempt to appear more human based their decisions on circumstance rather than principles. The anti-hero became our hero This all means the great motivator of self-sacrifice becomes greatly diminished.
It was inevitable in the post-sixties, postmodern era for this to happen and I’m not advocating that we return to a time in our history when what seemed utopian for white middle class males was, in all honesty, a dystopian period for ethnic minorities, women, the LGBT community, and the poor. I’m simply trying to point out that our cowboy heroes had some positive things to share with us and we have, as a society, forgotten what they were. We are on the verge of constant war, overwhelming poverty, a return to virulent racism, and the destruction of education. We have already made a democratic system of elections nothing more than silent auctions of power with corporations able to elect one corrupt politician after another. In fact, this debased election process led to a vile creature with orange skin, who by his own words and actions exemplifies most of our problems, winning the highest elected office in the land. It might be in our best interest to not only learn from the negative lessons from the Old West, which is a celluloid illusion anyway, but look more closely at some of the positive ones involved in the only true American mythology from so many years ago.
I believe there is a place for moral relativity, that it is far more conducive to freedom than absolute dictated structure in life. Humans actions seem most often and best served based on individual circumstance rather than categorical application of rules regardless of circumstance. But that only works when applied through the filter of a conscience, something many of my boyhood heroes exhibited even in a fictitious setting.
Jim McGarrah, Author 