Tom, you said that...
...But impairment surely does exist outside of human construction and
interpretation. Animals can be impaired, and it limits their ability to
survive and reproduce in their environment. Pre-linguistic humans
presumably were often impaired, and the consequences were similarly
disadvantaging. Norm, relating to average, or perhaps to 'evolved
species capacity' has meaning beyond human normative valuation, surely?
I think that impairment is worse than non-impairment in many
circumstances.
...I disagree. Impairment is surely dependent on the context and how you
view the world around you. I feel that you may be inputting modern values
around quality of life into something much more personal and complex.
Comparisons to animals are, as I'm sure you know, dangerous - as we know
evolution does not work when applied to the human species because of our
capacity to think and feel beyond the biological... and we do have the
ability and imaginiation to think beyond the biological constraints that we
may have, so that life is not valued by biological limitations. It is this
capacity to rethink our biological limitations that enables us to lead
fulfilling lives. In this sense impairment may neither be worse or better
than non-impairment, it is depedent on the context and value systems that
exist and we need to keep pushing those boundaries so that able-bodied
people understand that impairment does not equal worse than non-impairment.
What is needed and should be reiterated many times is for people and society
to rethink the way we value each other and fight against the increasing
trend of pointing to biological determinism and instinct that pervades much
modern pure science and popular tv programmes to help us understand that our
'lives' are what we and society allows us to make of them.
Yours
Glenn
Dr Glenn Smith,
Research Fellow
-----Original Message-----
From: T W Shakespeare [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 07 January 2003 03:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Obstacles to identity formation
Larry said:
"impairment merely re-adopts the old notion of disability as it existed
prior to the social model."
"Words have no meaning except what we make of them and they are
certainly not constant in what they purport to convey."
"I a paradoxical absolute relativist deny that there is any norm in
anything and that number and value do not really exist outside of human
construction and interpretation."
I would tend to agree with your first two statements, broadly speaking
and not wanting to quibble.
But impairment surely does exist outside of human construction and
interpretation. Animals can be impaired, and it limits their ability to
survive and reproduce in their environment. Pre-linguistic humans
presumably were often impaired, and the consequences were similarly
disadvantaging. Norm, relating to average, or perhaps to 'evolved
species capacity' has meaning beyond human normative valuation, surely?
I think that impairment is worse than non-impairment in many
circumstances.
Perhaps we need a comment from Ron Amundsen?!
Tom S
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