October 20, 2025 • 54 mins
David “Rut” Rutherford takes you inside the deepest chambers of human suffering — personal loss, combat trauma, addiction, divorce, the death of friends, and the quiet agony that lives in every home.
He explores the concept of a “Hierarchy of Suffering” — how we rank pain, compare trauma, and how faith, brotherhood, and purpose can reshape that hierarchy and keep us moving forward.
From combat veterans and custody battles to Christ on the cross and Nietzsche’s philosophy, Rut asks the haunting question:
👉 How do we carry the weight without collapsing beneath it?
This episode is not about despair — it’s about shared pain, empathy, resilience, faith, and continuing the mission.
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Suffering is all around us
14:03 - How can we understand suffering?
23:23 - The construct of suffering
31:03 - Nietzsche’s analysis of suffering
45:00 - How we can bear our suffering
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the overwhelming face of catastrophe, loss, heartache, betrayal, suffering,
and pain. The thing that we need to understand most
is how to create an appropriate hierarchy of suffering. This
week on The David Rutherford Show. Over the past month,
(00:31):
I have been in a really different space, especially after
the incredible experience of going on Sean's show offloading all
of this pain from my past in a way that
I had hoped would be a benefit for others. That
(00:54):
was my intent, is that I would tell these stories
to all of you and you would hear these the
constant reality of the highs and lows of life and
the fact that if you continue to press on with
the right group of people, the right faith, the right framework,
(01:15):
the right foundation of support, and your own kind of
belief systems, that that you can climb out of that
abyss and get back up on the proverbial bike of life.
And I was going great for a few weeks, and
then about four weeks or so ago, began this cascade
(01:38):
of suffering that seemed to be omnipresent at every turn
or trip or person or people I was around or
integrating with. It just seemed to kind of come out
of nowhere, and as if almost to test me to say,
all right, was all the things that you talked about,
(01:59):
do you truly belie leaving them? Because now I'm going
to give you and I mean when I speak in
that context, i'm talking about God. I'm going to give
you something to think about on a regular basis now.
And this is the idea of suffering. And so, as
I was at a very good close personal friend of
(02:21):
mine had recently gotten divorced over a long, long, difficult
road of the relationship and the divorce itself, and watched
his suffering there and was supported. He met somebody wonderful,
fell in love immediately, same background all this, So they
came together and they're having this beautiful wedding up in
(02:43):
the Adirondacks, and man, it was just like riding this high.
I was there with one of my other closest friends
and his beautiful wife, doctor Dan Luna and Leslie Luna,
and man, we had these beautiful, long discussions about what
we've learned in our lives and how we're processing it,
(03:05):
and just listening to him and his wife describe this
really unbelievably difficult road of suffering they endured with Dan's
mother over the two and a half years that she
contracted cancer, and they did everything in their powers to
extend her life, to which I one hundred percent, and
(03:28):
as do they extended their mom's life in ways I
can't even begin to describe it. They You know, if
you ever get an opportunity to hear him speak or
listen to how he talks about life and death and
what it represents. I think, out of all of my
friends that have come out of emerged out of the
(03:49):
g WoT in this very, very intense culture of death,
Dan has one of the most profound ways to analyze this.
And so here he is sharing this wonderful analysis of
his own suffering, of his mother's suffering, And this is
on top of his twenty plus years of service, nine
(04:09):
combat deployments, and all of his closest friends who he
had to present at their funerals. How it impacted his
children growing up right to watch their uncles constantly dying
on the battlefield. They're suffering catastrophic challenges in their post
operator life with operator syndrome, and he's sharing these really
(04:35):
beautiful lessons he's learned. But at the same time, you know,
I'm thinking to myself, how has these two people who
are probably some of the hardest human beings I've ever
met in my life, how do they just carry on
day in and day out. What is the thing or
the things or the ideas or the system or whatever
it is that keeps them carrying on? And so we're
(04:56):
all together celebrating our other friend's beautiful wedding, and in
the midst of this wedding, I find out that a
good another good, close personal friend of mine, a guy
who lived with me for many, many years, who just
as an amazing human being. His name is Chris Morton.
We went to high school together. He was the greatest athlete,
(05:20):
natural raw athlete I've ever seen, you know. We split
ways after high school. He went to UVA, played lacrosse,
you know. Just after that, he joined the army, was
an army, suffered some pretty substantial losses within his immediate
family kind of sent him down a bad path and
(05:42):
ended up getting sober and we reconnected when I got
out of the agency and moved back to Florida. We
ended up becoming close friends. He actually moved in with
me when I was going through my divorce and was
there for me and my children. He would come to
you know, Christmas is Thanksgivings, he would be around at Easter.
(06:05):
You know, just all this incredible time and space together
and our growth as human beings and our difficult times
of suffering. And then when I met my wife Johno,
you know, he was like, hey, I'm going to move out.
I don't want to. I don't think you want a
roommate and you'll have four kids now, so I'm definitely
out of here. And he did, and not long after
(06:27):
that he kind of fell off the sobriety train and
then battled significantly for the last five years until recently
he ended up succumbing to that suffering himself. So in
the midst of this grand event of a wedding and
then in the next moment recognition that and I was
(06:48):
there with other friends of his. I want, in particular
an unbelievable friend of mine, Jan Lennon, one of my
closest friends there is who's gone through his own suffering
the loss of an intimate family member in his life.
And you know, so we were in this event, we
had this beautiful I was surrounded by people who were
(07:08):
very adept, adroit and sincere about how they've assessed and
evaluated their own sufferings in their past, and so it
was there was a warmth there. But then I left,
and you know, it was like WHOA, that was heavy.
That was a weekend to really think about the magnitude
(07:30):
of what's taking place. And this was only a couple
of weeks after Charlie Kirk's assassination, to which a measurable
amount of suffering just gripped the world, and in particular
our country and the conservative movement and how people have
been dealing with that suffering. Right right after that, a
(07:50):
few weeks later, I reconnected and you know, keep in
regular touch with another friend of mine who has been
embroidered in this custody battle case for over seven years
just to see his child. And he's ingrated in a
city in a system that does not give the benefit
(08:13):
of the doubt or even support the male in these situations.
And then the system itself has turned against him, used
against him by his ex in a way that is
the most malicious, depraved way I've ever seen in my
entire existence. Just once again proving the point that I
believe that the judicial system, the justice system is broken
(08:36):
in so many different ways the fact that this American hero,
this person who has dedicated a massive portion of his
life serving He played Division one football. He now works
for a fire department, and you know, he has chosen service.
But this vindictive woman who he was gracious to marry
(09:01):
and have a child with, has turned him the whole
system against him because she does not want him to
have access to his child, because she knows the child
will pick him because of how good of a father.
And then I look at his life. He didn't even
have a father growing up, right, So an entire life
of not only his suffering being raised without a father,
(09:22):
but he had a great mom, great grandma, sister, you know,
but also this lifetime of suffering within the military and
that system, and now another eight years of suffering because
all he wants to do is see and be with
his child. I wonder how he's managing this now. He's
one of the most spartan like human beings I've ever
(09:44):
met in my entire life. He's just born from a
different age, almost as if there's a different sense of
imprinting neurologically that he has somewhere in his genetic makeup.
There's some you know, spartan or some samurai sell that's
ingrained in his psychology that enables him to endure things
(10:07):
that would have broken me ten times over. So how
does he endure that suffering? And just in the past
couple of weeks, I was riding around some with some
friends and doing my job, and a bunch of of
them have have been caught up in something that seems
(10:31):
to be a set of rules and regulations that seem whimsical,
and and yet they are somehow being implemented in a
in a way that my friends are are going to
result and suffer from financially business a little bit potentially,
(10:51):
but more so emotionally as to you know, why are
they singled out versus other people within the industry and
watching them deal with that, how are they going to
affect Is it going to affect their business? Their long
term employment? You know, all of those uncertainties that come
with these types of oversight groups that seem to wield
(11:16):
a power that doesn't often seem fair and just challenge
chatting with them and listening to the advice they're getting
from their friends and colleagues, you know, it's interesting to
watch how they're processing that type of suffering and then finally,
this past week, I had a wonderful experience. I was
(11:39):
traveling with another guy up up in the Midwest. And
this is a man who a few years ago lost
one of his young children in the middle of the night, unexplainably,
just died in his sleep. And we had about a
(12:01):
two hour car ride together. And thankfully he's an unbelievably
gracious and faithful man that humors me. Maybe humor's not
there that is available for my questions, my curiosities, my sympathies,
(12:23):
to try and understand how he sees the world through
this very very intense lens of suffering. How he wakes
up every day, how he thinks about his child thirty
to forty times a day, how everything he does, everywhere
they go, every time he passes by the child's room,
every time he sees a piece of clothing, every time
(12:45):
he goes to one of his other children's games, every
time he hears a particular song or sees a book
he used to read him, every time he looks into
his wife's eyes with that empty, blank stare of He's
never coming back, is he? And I listened to the
strength in him, and I listened to him quote Scripture
(13:09):
one right after the other, and he had made a
comment to me. He said that that joy in suffering
are braided together at the deepest aspects of our psychees,
they're conjoined. And this really kind of put me into
(13:33):
a state of perplexity, because how can those two things
coexist in the same moment. And he went on to
describe a very intimate description of Christ and Christ's relationship
with his suffering for him, for my friend. And I'll
(13:55):
explain that here as I come back around to this.
