An Antidote for Hate - Will Rogers
I heard the news of the horrendous 1998 murder of the University of Wyoming
student, Matthew Shepard, with shock and disbelief. Its raw hatred brought back
memories of my Oklahoma City visit the previous Spring.
Again I saw that chain-linked fence surrounding the Murrah Federal Building bomb
site. There was the array of crayon drawings, small toys, sprigs of flowers, each in
memory of victims of hate. I thought, too, of Oklahoma’s favorite son, Will Rogers,
and remembered his words, “A fellow shouldn’t have to kill anybody just to prove
they are right.”The McVeigh trial in Denver was over. Justice had been served, but it
left a troubling question. Even with justice served, the hate infecting the country
remained. So how now do we respond?
For my answer I turned to Will Rogers. That is, I turned to my understanding of him,
gained through several years of studying and portraying him in my living-history
performances.
I’ve tried to puzzle out why people endowed Rogers with such authority. He lacked
the qualifying credentials. He was neither a man of industry nor of government. He
passed himself off as unschooled, a status the people readily accepted. Even so one
Washington observer noted, “This country could never go to war unless Will Rogers
was for it.”
The relationship between Rogers and the American people is unlike any other in the
nation’s history. I turned to examine it again, but with new purpose. Since
practically all behavior and action can be understood in terms of self interest, I
decided to consider the relationship from this viewpoint. As I did, Rogers came to
represent the pursuit of self interest in ways that created trust. Trust is an
antidote for hate!
Trust bonded Rogers and the people. The people took him to heart because of what
he was as a person. He was so refreshingly genuine, so honest, a friend,
not a celebrity, even though he was the best known person in America. This bond
was so strong some say he helped prevent a revolution in the days of the Great
Depression.
This trust stemmed from the deep-rooted human desire to be oneself. Rogers was
legendary as a man who was himself. He mastered this art about as well as was
humanly possible. He did it with such ease, such unconscious effort, as though it
was the most natural thing in the world. Being your self was a birthright. You simply
claimed what was already yours.
In being himself, Rogers achieved the ultimate in self interest. The man was at
peace. Being content with himself freed him from the tyranny of envy, jealousy and
greed. He had no desire or interest to use people to satisfy self-serving needs. He
entered relationships, wanting only to know others and to enjoy them for their own
sake. This translated into a grinning, rope-spinning cowboy, radiating joy, boyish
enthusiasm, courage, friendliness and trust
Imagine living free from negatives, free from trying to control others, to control
events, to control life. You are free from pretense, sham and deceit, free from the
intimidation of status, rank or station. That’s what people in the 1920s and ’30s did.
They could look in a mirror and more nearly see themselves as Will Rogers than as
any other person in America. What then was there to do but radiate hope, joy, trust,
and find satisfaction in the moment - just as Will Rogers did.
One could trust a man like this, and trust him they did. It was a trust he never
violated. He in turn trusted them, believing everyone to be honest until they proved
otherwise. In trusting him, they trusted what he stood for. He became the nation’s
conscience and unmatched opinion setter because people also trusted his wisdom.
He had them laughing about things that mattered, about human welfare and the
health of democracy.
In their laughter they were saying, “He’s right about that.” In this laughter they
agreed that all shared common foibles. Strip way the social facade and trappings
and indeed all the people had much in common. This commonality should give
freedom, equality and justice to all. There should be freedom for the pursuit of
happiness and self fulfillment, the equality of an opportunity for success, and the
justice of a government serving all the people.
For Rogers these values were vital and alive. He was what he championed. Being
himself and living these values were one and the same. These were character values
that made him the person he was, creating trust up and down a two-way street.
They were values he absorbed as a Cherokee raised in the Indian Territory years
before Oklahoma was a state.
Will Rogers revealed to a nation what internalizing these values will do to a person.
They are the conditions in which human life flourishes and trust abounds,
conditions which support the desire to be oneself.
This is the challenge today: Weaving them into our nation’s social, political and
economic fabric, expressing and realizing them continually in the milieu of daily
commerce. No more to be trivialized, corrupted or perverted into inane slogans by
politicians, slick promotional copy by advertisers, or rallying cries for rebellious
action. These values will be so pervasive that any behavior violating them will
atrophy from lack of reinforcement.
This is possible when we understand that all of our institutions, formal and
informal, are part and parcel of an all-inclusive venture - the human
enterprise. This enterprise extends from home life to national assemblies; from
neighborhood gatherings to federal government policies; from playgrounds to
professional entertainment; from charitable endeavors to corporate board room
ruminations.
With this understanding, is it a short step to insist that all activities, goals and
objectives become subservient to the promotion and expression of the character
values inherent in American democracy.
Can it happen? Yes, if we want it to. It will be difficult. Rogers himself said,
“Meanness has always been better organized and conducted than righteousness.”
It’s easier for us to pass “tough” laws than work to change the equation. But unless
the equation is changed the image of a bombed out Federal Building and a young
man dying as a scarecrow will soon be lost from sight, buried under ever newer
scenes of hate.
(c) Cy Eberhart 1998
As a hospital chaplain Cy Eberhart, (now retired) was a firsthand witness to the
entire spectrum of human emotions: personal successes and failures; the deepest
despairs and the great peaks of joy. Two questions remained foremost in his mind:
How was it that some could find inner strengths that brought courage and hope and
others could not? What was to be learned from these experiences that would have a
positive and creative effect for daily, routine living?
His lectures, writings, workshops, book In the Presence of Humor and his living-history
performances of America’s famed humorist
Will Rogers offers some of the
answers.