[BlindTlk] Question about societal attitudes toward blindness

Wed Apr 24 17:58:22 UTC 2019

Michael, 

This was a good question.  I think that it is a nebulous thing.  What I mean by nebulous is that it boils down to our own individual inner experience - that is - how we define ourselves.  There are a lot of perceptions that non-blind people may have, or share.  Education is it, but some don’t care about that.  It is what is how we hold ourselves, as an example for ourselves, that matters.  Whether I were to be missing a leg or an arm, or if I signed instead of hearing and talking, or do not have full use of the single most dominant sense, sight, that people use in our society, it may simply be in the genetic hardwiring of people, that they may perceive a deficit.  Ok.  It has taken me years to arrive at these two words:  So What?  I think this is a great question, and issue.  It has touched me deeply on my own path.  

Over time since my own onset, I have found myself to handle it numerous ways, from vulnerability, to a maverick kind of sense of myself, like, if anyone has half a brain, they’d see that if I can triumph over this, then hell I must be someone who knows how to practice self mastery, and would be a really cool person to have around in a crisis.  Think of the example of Michael Hingson, (check out his book), who, because of his self-development, didn’t have to give a rat’s butt if the lights went out in the stairwell of the world trade center, when he led a group of people all the way down the tower stairs.  

What other people think is a crapshoot.  It depends on their ideas, or lack of them, and societal conditioning.  What matters, is how we hold ourselves.  

I’m 62 and wasn’t born blind.  It happened 10 years ago.  My own experience with it has been from both sides.  It has also been on both sides because it is vision impairment, not total blindness.  But within across a desk or cane tip range, I may as well just say blind.  Now, about being perceived by others, back to what I said above.  I trained O&M for a year.  But it took another year, before I would allow myself be seen back here in my small town, a twenty minute ride from where I trained, walking with a white cane.  I had work to to accept and own that I have what I have, and am who I am.  

Now, frankly, I feel a kind of pride inside when I pilot the cane, because I am doing something that my former self, and likely others, might think, ranges from challenging to difficult to impossible.  And I move fast.  It’s fast with my dog, and even faster just on cane.  That’s a good feeling.  The hardest thing for me to do has been to bring my former self, who was very physically accomplished, back into integration with who I have become as someone who doesn’t have the vision that I had.  Trying to compare them will kill you.  They simply have to be sewn back together, learning how to be less self-critical.  

I have a background as an indigenous skilled wilderness tracker.  When I take a group out, and first sit down with them to tell them how the training will go that day, and how they will see things that were formerly invisible to them, they are fired up.  But when I drop an, oh, by the way, I’m going to teach you this, and, I have neurological blindness, their jaws drop.  You can smell the smoke coming out of their ears.  Some just don’t know how to get their head around it.  But they are already about to do the impossible.  That’s my new world.  Enjoy it!

But then there’s the other side.  Because I’m not totally blind, I am subject to the occasional, quote, imposter syndrome, unquote.  For example, I agonized for months, before allowing myself to consider training a dog.  I didn’t yet understand completely what had happened and how I wasn’t seeing anymore, and I didn’t think I was blind enough!!  I went to self training, because I wasn’t yet capable of accepting, that, as I found out later, I would have qualified for a program dog.  It’s just Psychology.  

I coach leaders of organizations and businesses.  Naturally, I listen to videos, etc that leaders who are pretty famous in big companies are featured in.   In them periodically, we hear some prominent leader, disclosing how they experience this syndrome - which is an unfortunately normal human inner voice of self doubt.  The voice says, essentially, who do I think I am, to claim that I am good enough to fill in this position?  This is what I meant when I said it is a personal subjective experience.  I would say to this, having experienced it, never mind what anyone out there thinks, at all.  It is more to the point to ask, how am I feeling about myself?  What do I accomplish?  What makes me feel fulfilled, even proud?   What has become natural to me, that to someone else who is sighted, would think is difficult or impossible?  

From asking someone to let go of my elbow at an intersection, to hearing the regular I’m sorry’s, or the people scrambling to jump several feet out of my way when they didn’t even need to, or when they collect their kids as I approach (like, Joey! Susie! move! watch out!)…even as I would have walked right past them, to all of the Can I Help You’s… …  It can give a guy a complex.  I know that it is that they just don’t understand, or at least in the span of a momentary interchange, they don’t just can’t get it, that none of that is necessary.  I’m just another guy crusing through.  