But and so I really that these things weren't this
this monstrous catalyst for me to just start going, well,
how does this work? Like, where are we supposed to
find the appropriate matrix, the appropriate ven diagram to figure
(14:21):
out these hierarchies? Where does it begin, How do we
assess it, who's in charge of the hierarchies? And where
do they come from? How do we scan the society
around us and say, Okay, this is more weighted than this,
and this is more important to this. I mean, in
the last few weeks, what have we also seen. We've seen,
(14:42):
thank god hopefully a piece come to the israel Palestinian
thing or Hamas thing right, Although today I just saw
that they're saying that Hamas is breaking the ceasefire immediately.
But what I did see is I saw a catastrophe
of October, and I saw a catastrophe of many civilians,
(15:03):
including children, that were killed in the crossfires of this war.
And that's who takes the most suffering is the people,
not the governments or the terrorists organizations, but the people
that are encapsulated into this. So they are the reluctant
sufferers that have no choice as to try and manage this.
Where do they seek? Where do they seek the answers
(15:25):
for their to adequately create this framework that they can
dutifully or they can rationally, or they can with reason
come to a framework that doesn't destroy them. Where do
(15:46):
we go? You know, the build up of upcoming aggression
in Ukraine, we have Trump basically saying, you know what,
I'm thinking about supplying some long range missiles, and then
you had the President of of Russia coming back. Let's
say that's a total explanation. That means we're at war
with NATO? Right, where does that go? Well, as Jordy
(16:09):
and I were talking about before we hopped on a
nuclear annihilation, think about the suffering, and that in fact,
it's too difficult to come up with a description. Maybe
perhaps go check out Anny Jacobson's book about nuclear war,
and it has some pretty intense descriptions in there, the
annihilation of existence itself. That's probably a pretty substantial amount
(16:34):
of suffering. We've got to build up of aggression around Venezuela.
Ten thousand troops running B fifty two bombers offshore. We're
doing kinetic strikes against boats in the Gulf. And don't
get me wrong, I'm all for bringing it to the
people who are trying to poison our children and poison
each other in America. They get what they deserve. I
(16:56):
have no love loss for these people who want to
continue to poison us or the benefit of their own
financial gains. And all of the people down in the leaders,
down in those areas and those countries that are producing
this poison, guess what. And it's fair game. If you
want to poison us, then we're going to kill you.
(17:18):
That's the way it should be. I mean, And if
you want to think about that, I want you to
think about the suffering of the over five hundred thousand
people that have overdosed on fentanyl in the last five years.
That's more than all the people we lost in World
War Two. Think about their families. Think about those mothers.
Think about those brothers and sisters of their sons and
(17:41):
daughters and aunts and uncles and mothers and fathers that
are dead because of this poison that has flooded into
our country. Think about the statements as a result of
US punching back now and shutting the border down and
going after these cartels and these criminal organizations, the cartels
(18:01):
this past week, but basically came out and said, well,
we're going to put bounties on the heads of border
patrol or ice agents, much less all the people that
are Antifa, people that are violently protesting, that are talking
about violence as a necessity to overrule the king that
has now taken over America, meaning Trump. Think about the
(18:24):
suffering that's going to result from that, and it already
is now. I know what people are saying, Well, what
about the suffering of those who are yes here illegally
but doing it the right way. That seems to be
the new thing. And I said, you know what, I
appreciate it. Send them back, get on line and come
back through We've got to change radically, change the system
(18:44):
to start from fresh, otherwise the system will destroy us.
Just look at the deficits that are being run in
major cities where all these illegals are living, in the
school systems, in the hospitals. Right you seem to think
that that little Bob Joe who now is in indicted
in a classroom that's filled with eighty percent foreigners who
(19:05):
don't speak English, what about his suffering and the development
of his educational learning, Or what about the suffering of
the people who go into a hospital who have insurance,
who can't get in because the ER's book, because of
all the ego legal immigrants who use the ER systems
as their form of healthcare, and then you have to
(19:25):
fit the bill out of your taxes suffering. What I'm
afraid is in you know, Maybe this is because I
don't know, I'm digging more into the history of World
War One and World War Two lately, Or maybe it's
(19:46):
because I'm trying to understand the impacts of suffering from
the GWAT on all of my friends and colleagues and bodies.
Maybe it's just me and trying to understand the suffering
of my four teenage orders. Maybe that's what it is.
And the social hierarchies that change with the wind as
(20:06):
it blows in a new direction every single day, or
the suffering from the children I see that are phenomenally insecure,
including some of my own. How do I bring forth
a hierarchy or understanding of a hierarchy that gives them
the talent, the skill sets, the hopefulness, the optimism that
(20:31):
allows them to manage the sheer spectrum of what these hierarchies,
hierarchies of suffering encapsulate. Now, after thinking about all these things,
this idea popped in my head. And it's no new idea,
it's just it kind of hit me. As typically a
(20:51):
lot of these these ideas of when I do these
individual shows and I hope you like them, I really
hope you like them. I hope you enjoy the show,
helpe you appreciate what it is because they're designed for
these more difficult ideas or questions that we're often thinking
about but don't necessarily have an access point to deciphering
(21:15):
them or deconstructing them. Now, before I get into this
detailed understanding or my interpretation of that hierarchy of suffering,
I just want to take a quick moment to really
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(21:38):
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seven to two Patriot and make the switch today. Okay,
thank you so much Patriot Mobile. All right, ma here's
it do. So when I was thinking about this whole idea,
this hit me like a ton of bricks. The construct
of suffering itself doesn't maintain the wall if the individual
(23:32):
can restructure their perception of willpower in order to break
down the impact of the suffering against their defenses. And
so that's essentially the easiest way for me to kind
of evaluate. Because one of the things that I did
when I was with Dan Luna is we talked extensively
about the compartmentalization of it. How is it that going
(23:55):
through training, going back overseas over and over and over,
how is it that we're able? And I'm not saying
the way we come, the way with which we compartmentalize
is healthy. But what you can say is it enables
us to continue mission to Charlie Mike. Right. And it's
interesting that one friend of mine who's in the horrific
(24:19):
custody battle, you know, when he went back to Penn
State and spoke after the Joe Paterno fiasco. I shouldn't
pin it on him. It wasn't him as another coach,
but who participated in covering up to a certain extent
I would imagine and the suffering that emerged. They asked
my friend to go talk to the team during that
time and he gave this very powerful speech and it
(24:41):
was called, Charlie Mike, continue mission. So regardless of whatever
you're facing, whatever level in the hierarchiculture food chain you're
going through, there's a whole other side of you that,
guess what you have to just keep going. In particular,
if you've got your own responsibility, if you've got a
(25:01):
family to take care of, if you have a wife
to take care of, her husband to take care, you've
got beautiful children, or you've got to elderly parents to
take over or take care of, you have a business
to run, it's like tough shit, guess what drive on airborne,
Because regardless of your suffering and the level of your softing,
(25:23):
you've got to continue to produce, to perform in order
to maintain that momentum forward for all those who are
dependent upon you. So Dan and I were like, well,
how does this happen? What does it do? How do
you understand? And he said, first and foremost, man, you've
got to understand where the compartmentalization emerges from. How are
(25:45):
hierarchies incorporated? And do our existence as it is? And
really how do we define suffering itself? And so obviously
when you hear a man of that caliber of intelligence
and the level which he understands these complicated problems, you
do illegal research. And so, just to start out, just
(26:07):
to reset this conversation in this moment, I want to
talk about the definition of hierarchy. Hierarchy refers to a
system or structure in which individuals, groups, or elements are
organized in a ranked order based on authority, importance, status,
(26:27):
or some other criterion. It implies a vertical arrangement where
higher levels hold greater power, influence, or priority over lower ones.
