Why we must keep asking IF.

[Note: this entry is part of a larger Disability Blog Carnival that can be found at my good friend and fellow disaboomer Kara’s website: http://www.karasheridan.com/ starting on October 25, 2007, so check it out!  Also, you will notice I have more links than usual in this post.  I am trying to highlight all of the many different ways in which activists are working to tear down ableism with most of these, so CLICK ON THEM!]

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  -- Albert Einstein

Training in philosophy often boils down to guided practice with what many people think of as “critical thinking.”  Critical thinking usually means that a philosopher analyzes ideas and arguments with skepticism, asking questions about the various logical steps and trying to expose weaknesses in those steps or the ideas they were built upon.  To the philosopher, the questions “why?” and “how?” are often the most important.

However, to an activist, I think the question “IF?” is most central.  Sure, there are more practical concerns that we need to address during our everyday work, but an ability to ask the IF question keeps the fire in our bellies.  Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is the quintessential expression of the IF question.  It is the most beautiful, clearly conceived asking of what the world would be like IF oppression did not exist.  Every activist needs to be able to ask this question.  Whatever our particular niche is within the movement and whatever we do to bring about a better life for ourselves and our community, we must all have within us a vision for a better world. 

That vision may not exactly look the same to everyone within our community and should evolve as circumstances change.  Some of us focus our time and energy on particular issues or ideas.  Right now, I am very interested in asking how the goals and practices of medicine and biological research would be different, IF people’s concepts about disability were different.  My vision of a world that will exist, IF ableism is torn down looks much clearer in that area then it may look in the area of disability community and pride building, an idea that my friend Stacey is in love with and works relentlessly to promote.  Many organizations strive to bring about their vision of what employment would be like, IF people with disabilities were not discriminated against.  Other activists have a passion for bringing about radical changes for young people with disabilities by teaching them to ask and answer the “IF” question as they develop into present and future leaders.  Many of the most driven activists work to end the institutionalization of people with disabilities because they have a powerful vision of what our world would look like IF people had what the needed to live independently in the community.  Access to public space has largely improved, but is far from the wondrous vision promised by the ADA, which asked a broad range of IF questions, inspired by one of my heroes Justin Dart. 

Every day it seems I meet activists within our community that are asking their own version of the “IF” question in new and exciting ways, answering it with every ounce of energy they have.  The ability to ask “IF” gives us our drive because it gives us our hope.