Tag: review

Repurposing Trauma: Lessons from “The Bear”

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In the journey of life, we often encounter challenges that shape our experiences and mold our perspectives. Traumatic events, in particular, can leave lasting imprints on our psyche, influencing our behaviors, relationships, and overall outlook on life. However, how we choose to interpret and respond to these experiences can significantly impact our personal growth and well-being. By examining the themes explored in the TV show “The Bear” and combining them with timeless life advice, we can gain valuable insights into the process of repurposing trauma and fostering resilience.

The Power of Imagination and Dreaming

The advice, “Imagine freely, don’t take limitations,” resonates deeply with the concept of overcoming trauma. In “The Bear,” characters like Carmy Berzatto struggle with limitations imposed by their past experiences. Carmy’s journey is a testament to the power of imagination in breaking free from these constraints. Despite the trauma he has endured in high-pressure kitchens and his tumultuous upbringing, Carmy dares to imagine a different future for himself and his restaurant.

This ability to imagine freely is crucial when dealing with trauma. Often, traumatic experiences can create mental barriers, convincing us that certain futures or outcomes are impossible. However, by allowing ourselves to imagine without limitations, we open doors to new possibilities and paths for healing. This connects seamlessly with the advice: “Have specific dreams.” For Carmy, his specific dream of transforming The Original Beef of Chicagoland into a high-end restaurant becomes a driving force, helping him navigate through his trauma.

Childhood Dreams and Inner Child

The advice “Don’t forget your childhood dreams” and “Never lose the child inside you” offers another perspective on dealing with trauma. In “The Bear,” we see glimpses of Carmy’s past, including his childhood aspirations and the events that shaped him. The show illustrates how reconnecting with one’s inner child and early dreams can be a powerful tool in the healing process.

For many trauma survivors, childhood represents a time before the traumatic events occurred. Reconnecting with childhood dreams can serve as a reminder of one’s core self, untainted by later experiences. This connection to the past can provide a sense of continuity and identity, often disrupted by trauma.

Moreover, maintaining a childlike sense of wonder and curiosity can be incredibly healing. Children possess an innate ability to find joy in simple things, to be present in the moment, and to approach the world with openness. For trauma survivors, cultivating these qualities can be a powerful antidote to the heaviness of their experiences.

Learning from Mistakes and Experiences

The advice, “If you’re not listening for your mistakes, then you’re not in the right place,” is particularly relevant in the context of trauma recovery and the themes explored in “The Bear.” Throughout the show, we see characters grappling with their past mistakes and the consequences of their actions. Carmy, in particular, struggles with how his unresolved issues manifest in his leadership style, inadvertently mirroring the abusive tactics he endured in the past.

This advice underscores the importance of self-reflection and accountability in the process of healing from trauma. It’s not enough to simply acknowledge past mistakes or traumatic experiences; one must actively listen for them, understand their impact, and learn from them. This process of introspection and growth is vividly portrayed in “The Bear,” as characters like Carmy and Sydney confront their past experiences and attempt to channel them into their work.

“Try to learn from everything” further emphasizes this point. In the context of trauma, this mindset can be transformative. It suggests that even the most painful experiences can offer valuable lessons and opportunities for growth. In “The Bear,” characters like Chef Tina use their opportunities not just to improve their skills but to overcome their challenges and insecurities.

Overcoming Obstacles

“Brick walls are not there to stop us from getting something; they’re there to check how badly we want something.” This powerful advice speaks directly to the theme of resilience in the face of trauma. In “The Bear,” the characters face numerous obstacles, both internal and external. These challenges, much like brick walls, test their resolve and commitment to their goals.

For trauma survivors, this perspective can be particularly empowering. It reframes obstacles not as insurmountable barriers but as tests of determination. This shift in mindset can be crucial in the journey of healing and growth. It encourages perseverance and resilience, qualities essential in overcoming the lasting effects of trauma.

Life as a Game: Embracing Challenges

“Imagine your life as a game, see challenges as adventures, enjoy every day” offers a unique perspective on dealing with trauma. This approach encourages a shift in perception, viewing life’s difficulties not as burdens but as opportunities for growth and adventure.

In “The Bear,” we see this philosophy at work in how characters approach their culinary challenges. Despite the high-stress environment and personal struggles, there are moments when the characters find joy and excitement in their work. This ability to find enjoyment even in challenging situations is a powerful tool for resilience.

For those dealing with trauma, adopting this mindset can be transformative. It doesn’t diminish the reality of their experiences but offers a new way of engaging with life’s challenges. By viewing obstacles as part of an adventure rather than insurmountable problems, individuals can maintain a sense of agency and optimism in their healing journey.

Helping Others and Building Community

The simple yet profound advice to “Help others” is beautifully illustrated in “The Bear.” Throughout the show, we see how the characters’ individual healing processes are intricately linked to their relationships with others. The kitchen becomes a microcosm of community, where characters support each other through their struggles and growth.

