Tao of K-drama: She comes to know

The K-drama, known in English as She Would Never Know, is, of course, about women coming to know. The name in Koran is 선배, 그 립스틱 바르지 마요, which literally means Senior, Don't Put on That Lipstick. The translation is a bit awkward. "Senior" in this context does not mean last year of high school or elderly person -- the word is "seonbae," a title for someone who is ahead of one in school and/or work. It is a term of respect. The command here is uttered by the junior -- hoobae -- to his seonbae, a woman having an affair with a man who, unbeknownst to her, is about to marry someone else. She puts on bright red lipstick to go meet him in the stairwell. The hoobae hates the color on her, and hates what is about to happen when she finds out the truth. 

The show doesn't stop at one of these -- a wife doesn't know her husband is quiet and unexpressive because he is repressing his same-sex desire, and their child doesn't know divorce is looming; a woman doesn't know she can survive without the man of her dreams; a mother doesn't know her daughter was aware of the husband's infidelity, nor does the mother know she can survive the growth in her uterus because she's afraid to find out. All of these secrets will come out in time, and people will weather the storms they create. 

This being K-drama, people come into relationship, and by the time we reach the end, a much larger group is helping to manage the trauma and recovery. One recapper said that this was predictable K-drama and not that interesting. I thought he must have missed the careful way in which the show allowed people to get closer to the truth and closer to other people so they could manage the truth. Because that is the secret of the truth -- things are hidden because they will be hard to digest, they are frightening, they force us to go against the established order. 

This is perhaps clearest in the case of the husband who has to face "who he really is" -- that is, accepting his same-sex attraction. In one scene he goes to tell his parents he wants to divorce his wife. His father surges to his feet and smacks him hard in the face and then does it again and again. "You will not get a divorce," the parents shout. Imaging if he were there on his knees saying, "I am getting a divorce and marrying another man." His wife, who knows the violence of the in-laws, tells him that she will stay by his side until he can accept himself -- that she loves him as he is. He later says that that was the first time anyone had said that to him and it was freeing. 

Which brings us back to the red lipstick -- it is not her color. This show takes place in a cosmetics company and she was working on the color cosmetics team. So wrong color is a big no no. The hoobae wipes it off her lips. By the end, when she wants to win his love (back), she puts on an excellent color. Perhaps the deeper allusion is to the Police song, Roxanne -- "You don't have to put on the red light" -- or to the source of that song. No need for the red light -- you are OK just the way you are. 

Tao of K-drama: Inclusion and Salvation in The Good Doctor

The Good Doctor is a 2013 K-drama about Park Shi-on, a young man with autism who aspires to become a pediatric surgeon. There is widespread resistance to his entering residency in pediatric surgery. He is denied a license by the Korean medical board and ridiculed by many. His problems are exacerbated by his impulsive actions and inability to conform to the requirements of the team. At the same time, a chaebol is engineering a hostile takeover of the hospital to make a for-profit children's hospital. As the story unfolds, it is the inclusion of Park Shi-on that shifts relationships inside the hospital and allows hospital leaders to stave off the takeover. The parallels to our own time are obvious.

In the final episode, Park Shi-on is awarded a medical license. The head of the medical board comes to the hospital to deliver the certificate in person. He says that this is because Park Shi-on's case has shifted the board's approach to inclusion of people with disabilities. Park Shi-on then speaks. He says that he is different and tried to overcome his differences, but couldn't. At that point, it was many people reaching out to him -- from the children on the pediatric surgery ward to the medical director of the hospital -- who enabled him to succeed. 

While Park Shi-on is learning and growing, he inspires others to dare to include. Two other romances prosper because of this. This "love across boundaries" felt very familiar to me, as my parents crossed the divide of race and in my first marriage we crossed the divide of religion. The many little scenes rang true: getting taken aside for a "talking to," the hurtful gossip, the loving defiance. 

But most important in the ultimate outcome of the struggles as that people who opened their hearts to Park Shi-on also began to the work of the hospital in a new light -- less technical and robotic, and more ineffable and loving. People talked about healing medicine that they can't see. Over and over, we realize that this healing medicine is inclusion.

I sometimes think that "inclusion" is the most radical word of our times. It is a word with no boundaries -- that is the working of inclusion we see in The Good Doctor. The show doesn't have all the bells and whistles of K-dramas made now and the soundtrack is so syrupy your feet stick to the floor. The story is so strong and so well acted that it rises above all that, to be moving, fun and instructive. 

Main Street: May I add something?

I'd like to add something to what the pundits are saying. They all agree that the nation is polarized and angry. Some leaders are happy for this because they can use the inter-group distrust/hatred to gain power. Some leaders recognize that this is not good, although they seem like old-fashioned snake-oil salesmen in proposing remedies. 

Here's what nobody is saying, and I'd like to add: We are polarized because of seven decades of policies that sundered the physical integrity of our environment and altered our social connections. Through McCarthyism, urban renewal, deindustrialization, mismanaged epidemics, gentrification and other disruptive policies, we have destroyed the "weak ties" -- the social bonds that connect us across differences -- pushing us to solidify into groups defined by our "strong ties." Such groups are driven by "self-centered fear" -- fear of losing something they have or not getting something they want -- rather than broad solidarity with all living beings. Such solidarity requires the connections of weak ties. 

