againsttheglass.com

I am a day late in the May 1 Blogging Against Disablism event. Life intervened on my schedule, and I’ve been working on this post for a few days. Although this is tardy, I offer it as my contribution.

A little over a year ago, a student named Cho Seung-Hui went on a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. It was an unbelievable tragedy: 32 people shot, with the 33rd being the shooter himself. Parents lost children, families lost parents, friends lost friends, and the nation lost trust in the safety of colleges and universities. What ensued as a result was a national dialog, and an expanded legislative menu, dedicated to issues of liability, accountability, and enforcement.

As with so many public tragedies on this scale, we lack the will as a people to swim further up the food chain of an event to get to its origins. We like dealing with preventing horrific results, and that rarely pays off in solutions that drip with compassion. When you have a group of grieving parents, students, and a nation, the need for urgent action overcomes the need for deeper understanding. This is particularly true in the realm of political leadership, appointed and elected. Public money generally goes towards demonstrable solutions that guarantee re-election and a continual flow of local pork, not necessarily deeper problem-solving about why our society is like a petri dish for violence and tragedy. As one of my favorite Disney heroes, Shrek, would say, “Grab your torches and pitchforks!” We like doing that a lot.

Torches and pitchforks firmly in hand, we can march together, simultaneously feeling like we’re solving the problem while conveniently disowning our part in perpetuating it. We disown those whose brains are structured differently because the results of their disability demonstrates so clearly that they are not like us, less than human, having to be “dealt with” rather than understood. They can’t be understood, which we chalk up to the inhumanness of their behavior.

I remember the days following the shooting, feeling like I was in a surreal place. “We are all Hokies!” Why, in my own struggles, did I feel like, “We and those like me are all Cho.” Who, by the way, was a Hokie, however ambivalently so.

As a person suffering with major depressive disorder, and loving folks in my immediate family who are bipolar, alcoholic, and living with the Cho diagnosis of “selective mutism,” I do not have the luxury of disowning the humanity of those to whom my fellow citizens conveniently refer as other. I can’t apply that narrative because I know too much about the humanity that inhabits those of us whose brains were hard-wired on, shall we say, the alternate specifications. And the minute that a disowned object becomes subject, narrative goes away. You are confronted with only one thing: the bare, beautiful, horrible reality of the human mind in its infinite potential for choice, informed as much by simple chemistry as by what we call (in our theologically-generated narratives), conscience. You arrive at the unavoidable compassion that arises from stepping inside of the experience of the conflicted, and you cannot escape your responsibility in shaping a world that makes room for them, too.

We make room, in institutions like prisons and psychiatric facilities. We physically separate from this population so as to not be confronted, day by day, with humans who think differently on the alternate specs. We like to kill them sometimes. We like to demonize their parents, as though the 19th century notion of the sins of the parent visiting the child were still a metaphysical supernatural truth (but now we have Freud to give that old take a more modern narrative — phew!).

Then, we pass legistlation like Virginia’s brand spankin’ new involuntary commitment laws, which Alison Hymes has bravely railed against daily — a windmill-tilter if there ever was one, and one of my heroes. Able-minded folks have trouble listening because to open up this dialog is to open up their responsibility in building a world that prevents tragedy through compassionate health care and housing (more economical and efficient, by the way) than punishment for those with the alternate spec who need an alternately-appointed environment in which to thrive.

I was doing architectural planning and building code consulting in NYC in the 1980s when the disability act came to fruition in the codes. Folks lined up at the Department of Buildings the day before to secure an appointment for plan approvals prior to the onset of the law. Folks didn’t like the extra expense involved in grab bars, wheelchair ramps, and larger bathrooms. I remember working on a project for a bar/restaurant on the upper west side that didn’t make it in under the wire, so they had to provide a wheelchair accessible area to enable the hiring of a disabled bartender. The restaurant owner, not the nicest of men, was, shall we say, colorfully dismayed in a NYC kind of way.

Being kind, and open to the possibility of sharing the world with those needing accommodations that on the surface we read as “unfair,” is more work than punishment, but much less flashy than a shiny new prison and gleamingly extreme legislation. I remember even in a Unitarian Universalist church I was met by a supposed bleeding-heart liberal person with “I’m sorry, but these people are NOT going to be cured just by loving them!”

I could parse that many ways, but for now, I’ll focus on the word “cured.” We like to “cure” because it eliminates the problem. But, compassion does not imply cure. It implies living with a condition in dignity and cooperation, in community, getting treatment openly and without shame. It means the same coverage for preventive psychotherapy as for medical treatment. Here are a few alternate versions of recent events that could have been prevented by such a world:

1) A brilliant academic living on the alternate spec rises to the top of his field, to the level of President of a university. He does not fear reaching out for help under tremendous stress because, like a diabetic or someone with heart disease, his spec requires alternate treatment. He openly negotiates a contract allowing for time at AA meetings, psychotherapy, money for medications, and flexibilty in workstyle that suits his temperament. As a result, he is able to fend off crisis episodes, keep functioning brilliantly, bringing insight to the job that someone else, who may not be on the alternate spec, cannot. (the real story here>)

2) A young man on the alternate spec includes this information openly on his university application. All of his teachers, advisors, and deans know about it. His need for accommodation is expressed as openly as the needs of the man in the wheelchair or the woman with the guide dog. It is not hidden under a cloak of shame, so everyone in his environment has the information they need to help him complete his academic career. As a result, he is able to live in a special community on campus with others who are hard-wired more as he is. They even have a public voice on campus, and walk in the sun, instead of the shadows. His professors confer with each other each semester to make sure that they are all on the same page about the student’s progress and accommodations. Rage that could otherwise build up in shame and secrecy instead is prevented. He is loved, and he walks side by side with others like him. (the real story here>)

3) A little boy who is adopted inherits an alternate spec from his birthparents. His adoptive parents are able to let the neighbors and teachers know about this so that they can understand and assist in providing the boy with an openly-welcoming environment in which to grow. They let the boys parents know when he seems to be struggling so that he can be helped. They use the boy’s situation as an opportunity to teach their own kids about how everyone is different, and everyone is deserving of compassion. The boy, as a result, is never shunned, but is aided in his development and embraced for his difference. (the real story here>)

It’s simple economics that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Compassion is, therefore, the most economical way to create a better world. It’s time to grind the torches and pitchforks into plowshares, to lose our insatiable appetites for retribution, and hunger instead for a world of universal justice and love.