Ep16 -- Human Strong

 I wanted to open this episode with a metaphor, comparing the chemistry in a lobster shell with this week's theme of how we humans so often don't recognize our true natures until external events force us to.  Specifically, why do lobsters turn red when you cook them?  I know what you're thinking, what the hell are you talking about?  But trust me, this will all eventually come around to something fascinating. I hope.  So it turns out that lobster pigmentation is the result of two molecules found in its exoskeleton.  One is a protein called crustacyanin.  The other is a pigment called astaxanthin, which is a carotenoids, as is beta carotene, and it's a pigment responsible for bright red, yellow, and orange hues in many fruits and vegetables.  

But somehow, the crustacyanin twists the astaxanthin molecule up and changes how it reflects light, so it turns bluish.  

But, when exposed to high heat the crustacyanin and releases the astaxanthin, allowing it to return to its normal shape. Sort of like when you twist up a rubber band and then let it go.  And then the lobster shell appears red.  

The point is,  and I know it's hard to believe there's actually a point, but the point is this:  This is similar to what goes on with much of our very human good nature. It's in there. It's in all of us, but it often takes extreme external forces for it to appear.  So this week, I want to talk about some real-life examples of how that happens and see if we can figure out a way to make our good natures more readily accessible without having to wait until we're thrown into the metaphorical steamer pot.  Stay tuned.  

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we've all been conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with human nature. And how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind.  But first a word about a sponsor.  

As I was researching the chemistry behind red lobsters, I somehow ended up going down a rabbit hole of news surrounding the restaurant Red Lobster,  which is definitely not a sponsor of The Great Ungaslighting.  Have you heard that Red Lobster will probably file for bankruptcy protection because of massive losses incurred from its endless shrimp promotion,  which they had recently made a permanent fixture on its menu?  Funny little side note. Just about every news outlet frames the story that way that it was their endless shrimp promotion that caused the losses. Except the New York Post whose headline read: "Red Lobster, Reportedly Weighs Possible Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Filing as Labor Costs Soar."  Because of course they did.  

 The story doesn't end there, Red Lobster has now announced that are lucky 150 people could win an "exclusive opportunity to enjoy lobster endlessly compliments of Red Lobster."  Curiously, there's a little asterisk next to the word endlessly, but I'm sure it's nothing.  So, if you read a little bit further down their press release, it says.  "This exclusive opportunity will entitle each winning guest to one complimentary two-hour seating to enjoy lobster served endlessly.  Huh.  As I was reading through Red Lobster's asterisk-riddled press release for its Endless Lobster Fest I just kept hearing in the back of my mind.  

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And we're back.  

There's a funny thing that happens in Los Angeles, along the coast every year.  Unlike in the normal world of the Northern Hemisphere, around west LA the hottest time of year is usually late September to early October.  When my kids were in elementary school they have a big school carnival just before Halloween, and more often than not, it would be freaking hot.  And every year people would seem surprised by it.  A similar thing seems to happen whenever there is a big tragic event, whether it's a natural disaster or as so often happens in the US, a mass shooting.  Afterward, the community comes together and everybody helps each other. And people tend to think that this behavior is extraordinary. Oftentimes there'll be banners and shirts made that say Boston Strong or Orlando Strong or Las Vegas Strong. And I'm all for that. Whatever it takes for people to process a tragedy is exactly what they should do.  But I think it's important to realize that there's nothing inherently unique about the people in each of those places. Except that at that moment, they are a group of humans, collectively dealing with a tragedy.  It's their true humanity showing through. It's the heat of the tragedy releasing that hidden pigment of the compassion and the caring that's always there inside of us.  When you think about it that way, it's not that we're behaving in a superhuman way when tragedy strikes.  It's that in our everyday lives, we can get complacent and turn inward. We give too much attention to the charlatans and egotists among us who seek to capitalize on our good natures for their own individual game.  And we end up suppressing that natural, socially focused instinct that we all have.  But it's during those tragedies that we feel freed to be our true selves.  

The big question for me, and one of the most important questions I'm hoping to get at with this podcast is: Why do we have to wait for something big and obvious and terrible to happen before we'll feel freed to help each other?  I guess one of the answers is, pretty much nobody's defending the natural disaster. Although, there are occasionally folks who will claim that somehow the disaster was caused by someone else's heretical behavior.  

And there aren't many sane people saying good, you know, I'm glad they shot up that school.  But in normal everyday life, for every group of people that's suffering, feeling very similar emotions to the victims of those big disasters, in America there's almost always someone who is exploiting their suffering for their own profit and power.  And a lot of us can get caught up in their thinking.  Rather than seeing what's really going on. 



If you want to truly understand this, I recommend reading POVERTY BY AMERICA by Matthew Desmond.  What he means by the title is that America has a particular kind of poverty.  It's a poverty that is so entrenched and so difficult to mitigate, often because a lot of people make money off the same system that impoverishes millions either directly or indirectly.  And if you want to eliminate poverty, the simple truth is you're going to have to do some things that won't be popular among a lot of people much higher up the food chain, so to speak.  An example I've mentioned before on this podcast. Is that America effectively spends around $70 to $80 billion a year subsidizing homeowners in the form of the mortgage interest deduction.  And most of this goes to households with incomes of over $200,000.  Meanwhile over half of all poor renters in America pay more than 50% of their income on housing and a quarter spend more than 70%.  Now, one can argue that the mortgage interest deduction facilitates home ownership. Although an early 2000 study looking back 40 years found that while the deduction fluctuates significantly with inflation, those changes don't correlate to changes in home ownership.  And if you think about it, when someone is struggling to buy a house,  they're struggling because prices are too high and they can't scrape enough money together for a down payment.  The mortgage interest deduction only exacerbates that problem, and it really isn't top of anyone's mind when they're trying to buy a house.  Now., There is a legitimate argument to say that eliminating the deduction will lower housing prices and hurt homeowners. And it would, so it may seem impossible to eliminate the deduction. And right now, it definitely is.  And I don't really want to get into the weeds of this argument, but it's just to say that there's a strong argument for maintaining a program that probably shouldn't exist if, and it's a big if, we really want to tackle poverty and the housing crisis in America.  But I'm hoping that we might be able to make some progress if enough people don't continue to think of it as, oh, I'm going to lose money. But instead, think of it as a sacrifice you're willing to make for your fellow humans.  You'd be willing to sacrifice during the heat of a disaster. 

Everyone would. So the instinct is there.  You just need to be able to access it when things aren't quite so hot.  

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So all of this reinforces that idea from Gregory Bateson that I talked about a couple of weeks ago. We're all in the same ecosystem.  It reminds me of an example that Diana Butler Bass mentions in her book GRATITUDE: THE SUBVERSIVE PRACTICE OF GIVING THANKS.  She suggests that the normal understanding of gratitude can be problematic because we may feel that the person doing the thanking owes something to the person receiving the thanks and a kind of hierarchy is established.  She prefers to think of all of us sitting around a round table. 

So there's nobody at the head of the table. And to the extent that there are imbalances, it's just that resources need to be better balanced around the table. Those resources can be money. They can be power. They can be status. But yes, it is often the case that providing more resources to someone at the table will require taking them from someone else.  And that's a pretty radical idea in today's America.  But I think, if we focus less on what we might be giving up individually, and concentrate more on what we might gain, all of us collectively,  it might not be so hard to begin to just wrap your head around the idea.  And once we do that. We can begin to take steps slowly but surely towards making that idea a reality.  

Well, that's it for this week. Until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other, some slack,   and as always use your damn turn signal.