Seventy years.

Destruction of weak ties.

Crystallizing into strong-tie groups built on self-centered fear and radiating anger and resentment. 

This leaves us in a dire state. Most important, in this new state of social organization, the groups are not even thinking along the same lines. The psychologist Dr, Wade Nobles illuminated this process in the 1980s, during the start of the crack cocaine epidemic, as what he called a "drug culture" emerged within the Black community. The "drug culture" did not share the values of the traditional African American culture. For example, the "drug culture" focused on "I," while the traditional culture focused on "we." 

An example that my colleagues in public health find astounding is the rejection of vaccines. These have wiped out many infectious diseases that killed people in the past. The vaccine skepticism of people who will be leading health agencies in the Trump administration shocks us. 

If, however, we think of this line of reasoning as the emergence of a new culture that differs in values and has, at the core of its operation, managing self-centered fear, then we can follow the conversation and we can understand that disputes between groups crystallized around strong ties are very, very difficult to resolve. The terms of engagement don't exist.

This leads us to the urgency of rebuilding connection and the profound question of "How?" 

This may seem like a non-sequitor, but bear with me for a moment. I've been watching K-drama for almost four years. I have noticed that a daily dose of those stories has given me a new way of being in the world -- new patience, new interest in people, new calm. At first it seemed to me that each story was unique, differentiating K-drama from US soap operas. But having seen 60+ K-dramas, I realize that there is a way in which the K-dramas flow from one to another, creating a form of continuity. From that point of view, I've been watching K-drama for a bit more than 1001 nights. Like King Shahryar, my Scheherazade has tamed me -- aprivoiser in the sense of the Little Prince -- and I don't want to wake up mad. I just want to hear another story. We know that the King was driven to murder his wives by the self-centered fear of being betrayed again. But the fascination of "Wait, what happens next?" -- that is, curiosity -- opened his eyes and eventually permitted him to make a new relationship with the wonderful Scheherazade, who, by the way, was faithful to him through all those 1001 nights, even though her neck was potentially on the chopping block every night. I believe much the same thing has happened to me. K-drama made me curious and therefore re-invested in the world. 

What in the world, you might be asking, has either K-drama or 1001 Arabian Nights to do with the US polarization crisis?

The answer is this: there is a process by which groups diverge and adopt new cultural norms that drive their thinking. We can't fix the divergence by simply saying, "Don't you get that you're wrong?" And we certainly don't fix the divergence by claiming that one group has a mandate to impose its ideas on the other group. 

We can fix the polarization by taking a page from K-drama and the Arabian Nights:

• It is a slow process -- it takes time to re-form a shared understanding and shared trust.
• The process has to acknowledge the betrayals, neglect and harms of the past which created the splits. 
• The process has to set something in the middle that is shared -- something curious, something we'd all like to know. 

The "something in the middle" is the most complex part of this. An analogy might be that we have to wear protective glasses to look at the sun during an eclipse. Our two eyes can see the eclipse but might get hurt. We need the glasses to permit us to see. 

Friends and family watching the total solar eclipse 8.21.17 in Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ

The thing in the middle can't be a cultural product, as cultural products arise from the strong-tie groups and are part of the divergence. The thing in the middle can't be my most treasured thing or your most treasured thing -- universal vaccination vs. universal abortion bans. 

The thing in the middle can be an exploration of our neighborhoods and wondering if we have -- in the words of the ancient Chinese philosopher Xunzi -- put a good pattern on the world? A walk to see what's actually there -- many walks to see what's actually in a lot of places -- this is a thing in the middle that can lead us to a different understanding. There may be a fight that follows that, but it might be a fight that has a greater probability of saving our species and all that evolved with us. 

Talking with Allison Lirish Dean: Oori Consciousness Meets Main Street

Allison Lirish Dean has a podcast series called "Ear to the Pavement," organized in cooperation with Progressive City.  We talked about my book, Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All, in episode #20. Allison talks to lots of people and is an astute observer of the city. She poses questions that I find profound. In the course of our Main Street conversation, we talked about the deep fragmentation in the American scene and the need to find solidarity. In that quest, Main Street plays an important role. Main Street is organized as a crossroads of all of us. It offers the opportunity for us to know one another without being acquainted. 

It is a koan, one might say, that this setting in which strangers pass one another on street has the capacity for us to come together as a nation.  Buddhist teacher, Dr. Marisela Gomez, explained koans as short statements or stories that wake us up because we cannot follow them in our usual linear thinking. The most famous, perhaps, is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" I add my Main Street koan to this genre. 

Because Main Streets DO bring us together, they offer us a path to the emerging consciousness in which the importance of the collective takes center stage and we will be able to think our way to sustainability. At the very end of the podcast, I explained to Allison about "oori consciousness," borrowing the Korean word for "WE" to name this emerging way of thinking. As someone raised deep in American individualism, I can't say I understand the sense of WE that I can glimpse in K-Drama. That doesn't mean I can't see that the path forward runs straight thought oori consciousness -- that is, if there is to be a path forward, that's how it has to go.