Hierarchies are prevalent in social, organizational, political, and philosophical context,
often shaping how resources, responsibilities, or values such as suffering
(26:50):
are distributed or perceived. Definition of suffering, suffering is the
experience of pain, distress, or hardship, often involving physical, emotional,
or mental anguish. It can arise from various sources such
as physical injury, illness, loss, fear, or unfulfilled desires, and
(27:12):
it is typically characterized by a sense of discomfort or dissatisfaction. Philosophically,
suffering is often seen as an inherent part of human
existence through its nature and purpose, though its nature and
purpose are interpreted differently across cultures and belief systems. And
(27:33):
that's a kicker right there. For example, Buddhism views suffering
do caa or whatever dukkhaduka as a fundamental aspect of
life due to attachment and impermanence, while other perspectives might
frame it as a response to adversity or a catalyst
for personal growth. All right, now, you know, as you
(27:59):
begin to to you know, dissect the different levels with
which you can understand the value context of suffering, right,
you have to spread it out across something that you
fully understand. And so for me, my whole system of
how I approach life and how I approach relationships and
(28:21):
how I approach myself. And also what I've built my
business around is the idea of these frog logic concepts, right,
you know. And that's learning to embrace fear for self confidence,
live a team life, and live with purpose. The whole
fundamental strategy of that is to deal with suffering. Right.
It's my system that made sense to me. It's a
(28:43):
way I can give a rank order or or or
a definitive pyramid system as to what I really need
to focus on and what and how it presents itself
to me, right, you know. And when you're dealing in
the context of suffering, right, it's really about these more
(29:07):
extended ideas in terms of our existential cells, right, the
collective suffering of our group or tribe. Right, And how
we rank certain individuals in our tribe and they're suffering
as lower than ours or higher than ours, right, And
that's based on this visual interpretation of their anguish or
(29:27):
suffering or pain that we experience in those interactions. Right.
But it's also we rank it in our cultures, which
parts of our culture have more suffering than others? Right?
Is it in particular in the current order we're in,
it seems that, you know, certain aspects of American culture
(29:47):
have been flipped upside down, and those external cultures that
have weaved their way in on the infected, on these
other ideologies have basically that all, right, that our forefathers
in America, my ancestors, and the appellations, my Scottish ancestors,
theres were somehow they didn't experience suffering, and that they
(30:12):
were the ones that were responsible for suffering, and that
what some other groups they had to deal with the suffering.
And then all you got to do is just go
a little bit further back in time and you see
that those cultures they impose suffering themselves. In fact, the
reality of these hierarchies is kind of interesting. When you
(30:32):
dig deep enough, you recognize that all cultures have the
ability to impose and to experience suffering. All genders have
the ability to impose or experience suffering. Right, religions, right,
whether you're an atheist or you're science space or whatever,
(30:54):
we always have this, like it said, this innate ability
to experience the suffering. Right, it's imbued, so to speak. Now,
one of the things I wanted to do is I
really was like, all right, who's the world grand champion
of understanding this? Who is the person that spent the
most amount of time, that did the most amount of research,
(31:16):
that did the most amount of thinking, and came up with,
in my opinion, the greatest, really thoughtful, considerate and brutal
understanding of these hierarchies of suffering. And that person, not
(31:36):
according to me, but according to just about everybody else
when I did the research on it, was Frederic Nietzsche.
From eighteen forty four to nineteen hundred. He extensively explored
sufferings role in human existence, it's varying forms, and the
implicit hierarchies and works like thus spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good
(31:58):
and Evil, on the gi genealogy of mortality and the Antichrist. Now,
his philosophy doesn't explicitly use the term hierarchy of suffering,
but he deeply engages with how suffering is ranked by individuals, societies,
and moral systems based on its source, purpose and transformative potential.
(32:23):
His focus on suffering psychological, existential, and cultural dimensions combined
with his critique of moral frameworks, example in particular Christianity,
and he says it's a slave morality makes his work
foundational for analyzing hierarchies of pain, Nietzsche's influence on existentialism,
(32:45):
postmodernism in psychology examples, freud Frankel underscore his prominence in
this deep dive into understanding suffering. Right. He goes on
to really evaluate suffering's role in human greatness. He has
a very extensive critique of moral hierarchies. He has an
(33:07):
existential and psychological dimensions right, cultural and comparative suffering, which
I find is the one that really is permeating in
America right now. Right, we're so engaged in this tit
for tat game of your culture hasn't suffered as much
as my culture. Therefore, I'm going to make your culture
(33:30):
suffer more to catch up, to make it right to
do whatever. And that's just being force fed to our
young people. It's being force fed to our old people.
I mean, how you look at the No King's rallies
over the past weekend, and what did you see? A
bunch of middle aged white people in these cities going
to going to town. And then who else these crazy
(33:50):
radical young progressive leftists who are supporting supporting socialism or
American socialism or marks and whatever the hell you want
to talk about it, if that doesn't cause suffering. And
so what they are trying to get you to believe
is that your suffering, your existing suffering, as well as
(34:13):
the hierarchy of your legacy, your heredity, your family tree,
and the suffering they experience does not rate in the
same level as someone else. Right, And you even see
that overseas, You see people trying to contextualize suffering in
(34:37):
a very prominent way through cultural backgrounds, religious backgrounds. Who
was here first? Who wasn't here first? Therefore I have
a greater weight to apply to my own suffering versus
your suffering, And you'd actually deserve the suffering. So I'm
going to give you a bigger dose of it because
(34:57):
mine was so big you deserve yours now. And that
for me is kind of the unbelievable reality of that.
It is like as I go through all of these things,
and I, you know, you start to think about who
else the Nietzschee influence, right, and he influences Heidegger, Camu
fu cool, Right, all of these people's ideas that have
(35:21):
permeated where right into these core ideals or systems of
thinking and critical theory ideas or whatever you want to
describe a postmodernistic morally relative ideas of suffering which basically says, oh,
you have made me suffer, Now I'm going to make
you suffer. And when that happens, it does not take
(35:48):
anybody longer than an hour of just a superficial level
of research to look at just the twentieth century. Don't
go back any far behind that. You can start right
at about nineteen oh five, nineteen oh six. You can
start right there, and you can just go forward and
(36:08):
you can start to think about the hierarchies of suffering
from the twentieth century right and what impacted from that.
I was just listening to a historical podcast that was
talking deeply about the trenches of World War One, and
it was this beautiful introduction about how the men on
(36:32):
all sides, not just Germany or France or England or wherever,
but all sides of those who participated in those trenches
and what they had to endure for years. Now, it's
like you were in the trench for six months, like
we do, and then you go home and you rotate out.
Now this is years, because the end is on the
(36:53):
line for everybody, right, And so in that trench you
want to talk about suffering, you have and many times
water up to your chest. What do you think that
did after three or four days in your boots and
in your crotch, flesh just falling off after it becomes
rotted with the infections. Because when you're in up to
(37:14):
your waist, what else do you have? You're urinating and
defecating right there in the system. Plus you have the
piled up courses right down at the end of your
your trench right there, just rotting flesh, and with hundreds,
if not thousands of rats eating that flesh and defecating
in the water, and the swarms of flies and the
lice on your body, and all of the fleas that
(37:36):
were ingratiated into your beard and in your food as
you ate it suffering. What do you think those boys,
after they came out of that pit, decided that the
next time there was suffering, there was going to be
absolutely no quitting because of what suffering took place. Then
(37:58):
that's what we now know, we're willing to do. Those
are the edge. So what we do we reset came
out of it? Okay, the Great War is over. We're done.
And guess what nineteen thirty nine, thirty eight, thirty nine,
it starts all over again this time instead of what
twenty four million or whatever is. And by the way,
you want to read some suffering about the combat itself,
(38:20):
go read about the Battle of the soulm and the
first day alone, the first day alone, the British took
sixty thousand casualties. These are young boys. These are a
generation of people that are gone and never came back.
And so that's suffering integrated into the culture of that society,
(38:40):
integrated into the legacy, into the DNA of those children
who came out of that time to be predositioned for
a magnitude of suffering that seems to be catching up
some steam again because those children are now in power
around the world, or have been in power for the
(39:01):
last thirty to forty years. And so when you start
to think about how this imprints across the board and
all these different things, and the way it structures itself,
in my mind, it just keeps building and building and
building and building until you're at the point where it's like, oh,
you want to know suffering, Well, my country just lost
(39:24):
twenty two point five million human beings. Oh and then
on the flip side of that, the people who governed
my country just killed sixty five million human beings, murdered them,
starved them to death, butchered them ate their flesh to
stay alive. Suffering. So as you begin to see these things.
