// essays //
Fall 2006
The End of the World:
Fly Like an Eagle
Mark Holden
I'm an Eagle Scout. There, I said it. I'm a member of the Boy Scouts of America—that old, venerable institution whose mission is to inculcate into young boys the values of justice, courage, and loyalty. I'm more than a member, I'm actually one of the top dogs, one of the mere 4% that makes it all the way to the summit.
Scouting is a phenomenally anachronistic organization and, when taken in its true form, phenomenally valuable. Consider the scout law: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Here's the scout oath: 'On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to obey the scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.' The phrasing and diction are a bit archaic, yes, and the 'my duty to God' part legitimately raises eyebrows. But on the whole, wouldn't our society become instantaneously and exponentially better if overnight everyone took to heart those values and began living them out? Seriously.
That's pretty much what Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of scouting, envisioned (or so the story goes)—a cheerful, industrious society of boys who would go on to become a driving force for progress in the world; a fraternity of rosy-cheeked youths who would learn deeply the values of courage, trustworthiness, and industry. As a Lieutenant-General in the British army, Baden-Powell was a commanding officer in South Africa, where he served on the defending side during the Siege of Mafeking. In the battle, in which the attackers outnumbered the defenders eight-to-one, a cadre of local boys played a key role in bringing about victory for the defenders. This proved to Baden-Powell, goes the story, that young boys can exhibit courage and dedication, and that good things can come about when they do. On returning to Britain, he began authoring booklets explaining and expounding upon his ideas, neatly summarized in the scout oath and law. As a test for his ideas, he founded the first scout patrol, which began meeting in Poole Harbour, Dorset, England, in 1907. The idea caught on, and the rest, as they say, is history.
When you actually start examining history, however, issues arise to complicate this rosy vision. Most serious are the allegations of bigotry, prejudice, and classism that have been around since scouting's founding. According to some scholars, including Columbia's own Michael Rosenthal, Baden-Powell intended the boy scouts to be a factory for making perfect cadets of the British Empire. Meanwhile, scouting in the United States has taken on, in stereotype and partially in reality, certain prejudices: anti-gay, anti-atheist, anti-Jew, anti-colored, anti-anything but WASP/C. There also are persistent rumors of pedophilia. Some biographers of Baden-Powell have labeled him a repressed homosexual to explain his desire to surround himself with virile, physically-fit young boys. For what it's worth, Baden-Powell violently condemned sexual relations between scout masters and their charges, recommending flogging as punishment for any adult who overstepped his authority.
Beyond its prejudicial reputation, many today write off scouting and its ethos as holdovers from a simpler, less pluralistic era. First of all, the olive-and-khaki themed uniforms, bedecked with cheesy epaulets in appalling parody of military regalia, are horrendously ugly—ugly enough to be embarrassing, and probably are around only because some high-ranked curmudgeons can't bear change. Secondly, and more important, many today would say that the emphasis on God and patriotism is severely misplaced. At any rate, in today's political climate it certainly smacks of that bundle of ideologies people some people call jingoistic, fundamentalist Republicanism.
There's some validity to all these allegations. Scouting is a beast from another era, and given today's polarized climate, it's very easy to lump the boy scouts in with other dinosaur ideologies no reasonable person believes in. For example, the reference in the scout oath to "God and [his] country," or the the scout law's call to obedience and reverence. All right. I know what you're thinking: 'that means reverence to the Christian God and only the Christian God, and that all scouts must believe in said deity, and if they don't, first out of the organization and then down to Hell with them; obedience and duty to the country mean jingoism, where a scout must support his country in its endeavors no matter what, and obviously agree with the Bush administration's insinuations that no true American would question the war in Iraq.' This interpretation, albeit caricatured, holds water in America today, particularly when scouting arises among people that hold those beliefs anyway.
