Am I alone?

This was first published on 4/28/08 on Clotted Cognition. I started it with a long quote from another blog on disability, but I'll go ahead and leave that part out this time. If you had told me back then that I would republish this as a mostly able bodied person I wouldn't have believed you. Life has been good to me. So, on individualism, society, and shared responsibility:

This is an issue I've been wondering a great deal about lately. Why is it people think that because they are able bodied they do not have anything to do with disability or the issues surrounding disability? Are we/you truly that short sighted? I admit that I didn't think about disability all that much before I was forced to by disability, but I never assumed it would never be a part of myself. Honestly, it's unbelievable to me that anyone would think themselves that impervious to the degeneration all biological beings are subject to. Not just degeneration, but the accidental nature of life itself.

People! I have news for you!

You are going to die.

You are going to die quickly or slowly or anywhere in between and on the way there you will have pain. You will get sick, some more than others, and you will curse your mortality. These things are endemic to the nature of biology; there is no get out of humanity free card. You will not be passing stop.

You are going to deal with disability.

You will have to face the limits of your humanity, your biology and your patience when you are forced to deal with disability. You will need help and you will want to remain the choreographer of your own life. You will hate that you cannot do all that you want to do and you will curse your limitations. You will learn that life is not carefree and spontaneity no longer exists. You will learn to parcel out your time in terms of your limitations and the limitations of those around you and you will learn that being cared for or caring for someone else is the most empowering, belittling, aggressive, loving, and embarrassing thing you will ever have to face. You will lose your shame. You will lose your idea of sovereignty. You will lose your idea of yourself. You may not be the disabled person, but you will experience all of these things nevertheless.

How you deal with death, disease and disability is up to you. How you are allowed to deal with life after disability is up to all of us. If you choose not to acknowledge that there is merit in allowing people who cannot do things in the same way as everyone else or those who are unable to care for themselves to have access to health care, public spaces, employment, then you are denying your mortality as fervently as if you believed you had found the philosopher's stone. If you choose to let others wallow in the muck of society rather than acknowledging that we are not to blame for our humanness, then you are choosing a society based on your needs, your wants, your desires above all else. You are not a workable society; individualism does not endorse or include society or inhere itself beyond the limits of what we are. Individuality is. however, necessary for the understanding of self and the understanding that self inheres itself to existence. Individuality forces us to recognize that we are humans, we are other, and we are not the entirety of existence through its nature of separation. In other words, humanity gives us the ability, individualism gives us the context.

If society prevents us from obtaining the necessities of life it is degrading our rights as surely as if it imprisons us without cause; being forcibly held against your will and prevented from the freedom inherent in individualism has the same outcome as being unable to access what is needed to be human. Both things force individualism to subvert itself to the desires of others, therefore denying both our humanity and our right to be other than. If the outcome is the same but the path to that outcome is only slightly divergent, either thing is the equal of the other. Will it matter if you are in jail or if you are unable to leave your home (if you have one) when you are disabled? Will you be equal to all others in society if you are unable to acknowledge your individuality or the individuality of others through the basic assertion of your rights as a part of humanity?

Society cannot function if equality and the rights of individuals are applied sporadically. A society that lacks cohesion is inadequate to the point of exclusion. There is no way a collection of people who refuse to recognize the rights and basic access to what it required for life can progress and call itself a true society; those people exclude themselves from what society fundamentally is by their lack of a commonality of interest. Why else would people form a society if not to share commonality, to share burden and to share necessity? If we do not do these things equally then we do not care for what is outside of ourselves; we do not recognize the necessity of context, of fallibility and of biology. We cannot exist alone. It is beyond the realm of the possible; to deny that shared biological necessity is manifest by denying the care of others is to deny that we are human and to deny that we exist as individuals who possess otherness.