(39:47):
And one of the things that I found, you know,
kind of interesting about Nietzsche, and you know, he did
have the great quote that I kind of beaten the
death in my time while I was serving, as you know,
that which does not kill you only makes you stronger. Yes, indeed,
but what happens to the heart, the soul when suffering
(40:07):
becomes so integrated into the context of your being that
all you exist in is an interpretation of your suffering,
or ranging your suffering on the hierarchy of what it's
it's not tolerance and the hierarchy of being able to
sustain these other responsibilities of your life, you know. And
(40:32):
the other one great comment that I think really was
correlated to Nietzsche in such a profound way is that,
you know, God is dead. And what he kind of
assumes in these statements is that Christianity itself, because it's
core root principle of seek and ye shall receive the truth. Essentially,
(40:55):
what happened as a result of that culture, that hierarchy
of suffering that was integrated with Christ himself and his
suffering and what you get for that suffering, It emerged
and it stepped away from the core root idea and
then became, well, let's figure out what the truth of
existence is? Is God real? And yeah, it's totally cool.
(41:15):
Let's question God, Let's question the family, Let's question the
difference between a man and a woman. Let's question a capitalism,
Let's question everything, so that everything is on the table
to generate suffering. Well, what happens to a society in particular,
(41:36):
it's children when they don't believe that there's any outlet
or escape, there's any other component of their existence where
they can't restructure these hierarchies where they put something like
their faith in Christ at the top of the hierarchy.
What happens when they can't They lose faith in their
(41:57):
ability to provide for their future wife or their future
family because they can't get a job coming out of
these institutions that have robbed them of one hundred or
four hundred thousand dollars in degrees that are meaningless in
the grander context of the world. What happens to the
children that you have robbed them of any resilience or
(42:19):
grit because you have them facing their screens, keeping them
insecure on whether or not they're pretty enough, or they're
smart enough, or they're capable enough. What happens in a
society that lives in that perpetual onslaught of trying to
figure out what the hell is it worth? Where do
(42:43):
I look what moves up the chain and not usurps
or bumps out, But what can I put next to
the probability of my own death to balance that out,
to give it a counterpoint, the yin in the yang,
the good and the bad, evil and good Christ and
(43:04):
say whatever you want to match it as that. That's
the context of the balance that I believe is required.
And that's why I think, you know, people like J. R.
Tolkien really helped us begin to contemplate in this modern era.
(43:27):
There are some other great writers and philosophers out there too.
I don't want to go too in the weeds, and
maybe I'll do that, as you know, some of the
most positive philosophers out there. Certainly you've got concepts within
positive psychology, You've got concepts of you know, what's your why? Hell,
(43:48):
you've even got David Goggins like who's like fuck you?
Suffering is your joy? Right? That braided integration and people
will respond to it. And so again I come back
to the necessity that we all have as individuals to
try and figure out, as these hierarchy hierarchies of suffering
are so inundated, how do we put forth something into counterbalance? Right?
(44:11):
What is the thing that four to fives our defensive
systems around this? And I'm not sure. I'm not sure,
but I think what it is is it starts by
asking these questions of ourselves. Right, should we learn to
rank our suffering in more of a sophisticated manner? Right? So,
(44:37):
if if you know, I don't get something done for
my kid on time, do I inundate myself with grief
and guilt that I can't be there or I'm on
the road always, or you know, or or we can't
afford it or whatever? What do I do? Then? Is
there a sophisticated way to have those discussions that keep
(45:00):
your kids in check or keep your self in check?
Is there a more sophisticated way to evaluate the way
we analyze our abilities at work and performance. Jordy and
I talk about it all the time. We talk about
being patient and growing our audience. We talk about being
(45:24):
patient and picking the right topics and talking with the
right people, and it takes time to build something of
any significance. He's a constant reminder for me, Hey, let's
be patient, let's stay focused, let's do what we're doing.
And I try and be that for him. So out
of that idea of sophistication, I think what naturally should
(45:46):
emerge for all of us? Right, are these coping mechanisms
for this hierarchical, constantly moving structure of suffering? And what
do those coping mechanisms look like? Best? In my mind,
I go back to that wedding where after we found
(46:07):
the horrible news, and I think about the conversations I
was able to have with my wife in the moment,
the conversations I was able to have with her since then,
the conversations I had when I went with jan to
the to the beach and we went paddleboarding, because that's
something the three of us used to do all together,
and we sat in the water and I prayed in
the water and jan and we had great memories of
(46:30):
what he did and his soft heart and how much
he loved us, and how much he cared for us
and our children, and how difficult it was for him
to show it, but he was there, and there was
an amazing steadfastness even into the chaos of his own suffering.
So now you start to think, oh my god, maybe this, this, this, this,
(46:50):
this structure is not as as impenetrable as it might
otherwise seem. In particular, when you're under you're under the weight.
You're under that rock, the Sissifus rock of suffering, right, Like,
I'm never getting this damn thing off my shoulders. But
(47:11):
you can share the weight. You can most certainly share
the weight. And I think the real question should be
initiated on whether or not we need more of what
a greater innate sense of equilibrium within our framework of suffering,
(47:33):
to include empathy, right, or a sense of what is it?
It's a sense of calmness and recognition that sometimes suffering
is outside of our control. Right. It's this sense of
(47:54):
acknowledging that maybe the person who lost their child, you
know that their weight of their suffering is unique to them.
And then the suffering of a child who's struggling with
the relationship with their parent, right, and that we shouldn't
perhaps delineate too much which one has more weight than
(48:16):
the other. And in that calmness or that stillness, or
that that state of peace, that that state that Christ
talks about for us, right, that state where once you
give up the sense of worry and you just trust
in God's plan and you trust in God's presence and
(48:36):
you trust in his suffering. That he he had the
empathy to take the suffering of the entire world through
all time on his shoulders and bear that burden in
that nine hours when he was on the cross, and
(48:59):
the time he was being beaten and whipped, the night
when he was in the garden and God was speaking
to him saying, are you ready, because guess what it's coming,
and he was weeping blood and tears, sweating blood. Imagine
the weight of that suffering, and he says, trust in me,
(49:19):
I am the way. So think about how you can
employ that reality into your life. And as you identify
the people around you that are in these various levels
of suffering, think to yourself to them you can be
the way for them, not by giving them some scripture,
(49:43):
although scripture can help, or but more so, just give
them the presence that you are empathetic to their suffering,
that you maybe not understand the details of it or
can have felt anything that's relative to the specific of
their suffering, but you're there and you understand it, and
you want to listen, and you're there and you're like, hey,
(50:04):
I got it, it's okay, you're gonna be okay. Let's
get through it together. And imagine if we could just
do that with one or two people every month, or
two or even one person for an extended period of time.
And I know it's hard. I know it's real hard.
(50:28):
I've had to insulate myself and my family from a
lot of suffering, not only in my own heart and mind,
but from my world, that culture of death that always
seems to come knocking in the middle of the night.
So in the midst of all that, just take a
step back and say, all right, how can I help
(50:48):
somebody who's suffering. Maybe it's just opening your heart to them.
Maybe it's sending them a note, sending them a letter.
Maybe it's taking them out to dinner. Maybe it's just
calling them up and saying, hey, I love you. Because
that's the thing that begins to make sense to me
(51:08):
as I analyze this suffering and the extensiveness of with it,
it's just seems to be building and building and building.
I think we get back to the place where we
recognize that pain is a shared experience. In fact, I'm
here to tell you that in the thirty years of
(51:28):
me being an instructor, a coach, an operator, a speaker,
you know, all the things I've done, I can tell
you this, the one thing that seems to make us
unite and make us fight at the most is one
the collective understanding of each other's shared type of pain.
And then it's the collective anger against each other's suffering,
(51:53):
basically saying, you're making me suffer, so now you're going
to suffer. And so these things coexist in this complex
we eve that. I think that's what my friend was
talking about, This joy and suffer. I mean, that's intermingered,
and perhaps that's what he was trying to tell me
with it comes to with Christ himself. He knew he
(52:13):
had to suffer to set me free. Maybe that's it
for you and I Maybe if we recognize that we
have to suffer to set each other free, maybe that's
the hierarchy we need to think about. I just want
(52:40):
to thank all the people that I talked about in
terms of their unbelievable influence in my life, in particular
those who are not with us anymore, and their families
I want to thank. I want to thank my family.
(53:03):
I want to thank my wife, amazing human being who's
helped me understand suffering more than anybody else I've ever met.