But to dismiss scouting for these reasons would be a mistake. Despite the polyester khaki and the silly slogans, despite the accretion of prejudicial ideology, and despite, even, the possibly unseemly origins of the institution itself, there is a kernel of timeless truth in scouting and its values. The Republico-fundamentalist interpretation of scouting, as well as the progressive, modern interpretation, both miss the point, because they miss the underlying principles involved. What are those principles? Well, they're right there in the words. Reverence is one, reverence not to a specific deity or ideology, but to the fact that humanity has a mystical, spiritual side to its nature that expresses itself not merely in religion, but also in community and love for others. Whether that's just the result of neurons firing in certain evolution-produced structures of the brain or some deeper synergy with the cosmos, it's still a powerful force and an essential element of what it is to be human. Obedience is another element, not blind, dehumanizing obedience, rather, willingness to participate in an ordered social structure and follow the lead of those who know better, as long as their lead accords with reason. Duty to the country is similar. Duty doesn't mean blind jingoism or irrational passivity, it means acknowledgment that the society, culture, and nation in which one lives are, after all, rather important to peace, happiness, and the good life; despite any faults they might have, they're infinitely better than anarchy. Lest you say that those values are merely Western constructs that our culture tries to impress upon the world through its hegemony, I challenge you to find a happy, functioning society, Western, Eastern, Northern, Southern, or any other point on the compass, in which those values aren't a part of its warp and woof, the very fabric of its being.
If that seems like a huge burden for a quaint, archaic organization to shoulder—it is. But it's the only one worth taking up. To do less would be cowardly, and cowardice, as we know, is antithetical to the boy scout way.
Back when I was a boy scout, I felt a form of cowardice, a supreme embarrassment about my membership. I was abashed by the uniforms, the associations with so many young children, and by the links (in stereotype and pretty significantly in truth) with so many positions opposed to both basic human decency and the true values of scouthood.
But now that it's over, I can look back and say without getting warm at the collar that I am a boy scout, in the present tense, and in the transcendent sense. I don't particularly identify with the official organization and the ideologies it espouses here and now, but I identify strongly with the scout oath and law in their timeless interpretations. So next time you see a kid on the street in that garish getup, don't hate. He may be a bigot. But he just may be a concerned citizen of humanity.
Scouting is a phenomenally anachronistic organization and, when taken in its true form, phenomenally valuable. Consider the scout law: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Here's the scout oath: 'On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to obey the scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.' The phrasing and diction are a bit archaic, yes, and the 'my duty to God' part legitimately raises eyebrows. But on the whole, wouldn't our society become instantaneously and exponentially better if overnight everyone took to heart those values and began living them out? Seriously.
That's pretty much what Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of scouting, envisioned (or so the story goes)—a cheerful, industrious society of boys who would go on to become a driving force for progress in the world; a fraternity of rosy-cheeked youths who would learn deeply the values of courage, trustworthiness, and industry. As a Lieutenant-General in the British army, Baden-Powell was a commanding officer in South Africa, where he served on the defending side during the Siege of Mafeking. In the battle, in which the attackers outnumbered the defenders eight-to-one, a cadre of local boys played a key role in bringing about victory for the defenders. This proved to Baden-Powell, goes the story, that young boys can exhibit courage and dedication, and that good things can come about when they do. On returning to Britain, he began authoring booklets explaining and expounding upon his ideas, neatly summarized in the scout oath and law. As a test for his ideas, he founded the first scout patrol, which began meeting in Poole Harbour, Dorset, England, in 1907. The idea caught on, and the rest, as they say, is history.
When you actually start examining history, however, issues arise to complicate this rosy vision. Most serious are the allegations of bigotry, prejudice, and classism that have been around since scouting's founding. According to some scholars, including Columbia's own Michael Rosenthal, Baden-Powell intended the boy scouts to be a factory for making perfect cadets of the British Empire. Meanwhile, scouting in the United States has taken on, in stereotype and partially in reality, certain prejudices: anti-gay, anti-atheist, anti-Jew, anti-colored, anti-anything but WASP/C. There also are persistent rumors of pedophilia. Some biographers of Baden-Powell have labeled him a repressed homosexual to explain his desire to surround himself with virile, physically-fit young boys. For what it's worth, Baden-Powell violently condemned sexual relations between scout masters and their charges, recommending flogging as punishment for any adult who overstepped his authority.
