Asperger named "disability"? What is "disability" for you?

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LaetiBlabla
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31 Jan 2016, 6:16 am

From the point of view of a monkey, a human is disabled because it is unable to climb on trees.
Monkey, not seeing the point of building a house, finding it stupid.

From the point of view of a human, a monkey is disabled because it can't build a house.
Human, not seeing the point of climbing trees, finding it stupid.

Is disability not being able to do the same things as others?
Isn't everybody disabled for some things?
And, when you are unable to do something, don't you compensate by developping other abilities?

What is "disability" for you?



selflessness
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31 Jan 2016, 7:36 am

I think the whole premise of a disability is having a hard time with things that are easy for the general population. It's all relative so it's hard to pinpoint a true definition.



ASPartOfMe
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31 Jan 2016, 10:44 am

If your aspergers makes you bad at networking or eye contact but you are great at typing and writing you have plently of communcation ability but you will often not do well because the majority of society has decided networking and eye contact, body language etc are the most important ways to communicate. That makes you disadvantaged, not disabled.

if you do not plan well at all due to executive functioning issues I can not see how you will not struggle in any society. in that case it is a true disability.

What is disadvantege and what is disability will vary based on severity, the individual, his or her environment.


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techstepgenr8tion
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31 Jan 2016, 12:00 pm

It's a floating variable to me and it's one that depends on the general skill-sets, aptitudes, and intolerances of the culture that one lives in.

Our societies are generally destructively competitive on the economic fight-for-food level and eugenic-driven on the fight-for-mating (you might as well say fight-to-be-loved) level. The somewhat scary thing about how this floating point works is that a person could be anywhere in the range from being able to survive in the wild but being constantly outdone, outrun, and out-competed by other people all the way to being bed-ridden and needing full care from a staff of nurses from womb to tomb.

To that extent disability seems to be a question of whether you have certain unchangeable attributes within yourself that renders you impotent in the face of the world or at least which damages your capacity for authority with respect to the destructive behavioral patterns of other people around you to where you have to retreat because the effort is too overwhelming in tradeoffs for whatever benefit it may give.

Even if we had a Gattica culture where everyone's genes were in the process of 'perfection' and there was no such thing as classical disability anymore - the bottom 10-20% would be living under the same stigmas as the fully disabled today and whatever low to middle ground of people would be fighting an incredibly bloody war of social shibboleths and artificial litmus tests meant to disqualify people under a certain particular mark of genetic/neurological performance.

As far as I can tell it's never been a meritocracy and it never will be, rather it's a game of culling the 'weak' that's gone on since time immemorial and I tend to be pessimistic about any possibility of our changing that.


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lostonearth35
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31 Jan 2016, 4:14 pm

Disabled is when it's hard learning or doing things the "normal" way. Most non-disabled people think only the normal way is the "right" way, which is utterly stupid of them.



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31 Jan 2016, 6:05 pm

"Normal" - which is what disabled is judged relative to - can be so variable & relative to the situation, but there are some minimum thresholds I'd imagine. I'd further imagine that there are situations (rare as they may be) where being neurotypical is a liability.

For me, a "disability" is anything that stops me from doing that which a typical person thinks I should be able to do as easily as anyone else. Note the careful wording, as it penalizes the extremely talented as much as those with a disability. We live in a society that values conformity a wee bit too highly, I fear.


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31 Jan 2016, 8:48 pm

Something I've considered/realized for a while: I'm very nearsighted (first got glasses at 9) and insulin-dependent diabetic (diagnosed shortly before I turned 13), but since we live in a time where accurate glasses are easy to make and insulin injections/blood testing/etc. are easy enough, I've never really been affected all that negatively by either. If I would've been born 100 years ago, I would've probably been nearly-blind until I would've died a few years later.

What does that mean for "disability"? I guess if there are convenient enough ways to work around something, or are more socially acceptable, it's less likely to be considered so.



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31 Jan 2016, 11:11 pm

selflessness wrote:
I think the whole premise of a disability is having a hard time with things that are easy for the general population. It's all relative so it's hard to pinpoint a true definition.

It is a very relative, subjective term, and is used in a lot of vague ways. It might be more useful to approach it from a legal standpoint: a disability is a trait that is significant enough to require some kind of accommodation or support in order to survive or thrive. I see this trait as something unchangeable--not something that can be overcome through a lifestyle change, medical procedure, or therapy. Many disabled people can and do survive without support, but may have a shortened lifespan or live in impoverished circumstances.


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01 Feb 2016, 12:32 pm

Disability means you have a harder time with something than the general. You have to work harder and you use more energy. It can also mean you are not able to do something most people can do like hearing loss is considered a disability so even if you wear hearing aides to hear normal. It can also mean you have a different way of learning so you need to be taught in that style while the general don't need it to be taught to them that way. If you also have a different way of processing things, you may need more instructions and more detail than the general. Anything in the minority is considered a disability unless you are gifted of course because giftedness isn't a disability. If you are borderline intellectual functioning, that also isn't a disability under USA standards despite that they also have to work harder and they tend to drop out of high school and not go to college and they tend to live in the low class working uneducated jobs. I often feel I am in this range here despite being told I am very smart and bright and what my overall IQ score was in the 5th grade and what a psychologist wrote about me when I was ten saying she would say I am in the average to above average range based on my other IQ scores so my overall score is not accurate.


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zer0netgain
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02 Feb 2016, 3:56 pm

selflessness wrote:
I think the whole premise of a disability is having a hard time with things that are easy for the general population. It's all relative so it's hard to pinpoint a true definition.


I say this with the addendum that a disabled person is unable to compensate without some special accommodation (above just more time to learn how to do what everyone else can do).

If you need more time to learn to do X, you really don't have a "disability" once you learn how.

If learning to cope as best you can still leaves you unable to do X as well as everyone else, you're disabled.



TheExodus
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02 Feb 2016, 7:19 pm

Many things are easy for many people, but eventually it comes to the point where we struggle with basic tasks. I won't go into detail. Ultimately, if you can't walk, get dressed, or manage any of these tasks that are considered rudimentary and almost instinctive to most people, that's disabled.

Then, of course, we're only talking about physical disabilities and not mental. Depression is probably the most common mental disability, but there are of course far more severe cases such as Alzheimer's, dementia (or are they the same thing? Correct me if so), and nervous syndromes such as Parkinson's.

I think the term is flexible, but the consensus is likely always tipped in the favour of; if it's a difficulty not commonly faced by the general public, it can be deemed a disability.


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