Planet of the Blind

Everyone knows “self help books” make up the biggest section in the bookstore. I’ve been assisted by them. I was a child of alcoholics. I’m disabled and I strive for emotional intelligence. As a stepdad of two teens I’ve read about “the launching years” and “mean girls.”

Because I hold many of these books in high esteem I’m reluctant to criticize the genre. (I’m a poet and once many years ago I had literary friends over for dinner. One guest saw “Weight Lifting for Dummies” on a shelf and sniffed loudly about our lowbrow habits. I said no one lifting weights is a genius and that ended it.) Of course smart people do lift weights but it’s good when you’re a novice at anything to acknowledge you might be a clod-pole.

So I believe in the self help category at least to an extent. Like the first rule of medicine a book should do no harm. (One can imagine parodies like “Go Play in the Traffic” and “Just Pretend You Have a Parachute.”

It’s good to critique a cultural norm even if it does some good. One huge drawback to self help books is that they generally avoid the subject of groups. This makes sense because Americans view pursuing happiness as a matter of individuality. You have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit, not the whole village. In turn small “d” democracy is understood in very subjective ways.

Because I’m disabled I’ve been asked many times to talk about disability as a factor in understanding diversity and inclusion. The disabled are part of every identity and rather significantly. Diabetes is the number one cause of blindness in the US and poverty heavily impacts this. Those without health care are far more likely to lose their sight.

When I talk about this I find myself thinking that where diversity and inclusion are concerned we often think in the manner of self help when what we really need is group help. How would group help differ?

I’m not saying diversity and inclusion programs should become group therapy. Perish the thought. I’m talking about curiosity. Let’s say group help is the art of taking true interest in the people around us. Too much diversity and inclusion work stops at “we’ve diversified now let’s get on with it” and therein lies a problem.

As a blind man who’s been in countless board rooms and meetings I know there are tons of people who’ve thought to themselves: “There’s a blind person. Nice dog. Good that he’s here.” This happens to members of each outlier group in any work setting. We’re in the room. The room is now inclusive. Down to business.

Group help means doing the work of diversity. It means taking the time to know where we’re from, what our interests are, what art forms do we like, what obstacles and triumphs have we had? We should admit we don’t know much of anything about our co-workers and moreover we’ve no experience with how to know each other. Personal questions are often offensive or racist, sexist or transphobic or ableist–it’s best to ignore our differences. Personally I’ve taken offense when the first thing a near stranger says to me is “how did you go blind?” There are of course a million variants of this. That person may be an ableist of course but it’s also possible he or she has no idea how to talk to people. I think Americans have almost no clue how to talk to each other. You can joke and say we’re better off not doing so. But if we want a civic sphere that’s rich and fascinating and yes, celebratory of our diversity we have to learn a few things about group help.

Here are some thoughts on the matter:

1. We need to be curious about others in generous ways. Remember that the people around you are not the supporting cast in your personal drama. (This is a major principle of emotional intelligence.)
2. Being curious doesn’t mean asking personal questions like “how did you go blind?” A better approach when you’re meeting someone who isn’t like you is to take what I like to call the “paper airplane gambit” which means asking someone if they’ve ever been successful making one. (You can come up with your own subject matter. I’ve never made a paper airplane that didn’t crash straight to the floor.) Group help means sharing small things that might be quirky and letting things go where they may.)
3. Though number 2 above seems to belie this, group help isn’t a game. How many Human Resources events have you participated in where knowing others is turned into charades?
4. Group help means knowing your students and co-workers are deep people, often heroic, marked by tragedy and occasional triumphs and yes, each and every person around you knows incredible stuff you don’t know. We’re very weak in this area in the US.
5. Respectful curiosity makes working with others more interesting. The more one learns the more empathetic he becomes. Empathy is one of the prime antidotes for anger. Again, we’re very weak in this area in the US.
6. True curiosity without vanity leads to reciprocal self-disclosure. Who knows you might make friends.

If you go looking for group help books you won’t find any. But our national effort at understanding diversity and inclusion (launched far too late in our democracy as I see it) may lead to a new section of the bookstore and take emotional intelligence to a whole new level. Nowadays when I speak to groups I aim to promote curiosity and its best practices because as I see it the pursuit of happiness lies in this direction.