Beyond its prejudicial reputation, many today write off scouting and its ethos as holdovers from a simpler, less pluralistic era. First of all, the olive-and-khaki themed uniforms, bedecked with cheesy epaulets in appalling parody of military regalia, are horrendously ugly—ugly enough to be embarrassing, and probably are around only because some high-ranked curmudgeons can't bear change. Secondly, and more important, many today would say that the emphasis on God and patriotism is severely misplaced. At any rate, in today's political climate it certainly smacks of that bundle of ideologies people some people call jingoistic, fundamentalist Republicanism.
There's some validity to all these allegations. Scouting is a beast from another era, and given today's polarized climate, it's very easy to lump the boy scouts in with other dinosaur ideologies no reasonable person believes in. For example, the reference in the scout oath to "God and [his] country," or the the scout law's call to obedience and reverence. All right. I know what you're thinking: 'that means reverence to the Christian God and only the Christian God, and that all scouts must believe in said deity, and if they don't, first out of the organization and then down to Hell with them; obedience and duty to the country mean jingoism, where a scout must support his country in its endeavors no matter what, and obviously agree with the Bush administration's insinuations that no true American would question the war in Iraq.' This interpretation, albeit caricatured, holds water in America today, particularly when scouting arises among people that hold those beliefs anyway.
But to dismiss scouting for these reasons would be a mistake. Despite the polyester khaki and the silly slogans, despite the accretion of prejudicial ideology, and despite, even, the possibly unseemly origins of the institution itself, there is a kernel of timeless truth in scouting and its values. The Republico-fundamentalist interpretation of scouting, as well as the progressive, modern interpretation, both miss the point, because they miss the underlying principles involved. What are those principles? Well, they're right there in the words. Reverence is one, reverence not to a specific deity or ideology, but to the fact that humanity has a mystical, spiritual side to its nature that expresses itself not merely in religion, but also in community and love for others. Whether that's just the result of neurons firing in certain evolution-produced structures of the brain or some deeper synergy with the cosmos, it's still a powerful force and an essential element of what it is to be human. Obedience is another element, not blind, dehumanizing obedience, rather, willingness to participate in an ordered social structure and follow the lead of those who know better, as long as their lead accords with reason. Duty to the country is similar. Duty doesn't mean blind jingoism or irrational passivity, it means acknowledgment that the society, culture, and nation in which one lives are, after all, rather important to peace, happiness, and the good life; despite any faults they might have, they're infinitely better than anarchy. Lest you say that those values are merely Western constructs that our culture tries to impress upon the world through its hegemony, I challenge you to find a happy, functioning society, Western, Eastern, Northern, Southern, or any other point on the compass, in which those values aren't a part of its warp and woof, the very fabric of its being.
If that seems like a huge burden for a quaint, archaic organization to shoulder—it is. But it's the only one worth taking up. To do less would be cowardly, and cowardice, as we know, is antithetical to the boy scout way.
Back when I was a boy scout, I felt a form of cowardice, a supreme embarrassment about my membership. I was abashed by the uniforms, the associations with so many young children, and by the links (in stereotype and pretty significantly in truth) with so many positions opposed to both basic human decency and the true values of scouthood.
But now that it's over, I can look back and say without getting warm at the collar that I am a boy scout, in the present tense, and in the transcendent sense. I don't particularly identify with the official organization and the ideologies it espouses here and now, but I identify strongly with the scout oath and law in their timeless interpretations. So next time you see a kid on the street in that garish getup, don't hate. He may be a bigot. But he just may be a concerned citizen of humanity.
// MARK HOLDEN is a Columbia College sophomore. He is supposed to know how to tie twelve different kinds of knots. He can currently tie zero.