The HeroicAge

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Billy Joe Shaver — Honky Tonk Hero.

Twice in the same day I saw the concept of the “heroic” badly misunderstood. When that sort of thing happens, I figure it’s time for a RIR post. The first was in the context of the passing at the age of 81 of Texas songwriting legend and larger-than-life wild man Billy Joe Shaver. “Trigger” the keeper of the excellent blog SavingCountryMusic.com, opined that:

Billy Joe Shaver wasn’t just a musical legend and icon, or an “Outlaw” as we like to call the artists who work outside of the Nashville system. He was a hero, in both music, and in life. What is a hero? A hero is someone who illustrates a level of bravery well beyond what most would be willing to. It’s someone who stands up and charges forward when the rest of us would sit down or fall back.

A commentator called “Paddy” replied:

Your definition of a hero leaves a lot to be desired. Basically what you are saying is behave like an idiot and sometime in the future someone will call you a hero.

Trigger had it right; Paddy had it wrong.

A bit later, Rullman scouted up a new tome on the Hudson’s Bay Co. by Stephen Bown. Of course, that sent me plunging down a rabbit hole, and I ordered The Company and another one of his books on what Bown calls The Age of Heroic Commerce. A reviewer was bent that Bown used the term “unironically.” Ugh. Irony is often trotted out as a gold-standard for intellectual self-awareness by the hip and holy of our culture — but I tend to view it pretty much like one of my heroes (yep), Jim Harrison did:

“I like grit, I like love and death, I’m tired of irony…”

Pierre Radisson heads into the wilderness. Art by Frederick Remington.

Sometimes, just being to ornery to put up with any more shit is heroic. Paul McNamee scouted this up from Fred Saberhagen:

“The world was bad, and all men were fools—but there were men who would not be crushed. And that was a thing worth telling.”

There is a deep-seated confusion in American culture about the nature of heroism. It has become conflated with being “the good guy” in some sort of old-fashioned movie. Trigger’s simple definition is much closer to the Classical ideal, in which the hero is not laden with moral responsibility so much as he is required to be an avatar of his culture writ large — larger-than life. Achilles and Hector were not good guys doing good deeds, they were mighty men doing mighty deeds. Billy Joe Shaver was an avatar of Outlaw country music — the larger-than-life exponent of its freewheeling, poetic spirit. In his world, he performed mighty deeds. And he often did “behave like an idiot.” So did Achilles.

The writer Jack Donovan offers a useful rubric, noting that there is a difference between being a “good man” and “being good at being a man.”

The men who pushed Western Civilization across the globe were engaged in an heroic enterprise. Commerce in the era of 1600 when the British East India Company was chartered till the 1890s when the British South Africa Company created Rhodesia was an extreme activity. Exploration and enterprise were mighty endeavors, pursued by driven men. Driven men are generally not “good guys.” As greedy and ruthless as the men who led and served the great companies of the age — Hudson’s Bay, the various East India companies, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and on and on — they were, in their way, serving an entity greater than themselves and willing to sacrifice comfort and safety to do it.

We can and should assess the cost of their manic drive to thrust company rule into the wild places of the world and to extract riches from them. The cost was often very high indeed. But we must also recognize that commerce — trade and the extraction of furs, timber and minerals, built the world in which we live, for better or worse. For better and worse.

We Have Come To Trade, by Robert W. Griffing

If you must have your irony, here’s one: The Heroic Age of Commerce paved the way for an age of bland convenience. Bold, mighty, destructive fur trappers, miners and cattlemen made the world safe for Apple and Wal-Mart. So there ya go. And let’s not even go into the current state of country music…

Comments

Matthew says

November 2, 2020 at 5:36 pm

Well, we live in a distinctly unheroic age by either sense.

Paul McNamee says

November 3, 2020 at 6:22 am

“Achilles and Hector were not good guys doing good deeds, they were mighty men doing mighty deeds.”

Boom!

Now I’ve a hankering to revisit some myths.

- Jim Cornelius says
  
  November 3, 2020 at 6:53 am
  
  Always a good call.
  
Paul McNamee says

November 3, 2020 at 6:39 am

p.s. — the guitarist backing Shaver looks like he’s got my Strat! 🙂

- Jim Cornelius says
  
  November 3, 2020 at 6:53 am
  
  Rip it up!
  
tom says

November 3, 2020 at 10:46 am

in the past few years billy joe shaver used to come to phoenix for a concert. if hollywood made a dive bar production, surely they modeled it on “the rhythm room”, in an old part of phoenix, a little east of the old va hospital. billy joe’s concert place of choice. i almost find it hard to believe such beautiful lyrics came from a blue collar cotton picker and lumber mill worker? and i do not mean to “toot my horn” but after 50+ years i believe we who got drafted and sent to vietnam are accidental heroes. unless you upped for another year in the army, you did not have a choice for your “mos” (military occupational specialty). more likely thqn not you would end up in the combat arms, infantry or artillery. by your definition we were “accidental” heroes we had to do “well beyond what most would be willing to do”.….…

- Jim Cornelius says
  
  November 3, 2020 at 2:41 pm
  
  Fair enough, I think. Hats off to you.
  
Quixotic Mainer says

November 4, 2020 at 5:08 am

You’ve really nailed the differentiation between good and heroic. The word epic was overused and quasi ruined when I was young, but I would posit that it’s traditional definition is closely related to that of heroic. The Vikings and the Comanche were both certainly heroic and mighty, but you almost definitely would not want property they could get to if you weren’t part of the tribe.

The 3rd Star Wars prequel says in the opening crawl; “There are heroes on both sides” of the Clone Wars. The might of these figures is what makes them so, their morality is often a question of culture and perspective.

- Jim Cornelius says
  
  November 4, 2020 at 8:30 am
  
  Thank you, QM.
  This lays it down nicely…
  
  “The might of these figures is what makes them so, their morality is often a question of culture and perspective.”
  
  And you’re right about “epic.” When it’s applied to everything from mountain climbing to ice cream sundaes, it losses its meaning.

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