{"id":8215,"date":"2019-03-30T23:29:03","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T03:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=8215"},"modified":"2020-06-01T01:38:14","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T05:38:14","slug":"on-being-vulnerable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=8215","title":{"rendered":"Backaches and Vulnerability"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I\u2019m having surgery on Tuesday which, I\u2019m fairly confident, will remove the pain I\u2019ve have had for the last eight months. Before I do, a word about what this experience has taught me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about vulnerability since I hurt my back on July 23. Since then, aside from the three-week periods after I got two spinal injections a few months apart, I\u2019ve stood and walked with pain and have had trouble moving around. And that\u2019s left me feeling more vulnerable than usual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That feeling comes most often when I\u2019m near cars. I\u2019m much more careful crossing streets because once in a while the pain gets so bad that I just have to stop for a moment. And while I can pick up the pace for a brief burst, I don\u2019t respond as quickly as I usually do. So I\u2019m afraid of cars coming around a corner or speeding up as I cross a street. Usually<\/g> I\u2019m just concerned about other people not noticing me. But there have been a few cases\u2014one on Germantown Avenue and another on 2nd Street in Harrisburg\u2014where it seemed that a driver just started speeding up as I was hobbling across a street, practically daring me not to move out of the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just cars, however. I\u2019ve recognized that part of my sense of security in walking down the street in urban areas is my confidence that I can take care of myself in a difficult moment. It\u2019s not that I have many or really any such moments recently. As a short guy who didn\u2019t like getting picked on because I was smart and outspoken, I got into a few fights in my life. And being a lot more aggressive and tougher than others suspected, I came out of them well. But that was a very long time ago. I don\u2019t recall throwing a punch at anyone except in play since the ninth grade. Still, I have had an underlying sense of being strong and capable that meant something to me when I was out and about. And that, like my ability to work long hours and to act in stressful situations, has a lot to do with how I live my life, especially in the world of politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of that sense of confidence in the streets is gone at the moment. If trouble arises I can neither fight back nor run away. And even if that kind of trouble is incredibly unlikely, it\u2019s affected how I think of myself. And so does finding myself more tired and having to limit work hours because the frequent pain wears me out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I\u2019ve been feeling vulnerable in ways I never have before.\nAnd that has made me think more about the role the sense of vulnerability and\ninvulnerability plays in our lives. And I\u2019ve especially thought about the lives\nof those who are a lot more vulnerable than I was either because of their\nphysical limitations or because they face a lot more challenges than I do on\nthe street\u2014women, people of color, those who are disabled, those whose sexual\nidentity and presentation is not traditional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has occurred to me that my current sense of vulnerability, like the confidence I once had, is a bit of a mirage. Was I ever really as invulnerable as I thought? Is anyone? My late friend, the long-time transit activist Peter Javsicas, was walking down the street in Center City minding his own business last year when a car spun out of control and crossed onto a sidewalk and killed him. My grandmother and her friend the rebbitzin<\/g><\/g> were killed by a speeding drunk driver on the way to synagogue on Purim in 1969. Gangs sometimes pick on strangers who are not like them on the streets of the city. People fire bullets that hit random others in some neighborhoods\u2014including some not far from my own. And the police who are there to protect us sometimes harm us instead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, police violence is a lot less likely to happen to\nme. And that, among other things, leads me to think that no small part of my prior\nsense of invulnerability in the streets had something to do with my privileged position\nas a white, fairly prosperous, middle-aged man. Confidence in the street has\nsomething to do with one\u2019s physical being, but like most things, it\u2019s socially\nconstructed as well, and in ways that reflect the dynamics of power in our political\ncommunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our sense of confidence and safety in the world is shaped by who we are and by political and social forces outside us. But it\u2019s also a product of what we are used to. I was always more vulnerable than I recognized before I got hurt. I like to think of myself as tough but I am not that big–and sometimes that matters. And I was always vulnerable to all the random ways of being hurt, from illness to accident.  Our sense of vulnerability is measured on a relative scale, formed by our previous experience, not on an absolute scale. I\u2019m more vulnerable than I was on July 22. But I wasn\u2019t nearly as secure as I thought on that day either. (I wasn\u2019t thinking, for one thing, about what picking up a suitcase to put in the backseat of a taxi whose trunk was full could do to me.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If one has had a charmed life, like I have\u2014with good health, some economic means, a good education, and supportive parents, family, and friends\u2014one is probably fairly confident out in the world. But a lot of that sense of confidence is, again, a mirage. It\u2019s based not so much on personal attributes but on the resources and rules from which one benefits. And it\u2019s also based on a healthy dose of denial about all the random catastrophes\u2014from illness to disaster to economic and political crisis\u2014that can damage any of us at any moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This denial isn\u2019t wholly a bad thing. That I had more (partly false) confidence before July 23 most likely helped me live well\u2014and also do the work I do. And that\u2019s true for everyone. We can\u2019t live well\u2014or work and love well, either\u2014 if we don\u2019t have some confidence in our safety in the world and our ability to be effective in