Bravery, Bravado, and John Wayne:
I was struck by this rant against bravado that arose in response to a piece in the NYT on barbecue joints. Both were linked by Ann Althouse, sitting in at InstaPundit. The piece is essentially irritated by a mode that tries to portray things as more dangerous than they really are:
Why does everyone in this country have to brag about how tough they are, how hip they are, how mean the streets are down which they walk? When did it start? With Brando in 1954, vrooming through town in leather bomber jacket and shades and never imagining how he would end up? Or John Wayne, who didn't serve in World War II but could beat up anyone on the screen? Or Hemingway, who advised Midwesterners where to eat in Madrid after paying to watch other men risk their lives?
We've been copying those acts for almost a century, and it's bullshit, Americans, it's just a load of it. It's damaged the national character, all this vain posturing. It's why some of the most gifted craftsmen in the nation spend their careers making the same gangster movie over and over, saying millions of dollars' worth of nothing. It's why the most popular genre of music in the past generation, hip-hop, is based almost entirely on empty, juvenile boasts of sexual prowess.
I'd like to suggest that this isn't an "American" thing so much as it is an urban thing -- I've seen it most often from New York City residents living or traveling elsewhere, and trying to impress the locals with the fact that they're from NYC. (Indeed, the stupidest words I ever heard a man say were of this ilk, passed out of the mouth of a man who didn't understand that he was in a bar in North Carolina and being overheard by numerous other patrons. They were addressed to a local young lady at whom he'd taken offense, and were: "Listen, b***, I'm from the Bronx and..." at which point in his sentence he was 'overtaken by events.')
I've a friend from Chicago who is similar on these points, so I won't say it's a NYC thing; and the fellow is right to point to hip-hop culture.
He is wrong, however, to try and tarnish John Wayne with it just because he wasn't in the service in WWII. This happens to be the year that would have marked John Wayne's 100th birthday; that means that in 1941 he was thirty-four, well past the age of the draft, and fully sixteen years past the normal age for enlistment. He might have been especially praiseworthy for enlisting in spite of being sixteen years older than the young men he'd have served beside; but he is hardly blameworthy for having chosen to serve in other capacities. If our current Hollywood crop served their country at this time as well as he did in his, we would be far better off as a nation.
Wayne was certainly no coward, in spite of having not been a veteran. Michael Pate, who played the Apache chief Vittorio in 1953's
Hondo, noted in his interview on the DVD version that Wayne had exhibited a number of feats of horsemanship that were both dangerous and impressive. Most particularly, Wayne had ridden behind Pate during his own most dangerous scenes, just far enough outside of the camera to avoid being in the picture, but close enough to dash forward and help control Pate's horse if it had panicked or gotten out of control. Pate, no horseman himself, said that Wayne was right there with him at every take to make sure he came out all right.
Horses are huge and powerful, and they are also prey animals and herd animals in nature. This means they spook and frighten easily, as nature has bred it into them by destroying those who did not; it means also that they pick up clues of fear from each other very readily. It takes a certain courage to ride a horse at the gallop at all. To be prepared to charge into a panicked horse with your own, both of them running headlong, to try to win control of the reins and save a companion -- that's courage worth the name.
Wayne at his best shows us what is the natural and right expression of the confidence that comes from learning to face danger. He had bravery, not bravado. It carries through on the screen, and is why he remains an inspiration to us all. John Wayne will be America's contribution to the world's literature: when even Hemingway is forgotten, a few of Wayne's films will remain. In a real sense, he is America's Shakespeare -- he didn't write the lines, but like the Bard, he used the stage to show us something about both the national character and human virtue.
Bravery and courage were a topic of great interest for Aristotle and Plato; both discuss it at length. The
Laches has Socrates engaged in a discussion about how (and if) it can be encouraged and developed. Could practice fighting in armor help young men develop it? We, as a culture, certainly could use a movement from bravado to bravery -- although, as our servicemen have shown in Iraq and elsewhere, we have quite a few truly brave men and women.
