Confirmation bias is of course universal. The self, whatever it means, assembles a mosaic of preconceived views. Some are descended from the cradle; some from bad teachers. No matter what we say about it CB depends on a lack of comic irony, the inability to probe the limits of one’s customary ideas. I’ve several bad thoughts and they them come from unhappy engagements with a legion of hard hearted able bodied authority figures. Throughout my life from Kindergarten to today I’ve been told my disability is a problem.
So in a spirit of admission, my biggest confirmation bias is that I tend to think most if not all able bodied people are ableists and since I’ve been hurt over and over I anticipate the hurt. This means the open hand of my soul is often empty.
It gets worse. My disability bias absolves me of digging deep both inside myself and “out there” among strangers. I am hereby admitting I can be lazy.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had it with rank and file discrimination against the disabled and I’ll go to my grave decrying it. This isn’t an essay about going soft. This is about the difference between essentialism and soulful ambivalence.
Confirmation bias assures that I’ll go on thinking all white men are racists; all heavy set people are comedians; all able bodied people hate me.
Cultural theorists say, often with muscularity, that confirmation bias is sagacious.
But my grief and yours coincide.
I cannot grow without confronting my pain.
People are scared of disability. They believe without examination in compulsory normativity.
Most people despise their own liberty.
The central tenet of fascism is that all people outside “the party” are miscreants.
Freedom is, in all its beauty, a pursuit which means pain.
I will not participate in minimizing my pain or yours. Not will I adopt a cheap script.
Planet of the Blind 