To define ourselves as we Are rather than as we wish we were is the only way to understand our places in society, in life, and in time. Time is the enemy in all things; it is the enemy when those of us who reached disability first are forced to wait for everyone else to catch up before we are recognized as equal, valid human beings. It is the enemy when it robs us of the lives we thought we would have or the people we thought would always be here. You cannot fight time and win. Degradation is no less a part of biology than life is, the two being necessary for the other's existence. If you do not recognize that precarious and solid relationship you are living on the edge of sanity. Without one, there is no other; without death, life ceases to be. Without progress forward, degradation cannot exist. Without the recognition of our limits, we cease to recognize our humanity. In refusing to recognize the intrinsic nature of limitation, of age in time, you are guaranteeing your own quick slide into the intellectual degradation that comes with the inability to accept what Is. If you cannot accept the most basic tenets of life, or accept that they apply to you because you are human, you are doomed to live as if you were fighting against life itself. Without the context of reality and of place we lose our ability to exist in a meaningful way, to leave a legacy. Who are the people on the fringes? those are the people who are forgotten. Who are the people who choose that life? those are the people who cannot accept their contextual obligations to otherness. Those are the people who live as if they are alone, as if they are all that matters.

If you continue to live as if what matters to you now is what matters for you in the future, you will be doomed to a life dreams. You are refusing to recognize change, otherness and the forward movement humanity requires. Your interests will tie you to the future as surely as anything else, but those interests will change; if you are tied to the past, if you are emotionally or intellectually tied to what was once considered important because you did not consider what would be important, what will you do? How will you live if you have chosen to be pulled backward into the future rather than facing it with a confident stride? You will be one of those people we see who are trying to hold on to what they believe they once were; the people who have an idea of what they are based on an idea of what they used to be. Funny thing about ideas: they are never graspable, never holdable, never static. In trying to live up to an idea of what you are or were rather than living as you are you will fail as a human being just as surely as if you had purposely murdered your life. There is no purpose in that sort of failure; in seeking to dream and hope and not do you are seeking to deny the life that is purposefully and wholly your own. You are being held prisoner by an idea based on something that no longer exists, something that was. We pity those people for their sad, sad existences of nothingness. It is time you realize:

You will need health care.

You will need the ADA.

You will need recognition.

You will need kindness.

The fragility of water

 Things feel different lately. We never know if the latest incident is going to be the one that leads to a progression in my diseases, so each one is treated with urgency and care. Normally, I bounce back and am fine, but that’s not happening this time. I mean, I’m OK, I’m just not back to my version of normal. Don’t get me wrong, I think I have years left on this planet, but I also live with the knowledge that things can escalate quickly and seemingly out of the blue. But here’s the thing: I made my peace with the fragility of my life years ago and, while I don’t want to die, I’ve accepted it with peace.  

There’s a lovely scene in the movie Seeking a Friend for the End of the World where one character says to another, “But it isn’t enough time.” The other character responds: “It never would have been.” They were talking about the limited time they had together and, I think, stating the obvious: there is never enough time to be with the people you love. We are all wasting time in one way or another. We choose to stay home and watch TV because we can’t be bothered to go out; we choose to stay in bad marriages because we’re too stubborn or scared to make a change; we choose to stay in jobs that destroy us a little bit every day because the alternatives seem terrifying. I can understand the job scenario far more than the other two because the other two deal with the relationships we have with others; I will always believe that those relationships are the most important part of our lives and our time. So it is almost physically painful to me to see a person stagnate, or watch relationships be destroyed over stupid things like mistakes or misunderstandings. Yet, I’ve seen a fair amount of that lately; it’s sad and it’s wasteful. 

The idea that there exists time to waste is unthinkable. It’s gone before it begins, metaphysically speaking; what could be is nonexistent and cannot exist until you make it exist.  To know that time is rapidly decreasing for you is to inject a sort of hardening of purpose into everything you do. You can do what it is you want to do, the thing you know will bring you joy, or you can wait and hope things work themselves out on their own. Yet, we know that things rarely work themselves out on their own and that doing nothing is itself a kind of doing; it is a willful slipping away. 

Time is like water:  No matter how hard we try to contain it, it will eventually evaporate on us. All we can do is play in it for a brief time and hope we don’t drown before it’s gone.  It’s easier to float when you accept that your buoyancy is temporary and fragile and always, always easier when there’s someone worth staying afloat for. Time is happening, fragility is around us and in us; what are you going to do about the waste in your life?

