the moment with Mike Rusch (ep 2b, 49).

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This bridge episode sits in the tension of the current moment. Across two seasons, the underview has traced power in Northwest Arkansas from indigenous removal through racial terror to the displacement happening right now, asking what our institutions resisted and what they accommodated. The answer, consistently, has been accommodation: going along, choosing comfort over confrontation, narrowing the scope of who counts as neighbor. That history matters because we're watching the same choice play out nationally. 

When cultural agreement breaks down, when we lose our capacity to see each other, all that's left is force. The work ahead isn't shouting louder. It's the slow, patient labor of expanding who we see as "us" through stories, conversations, and relationships. Season 3 turns toward the faith communities of Northwest Arkansas to ask: where are the empathy makers, and how does faith create or breakdown belonging?

https://www.theunderview.com/episodes/the-moment-with-mike-rusch

About the underview:

The underview is an exploration of the development of our Communal Theology of Place viewed through the medium of bikes, land, and people to discover community wholeness.

Website: ⁠⁠theunderview.com⁠⁠
Follow us on Instagram: ⁠⁠@underviewthe
Host: @mikerusch

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theunderview/message

Episode Transcript

mike rusch. (00:47):
In 1937, an Italian cultural theorist
named Antonio Gramsci died infascist Italy after spending
his final years in prisonbefore World War II had begun.
He'd spent years thinking aboutpower, not just who had it,
but how power actually works.
Gramsci describedtwo kinds of power.

(01:07):
The first being a materialpower, political, economic,
military force, coercion, brutestrength, the kind of power
that says do this, or elseThe other kind of power that
he described is different.
It's the ability to createconsent agreement, a shared
understanding of what'snormal, what's acceptable,
and what's just common sense.

(01:28):
These two kinds of power,they exist in relationship.
When you have more of one,you need less of the other.
When there's agreement abouthow we should live together,
you don't need force.
The agreement does the work,but when the agreement breaks
down, when consent dissolves,then material power is the
only thing left, and thatbecomes control through force.

(01:51):
I believe that this iswhat we're watching unfold
in our country today.
The executive orders, thedeportations, the defunding, the
dismantling, and the paralysisin Congress, and when you can't
build agreement, you reach forthe lever of material power.
But this is a long process andthe reality is, is that those
building this kind of consentpower have been working towards

(02:12):
this for a very long time.
Gramsci would go on to later belabeled a Marxist, but his ideas
were picked up by French, farright thinkers in the 1960s who
argued that cultural change mustcome before political power.
The paradox is that here youhave two groups at opposite
ends of the ideological spectrumthat are using the same theory.

(02:34):
They agreed that ratherthan seizing power outright,
you reshape what peoplesee as normal, what feels
reasonable, and then politicalvictories will follow.
There is evidence to saythat this has been happening
here for decades in ourchurches, in our schools,
in media, through families.
A slow work, a, patient workmoving the window of normal

(02:56):
until ideas that once feltextreme, they become mainstream.
And over our first two seasons,this is part of what we've
been tracing on the underview.
In season one, I sat downwith Dr. Nick Ogle and we
talked about empathy, thesubject of his dissertation.
Not empathy as a feeling,but empathy as a practice.
The capacity to understandanother person's

(03:18):
experience, to see theworld through their eyes.
Because empathy is thefoundation of that second kind
of power, the consent kind.
You can't build sharedunderstanding without
the capacity to actuallyunderstand each other.
So I started asking, whereare the places in our
region that grow empathy?
What are the institutionsthat expand our capacity

(03:39):
to see each other?
To begin to even try tounderstand this, we began
working to understand how oneof the biggest institutions
in our region, faithcommunities, views empathy.
How does empathy work itselfout from faith into the
belonging of our community?
Over the past year, we'velooked at approximately 200
churches across NorthwestArkansas looking for the

(04:00):
language of empathy, the scopeof that empathy, and how far
does that empathy extend?
Who's included when we saylove our neighbor, what we
found, I'm sorry, is troubling.
Our region has a chronicallylow scope of that empathy,
a narrow scope of whocounts as their neighbor.
I believe this is the result ofgenerations of choices about who
we welcome and who we exclude.