accomplishing our goals. We have to put aside thoughts of random disaster and catastrophe and illness to get on with the tasks of our lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it would be better if those of us who have lived charmed lives recognized how much our sense of confidence and invulnerability is a product of luck and privilege, not our own doing. And would be best if we could create a political community in which these advantages were available to everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the problems in America today is that too many of us\nthink that we do it all on our own. The mirage that we are more invulnerable than\nwe really are may be necessary in life. But when that mirage takes an individualistic\nform, the consequences for our political community can be awful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our individualism leads those of us who are doing pretty well to fail to recognize how much we have been given. And that then leads us to blame the victims of misfortune. We in America are always quick to find something wrong done by someone who only suffers from one or another kind of bad luck, whether it comes in the form of illness, disability, or economic disaster. Recognizing the impact of chance on our lives is unsettling. One way not to see how vulnerable we all are, to protect our sense of security, is to blame the victims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our individualism has another bad consequence: When people organize collectively to reduce some of the effects of luck and privilege on their lives\u2014when Black and brown people and women and members of the LGBTQ community assert themselves\u2014those who have benefited from good luck and privilege often object. They made it on their own, they think, and can\u2019t understand why anyone else needs help. And so they deny their own privileged position on the one hand while organizing to fight to protect it on the other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That dynamic becomes even more striking when some of the people who have been privileged for much of their lives\u2014older white working class men for example\u2014have also been suffering more in recent year because our economy has increasingly left them out. It\u2019s really hard to understand how the rules and distribution of resources have benefitted you when those benefits have been slowly going down the drain for a decade or two. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Failure to recognize your advantages even when you are down in life makes it easy to get people to fight back against the aspirations of those who seek a fair share of those advantages. It\u2019s no accident that those who do so fight with the kind of braggadocio that expresses both their privileged position and their deep fear of losing it. The Right<\/g> in America once admired the strong, silent John Wayne. Now it admires the blustering bed-wetter in the White House. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no easy way to deal with these tensions, I think, except by directly addressing their source. And that means dealing not just with political churn on the surface but with the deeper political, social, and psychological dynamics that underlie them. A political campaign may not be the right place to do it, although I\u2019d like to see someone try. But the task of changing our country is far bigger than any campaign and it’s one we all have to undertake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to recognize that the confidence and sense of invulnerability\nsome of us have in this life is a product not just of our own attributes but of\nthe rules of our political community and the distribution of resources within\nit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to recognize how many people don\u2019t share in that sense of confidence and sense of invulnerability because they have been disadvantaged by the rules of our political community and the distribution of resources within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to recognize that any confidence and sense of\ninvulnerability any of us have is in large part a mirage, created by our hopes\nand fears more than the reality of our lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to recognize that, in truth, none of us can do well\nin this life without the help of others who ground, sustain, encourage, and\nwelcome us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to recognize that we have a responsibility to provide everyone with the same chance to be grounded, sustained, encouraged and welcomed in their lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we have to recognize that far from undermining individuality, the best way to encourage individuals to step up and take care of themselves and others and to push forward in the endeavors that define their lives, is to give them the same good start and backup that the most privileged of us take for granted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postscript: I had back surgery on May 2 that has relieved the pain I had been suffering for 8\u00bd months. Every day I fight the human inclination to forget the pain I had and to remember the lessons of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m having surgery on Tuesday which, I\u2019m fairly confident, will remove the pain I\u2019ve have had for the last eight months. Before I do, a word about what this experience has taught me. I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about vulnerability since I hurt my back on July 23. Since then, aside from the three-week periods after I got two spinal injections a few months apart, I\u2019ve stood and walked with pain and have had trouble moving around. And that\u2019s left me feeling more vulnerable than usual. That feeling comes most often when I\u2019m near cars. I\u2019m much more careful crossing streets because once in a while the pain gets so bad that I just have to stop for a moment. And while I can pick up the pace for a brief burst, I don\u2019t respond as quickly as I usually do. So I\u2019m afraid of cars coming around a corner\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1896,"featured_media":8217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[145,14],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/street20at20520megan20eaves20flickr20crop20resize.jpg?fit=2736%2C1722&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-28v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1896"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8215"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8403,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8215\/revisions\/8403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}