The Age of MacGyver
I’m not sure if it was the well-crafted mullet, the spiffy leather jacket, or the many rolls of duct tape, but I loved the show MacGyver as a kid. As I’m writing this, the theme song is on loop in my mind. I know, without having to think much about it, that MacGyver once neutralized poison gas with a chocolate bar, and got himself out of an avalanche using a zipper pull. When someone asks a question like “Which book/movie/tv show from your childhood has stayed with you throughout your life?”, it’s in my top three.
The show is a bit of a touchstone for a lot of people my age, a prehistoric meme, if you will. There’s the nostalgia aspect, I guess, the same wave of warm fuzzy that washes over a person when they dig an old t-shirt out of a drawer or hear a song that someone screeched around the playground at recess. I think it might be more than just a blast from the past, if you’re a Gen X. For starters, he tackled the things every 80’s kid was taught to fear, including poison, kidnappers, quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle. MacGyver also embodied the qualities we held dear. He was all about self-reliance, ingenuity, practicality, and just getting things done. He was, for the most part, understated and quiet, not a saint, but decidedly nontoxic. He was the consummate grown-up latch key kid, left to his own devices and expected to pull himself together in difficult circumstances. He did what he did without the ability to Google things or text a friend. Few of us have had to fight bad guys or disarm bombs, but we’ve been frequently told to just deal with things, using whatever resources we have on hand.
Recently, while reading a political philosopher’s work from more than a century ago, I also started to wonder if Mac might also be a bit of an anarchist. It’s not a perfect match, admittedly. I don’t remember his character ever taking strong political stances at all, and for the most part, he tried to make nice and work within “the system”. However, he did present a grass roots approach to problem solving, and a healthy amount of empathy for the marginalized. He was non-bureaucratic, and never waited for approval or rescue from the powers that be. He was the ultimate hacker, completely capable of going off grid when necessary. There was self-reliance and action, community mindedness and collaboration. Maybe MacGyver was anarchist-adjacent.
Whether one is looking for comfort in an 80’s kid trope, or seeking an era-appropriate philosophical archetype, I think it might be useful to do a rewatch of MacGyver (though I’m scared it might be far cheesier than I choose to remember). We seem to be smack-dab in the middle of an age of cartoonish action series bad guys, of hidden dangers and desperate situations. There’s a lot of “You’re on your own. Fix it yourself.” going around, a lot of conspicuously absent, unsupportive leadership. What’s a person to do at a time like this, besides take stock of the metaphorical rubber bands, chewing gum and tinfoil one has hanging around, and be prepared to put them to use at a moment’s notice? There’s a fair bit of chaos out there, but there are also quite a few brave and clever souls ready to get down to the difficult work of holding things together in new and inventive ways. If you’re tired of challenging the powers that be, you can rebel by being a MacGyver and just going around them.
There’s another aspect of MacGyver that I find particularly helpful and encouraging, decades later. It’s the (somewhat romantic) notion that there are still, in fact, solutions to problems, even serious problems. These solutions aren’t evident at first glance, but they are still there. All is not lost. That was the reassuring, aspirational ethos of the show, this feeling that things could be made better, by nonother than a well-meaning, down-to-earth, hands-on kind of person. If there is a path forward, a way out of the mire we find ourselves in, I think it might be this. We may need to be our own MacGyvers, and recognize the impact that we can have by pulling together bits and bobs, and in the process, pulling together communities. No waiting to be rescued, no expecting superheroes, just working with what we have in front of us, as quickly and cleverly as we’re able.