Transcript of my Talk with Adrian

It is a very rainy afternoon at least in Chicago and the this is the first Zoom interview I'm doing. Zoom has its advantages sometimes, although we're kind of Zoomed out and we’re kind of becoming zoombies. I'm sitting with, virtually sitting with Alexs Thompson who is a gentleman I met many years ago probably 2002 in our prospective days for the master studies at University of Chicago Divinity School so I can say I've known Alexs, that's that's how you pronounce Alexs right? I think? I know I've known Alexs for many years but as you will see from his interview, Alexs has been in and out and he has had an adventurous exciting life to say the least. So he was not the library Mouse like myself even though we both graduated from the PHD at the same time which was the summer, August of 2014 13 years after we started the program. It took us less time than the Jews in the desert but still and especially you Alexs have gone in various circles and the came back and in the most admiring way finish the job.

So I'm going to start by asking Alexs, to introduce himself briefly but then also to ask him to talk about his personal journey because he has an interesting life to say the least. Again, actually one of the most fascinating stories for someone who is older than me right? What year were you born?

I’m 45. How old are you?

I was born in 78 so I am 42.

And so please, Alexs I’m really excited to do this I know we've been talking about it for a couple weeks. Now I've listened to some of your other podcast and they’ve just been really impactful to me you know just hearing about other people's lives and their faith Journeys

 So yeah, I'm really excited to share.

Can you?

Yeah, so like I said I'm just really happy to be able to share my story as well so you know for me I grew up just outside of Philadelphia in a place called Norristown. I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and I think you know one of the hardest things for me growing up was finding a way to stay connected with the world around me you know. As a black kid growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood I always felt like there was this pressure to define myself in a certain way and I didn't ever feel like that way I was supposed to find myself was actually who I am. You know? I was the kid who you know really liked math, you know? And really wanted to excel in school. I didn't know what football was what basketball was or anything like that. I mean I guess I did know what it was but it never really captured my imagination and there was something about me that was really drawn to academics I would say. That created tension in my household. You know I grew up in a really tough household with all sorts of physical and mental abuse related to all sorts of things, but that made it difficult for me to focus on the things that I cared about and I spent you know a fair part of my life specifically as I was growing up feeling like there was nothing and no one for me, you know. And so I struggled with suicidal thoughts I struggled with, you know, rebelling against everything that I thought was keeping me from being who I wanted to be.

It was probably you know really when I join the Navy, I was in the Navy for four years, and I scored really well on the military ASVAB. And when I joined the Navy I got into a really good job field and started to do so well in my classes that it opened up a new reality for me and I think from there is when I really had the experience and the opportunity to be my best self. That's probably the best way to say it you know

I got into one the most difficult fields in the in the Navy and I did well and that just created a confidence for me. I had to work hard, it wasn't easy for me, the classes were really difficult. I had to work hard; I was studying 6-8 hours a day but because I was able to excel it pushed me to work even harder you know. And so I was in the Navy for four years I got out of the Navy in 2000 and then 911 happened the next year. And that really changed me again and it really propelled me to come up with a mission for my life that would become my main of session for the next 13-14 years. So, I learned Arabic, Persian, and I studied German. I had already learned French and I started to study Islam in a way that a few people get the opportunity to. And then have a real impact on a lot of people's lives so just had a lot of great experiences.

Let's pick up a few threads from this summary and go back to the experience of growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood in in the 80s right? I mean can you talk more about that pressure?

I guess but yeah I mean, so I didn't have the worst of the worst neighborhoods right. I didn't grow up around gangs or gun violence like, I think lots of people have and continue to live in this kind of environments. You know my parents had a high school education they hadn't gone to college and they struggled to support our family. I'm the second oldest of eight kids and my mom worked irregularly she would work you know at the local nursing home or helping out of the business down the street or something like that and my stepdad he again you know sort of went from job to job.

We grew up in an environment where we lived on food stamps and there were months where we can eat a normal amount or we can have electricity but we can't do both you know? So I guess you would save we grew up very frugal. Like said, I mean, there's tons of people who grew up poor and in worse environment, but I think the pressure for me that probably matters the most is the people around me believed that the best that they could accomplish was the best that everyone else had accomplished. They believed that the best of the best life was to conform to the life that we already had. you know so there was a sort of expectation that Alexs me I would accomplish the same things that my parents had accomplished. And maybe maybe a little bit more. But not substantially more. So when I talked about how I'm going to be a famous astronaut or computer engineer or something it was met with laughter and derision[a1] .

