Culture, chaos theory and choice
So, in my BADD post the other day, I explicitly noted the evil of our U.S. foreign policy in Iraq -- our war that, among other things, disables Iraqi children, many of whom will live their lives in a society with such a damaged infrastructure that their basic needs will never (not for one day) be well met. I know that some people trying to understand disability culture and the idea of impairments as not inherently tragic will be further confused by this. (No, being disabled is not a tragedy, yes, being disabled by an occupying army is an outrage and tragedy.)
The current discussion in comments at Alas, A Blog, started by WheelchairDancer's wonderful post "On Making Argument: Disability and Language" (also with a separate comment trajectory at her personal blog) struggles with this, or with several readers' inability to mesh together the ideas that while being or becoming disabled is not a choice, it is experienced by many people as normal or even filled with various human joys.
The confusion persists, I think, because disability is seen as this separate thing that happens, not as part of the whole spectrum of possible valid and ordinary life experiences. Maybe the breadth of what disability includes causes part of the confusion: we are the person born with spina bifida and the old fart losing his hearing, we are the person born to quadriplegia in a car crash and the cancer survivor who lost a limb while winning the battle, we're the child born with Down Syndrome and the dyslexic movie star, we're the institutionalized schizophrenic and the woman taking anti-depressants to keep moving through her busy day.
Pitting one life experience against another is ludicrous and unfair, of course, but in those comparisons I just made, the first examples are routinely seen as tragic and the second ones are all sometimes -- for better or worse -- seen as either common and ordinary or as triumphs of luck, strength and will. Neither characterization sums up the individual life or experience with disability. With adequate and just support, any disabled individual might lead an utterly ordinary life where his impairments are only one aspect of who he is. Or it might be the very thing that completely defines him. It might inspire him to amazing heights or leave him paralyzed with bitterness. (Yeah, note the metaphor there. Discuss, again, if you like.) People are different like that.
Two people can have the same job, with one hating it miserably and the other blithely content. Neighbors living side-by-side for sixty years can lead incredibly different lives. All life, but maybe especially disability, is chaos theory in action. Any outcome might be true.
The thing that makes the war in Iraq and the children it disables an outrage and tragedy is the degree of human choice. Someone somewhere (or many someones) makes a decision, and it leads to this event causing pain to other people. To value freedom and the individual means to value and support choice wherever possible and to be against human actions that limit freedom and choice of others. I don't find that contradictory to also embracing the disability experience as one that is in many ways fulfilling for many of us, even though few of us got here by choice and some of us have been injured at the hands of others.
4 comments:
I like the way you said disability is "part of the whole spectrum of possible valid and ordinary life experiences" because that is so true, and I have never expressed that idea to others as succinctly as you just expressed it to us. Thank you, Kay.
Before this whole stupid war started, I was talking with a blind friend of mine. What we found most appalling about the whole build-up was the festive attitude about going to goddamnfucking war. As if it was a football game or prom night, with no discussion of what war really is. War is a complete and total clusterfuck. It's a bastard. It should be a last resort. Any nation which wages a "preemptive" war is waging a war of aggression, and has declared to the world that it doesn't give a shit about how many widows, how many orphans, how many bereaved parents, how many people with disabilities, it creates in order to gain its objectives. Even if most of the violence is now because of sectarian suicide bombers, they were unleashed because the US demolished all civil order. We don't even take real care of disabled people in the US, not even the soldiers sent to pursue the illegitimate aims of moneygrubbers and powermongers. We sure have no business bringing death, disability, and chaos into the lives of foreigners.
Anyway, this is what me and my blind friend were saying before the war. I wasn't hearing any such conversation from people without disability, but I did hear virtually the same thing from other people with disabilities. Maybe because of the disability perspective on community and interdependence?
Great post, great comments. Thank you so much.
I was going to write more, but I put it here instead:
The Ideal War
Oh so. We recognize rape as a warcrime. It is. Is there a disability equivalent? Or will disablement forever be collateral damage...
WCD
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