Saturday, June 14, 1997

Unfortunately, our boundaries of acceptable behavior continue to expand

By Tom Schaefer

Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Knowing what was right or wrong was as clear as the hats on their heads. The good guys wore white, the bad wore black.

And the grainy black-and-white television set I watched in the 1950s accentuated the difference and helped define morality for me.

Hopalong Cassidy - Hoppy, to his pals - was my cowboy hero. Yet, he was one of the few exceptions to the Rule of the Cowboy Hat. His hat was black, as were his shirt and pants. The only concessions to the color rule were his hair and his horse - both white. But his actions quickly clarified what type of man he was.

Back then, through the filter of television, frontier justice was swift and certain. It was an eye for an eye, and justice was at the end of a rope or through the barrel of a Colt .45.

Today, we're confused about white hats and swift justice. Lessons of tolerance and insights to aberrant behavior that present the perpetrator as victim have taught us to holster our pistols. Consider the circumstances, we're told. After all, do we have the right to pass judgment when we're really not that much better?

Unless it's someone like Timothy McVeigh. Then a rope isn't good enough, especially for folks who want Western-style justice. But he's the exception, right? On a continuum from really bad (McVeigh) to no big whoopee (a little white lie), we usually judge ourselves to be on the whoopee end. Our - what shall we call them? - mistakes, well, they're really not so bad. Hey, we're not scumbags like he is or she is!

In fact, when it comes to evaluating our own behavior, we don't like black and white. We prefer gray because we can hide within its grainy morality, unsure anymore of what is black and what is white.

If you've ever been caught on the horns of some personal dilemma, then you know what I'm talking about. Maybe you've struggled over staying with a spouse who betrayed you or seeking a justified out through divorce. Perhaps you've agonized over lying on a job application or cheating on an exam - one of those "victimless" crimes - to achieve for yourself a "greater good."

The truth is, the decisions we make define our individual boundaries of right and wrong, and we expect everyone else to live within the boundaries we establish. Unfortunately for civic virtue and personal integrity, our boundaries of acceptable behavior, especially as we miss the mark again and again, continue to expand.

Need examples? Blasphemy, once condemned by God and the state, is now considered to be colloquial, even though God's law hasn't been repealed. Adultery, a crime in 27 states, is generally not treated as a punishable offense but as a relationship issue to work through. Greed, historically linked to covetousness and lust as a deadly sin, is now viewed as a legitimate desire to obtain as much wealth as possible - legally, of course.

Black? White? Right? Wrong? We have no cowboy heroes, no models of integrity that all look up to and seek to emulate.

Most of us agree on the pariahs of society - Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh - whom we quickly consign to the lowest regions of hell. But we disagree over who else deserves judgment because we no longer have common standards by which to judge.

Is it possible to re-establish common ground? It won't be easy. Too much has happened to our culture and to the way we choose our lifestyles and interpret our behavior.

And don't expect cries of "Return to the Bible!" with its standards of morality to convert the comfortable. We've lost our fear of hell, and heaven on earth is our mortgaged-to-the-hilt home.

Perhaps our society will have to hit rock bottom before we'll discover that a rebirth of virtue cannot happen until each of us is willing to hold himself or herself to higher standards and not sell out to the lowest common denominator of behavior. At the very least, that must be our first step.

Meanwhile, we'll have to come to grips with the grainy images of current values. No black hats and white hats even with their acknowledged flaws to help us make better sense of life's wrongs and injustices. No code of the Old West to guarantee justice.

Each of us must take personal responsibility for making our behavior fit within the boundaries of higher standards, instead of making the boundaries conform to our behavior. That will take time to learn, but it can be done.

Still, to be honest, I miss Hoppy.

(Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Write to him at the Wichita Eagle, P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201.)

(c) 1997, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).

Visit the Eagle on the World Wide Web at http://www.wichitaeagle.com/

Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.