No one had dreamed of doing those sorts of things when I was kid and certainly didn't talk about it if they did dream about it. So there's a pressure for me to conform but inside of me something completely different was happening. I started studying French in high school and I found myself thinking in French from the first day I took French class and dreaming about going to France and wondering what other languages I would learn.

I dreamed about becoming a famous chemist to discover some vaccine or discover some cure for something you know and so inside of me I'm living this world of dreams and everything on the outside around me is saying that's alien that's it's not just weird or unusual or doesn't make sense it's like: that's not real. Like what's happening inside of me is not real; is not possible. That’s what white people think and say and do. That's the message that I got: you're a black boy and black boys don't do that kind of stuff.

 You know and so that's really the pressure that I felt growing up.

I mean that's very interesting and there was a disconnect between the expectations of people around you and what you were craving or what you were yearning for right?

Right.

I didn't know this about you in such a precise way. We have this big discussion about, let's say education and the university performance gap between the different minority groups. And you're insight matters the most here right. So you have that and on the other hand I've worked for many years as a substitute teacher at a Community College and one of the things that bothers me sometimes is the perspective that these people are victims. We need to help them like the victim. Is that argument right? So it's almost that instead of empowering, let's say African-Americans, it's putting the burden on something else right. Or the other argument is the system is bad, you know there's no right way. Can you offer your perspective?

Sure, I mean my response is “yes and”. The system is broken, right? we know how public education systems, pre-collegiate public education systems, are based on taxes that are gathered within the communities and if you're living communities where you have less taxes for a less tax base then you have less resources in the schools in which you exist, right? So that disproportionately affects people from lower-income communities. It doesn't have anything to do with skin color but has something to do with economic status.

Okay, so that's one part of it. There are the way that our education system is set up to disproportionately affect people based on things like skin color, gender, and economic status. Another thing is that African Americans have historically been disproportionately affected by legal, health, and political structures. That's just the way it is, okay? So yes it's true that some people have less opportunity, but also… there's a really important “but also” here.

Before you get to the “but also”, can you say a little more on structure social issues especially in light of the recent events. I mean does systemic racism exist? And I think that is very important is systemic racism.

Yes. I was talking with someone about this yesterday and I'll say two things here: one I never talk about these things. I never talk about things like systemic racism in public or you know in a podcast and the reason is because, and this is the second thing: the reason is because the language that we use is so  sloppy on the one hand and politically charged on the other and to me that is the worst of all the possible combinations here right. Because you have people who are really politically motivated in some way, yet they're using language which does not facilitate constructive, precise conversations. So when you have things that are really charged and difficult you want to be as precise as possible so that you are discussing the issues that matter and it's really not just a proxy for my emotional state and it's not just a manifestation or an imposition of my ego.  It's actually me trying to solve something that has clear negative impacts on our society.  

I would just like to add that exactly. And that's the issue I find with this kind of discourse because it sounds beautiful and motivating, but then the question is what to do with this rhetorically charged language that amounts to ideological rhetoric that is totalizing. Where do we start here? Where do we move from here right?  

Right. You asked me a question which is politically charged and sloppy. So, there is such a thing as structural racism you know and so it's a bad. So, structural racism, which I believe exists, but the existence of this thing called structural racism is less important than the various things that happen on a daily basis in our legal structures, and our health institutions, in our educational institutions. So if we say does structural racism exist, I'm going to say yes; it exists. There's no doubt in my mind that it exists, but the value of that conversation at that level is probably minimal and primarily rhetorical as you mentioned. So if we are actually trying to solve an issue, this is another reason I tend to ignore these topics. I don't know how you got me to talk about this stuff.