You know. I want to thank you Geordie for giving
me the support and just the confidence that maybe we're
doing something right by getting on this microphone and sharing
(53:25):
these thoughts with people, and that hope that we can
lift one person up in the show, that's what we
hope we do. And then I want to just thank
Christ for the suffering he went through so that I
could feel the joy of having eternal life through his resurrection.
I hope y'all find a way this week to gain strength,
(53:46):
to minimize your suffering, and to find empathy for other people.
God bless you.
In the overwhelming face of catastrophe, loss, heartache, betrayal, suffering,
and pain. The thing that we need to understand most
is how to create an appropriate hierarchy of suffering. This
week on The David Rutherford Show. Over the past month,
(00:31):
I have been in a really different space, especially after
the incredible experience of going on Sean's show offloading all
of this pain from my past in a way that
I had hoped would be a benefit for others. That
(00:54):
was my intent, is that I would tell these stories
to all of you and you would hear these the
constant reality of the highs and lows of life and
the fact that if you continue to press on with
the right group of people, the right faith, the right framework,
(01:15):
the right foundation of support, and your own kind of
belief systems, that that you can climb out of that
abyss and get back up on the proverbial bike of life.
And I was going great for a few weeks, and
then about four weeks or so ago, began this cascade
(01:38):
of suffering that seemed to be omnipresent at every turn
or trip or person or people I was around or
integrating with. It just seemed to kind of come out
of nowhere, and as if almost to test me to say,
all right, was all the things that you talked about,
(01:59):
do you truly belie leaving them? Because now I'm going
to give you and I mean when I speak in
that context, i'm talking about God. I'm going to give
you something to think about on a regular basis now.
And this is the idea of suffering. And so, as
I was at a very good close personal friend of
(02:21):
mine had recently gotten divorced over a long, long, difficult
road of the relationship and the divorce itself, and watched
his suffering there and was supported. He met somebody wonderful,
fell in love immediately, same background all this, So they
came together and they're having this beautiful wedding up in
(02:43):
the Adirondacks, and man, it was just like riding this high.
I was there with one of my other closest friends
and his beautiful wife, doctor Dan Luna and Leslie Luna,
and man, we had these beautiful, long discussions about what
we've learned in our lives and how we're processing it,
(03:05):
and just listening to him and his wife describe this
really unbelievably difficult road of suffering they endured with Dan's
mother over the two and a half years that she
contracted cancer, and they did everything in their powers to
extend her life, to which I one hundred percent, and
(03:28):
as do they extended their mom's life in ways I
can't even begin to describe it. They You know, if
you ever get an opportunity to hear him speak or
listen to how he talks about life and death and
what it represents. I think, out of all of my
friends that have come out of emerged out of the
(03:49):
g WoT in this very, very intense culture of death,
Dan has one of the most profound ways to analyze this.
And so here he is sharing this wonderful analysis of
his own suffering, of his mother's suffering, And this is
on top of his twenty plus years of service, nine
(04:09):
combat deployments, and all of his closest friends who he
had to present at their funerals. How it impacted his
children growing up right to watch their uncles constantly dying
on the battlefield. They're suffering catastrophic challenges in their post
operator life with operator syndrome, and he's sharing these really
(04:35):
beautiful lessons he's learned. But at the same time, you know,
I'm thinking to myself, how has these two people who
are probably some of the hardest human beings I've ever
met in my life, how do they just carry on
day in and day out. What is the thing or
the things or the ideas or the system or whatever
it is that keeps them carrying on? And so we're
(04:56):
all together celebrating our other friend's beautiful wedding, and in
the midst of this wedding, I find out that a
good another good, close personal friend of mine, a guy
who lived with me for many, many years, who just
as an amazing human being. His name is Chris Morton.
We went to high school together. He was the greatest athlete,
(05:20):
natural raw athlete I've ever seen, you know. We split
ways after high school. He went to UVA, played lacrosse,
you know. Just after that, he joined the army, was
an army, suffered some pretty substantial losses within his immediate
family kind of sent him down a bad path and
(05:42):
ended up getting sober and we reconnected when I got
out of the agency and moved back to Florida. We
ended up becoming close friends. He actually moved in with
me when I was going through my divorce and was
there for me and my children. He would come to
you know, Christmas is Thanksgivings, he would be around at Easter.
(06:05):
You know, just all this incredible time and space together
and our growth as human beings and our difficult times
of suffering. And then when I met my wife Johno,
you know, he was like, hey, I'm going to move out.
I don't want to. I don't think you want a
roommate and you'll have four kids now, so I'm definitely
out of here. And he did, and not long after
(06:27):
that he kind of fell off the sobriety train and
then battled significantly for the last five years until recently
he ended up succumbing to that suffering himself. So in
the midst of this grand event of a wedding and
then in the next moment recognition that and I was
(06:48):
there with other friends of his. I want, in particular
an unbelievable friend of mine, Jan Lennon, one of my
closest friends there is who's gone through his own suffering
the loss of an intimate family member in his life.
And you know, so we were in this event, we
had this beautiful I was surrounded by people who were
(07:08):
very adept, adroit and sincere about how they've assessed and
evaluated their own sufferings in their past, and so it
was there was a warmth there. But then I left,
and you know, it was like WHOA, that was heavy.
That was a weekend to really think about the magnitude
(07:30):
of what's taking place. And this was only a couple
of weeks after Charlie Kirk's assassination, to which a measurable
amount of suffering just gripped the world, and in particular
our country and the conservative movement and how people have
been dealing with that suffering. Right right after that, a
(07:50):
few weeks later, I reconnected and you know, keep in
regular touch with another friend of mine who has been
embroidered in this custody battle case for over seven years
just to see his child. And he's ingrated in a
city in a system that does not give the benefit
(08:13):
of the doubt or even support the male in these situations.
And then the system itself has turned against him, used
against him by his ex in a way that is
the most malicious, depraved way I've ever seen in my
entire existence. Just once again proving the point that I
believe that the judicial system, the justice system is broken
(08:36):
in so many different ways the fact that this American hero,
this person who has dedicated a massive portion of his
life serving He played Division one football. He now works
for a fire department, and you know, he has chosen service.
But this vindictive woman who he was gracious to marry
(09:01):
and have a child with, has turned him the whole
system against him because she does not want him to
have access to his child, because she knows the child
will pick him because of how good of a father.
And then I look at his life. He didn't even
have a father growing up, right, So an entire life
of not only his suffering being raised without a father,
(09:22):
but he had a great mom, great grandma, sister, you know,
but also this lifetime of suffering within the military and
that system, and now another eight years of suffering because
all he wants to do is see and be with
his child. I wonder how he's managing this now. He's
one of the most spartan like human beings I've ever
(09:44):
met in my entire life. He's just born from a
different age, almost as if there's a different sense of
imprinting neurologically that he has somewhere in his genetic makeup.
There's some you know, spartan or some samurai sell that's
ingrained in his psychology that enables him to endure things
(10:07):
that would have broken me ten times over. So how
does he endure that suffering? And just in the past
couple of weeks, I was riding around some with some
friends and doing my job, and a bunch of of
them have have been caught up in something that seems
(10:31):
to be a set of rules and regulations that seem whimsical,
and and yet they are somehow being implemented in a
in a way that my friends are are going to
result and suffer from financially business a little bit potentially,
(10:51):
but more so emotionally as to you know, why are
they singled out versus other people within the industry and
watching them deal with that, how are they going to
affect Is it going to affect their business? Their long
term employment? You know, all of those uncertainties that come
with these types of oversight groups that seem to wield
(11:16):
a power that doesn't often seem fair and just challenge
chatting with them and listening to the advice they're getting
from their friends and colleagues, you know, it's interesting to
watch how they're processing that type of suffering and then finally,
this past week, I had a wonderful experience. I was
(11:39):
traveling with another guy up up in the Midwest. And
this is a man who a few years ago lost
one of his young children in the middle of the night, unexplainably,
just died in his sleep. And we had about a
(12:01):
two hour car ride together. And thankfully he's an unbelievably
gracious and faithful man that humors me. Maybe humor's not
there that is available for my questions, my curiosities, my sympathies,
(12:23):
to try and understand how he sees the world through
this very very intense lens of suffering. How he wakes
up every day, how he thinks about his child thirty
to forty times a day, how everything he does, everywhere
they go, every time he passes by the child's room,
every time he sees a piece of clothing, every time
(12:45):
he goes to one of his other children's games, every
time he hears a particular song or sees a book
he used to read him, every time he looks into
his wife's eyes with that empty, blank stare of He's
never coming back, is he? And I listened to the
strength in him, and I listened to him quote Scripture
(13:09):
one right after the other, and he had made a
comment to me. He said that that joy in suffering
are braided together at the deepest aspects of our psychees,
they're conjoined. And this really kind of put me into
(13:33):
a state of perplexity, because how can those two things
coexist in the same moment. And he went on to
describe a very intimate description of Christ and Christ's relationship
with his suffering for him, for my friend. And I'll
(13:55):
explain that here as I come back around to this.
