Why is is that non-typical things (and people) are held to an extremely high standard of self-justification, whereas more typical things (and people) get to have their existence taken at face value?
I came across a comment today (I don't remember the exact site) in which someone was making the claim that even if an autistic person was happy and okay with being autistic, we (there's that lovely non-inclusive "we" again) still have an obligation to prevent future people from being autistic. The reason? Because there's apparently "no reason for autism/Asperger's to exist."
(and no, this person didn't even bother claiming that he was only talking about people with "severe difficulties" -- he was including everyone who might presumably fall under the "autistic spectrum" umbrella, as far as I could tell.)
My first response to this (internally) was, "Wha?!"
See, as far as I know, there's no "reason" outside conscious awareness for anything to exist in the first place...stuff just sort of exists, and different people find meaning and value in different parts of existence. Maybe it's my vaguely existential tendencies talking here (if so, it's all Joss Whedon's fault!), but I think it's perfectly valid for people to decide for themselves that their existence -- however they might happen to be configured -- has value for its own sake.
Which means that autistic people (regardless of what their "label" happens to be, if they have one) have just as much right as anyone else to assert that there's nothing wrong with the fact of their existence, or the existence of similar others. The idea that any deviation from the norm needs to provide extra justification points for its existence is just plain silly. Real life is not some kind of assembly line, and people are not interchangeable parts.
There is no set of figures or statistics that can possibly provide an "objective" guide to configuring humans on some grand scale of promised "improvement". Either you decide that people are valuable for their own sakes and keep that in mind when making decisions from that point on, or you decide to play the "leaky lifeboat" game of looking at all of humanity with the goal of deciding who it is okay to throw overboard.
To me, it seems obvious that the former position is more ethically sound, but it sometimes seems to be very hard to justify it in ways that others can readily understand.
(Obviously this isn't some kind of hard-and-fast guide, and I am not suggesting everyone go home and snuggle with a serial killer because "everyone just needs to be loved". Rather, I am talking about a general weighting of attitudes, in which a person cultivates a default position of presuming value and seeing where that presumption takes them.
My guess is that if more people did this, there would be a lot less in the way of "writing people off" and/or assuming that because you can't understand how someone else could be happy, their own assertions to that effect can't be taken as anything more than signs of ignorance or "resignation to a lesser life").
Friday, June 27, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
You said this really well.
It's unfortunate that anyone would need to justify how they are valid.
Typical expressions often lack the creativity that all civilizations need.
"Maybe it's my vaguely existential tendencies talking here (if so, it's all Joss Whedon's fault!), but I think it's perfectly valid for people to decide for themselves that their existence -- however they might happen to be configured -- has value for its own sake." I would instead judge the tendencies of others who are likely to think more in the opopsite way to be what causes more problems.
Like I hear you pointing out here, I think that people who are judged unfairly as to the validity of our existence (and all such judgments are unfair)do know that this judgment is unfair and we do in turn assert that our existence IS valid and not the way it has been judged.
We all assert this in a variety of ways. When those methods of assertion are less understood, they are often unfairly judged again and the cycle is more likely to continue.
Breaking that cycle begins with the kind of awareness that I think this expression of yours (what you have written here) promotes.
I think evolutionary psychology may be able to explain this. Some sort of preference for normality, as deviations from the norm may imply mutations (and where there is one visible mutation, there may be many more undetected ones). Thus, even those who were disgusted at the atypical may have had more offspring or more healthy offspring.
I know that doesn't (or at least shouldn't) give any moral answers, but it may be an answer to your question of "why?" in the title.
I never thought about it in terms of a demand for justification. Very good point for everyone to think about, since atypicals often take a default position of defending who they are rather than just asserting their right to be who they are. Still, I'm tempted to say that anyone who's clueless enough to expect justifcation may not have any justification for *their* existence.
Ed said: We all assert [validity] in a variety of ways. When those methods of assertion are less understood, they are often unfairly judged again and the cycle is more likely to continue.
Indeed. I am always looking for ways to try and break the cycle of which you speak. I don't think writing alone can or will accomplish it, but it's definitely a start, and at least some people are likely to respond to it.
In a way, I feel often as if what I (and you and other self-advocates) are doing is akin to demonstrating how a Necker cube can be interpreted more than one way to people who have built their understanding of human society around the idea that certain things cannot be anything other than whatever their first impression was of them.
Joshua: The ev-psych angle is indeed interesting -- I suspect something along those lines is probably true, at least in a lot of cases. Acknowledging that sort of thing strikes me as potentially important, as I think sometimes people end up building entire systems of ideas that have the structure of "objectivity" when in fact they serve to reinforce preconceptions the people who establish them already had.
E.g., I remember reading a while back about how immigrants to the US (from places like Italy) were assumed "mentally subnormal" from the get-go, and this was considered "confirmed" by intelligence tests administered upon their arrival -- in English. That (hopefully) sounds ridiculous to reasonable people nowadays, but at the time I doubt many people even considered that there might be something wrong with the frame they were using, as such frames tend to be invisible to the people they aren't actually harming.
Catana said: ...since atypicals often take a default position of defending who they are rather than just asserting their right to be who they are.
Yeah, I've noticed that, and while I think it's a very understandable initial reaction to having been bullied and/or excluded a lot, I also think it can become problematic if taken too far. It has taken me nearly 30 years to learn this, but one thing it reminds me of is how sometimes people will assume you must have something to apologize for if you constantly enter situations and initiate your interactions with an apology.
You said: I'm tempted to say that anyone who's clueless enough to expect justifcation may not have any justification for *their* existence.
That's part of what I was thinking when I wrote this post, at least if I'm interpreting this statement properly -- basically, I think that questions like, "Why should atypical humans exist in the first place?" are really no different from questions like "Why should any humans exist in the first place?" I don't know this for sure, but I would be willing to hazard a guess that some folks find that second question extremely uncomfortable to ponder, which makes them more likely to question the validity of configurations they don't understand, as by questioning these configurations they emotionally "bolster" their own existence as somehow irrevocably valid.
I remember during my late-teens existential angst phase wondering why anything existed at all -- I frankly obsessed over that question for a while, and for some reason it seemed really important to come up with an answer. But then one day my brain did a bit of a flip and I realized that, well, stuff does exist, so why can't existence be taken as the default condition? There's nothing scientifically invalid about such a position, as "somethingness" (not "nothingness") is all we know to begin with. And over time, I've come to see the concept of "validity" in much the same way -- no, there's no cosmic supernatural source handing down meaning and significance to us from on high, but far from that making the universe empty of meaning, it in fact means that everything is positively teeming with meaning -- as it is literally all we have, and therefore infinitely precious.
I found this extreemly interesting, as i am often asked to justify my sons existance, but i find the people who ask this sort of question do not actually want to hear or understand the answer.
For me you summed it up really well with this single sentance;
'Everything is positively teeming with meaning -- as it is literally all we have, and therefore infinitely precious.'
casdok: That's awful that people ask you to justify your son's existence. :( I really do hope that someday people (by and large) realize that nobody is in a position to demand that others justify their or their loved ones' very existences...it's difficult to think of a ruder question! Imagine if all the energy people put into devising elaborate arguments as to why some people shouldn't exist were instead put into figuring out how best to help and express respect for those that do exist.
Thanks for stopping by, by the way. I have been reading your blog for a while now and it has affected me (in a good way, I'd say) to the point where whenever I think about what things might make for a better world, I consider families like you and C. I know that most would consider C's challenges and mine to be "worlds apart", but there's certainly common ground in the fact that we would both benefit from a world that frowned more on bullying and abuse, and that did not constantly demand existence-justification.
Post a Comment