Predetermined

I had a perspective offered to me the other day. Race has no determining, explaining factor on a persons: intelligence, competence, behaviour, or personal power. The line from an song I learned in catechism “Red and Yellow, Black and White”, “Jesus loves the little children of the world”. One could argue for more colours or shades but you get the picture, race doesn’t matter. Its easy to extend this a further to include gender, gender doesn’t matter either. Then it became harder. I was going to add in culture, culture having no determination on personal success, and I stopped. Culture can be so debilitating hindering and handicapping that its not true, culture can determine a persons ability to be successful even hindering it and or making the person a failure instead.
The one notion I wanted to add is that Disability isn’t a deterring factor on personal success either. Disability is interface and logistics. You get those two issues handled and your good to go. I’m a very smart person and not shy about it, being wicked fast and wicked smart serves me and helps me with my disability. The interface issues comes up for me because its easy for me to think your stupid and its easy for you to think I’m stupid. I can’t or don’t read a lot, it hurts so I do what I have to do. Even with the brilliant technologies I have access to reading is painful. I ask stupid obvious questions and to some people I’m stupid, “why don’t you go and read the book, the manual, the document and get the data yourself?”. We’ll it hurts. My learning style is verbal and visual. If I can have a discussion with a person over a picture rock and roll, I’ve got it. If I have to read about it, it becomes a ton of work. But by most peoples definition I am successful, and I’m disabled. There are a number of us who are disabled and successful and by extension I am going to say that disability has no impact on ones ability to be successful. My logistics are a thing I manage constantly as do we all. It takes the time to do the things I need to live, no more no less. Whatever is left over I can have fun with. Disability is nothing more than logistics and interfacing.
Genetics are such a loaded conversation for me. I watched “Gatica” the other day the movie offered a view on a future with genetic profiling determining success. Its an interesting notion as 99% of our genes no matter race, or gender or disability are identical. we have a 1% difference. Using that 1% to determine success or failure or viability is in my opinion not a good thing. After all we are adaptive and the knowledge passed on in our genes is beyond our scope of understanding. When nature needs to make an alteration or a change. What happens if we filter out natures work because it is a non desired trait. Because of my disability there are things I can do that you can’t, yes there are things you can do that I can’t but what if some of the “differences” in me are the next phase in evolution or perhaps nature is trying out a trait for inclusion in a future release. If we think we can mess with genetics and filter this and that and make determining choices what kind of mess are we going to make.
As a species we have done some major genetic engineering in recent times. With the development of the birth control pill we have tampered with the genetic selection process. Woman are choosing mates that they wouldn’t have naturally. High divorce rates deterioration of the family unit etc. and the impact on our genome is significant. What will it mean. Perhaps extinction, I would wager at least the eradication of the Caucasian race, we’ll see over time perhaps.
Determination is made solely on our culture which is made up of our beliefs and values, which we can change. I found out why I feel at home in the United State of America and I don’t in Canada. The US is the world leader in recognizing and adopting legislation guaranteeing rights for the disabled in the entire world. Canada, and I’m doing more research, may not even recognize fully disabled persons as citizens. Disabled people in Canada have not been recognized as citizens and we were termed “idiots”, until very recently. Disabled people are mentioned and the rights of the disabled listed in the context of the federal government of Canada and that’s it. Disabled rights in Canada can be nullified by the province you live in. Again probably why I prefer Ontario over Alberta, they are barbarians here in Alberta after all. The Canadian government is notorious for recognizing people but never defining rights, or providing rights in a context then taking them away again, a Yo Yo regime. Just look at Canada’s record in human rights and how Canada treated the indigenous people of Canada. The acts governing Indians in this country were after all the basis or Apartheid in South Africa.
Culture can be changed but Culture is a determining factor for individual success. After all we are all 99% alike and we are also 97% genetically alike to monkeys. I can assure you disabled people are at least 99% alike not 98% and we are definitely not monkeys. Cultures can be changed and all of us can enjoy success.