But and so I really that these things weren't this
this monstrous catalyst for me to just start going, well,
how does this work? Like, where are we supposed to
find the appropriate matrix, the appropriate ven diagram to figure
(14:21):
out these hierarchies? Where does it begin, How do we
assess it, who's in charge of the hierarchies? And where
do they come from? How do we scan the society
around us and say, Okay, this is more weighted than this,
and this is more important to this. I mean, in
the last few weeks, what have we also seen. We've seen,
(14:42):
thank god hopefully a piece come to the israel Palestinian
thing or Hamas thing right, Although today I just saw
that they're saying that Hamas is breaking the ceasefire immediately.
But what I did see is I saw a catastrophe
of October, and I saw a catastrophe of many civilians,
(15:03):
including children, that were killed in the crossfires of this war.
And that's who takes the most suffering is the people,
not the governments or the terrorists organizations, but the people
that are encapsulated into this. So they are the reluctant
sufferers that have no choice as to try and manage this.
Where do they seek? Where do they seek the answers
(15:25):
for their to adequately create this framework that they can
dutifully or they can rationally, or they can with reason
come to a framework that doesn't destroy them. Where do
(15:46):
we go? You know, the build up of upcoming aggression
in Ukraine, we have Trump basically saying, you know what,
I'm thinking about supplying some long range missiles, and then
you had the President of of Russia coming back. Let's
say that's a total explanation. That means we're at war
with NATO? Right, where does that go? Well, as Jordy
(16:09):
and I were talking about before we hopped on a
nuclear annihilation, think about the suffering, and that in fact,
it's too difficult to come up with a description. Maybe
perhaps go check out Anny Jacobson's book about nuclear war,
and it has some pretty intense descriptions in there, the
annihilation of existence itself. That's probably a pretty substantial amount
(16:34):
of suffering. We've got to build up of aggression around Venezuela.
Ten thousand troops running B fifty two bombers offshore. We're
doing kinetic strikes against boats in the Gulf. And don't
get me wrong, I'm all for bringing it to the
people who are trying to poison our children and poison
each other in America. They get what they deserve. I
(16:56):
have no love loss for these people who want to
continue to poison us or the benefit of their own
financial gains. And all of the people down in the leaders,
down in those areas and those countries that are producing
this poison, guess what. And it's fair game. If you
want to poison us, then we're going to kill you.
(17:18):
That's the way it should be. I mean, And if
you want to think about that, I want you to
think about the suffering of the over five hundred thousand
people that have overdosed on fentanyl in the last five years.
That's more than all the people we lost in World
War Two. Think about their families. Think about those mothers.
Think about those brothers and sisters of their sons and
(17:41):
daughters and aunts and uncles and mothers and fathers that
are dead because of this poison that has flooded into
our country. Think about the statements as a result of
US punching back now and shutting the border down and
going after these cartels and these criminal organizations, the cartels
(18:01):
this past week, but basically came out and said, well,
we're going to put bounties on the heads of border
patrol or ice agents, much less all the people that
are Antifa, people that are violently protesting, that are talking
about violence as a necessity to overrule the king that
has now taken over America, meaning Trump. Think about the
(18:24):
suffering that's going to result from that, and it already
is now. I know what people are saying, Well, what
about the suffering of those who are yes here illegally
but doing it the right way. That seems to be
the new thing. And I said, you know what, I
appreciate it. Send them back, get on line and come
back through We've got to change radically, change the system
(18:44):
to start from fresh, otherwise the system will destroy us.
Just look at the deficits that are being run in
major cities where all these illegals are living, in the
school systems, in the hospitals. Right you seem to think
that that little Bob Joe who now is in indicted
in a classroom that's filled with eighty percent foreigners who
(19:05):
don't speak English, what about his suffering and the development
of his educational learning, Or what about the suffering of
the people who go into a hospital who have insurance,
who can't get in because the ER's book, because of
all the ego legal immigrants who use the ER systems
as their form of healthcare, and then you have to
(19:25):
fit the bill out of your taxes suffering. What I'm
afraid is in you know, Maybe this is because I
don't know, I'm digging more into the history of World
War One and World War Two lately, Or maybe it's
(19:46):
because I'm trying to understand the impacts of suffering from
the GWAT on all of my friends and colleagues and bodies.
Maybe it's just me and trying to understand the suffering
of my four teenage orders. Maybe that's what it is.
And the social hierarchies that change with the wind as
(20:06):
it blows in a new direction every single day, or
the suffering from the children I see that are phenomenally insecure,
including some of my own. How do I bring forth
a hierarchy or understanding of a hierarchy that gives them
the talent, the skill sets, the hopefulness, the optimism that
(20:31):
allows them to manage the sheer spectrum of what these hierarchies,
hierarchies of suffering encapsulate. Now, after thinking about all these things,
this idea popped in my head. And it's no new idea,
it's just it kind of hit me. As typically a
(20:51):
lot of these these ideas of when I do these
individual shows and I hope you like them, I really
hope you like them. I hope you enjoy the show,
helpe you appreciate what it is because they're designed for
these more difficult ideas or questions that we're often thinking
about but don't necessarily have an access point to deciphering
(21:15):
them or deconstructing them. Now, before I get into this
detailed understanding or my interpretation of that hierarchy of suffering,
I just want to take a quick moment to really
tell you about one of our core sponsors. We couldn't
be more grateful for the fact that Patriot Mobile has
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thank you so much Patriot Mobile. All right, ma here's
it do. So when I was thinking about this whole idea,
this hit me like a ton of bricks. The construct
of suffering itself doesn't maintain the wall if the individual
(23:32):
can restructure their perception of willpower in order to break
down the impact of the suffering against their defenses. And
so that's essentially the easiest way for me to kind
of evaluate. Because one of the things that I did
when I was with Dan Luna is we talked extensively
about the compartmentalization of it. How is it that going
(23:55):
through training, going back overseas over and over and over,
how is it that we're able? And I'm not saying
the way we come, the way with which we compartmentalize
is healthy. But what you can say is it enables
us to continue mission to Charlie Mike. Right. And it's
interesting that one friend of mine who's in the horrific
(24:19):
custody battle, you know, when he went back to Penn
State and spoke after the Joe Paterno fiasco. I shouldn't
pin it on him. It wasn't him as another coach,
but who participated in covering up to a certain extent
I would imagine and the suffering that emerged. They asked
my friend to go talk to the team during that
time and he gave this very powerful speech and it
(24:41):
was called, Charlie Mike, continue mission. So regardless of whatever
you're facing, whatever level in the hierarchiculture food chain you're
going through, there's a whole other side of you that,
guess what you have to just keep going. In particular,
if you've got your own responsibility, if you've got a
(25:01):
family to take care of, if you have a wife
to take care of, her husband to take care, you've
got beautiful children, or you've got to elderly parents to
take over or take care of, you have a business
to run, it's like tough shit, guess what drive on airborne,
Because regardless of your suffering and the level of your softing,
(25:23):
you've got to continue to produce, to perform in order
to maintain that momentum forward for all those who are
dependent upon you. So Dan and I were like, well,
how does this happen? What does it do? How do
you understand? And he said, first and foremost, man, you've
got to understand where the compartmentalization emerges from. How are
(25:45):
hierarchies incorporated? And do our existence as it is? And
really how do we define suffering itself? And so obviously
when you hear a man of that caliber of intelligence
and the level which he understands these complicated problems, you
do illegal research. And so, just to start out, just
(26:07):
to reset this conversation in this moment, I want to
talk about the definition of hierarchy. Hierarchy refers to a
system or structure in which individuals, groups, or elements are
organized in a ranked order based on authority, importance, status,
(26:27):
or some other criterion. It implies a vertical arrangement where
higher levels hold greater power, influence, or priority over lower ones.