For me the value of these kinds of conversations is to solve problems right and ultimately the solutions to the problems that we’re trying to solve are around relationship. Whether you and I agree or disagree to me is immaterial. What matters is that you know you and I are able to build and maintain a meaningful relationship. And me and my neighbor are able to build and maintain a meaningful relationship. And within the contours of that relationship we will get to know each other and the struggles of someone like me, a gay black man in the Midwest, will become your concerns. It will become things that you talk about and think about and if I come home from work and I say something like, which has not happened to me, and I say something like a police officer just pulled me over for no reason, right or I couldn't get in to see the doctor or my kids can't get into the schools. As we build a relationship and share our lives, two things happen: on the one side whatever group of people are subjected to discrimination, let's just say it that way, their language becomes the language of the group. On the other side, if we take the person, and I'm being very generic here, you know we take someone who's not being treated badly and I am no longer able to say all those people out there don't care about me. Or all of those people out there are racist.

If you don't look like me you're no longer a racist or sexist or a homophobe right because not only do my issues become part of your language, your language becomes part of my language and your pain becomes my paint.

 We haven't said, you know, the name Martin buber, but he's screaming in the background right and the building of that I-Thou relationship.

Most a lot of my closest friends are police officers or firefighters right and so in the world we live in today I spend part of my day talking to police officers who feel targeted and lumped in with a group of police officers who've done horrible things and my friends feel like they're being lumped into that, right? My friends are being looked at as racist and violent. And so having that conversation with them gives me, like I said the other part of this relationship: their struggles and their thoughts and their experiences have become part of mine. As much as me talking about what it's like to be a black man in the US becomes part of their conversation and their language and their life, you know. And so I feel like it puts me in a uncomfortable situation.

I remember, literally there was one night where I talked to one of my friends who identifies as genderqueer and lives in Minneapolis who had recently gotten pulled over by the police and was railing about the police etcetera. So one part of my night was that conversation. The next part of the conversation that same night was with a friend of mine who is a police officer who was just got called in to go put on all his riot gear and go deal with protesters.

Right? And so for me to be in the middle of those conversations, it forces me, in a good way, to have compassion. And so that's probably on an emotional level but also intellectually, to interrogate the arguments on both sides and to come up with some sort of synthesis that allows me to say how do I engage with people who are on both sides of this issue, interact with them in a real honest way as human beings, right?

It's uncomfortable. But it's also terribly rewarding, right? Like it’s just extremely important to me

 I thank you Alexs and I basically share your your attitude totally. And correct me if I'm wrong in this, we talk about Martin buber and the I-Though relationship. We all talk about this, you know… you can easily establish this sweeping discourse like political correctness, all of which sound beautiful and might be reassuring at one point, but it's lifeless, right? I'll never feel your pain I never liked or disliked you right because I don’t encounter the other.

I don’t have to like everything about the other because I’m not a robot, right? Disliking something about the other doesn't amount to hate. Difference is not discrimination. I encounter you in your otherness with everything that you are. Your entire experience which might be very different. In a way, what I hear you saying is that the solution to this…there is no wholesale solution. That it’s personal. We start at the grassroots.

Yeah. I think. So you mentioned the term political correctness and I think I agree with what you said but I want to want to say it again. It doesn't matter if we agree, but I just want to say it again. There is political correctness when it is implemented which is lifeless, as you said. When it just sounds good and it just feels good. But if it becomes rhetoric which allows an individual or groups to establish differential power relationships which says I'm more whatever—“woke”…if political correctness becomes a source of creating power that allows individuals or groups to place others beneath them, and make a moral assessment to say I am therefore better, and you are worse, thus the distribution of resources based on money, time, political etc etc right if that's what's happening with something like political correctness then it's lifeless

But there's something really powerful important about political correctness which may be lost, I think in some ways. The power here is that normative structures, by definition, mute the voices that don't fit into that norm and so you think about the voices of the Irish and the Italians in the 18th or 19th Century. You think about the voices of the Jews, well I don't know, throughout all of time. You think about the voices of African Americans in the US, Native Americans and you go down the list and political correctness says, “how can we bring light to voices which already exist? Which already have impact and importance in our society?” How do we shine a light on those voices and bring them out and have them be heard? Not because, “Oh wouldn't it be nice if everybody got to get up on stage and speak”. Not in that sense, but as a recognition of what already exists. The value that is brought, not in a material sense, but the value that has already been brought for centuries. Like I said, I'm not sure that's how political correctness is implemented these days.