For trauma survivors, the act of helping others can be deeply healing. It can provide a sense of purpose, foster connection, and help shift focus from one’s own pain to the needs of others. Moreover, building a supportive community is crucial in healing from trauma. In “The Bear,” we see how the characters’ shared experiences in the kitchen create a sense of belonging and understanding that is essential for their personal development.

Repurposing Trauma: The Central Theme

The overarching theme of repurposing trauma, as explored in “The Bear,” ties together all these pieces of advice. The show demonstrates how characters attempt to channel their past traumas into their work and personal growth. Carmy’s “trauma dishes,” Sydney’s ambitious food tour, and Tina’s culinary school journey are all examples of how traumatic experiences can be transformed into sources of creativity and growth.

This process of repurposing trauma is not about denying or minimizing painful experiences. Instead, it’s about finding ways to create meaning and value from these experiences. It’s about taking the raw material of trauma and shaping it into something that contributes to personal growth and, potentially, the betterment of others.

The Complexity of Trauma Recovery

While “The Bear” and the life advice we’ve explored offer valuable insights into dealing with trauma, it’s important to acknowledge the complexity of this process. The show doesn’t shy away from portraying the ongoing struggles of its characters, even as they work towards healing. Carmy’s battle with post-traumatic stress disorder, manifesting through intrusive thoughts, anxiety, and outbursts of anger, serves as a reminder that recovery is often a non-linear process.

This realistic portrayal aligns with the advice to “Try to learn from everything.” It suggests that setbacks and struggles are not failures but opportunities for deeper understanding and growth. The show’s nuanced approach to trauma recovery emphasizes that healing is a journey, not a destination.

Balancing Trauma Focus with Joy

It’s worth noting that some viewers and critics have found the relentless focus on trauma in the latest season of “The Bear” to be overwhelming at times. This observation raises an important point about balance in dealing with trauma. While it’s crucial to acknowledge and work through traumatic experiences, it’s equally important to create space for joy, lightness, and celebration of life’s positive aspects.

This balance is reflected in the life advice to “Never lose the child inside you” and to “enjoy every day.” These principles remind us that even amidst working through trauma, it’s vital to cultivate moments of joy and maintain a sense of wonder about life.

Conclusion

The intersection of life wisdom and the themes explored in “The Bear” provides a rich landscape for understanding trauma and resilience. From the power of imagination and specific dreams to the importance of learning from mistakes and helping others, these principles offer valuable guidance for those navigating the complex terrain of trauma recovery.

Repurposing trauma, as vividly portrayed in “The Bear,” is not about erasing painful experiences but about transforming them into sources of strength, creativity, and growth. It’s about finding ways to channel past hurts into meaningful action and personal development.

Ultimately, the journey of healing from trauma is deeply personal and often challenging. However, by embracing the wisdom encapsulated in these life principles and illustrated in “The Bear,” individuals can find new pathways to resilience and growth. As we navigate our experiences of trauma and challenge, we can draw inspiration from these insights, remembering that within every struggle lies the potential for transformation and renewal.

Principle of Arbitrariness: Literature Review #3

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In a liberal democracy, it is generally held that the legitimacy of a sovereign’s coercive action (viz. laws) is justified insofar as the sovereign meets some condition: popular examples include the harm principle, public justification, or rules nobody could reasonably reject.[1] Whatever the justificatory standards are, notions of arbitrariness are often appealed to and have regulative roles. For instance, arbitrariness can be used as a heuristic or test for what is primitively (morally) acceptable – Rawls takes this route and employs arbitrariness as a meta-theoretical test for justifying the original position and veil of ignorance (which in turn justify his requirements of justice).[2] Another more intuitive example is the role of arbitrariness in regulating reasoning – the judge, in deciding two identical cases, should not be affected by arbitrary factors like political leanings or an empty stomach. In bringing together the ideas of a sovereign’s coercive actions and notions of arbitrariness, the question becomes one about the rights of the citizen and what she is owed in virtue of her equal status.[3] If we take the view that everybody deserves, at minimum, equal concern and respect, then arbitrary laws fail to show equal concern and respect because it illegitimately coerces them.

Public Justification

A closer look at the relationship between sovereign and citizen is crucial for a legal-political conception of arbitrariness, particularly insofar as non-arbitrariness is a requirement for the exercise of political power. Such views begin with a familiar Kantian starting point: the priority of the dignity of persons. In virtue of this special status, everybody is owed equal treatment which must be expressed in the basic structures of society. Rawls[4] champions this view as “political liberalism” and sparks a vast discussion on public justification. The basic idea is that political power is always coercive power, and this coercion must be justified if we are to take seriously the idea that persons deserve equal respect.[5]

One obvious coercive political power is the imposition of laws. If a law is to be publicly justified, then the subjects of the coercive laws must have good or sufficient reason to endorse the law (this is sometimes referred to in the literature as “public reason liberalism”). Public reasons are the kinds of reasons[6] that can be shared by all citizens. For Rawls, this is achieved by an overlapping consensus, that is, reasonable citizens can endorse a political conception of justice (a part from their own comprehensive doctrines) and debate only using these shared views. For example, a Christian’s reasons to worship God are clearly not public reasons, yet the Christian’s reasons to endorse the view that public office should be open to all can be public reasons and consistent with her Christian doctrine. Both the legislature and judiciary ought to appeal to public reasons – and not their own non-public reasons – with respect to laws in order for the law’s coercive power over citizens to be justified.[7]

