Part of the Problem
By: Raelle Kaia
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Uncertainty, Therapy, Reality, Madness

An Encounter with the Surreal on June 30, 2020

I was rattled and shaken up. The previous day, I had renewed sessions with my old therapist. I had first worked with her in 2013, briefly for two intervals over two years, and then weekly for three years; it had been a year and a half since our last session. I renewed sessions with her because I was feeling alarmed at what I identified as acute authoritarianism in the society, with shaming, self-righteousness, blacklisting, canceling, and vitriol directed at those who questioned the set of required beliefs held by the dominant group. I have written in depth about my experiences during this time in the article: Lockdown Evoked a Political and Conceptual Earthquake in My Life.

In summary, I was finding myself questioning the beliefs of every group, particularly the authoritarian characteristics of thought I observed in all directions, and finding myself without a group. I was doubting the severity and deadliness of COVID-19, and found myself opposing the state impositions of social separation, lockdown, mask-wearing, and vaccination — even if the virus were in truth as deadly as they claimed. I was also disturbed by what had become of the Black Lives Matter movement, worried its new form would work against racial justice and racial healing, and would strengthen racism itself, while also weakening democracy, human kindness, and compassion. It seemed on every side of every political divide, people were rushing to conclude that the mistake we had made in the past was that we had allowed too much freedom, too much liberty, too much speech, and too much diversity of conscience and opinion.

I was also confused, because I had always identified with the political left, primarily due to my understanding that the left was the ideology that supported the freedoms now under assault, and which opposed bigotry and discrimination. Suddenly, I was observing the left acting to undermine these values more so than the right — and finding pockets of the right voicing the same concerns I held — while the left denounced anyone holding these concerns as racist, murderously selfish, or dangerously deluded. I experienced fear, because it was not socially safe to discuss my doubts and perceptions with others without being canceled or blacklisted. I needed someone to talk to I could trust with my perceptions, my fears, and concerns, to help me process my alarm, and support me in retaining my sense of solidity in myself as the sands beneath my feet seemed to be rapidly shifting and melting away. I was finding that the only people who seemed to observe and take note of what I was seeing were conspiracy theorists, or those open to conspiracy interpretations. Consensus reality was not just fracturing, it was shattering. Where did I stand in relation to all this?

I shared all of this with my old therapist during our first session. The next morning I received an email from her informing me that she could no longer work with me due to the content I had shared with her. She had refunded my money, and wished me all the best in my future.

I experienced a rush of alarm in my body, and thoughts rushed through my head. What had just happened? My own therapist I had worked with for five years just canceled me! On one level it felt good to confirm I hadn’t been paranoid about my fears of cancellation — but it didn’t feel good to learn I hadn’t been paranoid enough. Or do I have it wrong? Maybe my therapist cancelling me is evidence that I had become a dangerous person, a toxic individualist, delusional at best, and morally reprehensible at worst — only I couldn’t see it due to my own delusions. Or did it mean something else I didn’t understand?

I took a walk to get grounded and think through what was going on and what to make of it. A few blocks away in my neighborhood, I came across an older white man on a street corner, overweight, probably about 60 years old, shouting loudly as he recorded a video testament into his smart phone. He was distraught, and had apparently just been expelled from his home due to ideological arguments and differences with the woman he had lived with. Here are some of his pronouncements:

“She said she hates white people — that she never liked them! She says the police are oppressors! She says Christians are rapists and pedophiles! She threw me out — the woman I’ve lived with for the past year! I didn’t say anything before, but I finally called them out on their lies and they threw me out! She says that white people removed natives from their land, but she removed me — her own native — from our land, from my home!”

I was keeping my distance because I was wary of getting involved, but I stopped across the street and just stood there listening in fascination. He was so caught up in his pain that he didn’t even notice me. Then I looked up at the building kitty-corner to him and saw that the entire wall of an apartment complex had been covered with chalk art framing the following written message (I’ve preserved the capitalization as it was written. Medium doesn’t allow underlining, so I’ve replaced the original underlining with boldface):

“BLACK LIVES MATTER! If You’re not MAD You are Part of THE PROBLEM”

I experienced a strong sense of the surreal. I walked back home to get my phone so I could return and take a picture of the mural, and have it later to meditate on. Since then it has occurred to me the message can be read two ways: “If you’re not angry you’re part of the problem,” and “If you’re not insane you’re part of the problem.”

When I got back, the man was still there recording his testament. He was starting to repeat himself and he was losing steam; his defiant anger was giving way to grief and sorrow. Reflecting on this now, I wonder to myself: “Was he not part of the problem while he was angry, but has now become part of the problem because he’s in sorrow?” I wasn’t angry at the time — I was scared, confused, overwhelmed — but not angry. Did that make me part of the problem? What is the problem? But maybe I was insane. If so, I was mad, and therefore not part of the problem.

The man’s voice was getting softer now, but I heard him say, “I don’t have a bed, I don’t have a home, I don’t have anything.” I looked over and saw that he was speaking to another man who had come up to him to offer some support. The other man broke social distancing protocol and gave this man a hug. They were holding each other as I walked away, headed back home — running late for my next video session with a client in my own work as a therapist.

This is where I would normally conclude with an interpretation of what it all means. But rather than that, I would prefer to leave the interpretation open. I’d like to invite us to pause and reflect for a moment how it is possible for us to project meaning and stories onto any of this: to condemn me or to vindicate me. To condemn the man on the corner or vindicate him. To condemn Black Lives Matter or vindicate it. To condemn my therapist or vindicate her. We can invent any number of stories and presuppositions to confirm our pre-existing biases. I do believe the following statement is undeniable: We are all under intense psychological pressure in this moment, pressure to endorse and denounce certain beliefs and people who hold those beliefs, with tremendous moral weight attached to those pressures. Change a few things about what we believe is true in the world, and the moral weight shifts radically from supporting one ideology to another. How sure are we about what is true? How sure are we in media narratives? How sure are we about this virus, or viruses in general? How certain are we about immunology? How sure are we that our values are inviolable and that completing values cherished by others are invalid?

Is it possible that part of the problem is our certainty in our certainty, the corresponding absence of compassion and empathy that follows from this — and the unswerving trust in those who tell us who we are and what we must do and believe in order to be good?

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps…