Good question. No, I don’t think the individual is the best judge. Mentally ill people are often robbed of insight, so I would not necessarily trust a severely mentally ill person’s judgment about how un-debilitated they are. There are also people who think they are disabled just because they have limited ability in a very narrow area. I think individual’s judgment should be considered, but I don’t think they should have the final say.
I guess what I wanted to get at it in my earlier post is that what can be “neutral” for one person can actually be emotionally burdensome for someone else.
This is valid. For one thing, I don’t think my disability could be fully accommodated. If society were to try and make me comfortable, the entire world would have to re-arrange itself to suit me, which is nonsense.
Ok, I can acknowledge overstating the exclusive nature of this unfortunate social phenomenon to SCI. However, with the groundwork that I laid out for it’s genesis, would you disagree that it is more ubiquitous with SCI that with other dibilitating conditions? I can quickly find numerous examples to share that show exactly what I am talking about, both on an individual level and on a society-wide level. Now it maybe be a case of cognitive bias, but I don’t recall seeing television or movies that hailed the inspirational triumph of cancer patients who single-handedly beat their cancers into final remission thru force of will, in stark contrast to the prognosis of all the experts.
Also, since many SCIs involve younger people sustaining their injuries engaging in reckless, dangerous, irresponsible or even criminal behaviors, there tends to be a Puritanical streak among elements of our society (even here on this board) who, to varying degrees, believe the person deserves their injury due to the immoral/unethical behavior that caused the injury in the first place. Its more prominent with certain conservative religious types but it exists in pockets in all areas.
People also think that if there’s a medical treatment for a condition, that means the condition isn’t all that bad and thus the sufferer lose the right to ever claim it as a disability.
For this assumption to be valid, the following must be always true.
The side effects from the medical treatment aren’t more debilitating than the condition
The sufferer can afford the medical treatment and can easily access it
The medical treatment is effective enough for the sufferer for it to be worth the costs of acquiring it
The medical treatment is effective enough for the sufferer to no longer be disabled
I think I remember some cancer ones, but like you say it may be because those are the ones that stick in my mind. It’s not worth quibbling about. The bias is definitely there. Through willpower, fighting spirit, and the almighty (praise be!), you shall walk! (Walking yet?)
I’m not interested in the people who dishonestly try to “spin” problems to sound like “blessings”. They’re trying to console themselves by playing pretend.
If my needs inconvenience others, but when my needs are met I’m perfectly fine, am I disabled?
I recognize that personally I AM disabled, though exactly to what degree is a confusing analysis. But I don’t believe that having inconvenient needs qualifies in any form as a disability.
“Able” is not a difficult question at all, just a silly one. “Able to do WHAT” is the problem. Very much like the idea of “physical fitness”, which is nonsense until you explain physically fit for exactly what. Being able and being fit are meaningless until the specific capabilities or tasks are identified.
If I ask “Are you reasonably fit?” and you say “Yes”, and I ask you well then how many times in a row can you lift 200 pounds over your head, you’ll likely say that’s not what you meant. In that example, the answer was foolishly given; the question was nonsense, and the only sensible way to answer is to request clarification.
Nah. Im one of the undeserving ones. Ya know, my paucity of character and all. Plus it turns out I’ve been praying to the wrong God all this time. Santa don’t doesnt leave those kinds of presents under the tree. No matter how many fucking Entemanns you leave. And fuck that other God too. You chose to allow me to become injured? And then decided I didn’t “qualify for salvation”? Or you were punishing me for my errant ways? Well fuck, where’s that Lucifer fellow at? I think ill start praying to the roaring lion. Cant be any more of a dick than that “God full of compassion” Ha!
I disagree. I doubt many folk would equate “reasonable fitness” w/ pressing 200# overhead. You can make assumptions based on the human physique. There is a reason stair risers and treads have standard dimensions.
Able to do what? function in society w/o requiring special accommodations.
And since I brought up vets, I ought to mention my favorite abused malady - PTSD!
Interesting. I wonder if people who are (fully) blind are told that if they just have enough willpower, they will be able to see again. I find it hard to imagine that happening, but then, I clearly vastly underestimated the number of people who would react similarly to someone in a wheelchair.
Cancer (which after so many people have battled with it you’d think it’s some sort of dragon rather than a crab) and depression are two pretty big ones.
When she was born, the parents of one of my SiLs were told she might never walk (at the very least I know she’s got scoliosis of doom); the father went further into the depression he already had, the mother rolled up her sleeves and carried the whole family. Talking to SiL about the power of prayer or about alternative medicine will probably only get you an extremely cold shoulder; her mother is old enough to have ditched unnecessary politeness long ago and turns from a nice little grandma into someone who’d scare a Brothers Grimm witch out of her underclothes.
“Function in society” doesn’t mean even close to the same thing for every person. Your function and my function might be just fine for each of us but not very similar. Every person functioning exactly the same as the next person has never been a requirement or even a reasonable expectation. Clearly, FDR was disabled. Do we say that he wasn’t functioning? And clearly, Charles Manson was physically NOT disabled. Do we say that he WAS functioning?
I’m not interested in these people either, which is why I didn’t mention them. There are some people who honestly and sincerely believe their conditions confer “blessings”, but they are honestly and sincerely oblivious to the problems caused by their conditions because they are sheltered from them.
