Where have all the cowboys gone? Singer/songwriter Paula Cole wanted to know in 1997. Now I’m asking. Once upon a time this country was imbued with a survivor’s mentality: either kill, or be killed. And while I don’t mean going as far as to advocate pillaging or murder, the idea of taking your neighbor’s land because you have a larger rifle/musket/pitchfork harkens to truer times.
Remember that book you read in sixth grade, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer? It’s the non-fictional account of Chris McCandless, an affluent East Coast boy who gave up the prospects of a quiet, comfortable life in favor of the rugged Alaskan wilderness. Lately, that frontier mentality has been nagging at my subconscious like Jennifer Lopez on a lonely Friday night.
Now that I’ve disgusted a large portion of my readership, I can talk mano-a-mano with the rest of you. In our high-tech, hustle-and-bustle 21st century society, the frontiersman seems more myth than man. The emasculation process begins at birth, where a child’s life is pretty much set out for them: Learn to eat solid food, learn to walk, walk to school, get a degree, walk out, contribute to society’s betterment.
And sure, getting a degree is great. But it’s also filled with rigorous monotony and the stench of false accomplishments. So you got an A on your term paper; congratulations! Now how is that going to help you build a makeshift fort when the 700-pound grizzly bear that’s been stalking you for weeks ransacks your stash of wild berries? Each term I check DuckWeb for that grizzly bear prevention methods course, and each term I’m disappointed.
Once upon a time the frontier mentality dominated all walks of life. I can’t speak definitively for an age I wasn’t around to see, but it seems to me that, once upon a time, people were allowed to express themselves in a way society no longer allows for. Some call it ‘political correctness.’ I just call it annoying. It’s much more than a mere inconvenience in our otherwise bright, sun-shiny days, though. It has serious ramifications on our politics.
Politicians nowadays come fully equipped with campaign staffers, whose livelihoods depend on shaping their candidate’s public persona into a socially acceptable, made-for-TV version of their former self. You see it every day on the news, when candidates visit towns they don’t know how to pronounce, and deliver rousing speeches written by a staff of campaign writers. Every action reeks of premeditation: When to speak, when not to speak, whose hand to shake, where to stand on a certain issue. Did George Washington have to put up with this crap?
History is filled with flawed heroes – pioneers who, save an eccentricity or two, were Gods among men. Look at Winston Churchill. By all accounts he was a brilliant leader. By many accounts he was also a bipolar alcoholic. And what about Ulysses S. Grant? Grant is as remembered by history for his world-class ability to hold liquor as he is for serving as president and General of the Union army. For better or worse, alcohol has fueled many leaders throughout world history.
Likewise, depression has played a prominent role in the lives of some of our nation’s best and brightest individuals. For Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, their depression wasn’t as much a barrier as it was a stepping stone to greatness.
Say what you will about these and other social taboos; men like Jefferson, Lincoln and Churchill were born destined for immortality. Not even depression or the occasional alcohol binge was going to get in their way. But the microscopic scrutiny our politicians are subjected to no longer allows leaders to express themselves freely. Which worked fine for the likes of Ronald Reagan. Yet the slope is a slippery one for those who have an ounce of substance to go along with their political aspirations.
What would happen to these men were they to run for office today? Would their shortcomings be tolerated? Or would they be ostracized from the ever-important ‘political mainstream?’ Maybe we shouldn’t be so reliant on our politicians to be models of temperance. Maybe greatness and madness are more closely related than we know.
Life is filled with these types of off beats – men and women whose unconventional views of the world are exceeded only by their desire to change it accordingly. You could say Chris McCandless was one of those individuals. Sure he died, cold and alone in the back of an abandoned bus. I give him props despite this. He dared to be different, to be an individual in a society that demands conformity. It’s all any of us can really hope for – except for the whole dying part, that is.
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