One of the most interesting cultural phenomena that arose in the latter half of the last century was the movement toward equality of previously devalued groups. This began with the enfranchisement of women, accelerated with the civil rights movement, and came to fruition with the homosexual rights movement. In all these cases, there has been, and continues to be, a tendency in the more extreme precincts of the movements, to idealize the formerly devalued while devaluing the formerly idealized, (ie, the white men heterosexual community.) Such reaction formations will almost certainly be seen from a future historical perspective as a necessary part of resolving historical conflicts toward the once marginalized.
More recently there has been an analogous struggle taking place with groups once thought of as disabled. Among the Disabled Rights groups there are additional factors that will make the outcome much different from the current resolutions we are groping toward in terms of the social place of women, blacks, and homosexuals.
This was seen in striking fashion in a post I wrote over two years ago, The Idealization of Defect, in which I discussed the psychology behind the desire of deaf parents to have a deaf child. For many of the deaf, not only did they vehemently deny that they had a disability, but they insisted that deaf culture was superior to hearing culture and wanted their children to be apart of deaf culture. The issue has gained poignancy because in recent years Medical science has begun to be able to treat certain types of deafness (cochlear implants) and many parents now face the question of seeking treatment for their deaf child.
New York Magazine has a report about the early stages of a similar struggle taking place within the Autistic Community. In a surprisingly decent report, The Autism Rights Movement, [HT: Siggy] Andrew Solomon discusses how "A new wave of activists wants to celebrate atypical brain function as a positive identity, not a disability. Opponents call them dangerously deluded." It is a long article and a brief excerpt can not do it justice but the salient points are several-fold:
Among the more highly functioning people with Asperger's Syndrome (like a milder form of Autism in which there is good language abilities) there has been an embrace of the designation of Neurodiversity. They see themselves, correctly, as having minds that function differently from the majority. Many recognize that their neurodiversity leaves them at a handicap when dealing the normative minds that surround them, while some insist, as have other disabled groups, that the larger majority should adapt to them rather then the other way around.
My initial reaction to this story was one of wonderment: What an amazing time and place we live in! People who would have once been shunned and cast out are now be arguing over the best ways in which to assert their rights and fight amongst themselves over whether or in what direction we should spend our time, energy and money looking for a cure.
My second reaction was that this is the early stages in a struggle over what it means to be disabled, and eventually over what it means to be human. In this and in other ways in which disabilities are being re-defined, there are several important developments occurring and it is likely that our entire approach to understanding disability is going to change within the near future.
At the moment, many disabilities are already being treated, corrective lenses and Lasik surgery perhaps being most prevalent. As time goes, on more and more disabilities will become treatable conditions. Once something has become a treatable condition, whether considered a disability or not, it becomes a choice whether to have the condition or not.
While these questions will first be asked of the deaf or blind, soon enough we will be discussing whether an unenhanced human with an IQ of 100, statistically average, is handicapped compared to the new humans who have enhanced their intellect with add-on memory modules, new drugs to do away with the need for sleep or that enhance attention and creativity (in ways much more focused than our current drugs for ADHD), and eventually new hardware that allow our minds to function at much higher speeds. (And consider what will hapen when people with IQs of 150 are considered handicapped because they lack enahncements.)
[As an aside, I have been thinking of how we might define disability in an age when people are so sensitive to such terms. I would suggest that an attribute is a disability where, were a majority of a population to have that attribute, the society would fail. This is a tricky definition. For example, it would include homosexuality as a disability since if the majority of a society were homosexual, the society would stop reproducing and the society would fail after one generation. Homosexuality is certainly not a disability for any individual in our culture (though homosexuals and women in the Arab world might well be considered handicapped, with the handicap imposed upon them by the culture), but on a larger scale, it would be were it prevalent. Further, in a situation where medical technology allowed for the successful incubation of children in artificial wombs, would homosexuality then be considered a disability? I suspect that we will one day find that sexual orientation, like so many other attributes that are inseparably linked to the workings of our minds and brains, will be nothing more nor less than a choice, changeable at one's desire. In a similar fashion, my nearsightedness, corrected by surgery, is not now a disability yet in the days prior to corrective lenses, if a majority of a population were nearsighted, that society would be in grave danger from a better sighted tribe. Perhaps it would be best to say that some, maybe all, disabilities are situational.]
Athletes are already discussing what it means that unenhanced humans can on longer compete with enhanced humans, even when the enhancements are not terribly well targeted pharmaceuticals. This goes beyond steroids, which have had such a dramatic impact on sports, to include the accepted practices of archers and shooters using Beta-blockers to slow their heart beast and increase their accuracy.
These are only some of the first of the enhancements that are going to occur as biotechnology takes off as a true informational science and technology.
It will be interesting to see what happens when parents can choose to cure childhood blindness or deafness, or, dare we imagine, Autism. Of even greater interest will be to see what happens when parents can choose their child's IQ, skin color, or sexual orientation.
The current issue of IEEE Spectrum on- line is devoted to articles discussing the possibility of the Singularity occurring in our life times. The articles are speculative and involve looking 10 + years down the road to discern the glimmerings of a technological singularity. The issues are complex and fascinating. The future will be here before we know it and thinking about such issues will soon be impossible to avoid. Michael Anissimov at Accelerating Future has begun to look at some of the articles with a critical eye and his work is also worth looking into.
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