Depends on how much inconvenience your needs are causing. Like, if you’re so allergic to peanuts that a couple of aerosol particles can kill you, then you’re disabled because you require a huge accommodation to live a “typical” life. But if you just break out into hives when you eat something with a lot of peanuts, then no. Your condition doesn’t require the people around you to have an extra amount of compassion and understanding and it doesn’t require any special accommodation.
To me, if someone who I interact with on a regular basis tells me they’ve got a condition, I will assume the person wants me to accommodate them somehow. Maybe they want me to be ready to step in for them or provide assistance if their condition temporarily impairs them. Or maybe they simply want me to not judge them harshly when their condition manifests itself unexpectedly and makes things awkward. So if someone can’t function well for long stretches without cluing anyone in on what they’re dealing with, then I think it makes sense to call them disabled.
That is the crux of the issue and the still-unresolved question of my OP. It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, even knowing it would be a challenging task at the outset. Oh, and I remembered something a bit clarifying about the diagnosis of my disability. It was a two-stage event. First was the tentative diagnosis in the hospital where my emergency aortic surgery was performed. This was rather inconclusive, as the ischemic nature of my injury left open a wide array of ultimate possible outcomes. The second, and more definitive diagnosis came from the spinal cord injury rehabilitation medical team that I was under the care of after I was transported from ICU in the first hospital to rehab in the second. It was a solid, credible diagnosis made by experts in the field of spinal cord injury as well as the peripheral nervous system and brain function as well as traumatic brain injury.
Yes, FDR was disabled. Thats why he required accomodations such as a wheelchair and untold other unseen assistive elements to facilitate his ability to function in an reasonabe manner. And just because Charles Manson was not physically disabled, does that somehow erase the almost certainty that he was a psychopath? Or to use proper termininology, afflicted with Antisocial Personality Disorder, of the psychopathic subset? Both men were clearly disabled. One man found accomodations which allowed him reasonable ability to function and one man did not. The difference was in outcome, not in outset.
I think DavidwithanR has a point though with wondering what “function in society” means.
Someone with relatively low intelligence can get a job assembling hamburgers at McDonalds and function pretty well in that job, with little accommodation. And maybe they can scratch out a comfortable existence on minimum wage if they are fortunate enough to live somewhere with ample affordable housing and a low cost of living.
But what if a person doesn’t have this? If you can’t find a place to live that you can afford in your society and you can’t afford to move to another society, then how can it be said that you are “functioning in society”? Functioning on the job <> functioning at life. And the old stand-by advice to “go back to school and get better skills” isn’t such great advice for someone who doesn’t learn easily.
So that’s why I think the degree to which someone is impaired depends on the obstacles that are found in the society someone finds themselves in. Not to be all leftwing radical, but if all Americans were guaranteed food, housing and health care, then it would be relatively easy to “function in society” because the basics would be covered. But when even fully able-bodied/minded people are struggling with the basics, it makes perfect sense for someone who feels disadvantaged to seek special protection and accommodation.
At some point, there needs to some some level of educated but essentially arbitrary cut-off separating disability from low ability. Otherwise what sort of ineffective and potentially ruinous quagmire would society be in? Life isn’t fair. Disabilities have to have, to some extent medically arbitrary points of cut-off, like why should those with a functional IQ of 75 be charged with violent crimes but those with scores of just five points lower not be held criminally liable for their actions (this was most recently in court in 2002 in Atkins v. Virginia). Does this make logical sense or seem fair or take all potentially relevant factors into consideration? It sure doesnt appear to, at least to my layman’s eye. It seemed to rest on a somewhat outdated, and fiercely debated, dividing line that separated “mental retardation” from regular old low intelligence.
No, life isn’t fair. But with some level of effort, life can be made a hell of a lot closer to fair.
In the bad old days, a person who needed a wheelchair to get around, got basically nothing from society. Stairs everywhere, can’t climb the stairs it’s your problem. It was “just not practical” to accommodate wheelchairs AT ALL, EVER.
We got smarter. A ramp is not that hard to add. A door that can be opened in a better way is not that hard to design. And so on.
Life will never be perfectly fair, but IMO it’s foolish to be against trying to improve the situation for as many people as possible.
I’m sorry but who has suggesting anything of that sort?
ETA: certainly “improving the lives of everyone” or as many as possible does not mean conferring medical/legal statuses of disability and government protections/accomodations to as many people as possible, does it? Would that really be of a net benefit to society? Would it even be feasible?
I think DavidwithanR is trying to find the line that was raised earlier about who we accommodate and who we don’t. Your post mentions that in many ways now the line is very arbitrary (70 is retarded, 75 isn’t, for example). I think it’s a balancing act for society. Ideally, we do the most good for the most people.
Plus it turns out I’ve been praying to the wrong God all this time. Santa don’t doesnt leave those kinds of presents under the tree. No matter how many fucking Entemanns you leave. And fuck that other God too. You chose to allow me to become injured? And then decided I didn’t “qualify for salvation”? Or you were punishing me for my errant ways? Well fuck, where’s that Lucifer fellow at? I think ill start praying to the roaring lion. Cant be any more of a dick than that “God full of compassion” Ha! 
