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Disability a new world view
After reading this article I hope not only to challenges the way in which you view disability but also the way in which you perceive the world. Lofty claims? True.
So at the start of our journey together it is necessary for you the reader to assess where your views on disability currently stand. Do you ascribe to the current social or old medical model? So to help you I have devised a simple test with a big question.
Where is Disability?
- a wheel chair user
- an inaccessible stairway
- an accessible toilet
Please consider the question as you read this article.
Ok back to my lofty claims, lofty claim number 2 to be precise,. Let us consider how does our condition determine our reality. To do this first we have to be clear about what we mean by condition and reality. I am using the term condition to describe physiology, cognitive modals and psychology. The human being exists in an almost infinite number of variations on a theme.
For example a common class room myth is that we only have five senses. To date there are nine accepted senses with the search ongoing for other suspected sensory systems.
- Equilibriocetion (balance)
- Proprioception (the body in relation to itself)
- Nociception (pain and wellness)
- Tactile (Touch)
- Gustatory (taste)
- Olifactory (smell)
- Termoception ( warmth)
- Visual sense
- Audititory sense
From person to person the individual level of sensitivity will differ. If we consider a constructivist approach there are two realities the 1st or primary reality being how we perceive and interact with world based on primary evidence we gather from our senses. Due to the variation in sensitivity of our senses this gives rise to a unique perception of the world. This unique world view is conditional in other words it depends on our sensory and cognitive capabilities for example
An adult who has profound congenital visual impairment before the age of 7 does not experience REM this lends weight to the idea that our dreams are interpreted by our primary world view or reality.
However this does not explain how we interact with each other. If our realities are personal how do we establish a sense of commonality? How can we function in large social groups?
To achieve this we must also inhabit a secondary reality, this is a shared or augmented reality. When we augment our reality we have added to our world view by means beyond our own natural capabilities. This need sharing our realities for socialization is based in evolutionary psychology and games theory. The process can be traced right back to our oral folklore traditions, telling stories around the campfire and in present times the Hubble telescope.
We now inhabit a universe of black holes not dragons; however both are equally terrifying.
Another aspect to consider is how augmented conditional realities give rise to cultures. This is difficult to examine long term in retrospect. Fortunately in the UK in 1908 the Radnor’s commission was created with the purpose of educational reform. This created specialist schools and for all their faults brought together for the first time the young British Deaf population who had previously been isolated.
In the class room they taught English, in the play ground British Sign Language was born!
In the last 100 years this has blossomed into a strong and vibrant culture based on their Conditional/Primary Shared/Augmented/Secondary Reality. We will return to examine British Deaf studies in the case study later.
So we have examined how a conditional reality can give rise to new cultures but the process is definitely not a one way street, in fact it is our cultures that augment our reality. I remember as a child my imagination being set alight by the revelation that dinosaurs were real and the disappointment that Santa Clause was not.
So the question is what processes are going on that allow our cultures to shape our reality and reality our cultures?
Presently we think of culture at a macro and a micro level. Macro cultures are universal or the core culture within a society. I.e. national identity
A Micro-culture is a distinctive culture of a group of people within a small geographical area, business or other social structure such as a family or group of friends.
So that describes the wide and the narrow perspective on culture but what about the individual, After all in their life time an individual may inhabit many different micro and macro cultures and are we not the product of our experience. So it would seem that we retain the cultures as we experience them. And it is this process I have termed as our Auto-culture or our unique cultural fingerprint.
The relationship between culture and reality is shown in the diagram below.
But how does this relate to disability? Well we have already discussed how a disability can become a culture and I know I’m putting my neck on the line here but a culture can become a disability in fact the two are interchangeable.
Using this philosophical world view I am redefining disability as;
"Disability is the disparity a person experiences within cultures from their REALITY"
Using this definition of disability it demonstrates the transitory nature of disability in other words the level of disability changes in different contexts.
The level of disparity is the Disability Factor and this can for the first time be quantified, with out making arbitrary qualitative assessments which are by definition flawed as they are based on the assessors reality. If you can measure something then you can manage it!
If we express reality and culture as a decimal percent of the number of people who share them with the person being factored.
So using the formulae
Reality/Culture x 100 – 100 = Disability Factor
Reality will always be equal to 1 as reality is an individual experience even a person who experiences multiple realities will still have multiple values of 1 however their disability factor may vary significantly.
Culture is expressed in terms of the number individuals who share a condition within a culture as the individual being factored and this should be calculated at a Macro, Micro and Auto levels.
Case Study
Let us carry out a thought experiment, first lets us construct a Micro-Cultural environment where a group of people who are considered disabled are in the majority. Fortunately we don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. Let create an imaginary Deaf Club with a 100 members and to reflect the diversity of Deaf Clubs we will assign 15 of those members as non-profoundly Deaf.
Micro-Culture (Deaf Club)
85 Deaf members and 15 hearing members
Deaf Reality = 1 Culture = 0.85 (1/0.85*100)-100 = 17.6
Hearing Reality = 1 Culture = 0.15 (1/0.15*100)-100 = 566.7
Okay what can we deduce from these figures well this shows that the hearing members of the club are more disabled then Deaf.
Now let us examine being Deaf in the context of the UK
Macro-Culture (United Kingdom 2000)
Approximate Deaf population 50,000, total population approximately 60,000,000
Deaf Reality = 1 Culture= 0.083 (1/0.083*100)-100= 1104.8
This highlights the importance of Deaf clubs for the empowerment and proliferation of Deaf Culture. But perhaps the most startling figure is still to come
Auto-Culture
Deaf Reality = 1 Culture = 1 (1/1*100)-100 = 0
So at an Auto-cultural level no-one can be considered disabled
Nobody can be born disabled.
Before I conclude I nearly forgot about the question at the beginning, I would argue that a) was an athlete b) is an obstacle (not entirely insurmountable) and c) is a label the represents the continuing apartheid of disabled people.
Anecdotally in my many conversations with people who have for whatever reason been labeled ‘Disabled’, more often than not they informed me that they were uncomfortable with the term and found it disempowering when used to describe the person they are. I am tempted to call for the ‘Dis’ to be taken out of disability we should focus on people’s abilities not what they can’t do. Is it not fairer and more accurate to refer to someone as being of mixed abilities? However what I will call for is a more progressive approach from the government. We have seen that the formation of Deaf schools was the catalyst that was needed for the formation of Deaf Culture. Government policy had a massive role to play back in 1908 the agenda was probably more class driven then any altruistic tendencies for Deaf people and they certainly couldn’t of predicted the evolution of Deaf Culture. But now we know it is possible within the right conditions, and over time if people are empowered to develop their own unique micro-cultures specific to their condition we will see new emergent cultures that will further enrich the tapestry of British Macro-culture. We need government policy to be specific and target the promotion and formation of these exciting new cultures. This isn’t about exclusion or exclusivity it’s about empowering culturally fractured individuals to develop and grow and in turn our society to benefit from their diversity
David Steven Twist
David has been working in community development for 8 years and is an associate of the Charterd Institute of Personnel Development
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