Spandau Sounds*

I was looking for something I wrote a few years ago on my stolen blog and found this. I thought it was fairly interesting, but then, I would, wouldn't I? This was originally written on 7/25/08.

I had a funny experience yesterday afternoon: I was driving to the pharmacy in an enormous SUV (rental) when a man in a Jeep darted in front of me and almost caused an accident. I instinctively honked at him, which he apparently didn't like. He sort of swerved a little bit toward me as I passed him, then got into the turn lane behind me and turned into the pharmacy parking lot. As I pulled into the handicapped spot at the front of the store, he pulled into a spot down the row. My usual exit the car routine goes something like this: 1. Take off seatbelt, 2. Put purse over head and arm (cross ways over chest), 3. put my arm through my crutch and grip the handle, 4. open the door and either swing my legs out or step out, one leg at a time (depending on strength that day), 5. pull crutch through the car after me. Imagine my doing all of this while being blocked from view by a large car door; you wouldn't see the crutch at all. So, as I was getting out of the car I saw the man from the Jeep walking purposely toward me, with a nasty look on his face. On his way toward me he had to navigate a column that necessitated some deviation from a straight path. If the man went in front of the column, he was coming toward me; if he went behind, he was going toward the store. Just as he was going in front of the column toward me I shut the door of the car and he clearly saw the crutch. He literally did a circle around the column and kept walking, acting as if he had never intended to come near me! It was freaking hilarious. I almost wish he had started yelling at me before I shut the door just so I could have seen his reaction when confronted with the gimp aid. That would have been priceless.

I've noticed this sort of attitude before; this attitude of gentleness toward people who are clearly disabled. What's odd is that I tend to see either that or the exact opposite. It's as if we inspire such strong emotions in people that they are incapable of reacting to us in a moderate way. While I was in the bathroom at Red Lobster the other day two women came in; one went into a stall and the other stood by the sink. They were talking up a storm about their different aches, pains and ailments, complaining away their time in the potty. As I exited the stall the woman by the sink literally stopped talking mid sentence and looked at me like she wanted to hit me. It was such an odd reaction and one I don't understand, still. Was it my age? Was it the crutch? Did she have instant guilt for complaining about minor aches and pains when a young woman with a crutch (i.e. a more unfortunate person) was listening? It's hard to say. I have an Obama sticker on my crutch but her angle in reference to the sticker made it impossible for her to see. It was just so odd.

It's natural for many of us to want to be sweeter to people whom we view as less fortunate than ourselves, just as it is natural for others to want to be mean to people they view as inferior to them. We know that, it isn't particularly revelatory. I simply find it odd that there tend to be only two categories that necessitate action toward people with disabilities: unfortunate or inferior. It's very similar to the kind of thinking that leads to or is engendered by extreme racism. I am not saying that is what is happening with these people; I am saying that the instantaneous nature of the emotion is one that has to come from long and fiercely held generalizations. Where do those generalizations come from?

Philosophy has many subcategories that people tend to specialize in and focus on in their studies and writing. Ethics is one of those categories, as is epistemology. Epistemology is, generally speaking, the search for the meaning of truth, or how we Know. There are several different theories for how truth is established and how we Know, of course; philosophers must always disagree or think up new ways to torture students. Some think truth cannot be established, others think it is established through the necessity of it, while others think it is established through coherence. While I tend to agree with a mishmash of theories (the McQuillan theory of Pragmacorrespondence?), William James's theory of truth is one I think serves us well when discussing the reasons for the broad generalizations people make whenever they are confronted with something new. James's theory is that there is no such thing as absolute, static truth; truth is simply what is true in pragmatic terms at the moment of its use. In other words, truth exists to apply itself to the general, not as a macro idea or fact that applies always, regardless of the particular.

