Wisdom from Festus 5

Wisdom from Festus 4

Wisdom from Festus 3

Wisdom from Festus 2

Wisdom from Festus 1

This blog has referenced Gunsmoke often enough to justify a set of silly memes. Bask in their truth!

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.21

“To what good end do men their passions raise,

even to drag from fate their deaths by their own hands?

If you seek death, she is surely nigh of her own will;

And her winged horses she will not delay.

Serpents and lions, bears, tigers and boars,

All seek your lives with their fangs,

yet do you seek them with swords?

Is it because your manners are so wide in variance

that men raise up unjust battles and savage wars,

and seek to perish by each other's darts?

Such is no just reason for this cruelty.

Would you apportion merit to merit fitly?

Then love good men as is their due,

and for the evil show your pity.”

—from Book 4, Poem 4

It is so easy to act poorly, because it is so easy not to understand; it requires no effort.

It is so easy to condemn, because it so easy not to love; it requires no effort.

I recall an old episode of Gunsmoke, the sort of show that is not in fashion at the moment, called “The Deadly Innocent.” Festus has befriended an orphaned young man, Billy, who has lived his whole life out in an isolated valley.

The boy has no family, no home, no profession, and absolutely no awareness of how the “real world” is supposed to operate. He won’t take charity, but will gladly do odd jobs for food, and he finds his happiness in telling fantastical stories and riddles to anyone who will listen.

People are slowly leaving his valley, and so Billy decides he will come to Dodge City. Festus, who has always been a kind soul, takes the boy in, trying to give him work, and trying to help him adapt to a world that can often be harsh and unforgiving.

One day, when Billy sees a rough and drunken cowboy attempting to drown a helpless cat, he fights to save the cat. He almost kills the cowboy in his rage, and he now finds himself subject to the law. He has a strong body joined to the mind of a child. He does what he thinks is right, but he violates all the customs of what we might call civilization.

One day, when Billy sees Festus shoot a deer for dinner, Billy lashes out in violence once again. He cannot bear to see what he thinks of as brutality.

Clearly something must be done with this boy. He is dangerous, a threat to the town, and not at all the sort of person we can allow in the midst of decent folk. Perhaps we should lock him up, or hide him away, where he can no longer do any harm?

I will not spoil the rest of the episode, but I heartily recommend it to anyone who is interested in the struggle between morality and social conformity. I do believe it was one of the first Gunsmoke episodes I ever saw, even if it was from one of the later seasons. It has stuck with me through all the years. It has imprinted something on my soul.

Perhaps I have related to Billy more than I would like to admit. Unlike Billy, I have an education, but I am still not all that bright. Unlike, Billy, I don’t have the strength to beat the crap out of a drunken cowboy, as much as I would often like to. I’m not sure where that puts me in the order of things.

The assumption is that Billy is “retarded”, or “special”, or “challenged”, or whatever words we are now expected to use. Yet notice that Billy has no worries about being anyone at all but a person who loves, who shows compassion, who defends the weak against the strong. He may not always understand the circumstances, but he has a better heart that most anyone else around him.

Festus sees this in him, because Festus also has a better heart than most anyone else around him.

There is a difference between innocence and ignorance: an innocent man can’t possibly know any better, but an ignorant man certainly should know better.

Look at how we hate, look at how we fight, look at how we dwell upon all the things that make us different, only as an excuse to abuse, to take advantage of the enemy, to kill whatever we do not prefer. Is this civilization? Am I sure I need that?

Nature will give us death in any event; why do we speed our demise with this false righteousness?

If they called me a Billy, I’d gladly take the name. It isn’t an insult at all, but a compliment in the eyes of Nature: love those who love you, and love those who hate you just as much.

Written in 11/2015
 

Learning from Gunsmoke

I read voraciously, sometimes more than is good for me, because I will choose to employ it as an escape. I pray daily, sometimes more than is good for me, because I'm not always sure what I'm praying for. I go out of my way to be kind, sometimes more than is good for me, because I don't necessarily know how to be helpful.

I also have a love and hate relationship with film and television. It can be a wonderful form of art, one I am grateful to have had the opportunity to experience in my life. At the same time, it can be a terrible way to numb and mislead my conscience, one that encourages me to confuse what is good in my life.

Like all things in this world, the benefit or the harm is not in the thing itself, but in my use or abuse of the thing. What am I taking away from it, and how am I letting it help me to become wiser and better?

Does it help me to watch movies and shows that deliberately glorify violence and hatred, or reduce love to lust, or paint life as a struggle to be won by lying, cheating, and stealing? For ever two minutes of a story, do I really need another one minute of advertising that sells me this product that will make me more popular, or that service that will make me more attractive?

We all find our own worth in things, in our own ways, and we all take out of things what we are willing to put into them, from our own sense of values. Still, I have myself grown tired of dwelling on people or situations that debase all that is truly human. Why am I gawking? Why am I paying attention? I can do better. What I choose to let into my soul will color the very content of my soul.

One day, I decided I would skip keeping up with this show about post-apocalyptic flesh-eating zombies, or that movie about building a bloody drug empire, or even making it through the bickering and posturing on the evening news. I was instead going to watch old episodes of Gunsmoke, one at a time, whenever I felt the need to turn on the television.

That show ran for twenty years, with over six hundred episodes, so it would take me some time to get the job done. It was certainly not time wasted, because when I finished it all, I walked away a better man. No, Gunsmoke didn't make me a better man, but it helped me to make myself a better man. The worth in it was learning about characters and conflicts that inspired virtue, compassion, and courage.

Marshal Dillon had grown up with a streak of bad in him, yet he had chosen to nourish the good in him. Doc Adams was as stubborn and ornery as a mule, even as he was happy to stay poor so he could serve Dodge City. Miss Kitty was tough as nails, and her profession was always questionable, but she had a heart of gold.

There was Chester, and Quint, and Festus, and even the old drunk Louie, and all of them had their many flaws. Still, at the end of every episode, they all had done their best, they all had learned something, and they all had faced tragedy to do what they knew was right. The story didn't always end well for everyone, though it always taught a hearty lesson.

Yes, you may laugh at how corny it seems to our fashions. I will insist, however, that this was not a white-washed show at all. It had a dark side to it, and a realization that all places and times face the very same troubles. There were scoundrels, players, bigots, thieves, rapists, and murderers back in this version of Dodge City, just as there are scoundrels, players, bigots, thieves, rapists, and murderers outside of your door right now. What the story suggested was that even the smallest people could try to make a difference, and that justice was worth fighting for.

No, it did not embrace despair and nihilism, and in this sense it is hardly trendy. Good could be found, even in the darkest of places. Human beings were capable of decency, even in the face of loss and death. The center of the narrative was the building of character, not the glorification of misery. There was a hope in living the day well, whatever may come to pass. There were harsh consequences, and there was always the chance for forgiveness and redemption.

"Oh my God, did you see that new episode of Los Angeles: Death Squad last night where Dakota cuts off three of Brandon's fingers, and then eats them? That was so sick, man!"

"No, sorry, I was watching an old episode of Gunsmoke where Dillon and Doc help defend a cowboy falsely accused of murder, and also give a drunken prostitute and her son a new chance in life."

That, my friends, is how to clear the break room at work.

Written in 12/2016

This was one of those early scenes that got me hooked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqyojnM9tlc