On the Normalization of Suffering

I spent a long time thinking about this podcast before I even started writing. Originally I had a much more controversial title in mind that probably would have generated a lot more interest but in the end my wife made me change it. So I guess in a way she has inadvertently become a silent partner in this endeavor and I can blame her for this much more boring title. But if you’ve come this far I guess you deserve to know, I was going to call this podcast “On White Privilege and Trauma”.

Irregardless, oh yes irregardless is a word, look it up if you disagree. It happens to be a word I like a lot because so many people want to argue that it isn’t a word at all. So, irregardless of the title of this podcast, the subject matter remains the same. I will tell you a story of White Privilege and I will tell you a story of Trauma. And then in the end I will tie these two things together for a lesson on the normalization of suffering.

Where to begin. I guess my thinking on this subject all started with Joe Rogan of all places. As you may or may not know he got into hot water a few weeks back after he made some comments on his own podcast to the effect of how all heterosexual white males have been essentially “canceled” en-mass. To be fair, I didn’t watch the podcast and I don’t care to, but I got the gist of what he was saying from the few clips I saw on TV.

This isn’t news to me and it isn’t something I haven’t heard before. In fact it is something I’ve heard many times from all kinds of people I know. Good friends who I consider quite woke and liberal in their thinking have joked to me “haven’t you heard the news that we don’t count anymore, that we’ve been canceled!” So I have to acknowledge that there is a real feeling in the air, not just among the Joe Rogans of the world but in general that the heterosexual white male is somehow under threat of being canceled or whatever. And I understand exactly where this feeling is coming from. I would never deny a person or people their feelings. Their feelings belong to them and are valid because it is what they feel. But the conclusion that is being drawn from those feelings, that is what I take issue with.

My message to Joe Rogan and to my friends who may or may not be having these feelings is this: “it’s ok, don’t worry, nobody is canceling you and your thoughts and especially your feelings are still as valid today as they ever were.” The fact that we in as a culture are taking a closer look at the suffering and plight of a segment of the population to which you do not belong should not in any way be seen as a threat. The fact that they are seen as a threat I believe comes from a fundamental misunderstanding about the thing that lies at the very core of all of these movements and that is human suffering.

An executive summary would probably be good here so I’ll make my point and then I’ll elaborate with some stories and a conclusion. My point is that suffering, human suffering is not a competition. It’s not like there is a pie of suffering and if we acknowledge the suffering of one group we must deny the suffering of another. Suffering is just not like that, it is something we all deal with. It is a part of the human experience.

In fact I would venture to say that the more in touch you are with your own suffering and your own experiences of trauma the more empathy you will have for the suffering and trauma of others. You first have to be vulnerable with yourself, you have to think back to a time of your own suffering and trauma. Contemplate it, spend time with it, as much as you need. Then turn your attention to the suffering of someone like George Floyd dying on the streets of Minneapolis. I guarantee the next emotion you will feel will be an overwhelming sense of empathy. I know my own suffering well and as a result I can relate to what it must have been like for George Floyd not that my suffering matched his but that I know what it is like to suffer and I can extrapolate from there to at least imagine what George Floyd must have gone through. Combine that sense of empathy with the knowledge that suffering itself is not a competition and I guarantee that the feeling you will draw from these social movements will be not one of threat but one of solidarity. Solidarity for Black Lives Matter, solidarity for Diversity Equity and Inclusion. And that is the fundamental principal of the normalization of suffering.

I told you I would share some stories and then I would come back to the thesis with a conclusion and so I will.

My first story is about white privilege.