What makes the brave? Two things: learning to overcome danger, and the guidance and example of older men. This means that it is necessary to expose oneself to
real danger to become brave. Yet, as brave men are necessary to creating a safe society, there is a paradox: exposure to danger helps create safety. It is only the man who has learned to fight that can protect his home. By becoming more dangerous, he makes everyone safer. The more men who become more dangerous in this way, the safer is society as a whole.
Mr. Cohen, the author of the original rant, is right to point to juvenile behavoir as the problem. What is necessary is to have old men who are examples for the young, men of the type that the young wish to emulate. I discussed this problem separately and at some length in
Social Harmony (you will have to scroll down in that archive -- New Blogger has broken the permalink).
The secret of social harmony is simple: Old men must be dangerous.
Very nearly all the violence that plagues, rather than protects, society is the work of young males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. A substantial amount of the violence that protects rather than plagues society is performed by other members of the same group. The reasons for this predisposition are generally rooted in biology, which is to say that they are not going anywhere, in spite of the current fashion that suggests doping half the young with Ritalin.
The question is how to move these young men from the first group (violent and predatory) into the second (violent, but protective). This is to ask: what is the difference between a street gang and the Marine Corps, or a thug and a policeman? In every case, we see that the good youths are guided and disciplined by old men. This is half the answer to the problem.
But do we not try to discipline and guide the others? If we catch them at their menace, don't we put them into prisons or programs where they are monitored, disciplined, and exposed to "rehabilitation"? The rates of recidivism are such that we can't say that these programs are successful at all, unless the person being "rehabilitated" wants and chooses to be. And this is the other half of the answer: the discipline and guidance must be voluntarily accepted. The Marine enlists; the criminal must likewise choose to accept what is offered.
The Eastern martial arts provide an experience very much like that of Boot Camp. The Master, like the Drill Instructor, is a disciplined man of great personal prowess. He is an exemplar. He asks nothing of you he can't, or won't, do himself--and there are very many things he can and will do that are beyond you, though you have all the help of youth and strength. It is on this ground that acceptance of discipline is won. It is the ground of admiration, and what wins the admiration of these young men is martial prowess.
Everyone who was once a young man will understand what I mean. Who could look forward, at the age of sixteen or eighteen, to a life of obedience, dressed in suits or uniforms, sitting or standing behind a desk? How were you to respect or care about the laws, or the wishes, of men who had accepted such a life? The difficulty is compounded in poor communities, where the jobs undertaken are often menial. How can you respect your father if your father is a servant? Would you not be accepting a place twice as low as his? Would you not rather take up the sword, and cut yourself a new place? Meekness in the old men of the community unmakes the social order: it encourages rebellion from the young.
The traditional martial arts tend to teach young men to undertake flashy and impressive, but not terribly effective, fighting techniques. Only as you grow older do the masters of the art teach you the real secrets--the subtle, quick, physically simple ways in which the human body can be destroyed. In this way, the old retain their power over the young--although they lack the speed and strength, they have in discipline in training more than enough to maintain the order. Social harmony is maintained in the dojo: the young revere the old, and seek to emulate them. Your father may be a servant, but he is still a warrior--and a more dangerous one than you. The father, being past that age in which biology makes us vicious, guides the son or neighbor to protect society rather than to rend it. It is not particularly different in the military.
If we would have a stable society, we must have dangerous old men. This means that, if you are yourself on your way to becoming an old man, you have a duty to society to begin your preparations. The martial arts are not the only road--my own grandfather did it through a simple combination of physical strength, personal discipline, and an accustomed habit of going armed about his business. There was never a more impressive figure--or, at least, there was never a boy more impressed than was I.
The martial virtues are exactly the ones needed. By a happy coincidence, having a society whose members adhere to and encourage those virtues makes us freer as well--we need fewer police, fewer courts, fewer prisons, fewer laws, and fewer lawyers.
John Wayne was an example like that, and is still. He is there for every American, pointing the way. We are lucky to have him, and in this of all years, ought to take some time to appreciate what he offers us.
