Behind the Seen

In this episode we discuss the ego, and how the ego creates stories about ourselves and the world in a way to understand reality. Think of it as a sort of programming. And this programming that tells us how to see the world becomes integral to our identity. And any new information that is introduced that conflicts with what we know literally becomes an attack of the self. How can we posture ourselves for integrating new information into our lives that allows us to live harmoniously with others without giving up core parts of who we are?

Today we’re going to talk about expectations, and how our expectations guide so many of our daily actions and how we see and interact with the world. So what are expectations? And what happens when we forfeit parts of ourselves to conform to unhealthy expectations put on us by others?

Today's episode coincides with Columbus Day, a day dedicated to honoring a man for his contributions to history, but who also committed horrific atrocities in the name of colonization. How should history judge such unsavory characters? We'll discuss how we form ideas about people's reputations, and how too often we take snapshots of people's lives—oftentimes their worst moments—and use those to make judgments about their character and value.

We all know that we inherit physical characteristics from our parents, but new understandings around a relatively new field called epigenetics, meaning “outside of genetics," shows how we can also inherit our parents fears, stress, and anxieties that even they themselves inherited from their own parents. In this episode, co-hosts Mark Bauer and Branden Polk discuss how that trauma passed down from slavery and Jim Crow might manifest today and what we should do with that knowledge.

Privilege is a word given to an idea that says there are certain advantages that some people have access to based solely on their race, gender or economic status. These advantages are wholly unearned because we were born into them. We inherited opportunities from decisions that other people made. The most obvious ones are those our parents made, but also the decisions those in society have made leading up to the time and place where we find ourselves.

In this episode, Branden Polk and Mark Bauer discuss the real-world effects of privilege and how it impacts our everyday lives.

In this episode, we delve a little deeper into what it means to actually listen. It’s one thing to hear someone, but it’s another thing to actually understand what they are trying to communicate. 

Assuming that you two are speaking the same language, a variety of factors can get in the way of listening. You have the speaker, who is trying to communicate from their perspective and life experiences, and then you have the listener, who is interpreting that information and trying to make sense of it based on their perspective and life experiences.

By the end of the episode, we'll hope you're able to identify areas where you haven't listened and take away some practical applications for hearing others.

*What you’re listening to is raw, unedited dialogue. Views expressed in this podcast are our own.

We’ve talked a lot about discomfort and tension when we encounter things that are different than us. This episode will go a little deeper into the actual psychology of that fear. Practicing getting over that fear is like building and stretching any muscle—it requires repetition. And continually pushing the boundaries of what you can overcome unlocks a whole new perspective on life when you aren’t inhibited by fear.

For this episode, it’s important that we talk about justification—or the excuses we make—when we’re confronted with our biases. If the last three episodes have caused you any kind of shame, guilt or anxiety, our typical reaction when we experience that kind of discomfort is to put it on somebody else, usually the person who pointed out our wrongness in the first place. We become the best defenders of ourselves in those moments to absolve our responsibility. But once you realize the discomfort is saying more about you than it is about the other person, there's freedom when you stop running, quit making excuses, and own it.

In this episode, we try to de-stigmatize the stereotype of the "angry black person." We have this idea that civil discourse means we can’t be passionate and angry, and so when dialogue rises to that level, white people use it as an excuse to disengage.

But political dialogue can often get heated, and we rarely shy away from it when we're emphatic about highlighting an issue that's important to us. It’s a necessary tool that we have taken away from a whole segment of people who need to use their voices for expressing their grievances.

*What you're listening to is raw, unedited dialogue. Views expressed in this podcast are our own.

In the first episode, we talked about what is at the root of misunderstandings and the snap judgements we make about people based entirely on the information we’re provided about their outward identities. Those outward identities never tell the full story about who that person is behind the seen, and when we’re confronted with those misunderstandings it creates tension between what we think we know and what actually is.

And when a whole bunch of people live together who share a bunch of commonalities related to economic status, religion, and ethnicity, they develop social norms as general guidelines for living together in a geographically defined area. In the United States, we might call that "Whiteness"--and this isn't in reference to the skin color so much as a social construct. In this episode, we discuss the history of Whiteness and its implications on us today.

*What you're listening to is raw, unedited dialogue. Views expressed in this podcast are our own.