Alan Turing: Difference, Discomfort, and the People We Discard

Today is Alan Turing’s birthday. You may remember him from the 2014 film Imitation Game as played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Turing was the he man who used math, logic, and early computing principles to crack the Enigma Code, a machine the Nazis used to scramble messages in a different way every day, making it incredibly hard to decipher.

This is the Enigma machine—used by Nazi Germany to send encrypted military messages during World War II. It scrambled each letter using a series of rotating rotors, creating over 150 quintillion possible settings. At the time, it was considered unbreakable. But Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park cracked it, changing the course of the war and saving millions of lives.

Historians estimate that cracking Enigma shortened the war by at least two years, saving millions of lives.

True talk, I don’t understand how Turing did it. I don't understand algorithms and functions the way I wish I could because I have dyscalculia, a math processing difference that went unrecognized during my school years. I did one time get to play with an actual Enigma machine, at the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland! Turning those dials and watching the letters shift felt like operating a piece of math magic.

Which would make Turing a math wizard and a hero!

And his country thanked him by destroying him - for moral indecency - because he was gay.

Discomfort isn’t danger. Difference isn’t wrong. #ProtectDifference #PrideHistory #AlanTuring

"Different" Makes Me Uncomfortable

Turing's crime was being different. Because people couldn’t understand him, they feared him. And then they punished him by forcing him to choose between chemical castration or life in prison. He chose the former, and then died by suicide less than two years later.

Now here is where this applies to me and to you: people often mistake discomfort for danger. And they treat comfort like it’s truth.

But comfort isn’t a moral compass. Comfort just tells you what you're used to.

Our Dangerous Addiction to Being Comfortable

We are addicted to comfort in this country. We avoid discomfort like it's poison. We don't want our kids to feel confused. We don’t want to suffer awkward conversations. We don’t want to hear about any pain we (maybe) didn’t cause or benefits we (maybe) didn’t earn.

So we lash out at teachers, at books, at gay people, at trans people, at neurodivergent kids, at immigrants, at anyone who reminds us that the world is bigger and more complicated than we want it to be. Because we're afraid.

And because we’re afraid, we’re easy to manipulate. Here's how: Just tell us it’s about “protecting children.” Tell us it’s about “keeping things normal.” Tell us anything that lets us stay comfortable, and we'll believe it.

The Hard Truth: Growth Feels Awful Sometimes

Learning is uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable. Kindness—real kindness—often asks you to sit in that discomfort instead of running from it.

Growth means admitting you were wrong before you learned better. It means making room for differences and respecting people you don't understand. It means recognizing that what feels safe isn’t always good, and what feels awkward might just be what love requires.

So What Do We Do?

We stop confusing comfort with correctness. We stop confusing tradition with the truth. We stop looking away when someone is treated badly just because it’s easier.

You don’t have to fully understand someone’s differences to respect their humanity or appreciate their gifts. I don’t understand how Alan Turing did what he did. But I can still recognize that it was extraordinary, and that the world is better because he was in it. That’s true of so many people our systems push to the margins. People whose brilliance challenges us to see the world a little differently than we have so far.

Our parents and teachers did their best teaching us the world as they understood it. But now we have new information and access to new perspectives. Keeping our kids on the same narrow path is a disservice to them.

Instead, we can teach ourselves how to say, “I don’t understand, but I’m willing to listen.” We can practice staying in the room when things get hard. By doing these things, we can teach our kids by example that discomfort is just a growing pain, and that’s where our humanity starts.

Alan Turing Deserved Better

He saved lives; he gave us tools we still use today; and we destroyed him because people couldn't handle how they felt about who he was. As if that was anyone else's business.

It begs the question, who are we asking today to hide, shrink, or disappear, just so we can stay comfortable?

Sit in the Discomfort. Stay with the Question. Do the Kind Thing.

That’s the call.

You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to know everything, in fact it's best to consider that you have a lot to learn - we all do. Just stay. Listen. Pause before you denounce difference.

Comfort isn’t a just and moral goal. Kindness is - and kindness is sometimes loud, sometimes messy, and almost always uncomfortable.

Comfort is a false promise. Kindness is love.

At Byrne Alive, we believe education is meant to stretch us—not soothe us. Truth grows in uncomfortable places. And we choose kindness over comfort, every time.