But since it's extremely important and powerful, certainly for someone like me; yeah I think that the philosophy of diversity, before it becomes an ideology, allows a certain open space for unheard voices or neglected voices to be heard and that's why I completely agree that it's very welcome and necessary.

and that, I think leads to the “but also” that I was going to get to a few minutes ago.

But we're still not ready, Alexs. Because you know we're both practicing Christians or to some degree practicing. The question, and it's not just the question because it's a tough area to question; How do you go from the personal to the larger system? I mean Christ did not change masses. Christ changed people.

Exactly. And this is an important question for me. How do you go from the person to the system or to the larger society? How do you make that step? It's actually a question that I have spent a lot of time thinking about and the reason is because I spent so much time working in u.s. foreign policy. I spent so much time in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Central and Eastern Africa believing that I was helping implement a policy of growing democracy; growing representative government around the world. So when I was in Fallujah for example in Iraq, you know my intent was to help people individuals band together to build the communities that they said that they wanted. Not terrorized by organizations like Al-Qaeda, but motivated by the what was important to them.

And political structures not even imposed by the US right, but to empower individuals to develop and live the lives they believe is best for them.  And there are all sorts of examples from my life where I can say that I had an impact on individuals and maybe sometimes on communities but the question I ask myself and this is very sort of revelatory, I guess about me. I contrast that with the impact that the United States had on a country like Iraq, and I am hard-pressed to say…

Actually, no: I will say that we did not accomplish our goals.  We did not establish or help the Iraqis establish a country that is stable; that represents, from my experience anyway, the wishes of most people which is to be able to build a family, to have a job, to be able to practice their religion. So it's like, what does that mean about how it could have been done or could be done in the future. Now I think this is really tied to the question that you're asking: how did we Institute change? is it the discipleship method where it's a one-on-one and you build a flame in a person who builds the flame in another person and then you know you expand from there and you have this sort of growth of change.

Or is it possible to create political structures and I didn't say anything about economic structures or education structures but is it possible to build political structures that implement that kind of change. In my head I have settled on the fact that it is really individual. It's really at that grassroots level; so that's one thing. The sobering fact of that is it takes millennia; it takes a long time to bring about cultural change. You’ve got me thinking and I'll just say there's one last thing: at the same time that people like you and me are trying to stoke the flame of individuals for positive change to create a better world for individuals and communities, there are other ideologues out there who are leveraging mass communication tools and methods to advance a primarily materialist world view. That means that not only are we trying to introduce change there's also an opposing force that's imposing a different mindset a different worldview which is not leading, in my opinion, leading people to deeper awareness of themselves and the people closest to them or the people in their communities.

That's my perspective.

Wow, thank you Alexs. This is really insightful and helpful to understand some of what's going on and having built a little bit of some kind of frameworks to decipher the narratives, as it were, and the only thing that may be left is hope, but not hope as something delusional.

And that leads to the “but also”. So we've talked about the current political social environment and I keep using this word differential because I think it's a really important word to talk about the fact that depending on what you look like where you grew up and how much money you have, your experience in America is different. That's just the way it is.

But also! And this, to me, is the most important part. And this is why I do not talk a lot about racism, homophobia, or sexism because the “but also” is “work hard!”

Work really, really hard!

It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to become a general or an astronaut or the president of the United States.

But take what you've been given this life and transform it into something which no one would have ever believed that you could have accomplished.

So I grew up like I said outside of Philadelphia in town called Norristown. And I grew up around people who didn't really think about going to college and I went on to get a PhD at one of the best universities in the world. It was not easy at all; it wasn't handed to me. I had moments, really important moments when someone said to me: “I think you can do this next big thing”. For example, in my academic journey there have always been teachers who have said, “I think you can move on.” When I was in elementary school, a teacher said, “I think you can be in the gifted class”, but when I got into the gifted classes no one did my homework for me. No one explained how to do geometry proofs for me, I had to figure that out on my own. So certainly, at moments there were people who said, “let me help you”, but when I got to that next phase, I had to suffer through the work of living up to the promise of that new thing.

So I went to the University of Chicago, where I got my PhD, I met a professor before I got there and he said, “I think you would do well at this top university.” I had to do the work of applying, writing my essays etcetera. It took me probably 2 or 3 weeks to realize that the people that I was in class with knew more about history and philosophy and language than I even thought possible.

So I had a choice to make. When I was young, everybody always told me I was never going to be anything or go anywhere or do anything so I could have said, “I guess they're right. I guess I just sort of lay down and die.” But I didn't do that. You know, most people take 3 classes, but I started taking five classes per quarter. I was spending all of my time in the library; I identified all the smart people in my classes and I said you're going to spend an hour with me in the library. You're going to spend three hours with me in the library then I'm going to buy you dinner or I'll take you out to have a drink or something right. And I would just pick their brain.

The moral of the story is that there are lots of reasons, legitimate reason, structural reasons, why people fail. But those reasons don't have to necessitate failure. They don't determine failure. What I believe is that I determine success and failure for my life. And it doesn't mean that someone has to be, you know a four-star general, president of the United States or something like that.  But as we, as individuals, identify our goals in life—to be a good parent or a good husband or a good wife or a good partner. To be a great person even as we define those things that matter to us and bring meaning to our lives. The goals for which we would bust down every barrier to get there.

And that's why I said when we started this part of the conversation  that it's a “yes and”. Because, you know, in the United States we have this myth of pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But it doesn't mean that…actually it implies that there are people who don't have that hand up.

And I would make it a stronger statement: we know that there are people who need a hand up and as I said, I grew up on welfare and food stamps, right. But that in and of itself doesn't have moral value in my opinion. Whether someone is on food stamps or welfare is morally irrelevant. Some people live in environments where that is a necessity. However, it doesn't have to define who that person is or how they accomplish their goals or even what those goals are.

Wow, thank you, Alexs. You are making a little bit of an anti-Marxist argument that you are not defined by your material conditions without saying that the material conditions are not important in a person's life. There's so much more to us than the material dimension.

Right. I think that's part of the problem with the rhetoric that we hear frequently—it's reductionist. It says either your material condition is all that matters or it does not matter, but we have to have this “yes and”, right which says, yes, our material condition matters. How we grow up, what we look like, what we have access to, matters.

Also, there is something about the human condition, I believe, that allows us to push further and push beyond and so long as that drive is not emphasized, individuals succumb to the language of living up to whatever others around them said they should live up to.

Or, Alexs, succumbing or reducing oneself to one’s circumstances.  

The other point I want to bring out here: frequently when we talk about overcoming obstacles and I say “we” here, I mean if you think about movies and songs, and books that talk about overcoming obstacles, we tend to use examples of wildly famous people like NFL players, NBA players, presidents, you know, people who come from nothing and accomplish everything. Make all the money in the world, best relationships, families, religious life etcetera. And there is value in those stories. there's value in saying something like here is a person who had nothing and now they have everything. Materially, spiritually, emotionally.

At some point, though, I would almost say it's irrelevant, right. The percentage of people who, let’s just say, make it into the NFL. But even the percentage of people who make it into the NFL who actually would even want to be in the NFL is still like infinitesimally small numbers right. We can go down that list until you're at the percentage of college football players who make it into the NFL is still like a really small number, you know.

So that's why I always ask myself what's the value of repeating the stories and as I said, there is some value, but the negative part here is that I think it encourages the simplification of dreaming. It narrows what people think they should dream about and understand what matters. And so, someone will say what matters is if I can become a famous singer or famous athlete or famous politician when the likelihood of that, statistically, is so small that you wonder why should we even be sharing these stories as widely as we are.

Right, Alexs and I want to thank you. You're making very valuable points, because I see my students being almost duped by this discourse and me as an immigrant I think I American optimism is worthwhile, but sometimes it becomes almost delusional and on young people is a kind of non-realism and really unrealistic expectations that then set them up for some disappointment.

When you said it’s delusional, I sort of took a pause there, but I think you're right in the technical sense. Right in the sense that there are individuals who are deluded into thinking that the odds of making it as an NFL player are higher than they actually are.  And so sometimes American optimism turns into this thing where individuals believe that things are likely, which are highly unlikely. And so yeah, I mean, I think that's a really important point about American optimism; that it can be delusional. But I think at its core it is essential and really critical to… if we call it the American experiment, right. That optimism about who we can be and what we can accomplish.

It can be perverted. Optimism can be perverted into something which is delusional, but at its core it's central. Certainly for me. Being optimistic has driven me through my life and allowed me to succeed and in a lot of ways to stay alive. But what I would say, you know, what's really important is around an idea of dream-making. How do individuals make the dreams for which they direct their lives? What are the dreams that energize them and cause them to push past and break through obstacles that otherwise would stop them?