Hierarchies are prevalent in social, organizational, political, and philosophical context,
often shaping how resources, responsibilities, or values such as suffering
(26:50):
are distributed or perceived. Definition of suffering, suffering is the
experience of pain, distress, or hardship, often involving physical, emotional,
or mental anguish. It can arise from various sources such
as physical injury, illness, loss, fear, or unfulfilled desires, and
(27:12):
it is typically characterized by a sense of discomfort or dissatisfaction. Philosophically,
suffering is often seen as an inherent part of human
existence through its nature and purpose, though its nature and
purpose are interpreted differently across cultures and belief systems. And
(27:33):
that's a kicker right there. For example, Buddhism views suffering
do caa or whatever dukkhaduka as a fundamental aspect of
life due to attachment and impermanence, while other perspectives might
frame it as a response to adversity or a catalyst
for personal growth. All right, now, you know, as you
(27:59):
begin to to you know, dissect the different levels with
which you can understand the value context of suffering, right,
you have to spread it out across something that you
fully understand. And so for me, my whole system of
how I approach life and how I approach relationships and
(28:21):
how I approach myself. And also what I've built my
business around is the idea of these frog logic concepts, right,
you know. And that's learning to embrace fear for self confidence,
live a team life, and live with purpose. The whole
fundamental strategy of that is to deal with suffering. Right.
It's my system that made sense to me. It's a
(28:43):
way I can give a rank order or or or
a definitive pyramid system as to what I really need
to focus on and what and how it presents itself
to me, right, you know. And when you're dealing in
the context of suffering, right, it's really about these more
(29:07):
extended ideas in terms of our existential cells, right, the
collective suffering of our group or tribe. Right, And how
we rank certain individuals in our tribe and they're suffering
as lower than ours or higher than ours, right, And
that's based on this visual interpretation of their anguish or
(29:27):
suffering or pain that we experience in those interactions. Right.
But it's also we rank it in our cultures, which
parts of our culture have more suffering than others? Right?
Is it in particular in the current order we're in,
it seems that, you know, certain aspects of American culture
(29:47):
have been flipped upside down, and those external cultures that
have weaved their way in on the infected, on these
other ideologies have basically that all, right, that our forefathers
in America, my ancestors, and the appellations, my Scottish ancestors,
theres were somehow they didn't experience suffering, and that they
(30:12):
were the ones that were responsible for suffering, and that
what some other groups they had to deal with the suffering.
And then all you got to do is just go
a little bit further back in time and you see
that those cultures they impose suffering themselves. In fact, the
reality of these hierarchies is kind of interesting. When you
(30:32):
dig deep enough, you recognize that all cultures have the
ability to impose and to experience suffering. All genders have
the ability to impose or experience suffering. Right, religions, right,
whether you're an atheist or you're science space or whatever,
(30:54):
we always have this, like it said, this innate ability
to experience the suffering. Right, it's imbued, so to speak. Now,
one of the things I wanted to do is I
really was like, all right, who's the world grand champion
of understanding this? Who is the person that spent the
most amount of time, that did the most amount of research,
(31:16):
that did the most amount of thinking, and came up with,
in my opinion, the greatest, really thoughtful, considerate and brutal
understanding of these hierarchies of suffering. And that person, not
(31:36):
according to me, but according to just about everybody else
when I did the research on it, was Frederic Nietzsche.
From eighteen forty four to nineteen hundred. He extensively explored
sufferings role in human existence, it's varying forms, and the
implicit hierarchies and works like thus spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good
(31:58):
and Evil, on the gi genealogy of mortality and the Antichrist. Now,
his philosophy doesn't explicitly use the term hierarchy of suffering,
but he deeply engages with how suffering is ranked by individuals, societies,
and moral systems based on its source, purpose and transformative potential.
(32:23):
His focus on suffering psychological, existential, and cultural dimensions combined
with his critique of moral frameworks, example in particular Christianity,
and he says it's a slave morality makes his work
foundational for analyzing hierarchies of pain, Nietzsche's influence on existentialism,
(32:45):
postmodernism in psychology examples, freud Frankel underscore his prominence in
this deep dive into understanding suffering. Right. He goes on
to really evaluate suffering's role in human greatness. He has
a very extensive critique of moral hierarchies. He has an
(33:07):
existential and psychological dimensions right, cultural and comparative suffering, which
I find is the one that really is permeating in
America right now. Right, we're so engaged in this tit
for tat game of your culture hasn't suffered as much
as my culture. Therefore, I'm going to make your culture
(33:30):
suffer more to catch up, to make it right to
do whatever. And that's just being force fed to our
young people. It's being force fed to our old people.
I mean, how you look at the No King's rallies
over the past weekend, and what did you see? A
bunch of middle aged white people in these cities going
to going to town. And then who else these crazy
(33:50):
radical young progressive leftists who are supporting supporting socialism or
American socialism or marks and whatever the hell you want
to talk about it, if that doesn't cause suffering. And
so what they are trying to get you to believe
is that your suffering, your existing suffering, as well as
(34:13):
the hierarchy of your legacy, your heredity, your family tree,
and the suffering they experience does not rate in the
same level as someone else. Right, And you even see
that overseas, You see people trying to contextualize suffering in
(34:37):
a very prominent way through cultural backgrounds, religious backgrounds. Who
was here first? Who wasn't here first? Therefore I have
a greater weight to apply to my own suffering versus
your suffering, And you'd actually deserve the suffering. So I'm
going to give you a bigger dose of it because
(34:57):
mine was so big you deserve yours now. And that
for me is kind of the unbelievable reality of that.
It is like as I go through all of these things,
and I, you know, you start to think about who
else the Nietzschee influence, right, and he influences Heidegger, Camu
fu cool, Right, all of these people's ideas that have
(35:21):
permeated where right into these core ideals or systems of
thinking and critical theory ideas or whatever you want to
describe a postmodernistic morally relative ideas of suffering which basically says, oh,
you have made me suffer, Now I'm going to make
you suffer. And when that happens, it does not take
(35:48):
anybody longer than an hour of just a superficial level
of research to look at just the twentieth century. Don't
go back any far behind that. You can start right
at about nineteen oh five, nineteen oh six. You can
start right there, and you can just go forward and
(36:08):
you can start to think about the hierarchies of suffering
from the twentieth century right and what impacted from that.
I was just listening to a historical podcast that was
talking deeply about the trenches of World War One, and
it was this beautiful introduction about how the men on
(36:32):
all sides, not just Germany or France or England or wherever,
but all sides of those who participated in those trenches
and what they had to endure for years. Now, it's
like you were in the trench for six months, like
we do, and then you go home and you rotate out.
Now this is years, because the end is on the
(36:53):
line for everybody, right, And so in that trench you
want to talk about suffering, you have and many times
water up to your chest. What do you think that
did after three or four days in your boots and
in your crotch, flesh just falling off after it becomes
rotted with the infections. Because when you're in up to
(37:14):
your waist, what else do you have? You're urinating and
defecating right there in the system. Plus you have the
piled up courses right down at the end of your
your trench right there, just rotting flesh, and with hundreds,
if not thousands of rats eating that flesh and defecating
in the water, and the swarms of flies and the
lice on your body, and all of the fleas that
(37:36):
were ingratiated into your beard and in your food as
you ate it suffering. What do you think those boys,
after they came out of that pit, decided that the
next time there was suffering, there was going to be
absolutely no quitting because of what suffering took place. Then
(37:58):
that's what we now know, we're willing to do. Those
are the edge. So what we do we reset came
out of it? Okay, the Great War is over. We're done.
And guess what nineteen thirty nine, thirty eight, thirty nine,
it starts all over again this time instead of what
twenty four million or whatever is. And by the way,
you want to read some suffering about the combat itself,
(38:20):
go read about the Battle of the soulm and the
first day alone, the first day alone, the British took
sixty thousand casualties. These are young boys. These are a
generation of people that are gone and never came back.
And so that's suffering integrated into the culture of that society,
(38:40):
integrated into the legacy, into the DNA of those children
who came out of that time to be predositioned for
a magnitude of suffering that seems to be catching up
some steam again because those children are now in power
around the world, or have been in power for the
(39:01):
last thirty to forty years. And so when you start
to think about how this imprints across the board and
all these different things, and the way it structures itself,
in my mind, it just keeps building and building and
building and building until you're at the point where it's like, oh,
you want to know suffering, Well, my country just lost
(39:24):
twenty two point five million human beings. Oh and then
on the flip side of that, the people who governed
my country just killed sixty five million human beings, murdered them,
starved them to death, butchered them ate their flesh to
stay alive. Suffering. So as you begin to see these things.
