We Become What We Normalize

September 18, 2023
Dark (The Possibility of America), an assistant professor of religion at Belmont University, sets out a full-throated critique of contemporary American culture and offers an alternative to its “toxicity and terror and trauma.” In so doing, he calls out a “deferential fear” that “dictates our speech, behavior, and our sense of what’s possible,” as well as the “hidden structures and tacit social arrangements that draw us away from ourselves,” including brands, businesses, and governments. He’s especially outspoken about the damages of whiteness, which he defines as a “refusal to see,” claiming, for example, that white people failed “to rationally process the fact of the January 6 insurrection as an insurrection.” While these and other ills foster a “dysfunctional culture,” readers can step “out of the infinite loop of normalizing harm” by willingly engaging in “brave and risky” dialogue with others. (To Catholic theologian Thomas Merton’s adage, “it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything,” Dark adds: “There are no randos.”) Drawing on sources ranging from Socrates to LeBron James’s social media, Dark makes a persuasive case for building a more just society by stepping into sites of tension and conflict, though his message is sometimes diluted by elaborate metaphors that do more to confuse than clarify (including a mention of “robot soft exorcism theory,” which “helps us spy out, analyze, and act imaginatively upon our common compromised reality”). Still, this is an impassioned cri de coeur.