Democracy and Equality

It is important to emphasize that public justification does not simply mean the will of the legislative majority. In virtue of fundamental rights tied to equal standing and respect, those in the minority and lacking political power are still protected from being at the mercy of the legislative majority. Christiano[8] explores these questions of the moral underpinnings of democracy and liberal rights. Collective decisions through a democratic process have authority over us, but it is not clear how this is justified or how it relates to the “liberal rights”[9] that structure a constitution. For example, the political will of the legislature must abide by principles of democracy and the rights held by both the minority and the majority, but such normative principles, according to Christiano, are “vague and unsystematic.”[10] Thus, Christiano develops an account of democracy as “public equality” in decision-making.

The idea is intuitive: the unifying principle of a just society is that “all can see that they are being treated as equals.”[11] All coercive authority is justified on these grounds (as well as its limits), and what follows from this is that even those in the minority must be treated in a “publicly clear [way] as persons whose well-being matters and whose well-being matters equally.”[12] In other words, everybody has equal standing in collection decisions or else the authority is illegitimate.[13] Christiano’s justificatory tool is the “egalitarian standpoint of publicity,” which is supposed to make clear the facts of “diversity, disagreement, fallibility, and cognitive bias and the interests in being able to correct for others’ cognitive biases…”[14] This closely resembles Adam Smith’s impartial spectator, but it is focused on achieving equalities of interests.[15]

The Rights of Minority Views

At this point, some limits for the public reason liberals should be brought to the fore. Wolterstorff[16] has two particularly convincing arguments. The first is widely discussed: the premises of public reasons liberals are highly idealized. They assume reasons for rational agents in ideal states of affairs can adequately ground the justificatory standards for non-idealized agents. Wolterstorff argues that this is patronizing and fails to show due respect for persons.

A second, and more unique, criticism is that public reason liberals arbitrarily give more weight to secular reasons over religious reasons. Recall that a Christian’s reasons to worship God are by definition non-public reasons, so the Christian cannot invoke such reasons in public discourse. Wolterstorff remains unconvinced that the Christian must set aside their Christian reasons and instead only appeal to public reasons. This seems to privilege some conception of the good (or compressive doctrine) over another – namely, a secular conception of the good. What is striking here is that what is being purported as state neutrality is really an arbitrary favoring of a particular way of life. 

In a society containing a plurality of views, liberal neutrality[17] goes hand in hand with non-arbitrariness. Den Otter[18] investigates this by exploring the topic through a sustained analysis of polygamy (or “plural marriage”) with respect to (American) constitutional rights. Behind all this, there is a general notion of liberal neutrality which, in the face of pluralism, does not privilege one conception of the good over another (this is one of the facets of public justification).[19] From this, we can derive a right – that is publicly justified on terms others can reasonably accept – to choose our own conception of the good.[20]

In a pluralistic society, it might be easy to see how same-sex marriage can be justified as a right on constitutional grounds, and, according to Den Otter, the same justifications must also apply to polygamy.[21] American history had similar socio-political motivations for antipolygamy sentiments, particularly against Mormon groups and specious justifications of harm to families (e.g. failing to parse polygyny from polyamory, failing to account for the empirical data of alleged harms, presupposing as deviant or unacceptable, etc.).[22] All things equal, given current views on marriage, it would be arbitrary to exclude polygamous marriage.

[1] J Quong, Liberalism without Perfection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[2] J Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 2nd ed (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971).

[3] Charles Taylor, “Hegel’s Ambiguous Legacy for Modern Liberalism” (1989) 10: 5-6 Cardozo L Rev 857.

[4] J Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York City: Columbia University Press, 1993).

[5] Charles Larmore, “The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism” (1999) 96: 12 The Journal of Philosophy 599.

[6] “Reasons” are simply consideration for favoring something. See T Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998).

[7] R Den Otter, Judicial Review in an Age of Moral Pluralism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

[8] T Christiano, The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

[9] Ibid at 132-190.

[10] Ibid at 1.

[11] Ibid at 2.

[12] Ibid at 5.

[13] For an account of political authority, see ibid at 232-260.

[14] Ibid at 89.

[15] B Barry, Justice as Impartiality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

[16] N Wolterstorff, Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

[17] Will Kymlicka, “Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality” (1989) 99:4 Ethics 883.

[18] R Den Otter, In Defense of Plural Marriage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

[19] Ibid at 281-284.

[20] For an analysis of fundamental rights relating to polygamy, see ibid at 176-205.

[21] For an equality-based analysis, see ibid at 244-272.

[22] For an analysis on the argument from gender inequality, see ibid at 65-122; and, for further arguments from child welfare, administrative considerations, and appeals to tradition/nature, see ibid at 123-174.