And I guess the main point is probably the final point that I want to make here: It's essential that an individual define their dream and that they not simply transplant the dream of someone else onto themselves. It's not good enough to say this other person dreamed about becoming a famous artist therefore I'm going to become a famous artist. It's essential that the individual identify their personal dream to take the time and effort to understand who they are in some ways and then craft a future and a life around that. And sometimes that means I want to be a strong bulwark in my community. My community means so much to me. Or my family means so much to me or my school my job whatever those things are and that it's okay and valued to have that as the motivating factor of our lives.

The more we put celebrities on pedestals right, the less the things that actually matter in life seem to have less value.

What I hear you saying, Alexs, is that you're advocating for a certain kind of groundedness and embeddness. And I think the two extremes are…on the one hand you can be this very ungrounded being  which is gnostic in a way it’s a form of gnosticism because it has no connection to a body. On the other hand you have cynicism. There is no horizon; you’re in a cave. Like how you described your childhood, you were in a cave.  Maybe one way to grasp this is to … hope as a virtue is embedded. You are embedded; on the other hand youre not in a bubble or a cave.

You used the word disembodied and I think there is a trap or temptation on both sides. On the one side there's this disembodiment…it doesn't matter who I am or who I want to be. I will simply be what is popular to be. And that is a sense of being disembodied as well, right? Like you are distanced from who you are as a person. So I'm making a subtle point in a strong way. The subtlety here is that if you want to be an NFL player and you have the skills: go do that. Let that animate your life in the context of being a whole person.

But I think one of the worst things that I could imagine is if someone read my book and said, “oh I'm going to go do that!” It's like why? I lived my life in the best way that I knew possible. I identified what mattered to me and I pursued it at all costs. But for someone else to say, “I'm going to go do that same thing is…it's disembodied…it's all sorts of things, but it puts that person in a situation where they separate themselves from who they are and they begin to try to imitate or mimic something that I did with my life which is not the end not the goal the purpose of being a human, I don't think.

So I’ve  said, not everybody's going to be a general or Senator or president, but if that motivates you, then go do that. But do it because it animates and motivates who you understand yourself to be.

Maybe, Alexs, just to end the first part of our conversation, I wanted to ask because you mentioned a very strong emphasis on hard work. And I know we'll talk about this in the second part of our conversation about religious conversion in your spiritual religious like I know that has been an important component. What has fueld you? Power to endure, overcome, to keep going, to persist, to persevere?

We’ll have to get into the details, I think, in our next installment, but I think there are two things: first, I was afraid that if I stopped running, I would die. I think based on how I grew up, there was there was a… I'm hesitating to say it was a sense of fear because it's not like I was motivated by fear, but there was a fire in my belly for so long and I think it was initiated by how I grew up. Seeing how I perceived the people around me and being afraid that I would fall into becoming like them I think that really propelled me. That's on the one hand.

On the second hand, you talked about sort of my conversion story. There's always been a sense of mission and purpose in how I've lived my life. And some kind of divine ratification of that life.

Like I said, we can we can talk in more detail about that, but I think you know again, you know we talked about the stories of people who overcome and a lot of times it's like, oh you know it's all about God or it's all about my personal grit or all about my personal etc etc and that is part of it but what I don't want to do is to ignore the fact that there was something subconscious going on with me. I was motivated to change the world; to really make a difference. I felt like my faith had an important part of me living out the life that I wanted to live and so that's all really important and I think we'll talk a lot about that in detail.

That's why I led with the first part; it's probably not fear, but something like fear that propelled me. And as we tell these stories of triumph, I want to bring that out of myself in my story; talk about how I grew up in a place and I had experiences there and it impacted me and it continues to impact me. And it's not pretty and it's not nice and it may not feel good. And it doesn't make the front cover of a book or something, but I think lots of people have that story…lots of people who are successful or on the path to being successful struggle with remembering and seeing and feeling and hearing the voices from our past. That are constantly pulling in some way, pulling down; as we’re moving our lives up and these influences are pulling us down.

Those two things I want it I want to keep in mind. But yeah that's sort of how I was able to keep moving.