Like It Or Not, Everyone Needs Stuff

The quote below from Whose Planet Is It Anyway? caught my eye today:

What's such a big deal, anyway, about the simple fact that it costs money to educate us [autistic/disabled/atypical/etc. people] and to provide the services and products that we need? Guess what, the same is true of your family, pal. The only difference is that society has categorized your family's educational and other needs as "normal," while arbitrarily excluding others from that privileged caste. You're no more deserving and no less expensive than anyone else—you just have the home field advantage.

Read it, folks. And if you don't get it, read it again.

Bottom line: Everyone needs resources to survive. Yes, even really really rich people who meet or exceed contemporary standards of attractiveness. We all need to eat, sleep, breathe, and excrete. We all need protection from the elements and other dangers that would otherwise threaten our vulnerable meatbodies. And we all ought to have access to appropriate opportunities for education, cultural participation, and enrichment.

There is no way around using resources -- for anyone. And I have had it up to here (places hand at forehead level) with people making alarmist claims about the "cost" of caring for or educating one group or another. I get that stuff and time are both limited, and I also get that practical factors will invariably come into play as far as figuring out how to distribute resources. But there is no good reason to presume that because a given person or group has nonstandard needs that the mere existence of that kind of person constitutes a "crisis".

If there are really THAT many people with atypical needs, maybe that ought to be taken as a sign that something is wrong with the way our society is structured -- NOT that the world has been inundated with supposed "defectives".

I will consider it a good day indeed when the supposedly-inclusive "we" so often invoked in discussions of what "we" need to do about autism or anything along those lines actually includes the people being talked about.

"We" are not interlopers in "your" society -- society consists of all of us, and it seems hideously wrong for some to sequester themselves off in some kind of "well, we're okay!" bubble while the rest are assumed to be nothing more than parasites or interlopers. Like it or not, different people have different needs. If you don't like that, fine -- but at least come clean with the fact that you don't like it, rather than couching your assertions in the language of "helping".

And finally, I'm all about trying to find ways to use resources more efficiently. Sustainability is a growing concern of mine, and I do not deny the fact that resources are limited (in the absolute sense that the universe contains a finite amount of matter and energy; I'm pretty sure that there's more than enough "stuff" on Earth to quite comfortably support the existing population, and that distribution problems are primarily political and logistical in nature as opposed to functions of absolute scarcities).

But I do not think it is necessary or ethically responsible to invoke the widespread devaluation of people with atypical needs as a "sustainability strategy".

It's hard to fathom sometimes how people who by all marks and measures seem to fancy themselves "intelligent" and "civilized" persist in perpetuating what amount to the lowest forms of common barbarism, however dressed up in the verbiage of "compassion" and "progress" they might be.

---

PS: I'm not interested in any comments along the lines of, "But you don't understand! Some people do cost more than others to care for, and we can't ignore that fact!"

I'm not suggesting that fact should be ignored -- I'm just saying that the issues around that kind of thing are more complex than a lot of people seem to think they are, and I'm also trying to encourage people to think in terms of how social and cultural structures might be changed so as to be more flexible and inclusive.

I can't imagine that humanity has exhausted its creativity in this regard yet, which is why I'm rather confounded by the seeming emphasis these days on trying to alter or "prevent" certain kinds of people -- people who themselves have asserted that no, they are not "suffering" for the mere fact of being configured the way they are. To me, it seems terribly defeatist to presume that "oh well, we can't change the world or fight prejudice anyway, so let's just try and mold people according to the status quo and all the prejudices it currently contains." I mean, talk about an unimaginative approach!