(39:47):
And one of the things that I found, you know,
kind of interesting about Nietzsche, and you know, he did
have the great quote that I kind of beaten the
death in my time while I was serving, as you know,
that which does not kill you only makes you stronger. Yes, indeed,
but what happens to the heart, the soul when suffering
(40:07):
becomes so integrated into the context of your being that
all you exist in is an interpretation of your suffering,
or ranging your suffering on the hierarchy of what it's
it's not tolerance and the hierarchy of being able to
sustain these other responsibilities of your life, you know. And
(40:32):
the other one great comment that I think really was
correlated to Nietzsche in such a profound way is that,
you know, God is dead. And what he kind of
assumes in these statements is that Christianity itself, because it's
core root principle of seek and ye shall receive the truth. Essentially,
(40:55):
what happened as a result of that culture, that hierarchy
of suffering that was integrated with Christ himself and his
suffering and what you get for that suffering, It emerged
and it stepped away from the core root idea and
then became, well, let's figure out what the truth of
existence is? Is God real? And yeah, it's totally cool.
(41:15):
Let's question God, Let's question the family, Let's question the
difference between a man and a woman. Let's question a capitalism,
Let's question everything, so that everything is on the table
to generate suffering. Well, what happens to a society in particular,
(41:36):
it's children when they don't believe that there's any outlet
or escape, there's any other component of their existence where
they can't restructure these hierarchies where they put something like
their faith in Christ at the top of the hierarchy.
What happens when they can't They lose faith in their
(41:57):
ability to provide for their future wife or their future
family because they can't get a job coming out of
these institutions that have robbed them of one hundred or
four hundred thousand dollars in degrees that are meaningless in
the grander context of the world. What happens to the
children that you have robbed them of any resilience or
(42:19):
grit because you have them facing their screens, keeping them
insecure on whether or not they're pretty enough, or they're
smart enough, or they're capable enough. What happens in a
society that lives in that perpetual onslaught of trying to
figure out what the hell is it worth? Where do
(42:43):
I look what moves up the chain and not usurps
or bumps out, But what can I put next to
the probability of my own death to balance that out,
to give it a counterpoint, the yin in the yang,
the good and the bad, evil and good Christ and
(43:04):
say whatever you want to match it as that. That's
the context of the balance that I believe is required.
And that's why I think, you know, people like J. R.
Tolkien really helped us begin to contemplate in this modern era.
(43:27):
There are some other great writers and philosophers out there too.
I don't want to go too in the weeds, and
maybe I'll do that, as you know, some of the
most positive philosophers out there. Certainly you've got concepts within
positive psychology, You've got concepts of you know, what's your why? Hell,
(43:48):
you've even got David Goggins like who's like fuck you?
Suffering is your joy? Right? That braided integration and people
will respond to it. And so again I come back
to the necessity that we all have as individuals to
try and figure out, as these hierarchy hierarchies of suffering
are so inundated, how do we put forth something into counterbalance? Right?
(44:11):
What is the thing that four to fives our defensive
systems around this? And I'm not sure. I'm not sure,
but I think what it is is it starts by
asking these questions of ourselves. Right, should we learn to
rank our suffering in more of a sophisticated manner? Right? So,
(44:37):
if if you know, I don't get something done for
my kid on time, do I inundate myself with grief
and guilt that I can't be there or I'm on
the road always, or you know, or or we can't
afford it or whatever? What do I do? Then? Is
there a sophisticated way to have those discussions that keep
(45:00):
your kids in check or keep your self in check?
Is there a more sophisticated way to evaluate the way
we analyze our abilities at work and performance. Jordy and
I talk about it all the time. We talk about
being patient and growing our audience. We talk about being
(45:24):
patient and picking the right topics and talking with the
right people, and it takes time to build something of
any significance. He's a constant reminder for me, Hey, let's
be patient, let's stay focused, let's do what we're doing.
And I try and be that for him. So out
of that idea of sophistication, I think what naturally should
(45:46):
emerge for all of us? Right, are these coping mechanisms
for this hierarchical, constantly moving structure of suffering? And what
do those coping mechanisms look like? Best? In my mind,
I go back to that wedding where after we found
(46:07):
the horrible news, and I think about the conversations I
was able to have with my wife in the moment,
the conversations I was able to have with her since then,
the conversations I had when I went with jan to
the to the beach and we went paddleboarding, because that's
something the three of us used to do all together,
and we sat in the water and I prayed in
the water and jan and we had great memories of
(46:30):
what he did and his soft heart and how much
he loved us, and how much he cared for us
and our children, and how difficult it was for him
to show it, but he was there, and there was
an amazing steadfastness even into the chaos of his own suffering.
So now you start to think, oh my god, maybe this, this, this, this,
(46:50):
this structure is not as as impenetrable as it might
otherwise seem. In particular, when you're under you're under the weight.
You're under that rock, the Sissifus rock of suffering, right, Like,
I'm never getting this damn thing off my shoulders. But
(47:11):
you can share the weight. You can most certainly share
the weight. And I think the real question should be
initiated on whether or not we need more of what
a greater innate sense of equilibrium within our framework of suffering,
(47:33):
to include empathy, right, or a sense of what is it?
It's a sense of calmness and recognition that sometimes suffering
is outside of our control. Right. It's this sense of
(47:54):
acknowledging that maybe the person who lost their child, you
know that their weight of their suffering is unique to them.
And then the suffering of a child who's struggling with
the relationship with their parent, right, and that we shouldn't
perhaps delineate too much which one has more weight than
(48:16):
the other. And in that calmness or that stillness, or
that that state of peace, that that state that Christ
talks about for us, right, that state where once you
give up the sense of worry and you just trust
in God's plan and you trust in God's presence and
(48:36):
you trust in his suffering. That he he had the
empathy to take the suffering of the entire world through
all time on his shoulders and bear that burden in
that nine hours when he was on the cross, and
(48:59):
the time he was being beaten and whipped, the night
when he was in the garden and God was speaking
to him saying, are you ready, because guess what it's coming,
and he was weeping blood and tears, sweating blood. Imagine
the weight of that suffering, and he says, trust in me,
(49:19):
I am the way. So think about how you can
employ that reality into your life. And as you identify
the people around you that are in these various levels
of suffering, think to yourself to them you can be
the way for them, not by giving them some scripture,
(49:43):
although scripture can help, or but more so, just give
them the presence that you are empathetic to their suffering,
that you maybe not understand the details of it or
can have felt anything that's relative to the specific of
their suffering, but you're there and you understand it, and
you want to listen, and you're there and you're like, hey,
(50:04):
I got it, it's okay, you're gonna be okay. Let's
get through it together. And imagine if we could just
do that with one or two people every month, or
two or even one person for an extended period of time.
And I know it's hard. I know it's real hard.
(50:28):
I've had to insulate myself and my family from a
lot of suffering, not only in my own heart and mind,
but from my world, that culture of death that always
seems to come knocking in the middle of the night.
So in the midst of all that, just take a
step back and say, all right, how can I help
(50:48):
somebody who's suffering. Maybe it's just opening your heart to them.
Maybe it's sending them a note, sending them a letter.
Maybe it's taking them out to dinner. Maybe it's just
calling them up and saying, hey, I love you. Because
that's the thing that begins to make sense to me
(51:08):
as I analyze this suffering and the extensiveness of with it,
it's just seems to be building and building and building.
I think we get back to the place where we
recognize that pain is a shared experience. In fact, I'm
here to tell you that in the thirty years of
(51:28):
me being an instructor, a coach, an operator, a speaker,
you know, all the things I've done, I can tell
you this, the one thing that seems to make us
unite and make us fight at the most is one
the collective understanding of each other's shared type of pain.
And then it's the collective anger against each other's suffering,
(51:53):
basically saying, you're making me suffer, so now you're going
to suffer. And so these things coexist in this complex
we eve that. I think that's what my friend was
talking about, This joy and suffer. I mean, that's intermingered,
and perhaps that's what he was trying to tell me
with it comes to with Christ himself. He knew he
(52:13):
had to suffer to set me free. Maybe that's it
for you and I Maybe if we recognize that we
have to suffer to set each other free, maybe that's
the hierarchy we need to think about. I just want
(52:40):
to thank all the people that I talked about in
terms of their unbelievable influence in my life, in particular
those who are not with us anymore, and their families
I want to thank. I want to thank my family.
(53:03):
I want to thank my wife, amazing human being who's
helped me understand suffering more than anybody else I've ever met.
You know. I want to thank you Geordie for giving
me the support and just the confidence that maybe we're
doing something right by getting on this microphone and sharing
(53:25):
these thoughts with people, and that hope that we can
lift one person up in the show, that's what we
hope we do. And then I want to just thank
Christ for the suffering he went through so that I
could feel the joy of having eternal life through his resurrection.
I hope y'all find a way this week to gain strength,
(53:46):
to minimize your suffering, and to find empathy for other people.
God bless you.
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