We Become What We Normalize

How do we resist the false idols of power and influence to seek true connection and community?

From one of the most respected thinkers and public intellectuals of our day comes a book that is both a cultural critique of the state of our country and a robust summons to resist complicity. As we move through the world, we constantly weigh our conscience against what David Dark calls "deferential fear"--going along just to get along, especially in relation to our cultural, political, and religious conversations. Dark reveals our compromised reality: the host of hidden structures and tacit social arrangements that draw us away from ourselves and threaten to turn us slowly into what we decry in others.

We Become What We Normalize counsels a creative, slow, and artful response to the economy of reaction, hurry, shaming, and fearmongering. Dark offers a deep analysis of the ways our conceptions of ourselves and our use of technology often lead us away from what we believe, reinforcing the false narrative that we must humiliate others in order to survive. "I suspect we become what we sit still for, what we play along with, and what we abide in our attempts to access more perceived power and more alleged influence," Dark writes. We Become What We Normalize calls for a new kind of struggle, ethic, witness, and spirit that helps us step away from the infinite loop of normalizing harm into effecting true change for ourselves and the worlds we inhabit.

David Dark is an American writer and public intellectual. A frequent speaker and podcast guest, he is the author of several books, including The Sacredness of Questioning Everything; Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons; and The Possibility of America. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Pitchfork, Paste, America magazine, The Christian Century, and Religion News Service. Dark teaches in incarcerated communities and at Belmont University. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, singer-songwriter Sarah Masen.