I think James hit on something quite interesting with this idea of pragmatism being the true (!) focus of knowledge. Think of it this way: if we were constantly forced to reevaluate every new thing we see, hear, taste, touch, smell or do we'd never progress beyond a baby's ability to process life. If we had to do that much work constantly, we would never get anything related to the utility of life accomplished! For example: when you go to a party where you don't know anyone, it requires far more work than if you were at a party where you do know everyone. You've already assigned belief and meaning and truth to the people you know and you only need to change those things when something new about that person is established. But when you are in a new situation with new things you are forced to find belief, meaning and truth for each thing. That's a hard process! Luckily, we've already established some larger generalizations that can be applied in general terms to the new things we're experiencing. If you see a person reading a book in the corner at the party and you know that everyone you've ever met who is that bookish is also quite shy, you make the unconscious generalization that the bookish person in the corner is shy. If you're wrong, it's an easy fix and it's something you are not required to discover on your own. People will act as they act, regardless of what we think; it is up to them to show us who they are and up to us to change our generalizations on the fly.

This theory and practice does get a little tricky when we add in things like hate, anger and closed mindedness. If you were raised to believe that all Asians will cheat you when dealing with them financially, you will make the assumption that the Asian man at the pharmacy is taking something from you that he has no right to take. You assumed something from a generalization you believe is based on truth. But that is not a generalization that works. Even if you had experienced an Asian person cheating you, the cheating had nothing to do with the man's race and everything to do with his character. We might say that a person who belongs to the North American Cheater's Club would be someone who will cheat us because they have demonstrated a willingness to do that by their behavior. Behavior is the key in these things; people may look like they behave (clothes, makeup, hygiene), but those things necessitate behavior. When we generalize correctly, we make assumptions about people based on what we know about others like them. What do we know about the Asian cheater? We know that he is a man, he is Asian, and he cheated. The cheater’s gender and race have nothing to do with the act of cheating; the cheating is what we have to understand the person. In other words, do you know more about a person by looking at them or by seeing them act? Clearly, actions are the only indications of a person’s character and the only way we can know who they are.** Accordingly, if your only experience with people in wheelchairs has been that they are cranky and have huge chips on their shoulders, you will generalize that behavior for all wheelers because it is backed up by the assumption that people in chairs might have a harder life than people who are able to ambulate without assistance. There are good reasons behind these generalizations and these particular assumptions translate to all the knowledge you require until you have a new experience with a wheeler that changes your necessary knowledge. That is the nature of this fluid idea of truth; we change our understanding and beliefs when it is pragmatically necessary.*** 

This is all very idealistic, but it does work well for us in practical terms. The challenge will always be, though, how to know when a change in generalization is necessary and which generalizations are nothing more than prejudices. You will hear people say things like, "I Jewed them down to a lower price," about bargaining for a better deal. That is the phrasing for an improper generalization. While there may be some Jews who are parsimonious, ascribing that characteristic to such a large group of people is not something that will ever work on pragmatic grounds. If you make that large of a generalization you are bound to be in a constant state of confusion or anxiety because you are constantly having to either refuse to acknowledge that your idea is wrong (which requires more work than accepting that your idea is faulty and moving on) or you will have to constantly be reevaluating the idea.**** If the constant reevaluation is happening, you've missed the pragmatic utility of generalizations entirely, While it seems like the Jewish generalization and the disability generalization are the same, they are quite different. The cranky behavior of the wheeler has two things backing up the generalization: the experience you've had with a cranky wheeler and the knowledge you have that ambulation usually makes life easier. The Jewish assumption has only one thing behind it and that is your experience with one person without any kind of reason behind the experience itself. While the wheeler may not be cranky because he or she is in a chair (and really, being in a chair can be a good thing, too), the generalization does have some soundness to it in relation to how we understand the nature of our existence. What is there about the Jewish person and parsimony that makes sense? Is there any utility in the action itself? No, of course not. There isn't a practical reason for the assumption that all Jews are parsimonious, though there might be more of a practical reason behind the assumption that all wheelers are cranky. The more practical nature of the wheeler assumption does not, however, absolve us of guilt if we keep the generalization once we know it is not valid. That is why prejudice, or a belief we want to be true no matter if it is true or not, are so detrimental to our epistemological understanding. With every generalization comes the necessity of the acknowledgment of our fallibility as humans. Quite simply, we can always be wrong in everything we think we know. 

