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.