04. Dear Hank & John. 002 - It's a Humor Podcast! Part 4/5.
• [Question 9]
John: This question, speaking of hard lives and personally specific questions, comes from Kieran. "Dear John and Hank. Greetings, I'm a nerdfighter who was recently diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and I'm heading off to college in August. I was wondering if Hank, given his own experience, had any advice about dealing with this disease while in school?" Hank, you have ulcerative colitis. Um, what do you think?
Hank: Uh, it depends on your severity. There, but like... It's mostly about getting use to and being comfortable with uncomfortable things so letting your professors know and your friends know that you might have to not be where you're supposed to be at all the times when you're supposed to be there and you might have to run off in the middle of class and just don't ask 'cause you know where I'm going. Yeah, and it's about, like, being comfortable enough with your disease and your situation to not feel embarrassed about that or to, you know, be able to get over the embarrassment of it. And that's really hard and it takes time and practise and that's the only thing that it takes. You just have to do it and the more you do it the more you'll know that people are really gonna be fine with it.
John: Yeah. I feel like we have so much shame around our bodies that disease like ulcerative colitis are kind of doubly traumatic, like they're obviously physically traumatic but there's also this huge social stigma that goes with it because we aren't allowed to talk about pooping and we aren't allowed to talk about, like, intestinal diseases in the same way that we're allowed to talk about, say a broken arm or diabetes. And I just want to encourage you to be as open as you can and to understand that your body is not shameful and that making this, you know, it's unfortunate that you have a disease that's made worse by social stigma but, you know, the vast, vast majority of people are compassionate and open and will not be judgmental and will not snicker at you and will understand that you are living with a chronic illness that is already difficult enough without having to be surrounded by people who would shame you for it.
Hank: Yeah, and it's a thing that's going to, but it's not not going to be embarrassing. It's going to be embarrassing for you and it might also be embarrassing for them but it's just, you know, like, the only way we can move past this is if we pretend like it isn't embarrassing and then everybody will be like "I'm embarrassed but should I be?" And then they'll be like "No" and then it's OK. And hopefully through a generation of that we can have children that will not feel like they can't, you know, have a disease that involves pooping and not experience constant shame.
John: Yeah, I guess that's what I really want because I do think that, like, once people are exposed to it and if you can be honest about it, like Hank when you're honest and open about it, like my own embarrassment, it's actually done wonders for my own embarrassment and shame around bodily functions, you know. And I think that it's unfortunate that you get placed in a position where you sort of have to be a spokesman for it but it does do a lot of good and people's attitudes do change by exposure and they become more comfortable and they stop seeing it as, through the embarrassing lens that they've always seen it through. But it does take time and work and it's not fun.
• [Question 10]
Hank: "Dear Hank and John. I recently finished my first year of university and right after that I went on a service trip to Nicaragua. I have been thinking a lot this past year about ways in which we can help those less fortunate than ourselves, especially when it involves other nations than our own. Is it right to interfere in the lives of others and come to help them as if we know best? Kim." John: Well that's a really interesting question and I think for a long long time one of the biggest problems in global development and global aid was this idea that instead of listening to people living in low income countries about their needs and their proposed solutions to the problems they face, you know, the US and Europe and the Soviet Union would come in and say, like, "Oh, we have the way and now we shall implement it." And that was very effective in terms of getting countries to, you know, side either with capitalism or communism but it was completely ineffective when it came to development and that's one of the big or one of many reasons why low income countries didn't benefit a lot from development aid in the second half of the 20th century. I think the key here and the key in so many places is to listen and to listen empathetically and to understand that people living in poverty understand much more about poverty than we do. And they also know solutions that we can't possibly think of. So instead of, like, going to a poor country and trying to implement a solution, I think that it makes a lot more sense to go to poor countries and listen. And then see if there are way that money or other resources can help to implement solutions and I think that kind of development is a lot of what we've seen in the last 20 years and has a lot to do with why we've seen these dramatic reductions in infant mortality, in maternal mortality, dramatic reductions in malaria deaths and diarrheal deaths. It's because we finally have started to listen but we still need to do a much better job at that.
Hank: It's really difficult to come into a place and have this goal of wanting to make the place better and then to not immediately impose all of your values and perspectives and world views on that situation. Like I am used to a world where you solve problems by hiring people and you solve problems by thinking really hard about complicated, you know, like the... And I'm solving the problems inside of the social structures that I know and understand and those are not the social structures of other places, they're the social structures of Missoula, Montana and online video which are not universal in any way. So I, like, it's important to realize that when we are engaging other places and other people who are different from us, we are the ignorant ones, we have no idea what's going on. We have no idea how that society functions and wanting to impose, and like sort of implicitly imposing our world view and then also wanting to impose our values are destructive feelings because there's the thing where you feel like "Well, I'm helping and, but like this thing, this way that your culture behaves upsets me and so, like, let's fix that first" is not, that's not why we're doing this. We're doing this so that fewer babies will die and so that people will live longer and have happier healthier lives. That's the first step. And like this thing that happened for a long time where the first step was to impose your values along with whatever aid you were giving was destructive.
John: Yeah, and we still don't do a great job of not doing that. I mean, the healthcare system in the developing world that I know best is the Ethiopian healthcare system and one of the biggest successes that they've experienced in the last 15 years is with volunteers, it's with female volunteers in rural communities who go out and talk to their neighbors about prenatal care, about how, when it's time to have a baby, how to get to the healthcare center or if necessary to get to a hospital and those are people who aren't paid. Like that's very counter to my understanding of how you solve healthcare problems because I live in a country where we spend 20% of our GDP on healthcare. And so I remember talking to a woman and saying, like "I don't want to sound like a, you know, like a filthy capitalist but like why do you do this? Like, you know, like you have a lot of other work and you have a lot of other responsibilities, why do you do this?" And she pointed out to me that that is not a question that I would ask if I had seen a lot of babies die.