I say, for myself, keep developing skills of perception, and continuously stretch what seemed tough or not very possible.  My own quest has been in addition to other things, to develop ceramics to the point of featuring in galleries, staying in martial arts, and returning this year to ballet training, 40 years after dancing classical Russian.  It’s not easy.  Often I feel like an idiot.  Sometimes it really pisses me off and I want to walk out.   But I’ll tell you, it sure does help to push the dents back out of my container so to speak.  

This is that two-sided issue that I’ve been mentioning.  I don’t do it for other people, or to hear complements.  But psychologically, we have in our hard wiring, a circuit that *is* a societal circuit.  It lives in us, as an as-if kind of circuitry.  We witness ourselves as a feeling.  But if we aren’t sociopaths, then somewhere in there, we also witness ourselves *as-if* it mattered to others, how we show up and perform.  That, quote, attaboy or attagirl, unquote appreciation circuit applies inside ourselves, as a normal bit of self consciousness, not as living in a vaccuum.  So when I look at something being demonstrated, and I get that there is motion and it might look reasonable, but then a second later it made absolutely no sense and has to be explained or modeled together, I usually feel frustrated.  But once I get the routine, and execute it, it is satisfying.  It might only be disappointing, just to have finally done it after all that hard perception work.  But when I step back out of myself, and look at this guy from a distance, perhaps as-if I were someone else looking, I see a guy doing something hard core impossible, and that makes me feel good.  I think that in the end, that’s what matters.  

-Peter

> On Apr 24, 2019, at 2:56 AM, Walker, Michael E. (UMSL-Student) via BlindTlk <blindtlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Thank you all for your responses on this. I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about there being a few of us compared to people who can see. It would make sense, then, that it’s constantly a cat and mouse game. New people are born, don’t get exposed to blind people, so blind people keep putting their selves out there. It sounds like it’s just a fact of life. It also reminds me that I’m on the right track, because I’m working like everyone else. I do agree with the point though that it can become a problem if your boss has stereotypes about it.
> 
>> On Apr 23, 2019, at 2:14 PM, Judy Jones via BlindTlk <blindtlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Very well put.  I think the reason we are constantly educating, whether we like it or not, is that there are so few of us in proportion to society, and with each generation, a new crop of people arise that still need educating.
>> 
>> When I have spoken at schools, in particular, I tell the kids that they are going to be tomorrows parents, employers, and leaders in society, and how important it is they understand about blindness, what it is, and what it isn't.
>> 
>> Judy
>> “Embrace the day with its mercies and blessings.”
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: BlindTlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Mark Tardif via BlindTlk
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2019 10:21 AM
>> To: Blind Talk Mailing List
>> Cc: Mark Tardif
>> Subject: Re: [BlindTlk] Question about societal attitudes toward blindness
>> 
>> Three words, education, education and more education.  It will probably be a 
>> lifetime process for you.  It can be frustrating at times because you would 
>> think we would have made much more progress in this area by now.  I think 
>> putting yourself out there and just meeting people and engaging them is an 
>> excellent start.  Most people never expect to meet a blind person so it's 
>> easy to understand the lack of education among the public regarding 
>> blindness and the fact that blindness is a characteristic, but it is not 
>> what defines us.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Mark Tardif
>> Nuclear arms will not hold you.
>> -----Original Message----- 
>> From: Walker, Michael E. (UMSL-Student) via BlindTlk
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2019 6:13 AM
>> To: blindtlk at nfbnet.org
>> Cc: Walker, Michael E. (UMSL-Student)
>> Subject: [BlindTlk] Question about societal attitudes toward blindness
>> 
>> Good morning,
>> 
>> Something I have been troubled by for a long time is why society sees blind 
>> people differently from people who can see. For example, I often find that 
>> when the topic of friendship or dating comes up, I still get asked questions 
>> like whether or not I have considered dating a blind person. It tells me 
>> that society still has a ways to go in learning that blindness is an 
>> inconvenience rather than something that defines us. We like to participate 
>> in the same venues as everyone else, without being seen differently. How do 
>> we overcome these challenges? The only thing I know to do is to keep doing 
>> what I’m doing: putting myself out there and meeting people. What do you 
>> guys do to overcome these challenges? How do you feel about being seen 
>> differently because you’re blind?
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> Mike
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