It takes place in Minneapolis of all places. I was 22 years old and my best friend Larry and I were out in Uptown looking for our first apartment. Larry happens to be black but that is really immaterial to this story. We were looking at an apartment, what became our first and my only apartment in Minneapolis. We loved it at first sight, a two bedroom in a 5 apartment building with a nice front porch covered in vines. By today’s standards the rent was low around $650 but it didn’t matter because Larry and I had only recently arrived in Minneapolis and neither of us had jobs. We looked at the apartment with the landlord and told her we wanted to rent it. She asked a few questions one of which was if we had jobs. We both replied that we did not. She looked back at us with a concern on her face. “How do you plan to pay the rent?” She asked. I looked her right in the eye and said “It’s ok, I’m independently wealthy” Now this was a complete fabrication I admit. True I could have begged my parents for the rent money if push came to shove but I wasn’t about to do that. Larry and I planned to go out the next day and find jobs with temp agencies, whatever it took to get on our feet but she had no clue about that. But none of that mattered because the landlord looked at me and said simply “Ok” and handed over the keys.

This is a pure example of white privilege in action. This was Minneapolis in 1992 do you think that if Larry had been by himself or we had both been black she would have taken my offhanded remark as a satisfactory answer for the critical question of how we were going to pay for the apartment. There is no way in HELL she would have done that. In fact we would not have even thought to say something like that. Not because she was racist or anything like that but because in saying “I’m independently wealthy” I was leveraging a common narrative in American culture. The narrative of the independently wealthy young white male. There is no corollary for the young black male. On the contrary the common social narratives applied to young black males are quite the opposite. They aren’t positive in any way but in fact quite negative. So negative in fact that they result not in someone getting an apartment but in someone dying on the street. These narratives positive for the one and negative for the other are woven into the very fabric of our society. The story I’ve just shared is a shining example of one side of that coin, the side of white privilege.

Let me turn now to my second story. This is a story of trauma.

In a previous podcast “On Letting Go and Letting God” I spoke of my older brother Ian who thrived on chaos. He moved out of our house when I was about 10 years old, but those first ten years were very traumatic for me as a child. I won’t go into the specifics of this trauma but I will tell you a story from the result of that trauma. When I was 28 or so, I traveled to Tucson Arizona with my Mother. This is where my mother grew up and we went back occasionally. When we did we’d look up Ian to see how he was doing. Ian was an alcoholic but at the time 1998 or so he was still able to hold down a job. My mom asked me to come with her to visit Ian at his work and I agreed. I remember he was working at some steel manufacturing facility doing odd jobs or something. I just remember walking into the warehouse. I was a couple steps behind my mother when I first saw Ian.

When I saw Ian, I had a very visceral reaction I’ve never had before or since but that I’ve heard reflected from other trauma survivors. I felt myself suddenly transported back in time I was no longer a 28 year old man walking a few steps behind my mother but a little child hiding behind my mother’s apron. This mental event only lasted a few seconds or so and I snapped out of it but it was surprising and unexpected. I’m sure a therapist would have a field day unpacking this but the point is that undeniably trauma and suffering persist deep somewhere inside my subconscious.

So what is the point of these two stories? What is the relationship between them? One the story of white privilege the other a story of trauma. How could they possibly be interconnected? That is entirely my point. They are not interconnected in any way. They exist entirely independent of one another within my consciousness, and within my personal history. One does not affect the other, nor should it. I can acknowledge both independently of the other. Yes I have experienced white privilege and thus I can say without a doubt that white privilege exists. Yes I have also experienced trauma and suffering and I can say without a doubt that suffering is part of the human experience.

What I can do is leverage these both for the purpose of social progress. My own experience of white privilege helps me recognize the injustice of the social narratives woven into the fabric of our society. My experience of suffering helps me feel empathy for the suffering of others. I recognize the social narrative that led to George Floyd lying on a street in Minneapolis with his neck under the knee of an officer of the law. I also feel empathy for the suffering that he went through and the injustice of it all.

I don’t feel threatened at all by the social movement spawned in part by the suffering of George Floyd instead I feel empathy and solidarity because I understand fundamentally that suffering is not a competition. We can recognize and fight injustice without denying our own personal history. In fact the normalization of suffering teaches us that the better you understand your own experience of suffering the better you will be able to have empathy for and thus fight against the suffering of others.