Dear Ted Cruz:

My stepdaughter lives in Austin, Texas and has been entirely without power, water, and nutritious food for many days. She is not a symbol or metaphor–she’s one of the millions of Texans currently fighting to stay alive. Do you understand fighting to stay alive? Do you know the “golden rule?” I sense it’s fruitless to ask. After all you’re the man who, speaking of history said: “Twenty years from now if there is some obscure Trivial Pursuit question, I am confident I will be the answer.”
Question: “Who was the Texas Senator who abandoned his constituents and fled to a Mexican resort during a pandemic and a vast power and water crisis?” Maybe those people of the future will play Trivial Pursuit in Cancun? But let’s forget them. What other “obscure” questions might be asked which your name could fit as an answer? Your Princeton roommate Craig Mazin might help with this. He said of you: “Ted Cruz is a nightmare of a human being. I have plenty of problems with his politics, but truthfully his personality is so awful that 99 percent of why I hate him is just his personality. If he agreed with me on every issue, I would hate him only one percent less.” Ready? Here’s another TP question: “What male Senator would be most likely to dress as a woman to escape the Titanic?”

Poetry is to prayer as wheat is to bread. One of the reasons I’m uncomfortable with academic creative writing programs and organized religion is because too few professors or priests have strawberry jam.

**

Joan of Arc ate quince jam before battle as it gave her courage.
I’ve had quince jam and judge it to be fine, but it’s not strawberry.

There’s a Finnish saying: “Sweden is a blueberry, Finland a strawberry.”

How I wander.

**

The soldiers who survived the Crusades introduced  jam to France. Many of them were blind. I picture them tramping over hostile terrain, sightless, clutching jars in their arms.

Nostalgic for the local bus there’s a pandemic…

Thinking of Saarikoski
Windows retreating to Platonic originals
God’s casements now dirty over the world

(Or “less than” God, press two)
Women and men drive circles in the dark
Herakleitos in Finnish more sensible than Keats

Through Logos all things are understood
Sick lights on at the neighbors
“One must talk about everything according to its nature…”

Nostalgic for the local bus there’s a pandemic…

Thinking of Sarrikoski
Windows retreating to Platonic originals
God’s casements now dirty over the world

(Or “less than” God, press two)
Women and men drive circles in the dark
Herakleitos in Finnish more sensible than Keats

Through Logos all things are understood
Sick lights on at the neighbors
“One must talk about everything according to its nature…”

The Art of Asking Able-Bodied People For a Life, Part One

With apologies to Georges Perec let’s start with his words: “Having carefully weighed the pros and cons you gird up your loins and make up your mind to go and see your head of department to ask for a raise so you go to see your head of department let us assume to keep things simple – for we must do our best to keep things simple – ”

Let’s say this isn’t about a phobic man whose alienation is insurmountable. We’ll substitute disability. Having carefully weighed the pros and cons…we gird the loin cloth and go to see our head of department to ask for what’s rather quaintly called a “reasonable accommodation” and Lo! Lo! We’re of course asking for the right to have lives. Accommodation, reasonable, means the right to live.

Please forget the soul crushing experience of having to ask for the right to live. You must forget how brutal this is. You must behave like those passengers on the Titanic who played pickup ice hockey. The art of begging for your life must be a game. Able bodied people love games, the crueler the better.

This is why the boss, the Dean, the district manager, (able bodied people have many titles) like to keep you waiting. You need something central–permission to use your oxygen tank in the library; a Braille sign pointing out the exits in the dormitory; a fire alarm for the deaf; Lord how it goes on–someone to shovel the sidewalk in front of the wheelchair ramp; medical coverage; maybe just a single day of acceptance which I think is also an accommodation–but Mr. or Mrs. Able keeps you waiting. All you want is an equal shot at life.

Once upon a time I was told by a waiter that I couldn’t come in his restaurant. He didn’t understand that my guide dog is protected by law and is allowed everywhere the public goes. In fact he didn’t care about this at all. It was raining. Hh was playing the ableist wait game. So I pushed past him, entered the Tony little restaurant and announced loudly to the assorted diners that I was being told I couldn’t come in as a blind person. Diners booed. I was seated.

