BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History Advertisement

If you want to understand the behavior of a person or group, perhaps the most useful thing to do is look closely at their values. Our values, to a very great extent, determine our behavior.

Values -- standards of worth and importance to which we are committed -- serve as guides to behavior and drive our choices. We tend to strongly define ourselves in terms of them.

Values can be consciously held, in which case we are fully aware of their existence and influence on us, or we can be unconscious of their presence and their influence. Some values are held superficially and have less influence -- here today, gone tomorrow. Others lie at the core of an individual or nation's existence and can be profoundly influential, persisting for a lifetime or, in the case of a nation, for centuries.

I thought it would be fun to speculate on what the core values of American society might be, and provide some examples of how they might have been expressed in Nye County history. My speculations, of course, are tentative. You may wish to develop a list of your own. Here goes.

Core American values (in no particular order)

1. The dollar trumps all. In modern American society, most things are pretty much reducible to their dollar value. Money is what people want, it is what they need. The dollar is the most important standard in American life.

From its earliest days, wealth was the primary factor in determining one's social standing in Nye County. There were, of course, other criteria for determining a person's worth, like "nice guy," "likes dogs," "helps her neighbors," etc., but they typically carried far less weight. It was the dollar value of one's assets that most determined a person's place in the community.

Social status as determined by wealth, like wet paint, tended to rub off on family members, close associates and even acquaintances.

2. Big is better. A big house, a big mine, a big farm, a big car and a big cigar have long been preferable to the smaller version. Big, of course, tends to go hand in hand with a dollar value.

In Pahrump during its cotton-growing era (circa 1955-1970), Walt Williams, who owned the Pahrump Ranch, gained high social status for having the largest operation and producing the biggest cotton crop. The Simkins brothers, on the other hand, received high status for producing the largest cotton yield per acre. Size does matter!

3. What's mine is mine. The concept of irrevocable ownership is a powerful core American value. Money, property and even ideas that a person has acquired lawfully (and sometimes even unlawfully) need not, it is held, be shared with others or the government against the owner's will.

Taxes are an exception to this concept, but they are often paid resentfully. My guess is the "what's mine is mine" core value may be growing in strength nationally.

In its strong form, this value rejects the idea that an individual should be required to share his or her wealth with others less fortunate since it was the society that made possible the accumulation of the wealth in the first place. This value makes easier the accumulation of large personal fortunes among the few and contributes to the widening disparity in wealth among Americans.

The "what's mine is mine" value lies at the heart of American conservatism and stands in sharp contrast to the wealth-sharing ethic found throughout social democratic nations of Western Europe.

4. New is better than old. Out with the old, in with the new -- new car, new house, new furniture, new clothes, new business acquisitions. This core value applies to people as well.

It was not always this way. The idea that the new is better than the old has, as far as I can tell, only come to prominence in American society during the last 50 to 75 years. The preference for the new is part of the growth of consumerism which, of course, underpins our economy. Nowadays, a town knows it has arrived when Walmart and Home Depot establish big boxes there.

The beginnings of a consumer-based society can be seen when the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogues, or "wish books," as they were sometimes called, became popular early in the 20th century. In Round Mountain in the 1930s, people knew exactly what day their catalogue order would be delivered by mail if the order was placed on a Monday.

5. Consumption is good. The core value that says consumption is good is also relatively new in America, though the rich have long practiced the art of conspicuous consumption. An exuberant attitude toward consumption was not widely held in Nye County or in America prior to about 30 of 40 years ago, I would guess. "Shop 'til you drop" was not always the American way.

In the past, excessive consumption was seen as wasteful, even immoral. Most children today, bless their hearts, have more toys than the combined holdings of all the kids in the small mining camp I grew up in. As often as not, we made our own toys. This was also the case in Nye County communities 50 or more years ago.

There are two other strongly held core values in America, but they are not necessarily expressed consistently in behavior.

6. Work is good. Most of us would agree that work is good, not just as a means of obtaining income, but good in and of itself. Work is thought by most of us to enrich the soul. This idea runs deep in our heritage.

And yet, while people agree that hard work is good, they understand that, for the majority, it is not necessarily the royal road to the good life. In fact, in most cases, the harder one works, the lower one's income.

The best path to prosperity is typically not found through performing hard work but through having others work hard for you, preferably at low wages. This is the basis of institutions like slavery, indentured servitude, the company store and sweatshops.

Though the value of work is ever advocated, the very best way to make money is not through work at all but by making money out of money.

Philadelphia investors in the Tonopah mines in that boomtown's heyday understood this. They clipped stock coupons and grew richer while the Tonopah miners subsisted on survival wages and died young from silicosis caused by laboring in unsafe, dusty conditions underground.

The miners' hard work only enabled them to survive long enough to leave widows with young children.

7. Competition is good. Americans believe strongly in the value of competition. We see it throughout society in sports, school, business, and rivalry for mates and social status. But again, as with work, it is often a case of competition for you and a free pass for me.

In many instances the real goal of competition, notably in business and love, is to eliminate the competition. This suggests that, rather than competition, it is winning that may be the deeper core value.

I suggest that all the core values suggested above will increasingly be challenged in the decades ahead as climate change, increases in world population, and growth in scientific understanding and technology reshape the modern world.

As our values are reshaped, enormous opportunities will open for Nye County and its people if we are willing to see and embrace them.