Let me give you one more example: If you live in the United States and you drive a car, and you live in a state that allows people to pump their own gas, chances are good that you've pumped gas into a car on more than one occasion. If you're driving around in an unfamiliar area of town and you notice you need gas, the process for getting the gas will be known to you already and would not necessitate new knowledge on your part. Even if you find that the gas station you chose has a slightly different process for getting gas, your generalizations about pumping gas are ultimately still true; you've simply added a new element to what you already understood. If, however, we change the way we fuel our cars you will have to learn a new way of doing it and the old generalizations must be discarded; they will no longer be pragmatically true. 

What does this wordy discussion of truth have to do with the reactions people have to the disabled? Simple: People react the way they do because the experiences they've had and the truth of those particulars fuel their generalizations about the disabled. It's harder to attach blame when that is the case because we're not talking about something like race or even culture; we're talking about a very specific way of life that is particularly different for every disabled person, but generally the same for all disabled people. The generality is the limitation we have that able bodied people do not. Yet, everyone has limitations; that is the thing, the knowledge of limitations, that allows for the somewhat appropriate generalization about people who are more limited than you. If I were to think about it (not that I do that sort of thing) I would probably find that I have made some assumptions about what it is like to live life in a wheelchair and about the people who do that. My generalizations might be closer to particular truth than an able bodied person's generalizations, but they are no less fluid. The amount of change needed does not alter the necessity of the fluidity of the generalization or the generalization itself; all it does is give me a head start on truth.

Another reason able bodied people react to us in strong ways much of the time is partially due to the fact that we are a minority of people whose differences are imposed on others. Five able bodied people standing in a group discussing dogs are just standing there discussing dogs. If there is one black person in the group the situation does not change; the race of of the participants is irrelevant to the negotiation of the conversation. If, on the other hand, one of those people is disabled the negotiation does change. If they are deaf, for example, they either need to face the person speaking to read their lips, or someone needs to translate with ASL, or the person speaking must use both ASL and spoken language. The difference doesn't make the disabled person inferior to the others, nor does it make the situation harder or less valuable. The difference is only the imposed limits on others in the situation, not just the person with the disability. Again, that isn't a bad thing, it's just a necessity. Unfortunately, some able bodied people do attach value to these things and assume that a person who can't do the things they do in the same way is lacking in something. That is not an appropriate generalization because it forces the particular to be general. While the deaf person in the dog discussion can't hear as everyone else can, they can still have as much participation in the discussion as everyone else; it is simply a difference in the way it is communicated. It is the same with walking versus wheeling; the movement necessary to get to a different spot is accomplished in different ways but it is accomplished. Any generalization of lesser value is one that has nothing to do with the actuality and everything to do with a forced version of reality. It simply does not correspond to truth.

We need to be thoughtful and aware of our generalizations for them to work for us instead of against us; I do realize this is easier said than done. Generalizations can turn into steadfast beliefs if we are lazy or if we think we benefit from a truth that is not supported by correspondence. When you allow for belief to correspond to truth, it must actually correspond to truth; if we allow for such a thing, we also must acknowledge that the truth we think we know is still understood in human (fallible) terms. Even if you think you Know, doubt will always creep in. We are, after all, human. Generally speaking.


*I admit, sometimes the obscurity of the titles I choose cracks my ass up!

**Appearances are relevant to generalizations only when they involve action.

***Please do not think that this theory legitimizes every generalization. There must be practical necessity involved and it must be based on actuality. If someone is rude to you and you assume it's because they have a little green alien residing in their bottom, you are making an assumption that is utterly divorced from necessity or actuality. If you were to then make the generalization that all rude people have little green aliens in their bottoms you are basing the generalization on something that cannot be true. Generalizations must be knowledge and reality based to constitute truth.

****I recently read Schindler's List, by Thomas Keneally. I can't remember who it was that said it, but one of the high Nazi party members (Goering, maybe?) made a speech in which he admitted that "Aryans" probably knew one Jew who was a "good" Jew. He went on to tell them that they must make no exceptions and be merciless with all Jews because they were all the same at bottom. I would imagine the willingness to admit that there might be some goodness in this thing you have decided is all bad would make your steadfast bias painful. The futility of a generalization that admits flaws is the thing that ultimately dooms tyranny.