The point is accommodations are not negotiable no matter what the abled employment-education complex wants you to think. Any modification that allows the disabled to fully live is a matter of life itself.

Dignity is not a game. Not anymore. Black Lives Matter; #metoo
speak to a thing beyond dignity, nobility itself.

Life is noble.

Can I get away with this?
I wrote “Percy Shelley”
Now you must think of him
Flitter moth on fire
Predatory cruel
Great talker though
Alright let’s play this game
“Erasing Shelley”–
“Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.”

I once went to the home of Sergei Esenin in Tashkent. There was a Caruso record on the Victrola. One of Isadora Duncan’s scarves was framed behind glass and hanging on a wall. A book of poems lay open on a table. All three of these artists died tragically when still young. The cramped apartment was a museum to arias I thought. Esenin wrote:

“I do believe in happiness!
The sun has not yet faded. Rays
Of sunrise like a book of prayers
Predict the happy news. Oh yes!
I do believe in happiness!”

Describing the ardor of dance Isadora Duncan wrote:

“Now I am going to reveal to you something which is very pure, a totally white thought. It is always in my heart; it blooms at each of my steps… The Dance is love, it is only love, it alone, and that is enough… I, then, it is amorously that I dance: to poems, to music but now I would like to no longer dance to anything but the rhythm of my soul.”

And then there’s Caruso singing “Donna non vidi mai” from Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut”:

“I have never seen a woman, such as this one!”, “To tell her “I love you”, my soul awakens to a new life.”

I pictured Duncan and Esinen whirling around the little room to the astonishingly beautiful aria sung by a tenor who was said to spin gold threads. And I thought of death at bay in that tiny room.

As I recall (but may have it wrong) Esinen’s book mark was a demi tasse spoon.

Scholars and students of disability studies have had a great deal to tell us about the components of embodiment by which we mean “fringe” bodies held at remove from the tasteful drawing room. The TDR is your university, corporate conference table, the chamber of commerce, and yes, organized religion which is excused from adhering to the Americans with Disabilities Act presumably because in this “Christian” nation everyone knows the lame and halt are outcasts though Jesus said no such thing. One imagines the bishops reading John Rawls whose just society supposed no one would ever become ill. With a tip of the hat to Mel Brooks: “let’s have the dancing Jesuses over there; the singing Jesuses over here!”

Of course I like the wheelchair Jesus and the sign language Jesus and the guide dog traveling Jesus, the limping Jesus, and so forth.

In her edited volume “Foucault and the Government of Disability” the philosopher Shelley Tremain unpacks the creation of enforced disability, that is, disability as a vehicle for governance:

“…the governmental practices into which the subject is inducted and divided from others produce the illusion that they have a prediscursive, or natural, antecedent (impairment), which in turn provides the justification for the multiplication and expansion of the regulatory effects of these practices. That the discursive object called “impairment” is claimed to be the embodiment of a natural deficit or lack, furthermore, conceals the fact that the constitutive power relations that define and circumscribe “impairment” have already put in place broad outlines of the forms in which that discursive object will be materialized (Tremain 2001). In short, an argument about disability that takes Foucault’s approach would be concerned to show that there is indeed a causal relation between impairment and disability, and it is precisely this: the category of impairment emerged and, in many respects, persists in order to legitimize the governmental practices that generated it in the first place.”

If you’re not a philosopher or a historian of governmental effectuation this passage might be as difficult as abstract poetry but let’s say disability was created by government to withdraw status from outlier bodies because they couldn’t work in the newfangled factories of the late 18th century. Disability originally meant and continues to mean lack of economic agency. Governments then created carceral institutions hidden behind tall hedges. Thus the government of disability both creates disablement and enforces the lived experience of disability.

Now putting a ramp on a church is just too damned expensive. Easier to keep the fringe out. If there wasn’t something wrong with them Jesus wouldn’t need to cure them. Curing them is Jesus’ job. We love Jesus. But you must agree the disabled aren’t tasteful.

What does this have to do with Foucault and the government of disability? Plenty. Enforced unfitness is designed to be unresolvable. Then exclusionary. A human difference that’s always too expensive. And in the pandemic, why not let them expire?

The best of the liberal intellectual tradition calls on us to engage with and talk back to the enforcements of bio-politics.

Here comes wheelchair Jesus.