(no subject)

Extreme mountaineering and deep scuba diving and so on are underpinned by a kind of ableism.

 

I don't mean this term in the classic sense, of "discriminatory against disabled people". It's more profound than that.

 

When you're disabled, few people understand that you genuinely *can't* walk any faster or work any harder. There's a very human temptation to instead see the failures of disabled people as true failures: a failure of character, a failure of will, a failure of commitment.

 

I see a very similar psychology in extreme adventure sports. There's a sense that climbing Everest is a sort of metaphor for the human spirit, that it's something anyone can accomplish if you Really Want It and you're Willing To Go The Distance. Similarly in deep diving, where terms like "courage" and "endurance" are liberally littered around by non-divers who don't know what they're talking about.

 

The fact is, above 26000ft the human body just comes to pieces. Under water, it's about 790ft - the recommended safety limit for recreational divers is a mere 130ft. Willpower has nothing to do with it. Gas exchange breaks down; your lungs die of their own accord; your blood bubbles; you start hallucinating, and then you die. There's a very human narcissism in thinking one can Overcome Anything, and that if you try hard enough and use positive thinking you can somehow undo the stars and make the mountains and crevasses of the earth your plaything; and that the limits and warnings set are not, in fact, a kind of challenge or cowardice, but a hard biological limit which you pass through to your peril.

 

I think there's a lesson here about how we treat the disabled, as if their biological limits too were something the mind could overcome through sheer effort and desire.

(no subject)

 A conversation you will find frequently in scuba forums:

Person A: I'm going to dive to this {completely ludicrous} depth!
Person B: You're going to die. This is pointless.
Person C: Don't be such a downer - I think this is a marvellously courageous attempt. Don't discourage!

And then a few weeks later:

Person A: ~silence~
Person B: This is sad, of course, but completely predictable. You shouldn't dive to {completely ludicrous} depth; what went wrong on this dive is that the dive should never have been attempted
Person C: That's so disrespectful. At least he died doing what he loved. You could die in a car accident any day: this kind of courage and ambition is what adventure is all about!

I've seen this conversation over and over again, and I'm sure they have it in mountaineering forums too. And it's Person C's attitude which is the problem here, and which filters out into the wider community as ableism. It's a naive belief in the Triump Of The Human Spirit, the sheer arrogance of man in nature, the extent to which we've been divorced from both the land and the body, to think that we could simply overcome. And that flying in defiance of what science is telling us about the nature of our world is, in some way, praiseworthy - instead of profoundly stupid and wasteful.

But then I speak with people about disability and why I cannot work, and I get a wall of "hmmm well yes but maybe if you found a nice little job at a bakery or helping children to read", as if there's an eternal dumbass wellspring of hope in the human spirit too, which is designed to minimise the biological and ignore the natural and believe, in our arrogance, that our big brains and the hearts within us can carry us anywhere, do anything, without cost or consequence.