Jim Heartfield asks me Wednesday Nov, 18/98: You say that some people choose blindness. I would like to see statistics on that. I myself wear glasses. Opticians seem to be doing very good business whenever I visit. Very few people given the opportunity would embrace their cataracts.
I'm interested. How would you make an argument for the superiority of blindness over sightedness?
-- Jim heartfield
Doyle Historically the Greeks thought of blindness as a unique form of wisdom, so various people chose to blind themselves to be "wise". But setting aside such cultural anamolies, I know blind people who would not choose to be sighted. I am not saying every blind person thinks that way. But there are people who do feel it is just fine to be blind, and having vision would demean the meaning of their life for them. Usually these issues are thought of as medical solutions, as in fixing the "poor broken disabled person". The so-called medical model that makes everything ok. If a person has congenital childhood cataracts, sometimes at adult hood, for various reasons vision returns after the cataracts are removed. The resulting brain circuits are overloaded with stimulation which can't be processed anymore, and the effect is crazy making and a genuine horror to experience. A lot of experiments upon disabled people are done this way in medicine because people get it in their heads things must be fixed to "normal", and the results make life worse for people. The same can be said for the deaf, and other childhood arising disabilities. In essence there is such heavy pressure to fix a disability only to find out the fix is worse than the "problem". How would I find statistics about what the blind feel about this. People don't collect such data, because you can't fix blindness. It would be a hypothetical speculation with no purpose.
Doyle You know it is hard to know what makes a life satisfying and rewarding. We live with something, and it becomes a deep part of us. Why does it have to be so hard to grasp that a blind person might feel their life is valid, not invalid.
Jim Well, that's mighty big of you.
Doyle I sounded condescending to you? I assumed you weren't conscious of the equation between margins and disability. Perhaps you did carefully choose your words. You really mean that when someone is in error, such as Pomo's, that the community of disability is the right source of metaphors about being marginalized? I was hoping I could get you to "see" the light about being blind. I guess you see only what you want to. regards. Doyle Saylor