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15 September 2019 13:56![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
haptalaon 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.
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.