(04:22):
In season two, the story ofnorthwest Arkansas, we traced
power from its origins inour regions to today, and
following that power, wetracked who held it, who is
excluded, how it was maintained.
From indigenous removalto enslavement, to racial
terror, the fight forcivil rights and sundown
towns to the displacementthat's happening right now.

(04:42):
And through all of it, we askedwhat did the institutions we
created, what did they resistand what did they accommodate?
The reality is that NorthwestArkansas, like most of the
country, has continued tomove towards accommodation.
We are very good at goingalong at choosing comfort
over confrontation, and inmany, many times the churches
have stayed quiet or they'veempowered that accommodation.

(05:05):
Some of those civicleaders look the other way.
Granted, not all of them,but enough to allow material
power to operate unchecked.
the consent held, and sometimesit simply said, "this is just
how things are done here."Season three of the underview
is coming and it's about thefaith of Northwest Arkansas.
We're going to dig deeper tounderstand where the empathy
makers are in our community andhow that long arc of power from

(05:30):
our origin story to today hasshaped how institutions of our
region help enable or preventbelonging and placemaking.
Because our institutions havea choice, it's the same choice
that they've always had.
Resistance or accommodation.
The prophetic tradition orthe comfortable tradition.
And the absence of resistance.

(05:50):
It's not neutrality, it'sconsent, it's agreement
with the way things are.
So here we are in this moment.
What do we do?
I know I can't control what'shappening at the national
level, but here in theunsettled Ozarks of northwest
Arkansas where I live, myhome, this is the kind of work
that we can be committed to.
I will admit that I didn'tgo to any of the protests

(06:11):
that were held locallyhere in northwest Arkansas.
I know so many did, and as ourcommunity, those voices matter.
Our voices need to be heard.
But for me in this moment,caught between anger and not
really being sure what to do.
Sometimes it feels like I'mjust yelling into the wind.
. And my assumption is, is maybethat you feel the same way also.
But if culture change indeedcomes before political change,

(06:34):
then the work of culture makingis work that really matters.
It's slow work, it's patientwork, shifting what seems normal
through conversations, storiesand relationships that expand
our capacity to see each other.
Because what's normaltoday has changed.
We've created institutionsto help us do this work.
Churches, schools, libraries,community centers, our justice

(06:57):
systems, those institutions,they follow our lead.
They respond to what werequire of them, what we
will tolerate, what wehold them accountable to.
But that is all anoutflowing of our ability
to find common ground andagreement outside of them.
If we get lured towards theextremes, they will follow
us there and they'll usewhatever power they have,

(07:19):
which increasingly seems tobe a material power, but it
doesn't have to be that way.
We have agency in this, butcan rebuild our capacity for
consent and for civility, we canexpand the scope of our empathy.
We can widen the circle ofwho counts as our neighbor.
And I'm reminded in our lastinterview of season two, Barbara
Carr, someone whose family storyhas borne witness to material

(07:42):
power across generations.
She said that "there is no suchthing as wholeness. There's
always a slice missing,"and I've wrestled with that
statement for a very long timenow, in those words, there
is the admission that thiswork is not yet finished.
We may not be able to achievethe wholeness that we want
and the time that we need,however we can be faithful

(08:04):
to the practice of it.
In last season's interviewswith Melissa Horner and Quapaw
Nation elders, Barbara KaiserCollier, and Betty Gaedtke
the first people of thisland, they began the process
of teaching us what this deeprelational work can look like.
We have the invitation andthe ability to pursue it
relentlessly, and maybe justmaybe it's there that this

(08:27):
generational work of wholenesslives and thrives, when we
stop shouting louder and beginlistening deeper, when we move
away from the extremes towardone another, when decrease
the need for material powerby building the other kind.
That power that comesfrom understanding it
is the slow work ofexpanding who we see as us.

(08:50):
And that is the stronger form ofpower, A power that will endure.
That's the pathforward together.
Not because it'seasy, but because the
alternative is force.
And force is what happens whenwe've given up on each other.
And I do know this.
I'm not ready to give upon each other and I don't
believe that you are either.

(09:10):
This is the underview,an exploration in the
shaping of our place.