Columns

By Roger Barbee

During my forty-year career in education I witnessed too often the damage of peer pressure. In order to “belong” to a group, a student would adopt behavior and dress to demonstrate they had reached the threshold of being “one of us.” This pressure was mostly negative and even dangerous because it required a student to follow imposed mores and not his or her own morality. At times this acquiescing to demands made by a group could result in serious circumstances, such as when a young female would “give it up” so that she would belong to the group of cool.

We all want to belong; to be a member of something larger than ourselves. Belonging to a group gives us a sense of worth, a sense of safety, and a sense of justice. If we become a member, then we become validated by the group and whatever price paid for membership becomes secondary to the belonging. This herd mentality, we hope, will lead us to herd immunity, the place where all members of our herd are protected by our experience and exposure.

 When I coached a high school wrestling team, I had team tee shirts with “Iron sharpens iron” printed on the backs.  I told the wrestlers that they were to help sharpen their teammates during every practice. I explained that they were each responsible for helping their teammates become better wrestlers and people. Iron sharpens iron. While the wrestlers were part of a team, a herd if you will, or a tribe, even, they were individuals most of all. They were parts of the whole, but they were required to be individual wrestlers, just like the individual strands of a rope. If they were not independent wrestlers, the team suffered because they were not being the best that they could be. Iron sharpens iron. The phrase I used comes from Proverbs 27:17, “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”

            But if one becomes trapped in herd mentality then he or she relinquishes individuality and is not sharpened by others. Instead of challenging and making each other sharper, the easy life of following the herd takes over. The price does not matter anymore; all that counts is the sense of belonging to the group. The aspiring member will now do anything to belong to the herd–even expose his or her children to possible infection of a disease that is rapidly spreading. Such illogical acts feed the self-serving aspirant. Membership in the herd has now taken over.

The trap of herd life is all around for Christ followers, and always has been. However, we are reminded to be wary of false leaders and ideas. The 1^st Century Christians had to battle against tempting ideas such as Gnosticism. They had to use the discernment we are all given. They had to be aware! And we are to be aware as well for temptations that come in attractive packages. Such temptations are not only of the flesh, but of the lure of power, money, and belonging to a herd that offers only the allure of riches. After all, we can never be fully immune to any evil. That is perhaps the biggest lie of all.

By Roger Barbee

                                                Reading Old Journals

Reading old journals can be an unsettling or a rich experience. Having thought of some of my journals from the mid-1990’s and later that I had shoved into a drawer of a file cabinet residing in a closet, I decided to pull them out and organize them in chronological order. I realized that I would need to read them, not too closely, but close enough to get the flavor of whatever day, month, and year in which I had written. I opened the first one remembering that Rick Bragg writes in All Over But the Shoutin’ “…dreaming backwards can carry a man through some dark rooms where the walls seem lined with razor blades.”

Reading the first journal that is over twenty years old opened a window to a life half-forgotten. Reading my thoughts of events and people in my then life, most entries surprised or pleased me and a few read as if they were of someone else’s life. Yet one entry was not about me but something I had thought enough of to copy into the journal without naming where I  had found it. Fortunately I had cited an author, whether correct or not.

A July 2000 entry read “Found this” and was followed by what I had copied from somewhere– “Walker’s Decalogue by Howard Zahniser.” Like so many entries, I did not remember anything about this one and not knowing anything about Howard Zahniser I did a quick Internet search and read about his brief but impressive life. His accomplishment as the primary author of the Wilderness Act which Congress passed in 1964 reveals his love and appreciation for wilderness. In his 2016 essay about Zahinser’s  achievements, Max Greenberg for the Wilderness Society paid tribute to him in these words, “He was just a dogged man who did the good, hard work of preserving our natural heritage for generations to come.”

However, what I was most interested in was the “Walker’s Decalogue.” Whether Zahinser had written it, or I had been mistaken in my journal entry of 2000 became secondary. Regardless of its authorship, here is what I had written in my journal, and I am as awed by it now as I obviously had been when I copied it.                                                        

Walker’s Decalogue by Howard Zahniser

1.         Don’t pack your troubles in your rucksack

2.         Don’t grouse at the weather

3.         Don’t miss opportunities of friendship with man or beast

4.         Don’t walk half a yard in front of your companion

5.         Don’t overfeed your body

6.         Don’t starve your mind

7.         Don’t overwork your legs

8.         Don’t lose your temper if you lose your way

9.         Don’t leave anything behind you but a good impression

10.       Don’t take anything away but pleasant memories

Now, I grant that a reader could argue that the decalogue is too negative because of the Don’ts, or a reader could argue for subtraction or addition to the ten. However, I ask the reader to see the decalogue as positive suggestions for a metaphorical journey since we all, whether out on a hike or just travelling to work, are on a journey. In fact, our lives are packed with journeys such as a trip to a grocery, or a drive to visit a friend, and any number of longer/shorter journeys whether we walk, ride, run, fly, or float-we are sojourners.

Any list is bound to engender a discussion for favorites, and I admit to being partial to Don’t number 4 because every journey is made better when shared with another traveler.