Yesterday, the H.R. 3195: Amendments Act of 2008
passed the House, 402 to 17. I will list the nay votes at the bottom,
but just be glad Ron Paul didn’t get anywhere with his campaign. Ron
Paul is a doctor and should know better.
Speaking of knowing better, there is a new story about an autistic child and his parent being kicked off of a plane before the plane left the ground. (HT to Deafmom)
I don’t know what really happened so I won’t comment on which side was
right or even if there is a clearly right side. What I can comment on
is a blog post I read (again, HT to Deafmom) that called for people with special needs children to either sedate them or stay home. If
you’ve ever been forced to withstand the screaming of a child while on
an airplane where you cannot escape, you know how horrible it is and
how painful it can become for everyone on the plane. No one would dispute
that or dispute the fact that children should be able to follow
aviation rules when flying, or that their parents should enforce those
rules. All of that is obvious and hardly needs to be mentioned by logic
loving people. However, the thing that disturbs me about the opinions
expressed in that blog post is that disability is something that is not
normal. She states: “There’s lots more I can
say on the whole overuse of special needs syndrome that’s making life
so annoying for normal people - but that’s for another day.”
Pick
your jaw up off of the floor and let’s get down to business. Where are
people getting this idea that there is such a thing as “normal” that
applies to more than one person? My idea of normal, disability or no
disability, is absolutely different from everyone else’s idea of
normal. Even my husband has a different idea of normal, and we live in
the same house and share everything. I think
people who are illogical and refuse to listen to what other people have
to say are abnormal; I think that because they are outside of the idea
and reality of normal I choose and am forced to accept. Yet,
there are people, probably even people I know or knew, who think that
the strict adherence to reason is abnormal in its denial of emotion 99%
of the time. The point is, there is no possible way to describe or
agree upon an idea of normal that applies to any hint of plurality. It
is not normal for me to think of people with disabilities as something
that should be shameful, though it is clearly normal for the blogger
previously mentioned to think so. Which one of us is normal?
The
problem is easily elucidated when you think of the phrase, “We’re just
like everyone else; we just do things in a different way.” I may have
used that phrase or something similar to it in this blog. It’s an
inherently fallacious statement because it assumes that there are
people out there who are not different. Yet, we are
defined by our limits and those limits are enforced by the fact that
there is otherness, there is individuality, there is me and there is
you. I am not the same as anyone else on the planet because I am
different; dare I say it? I am unique… just like everyone else. The
fact is, our only normal state is in the very difference that inheres
itself to humanity. We all fit into the category of human being, and we
all fit into the category of singularity.* Those hyper categories are
the things that bind us together, but they are also the things that
show us that our differences are our only sameness; normal literally
translates to, creates and destroys difference.
I
wonder why that blogger has the idea that she is normal and someone
with “special needs” is not normal. I have to wonder how many times in
her life she has been represented completely by other people, or how
often she sees her own thinking manifest in others. We may see glimpses
of that sort of thing here and there, but to find someone who is
exactly like you would be impossible, even if we were able to discover
it. I can no more tell what you are thinking than you can tell what I
am thinking,** which makes the measurement of sameness unthinkable.
When we believe we’ve met someone who is just like us, we are often
more disappointed by them than by people we recognize as “not our
kind;” this stems from the betrayal of self that we feel when the
person reveals that they are not, in fact, like us, or as like us as we
imagined. Those are the times when our difference is known to us and
when we realize that we will never be anything but alone in our
individuality. I wouldn’t even say that identical twins*** have
anything other than their duality, though they share the same genes.
Even twins develop as people in different ways, which allows for the
fact that we are a priori beings with a posteriori lives. Regardless of
your belief in biology over personality or a soul over nothingness or
anything in between, you must admit that there are many things in this
life that we are forced to accept and that anything that forces
acceptance is a limitation. We are the products of our limited
experiences and physical nature and those two things force our normalcy
to be what it is, regardless of our willing it otherwise. Yet, this normal thing is only an illusion and must ever be thus.
Normal
is an illusion because normal does not and cannot exist. As I stated in
an earlier post, normal can never be static due to the fallibility and
constant forward motion inherent in biological life. Unless a thing is
something that exists unchanging, it cannot be said to exist at all.
While people die, the energy that made up the person does not die, nor
does it degrade. It exists without change, though it manifests itself
in particular ways. The appearance of change is there,
but the actuality is not. Is a dog ever anything but a dog? Is energy
ever anything but energy? Are you ever anything but you? The thing
itself that is a human being will remain (evolution is another topic
and one we do not need to go into at this juncture); “normal” doesn’t
exist for the thing itself because that would allow for variation,
and the thing itself cannot admit for variation. If there is
something that is normal, there must also be something that abnormal.
This is true for Humanity; is there Not Humanity? Of course not. Normal
cannot have an a priori existence. What we are finally left with is the
idea we attach to the word “normal” without anything
that points to its actuality. Normal is as normal does, and normal does
not do at all.
Where does this idea of
normal come from, then? It turns out that our idea of normal is nothing
more than a statistic; if you are a part of a group and everyone in
that group has blond hair, you are a part of that group. If you are a
part of a group and everyone but you has blond hair, you exist in that
group as the way that shows the statistical nature of the group. It is
nothing more than a simple majority! The “normal” blogger who inspired
me to write this post was repulsive in her bold acceptance of her
superiority in her perceived normalness. The endorsement of some sort
of special class of people who are entitled to more simply because they
are part of a majority is an idea that continues to do a great deal of
damage to humanity. Eugenics was founded on that principle and it is
the idea that motivates anyone who would take away the rights of
others. What is ironic is that the blogger is trying to claim that
people who have “special needs” are asking for special accommodation,
above and beyond what “normal” people have. Yet,
her idea of her own superiority is one of claiming special rights for
herself and others like her when people who are different “annoy” her.
She is seeking special accommodation for her group from other groups
and is doing it in the mode of seeking to deny special accommodation to
other groups. She is asking for something that she claims to abhor and
requiring other people to act in a way that recognizes her rights and
the rights of people like her above others! She is asking other people
to accept her majority as a thing in itself, a thing that exists no matter what. I
find that so… puzzling. I suppose I shouldn’t expect a great deal of
logic from a woman who claims that because her kids have asthma she
could request a special accommodation for them to breathe. The right to
breathe requires special accommodation?
I’m
going to take my abnormal body to bed and sleep to nurture my normal
existence. Sleep as a requirement for human life is static, though my
mind never is and never will be. What I wouldn’t give for the mindless
comfort of the majority when I am trying to sleep!
*Even conjoined twins are singular and have singular ideas.
**As
it turns out, people can tell what I am thinking: Yesterday, my
students told me that they can tell when I get frustrated in class
because my face turns bright red. I had no idea!
***The
semester before last I had two sets of twins in one class. This
semester I have four people in one class who have a twin. What are the
odds?
Nay votes:
GA: Broun, Paul [R]
CA: Campbell, John [R]
CA: Doolittle, John [R]
TN: Duncan, John [R]
AZ: Flake, Jeff [R]
NJ: Garrett, E. [R]
TX: Gohmert, Louis [R]
TX: Hensarling, Jeb [R]
GA: Kingston, Jack [R]
GA: Linder, John [R]
TX: Marchant, Kenny [R]
TX: Paul, Ronald [R]
TX: Poe, Ted [R]
GA: Price, Tom [R]
CO: Tancredo, Thomas [R]
FL: Weldon, David [R]
GA: Westmoreland, Lynn [R]
Picture credit
