Mismatch: A crucial concept of civilization and disability

I’ve read four books over the past two years which have radically transformed my understanding of the human world. I highly recommend all of these to readers who may feel disjointed, hopeless, surreal, useless, bemused and/or displaced by current events and daily survival in our modern society. These books won’t make all your troubles go away, but they do help make sense of them.

This is the reading list—all both pleasant and absorbing reads, impeccably written:

• Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress by Christopher Ryan

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Derek Perkins, et al.

• Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser, Xe Sands, et al.

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Each of those books is utterly transformative in its own right, and there are far too many interesting points to cover in a single blog post, but there is one overall impression I have taken from this study of human nature and our relationship to both civilization and the natural environment. That is that virtually all humans today are “disabled” in the social-model definition of the term because we are living in a maladapted environment that does not support our physical and psychological needs as human organisms.

Image via pixabay - people walking through an airport

For those who are just waking up today, the social model of disability is the concept that disability is not a problem with the individual person but rather a mismatch between an attribute of a person and their human-designed environment.

Thus, a person with a wheelchair is “disabled” primarily because of stairs. In a society without stairs, using a wheelchair would likely be considered a quirk or at most a private health matter. A person with ADHD is “disabled” because of our society’s obsession with tasks that require sitting still and focusing one’s attention on random, functionally irrelevant things for long periods of time. In a hunter-gather society, ADHD may have actually provided advantages in the type of alertness needed to procure food, which is one theory about why it is so prevalent and so much more problematic today than it was decades ago. The further we get from a nature-centered lifestyle, the more society conflicts with ADHD brains.

Similarly, I am “disabled” because I can’t drive or make eye contact, while I am living in a society where driving is central to procuring food, shelter and all the other basic human needs and making eye contact is one of the foundations of social interaction. If I lived in a society. where everyone lived in dimly lit subterranean tunnels with either no transportation or collective transportation and making eye contact was culturally frowned upon, my vision impairment would likely be considered no more than a minor nuisance. And I might be sought after for jobs where no light was available.

Even today, if the electricity goes out at night and the house is completely dark, sighted people fumble around and become suddenly “disabled” by this environmental shift, unable to even walk safely across the floor without bumps to heads or shins. Meanwhile, I walk calmly into the kitchen, easily navigating around the chairs with a hand out the same way I always do, open the junk drawer and reach for the flashlights which I am used to finding by touch.

If read through the lens of this social model of disability, my book list shows that most humans are impacted negatively by the human-built societal structures of today in ways that are significantly disabling. Unfortunately, many of these problems impact people traditionally considered disabled even more heavily than the average person. I am not, therefore, arguing that “we are all disabled” and thus people with disabilities aren’t disadvantaged. Unlike the lights going out, this societal maladaptation does not confer any ironic temporary advantage on me. But I would like to introduce abled people to the idea of looking at their human-built environment from the perspective of its maladaptations which are causing widespread and preventable illness, disability and harm.

Just as I—as a visually impaired person in a sighted society—can find workarounds, obtain adaptive technology or change my environment to better suit my body’s specific needs due to my vision impairment, I am doing the same when it comes to my needs as a human organism—as best I can—in a society that is wildly maladapted for human organisms in general.

In the list, I put Civilized to Death first because that book comes the closest to stating the disabling nature of modern society outright, although the author doesn’t have a grounding in the social model of disability, so he missed this as a further application of his research.

What Christopher Ryan does say in Civilized to Death—and the other authors reiterate—is that human beings are sadly mismatched to the modern environment. Ryan uses the analogy of different types of zoos—some where animals are kept in depressing concrete cages versus those where animals live in a simulated wild environment. He makes the case that modern cities are to humans much like the concrete cages are to animals in zoos. They present unhealthy, stifling environments for humans who suffer physiologically and psychologically as a result.

Through several chapters packed with examples, Ryan demonstrates that modern humans are suffering from deep frustration and significant unnecessary health problems because of our built environment and our societal structures. From artificially enforced sleep patterns to the modern grain-rich diet that we did not evolve for, from bacteriological and toxin exposure that is making us far sicker than our hunter-gatherer ancestors to social structures that are psychologically toxic and oppressive, Ryan shows that modern society is disabling, sickening and killing most humans in ways that early human societies did not.

To clarify, as Ryan does at more length in the book, the reason that hunter-gatherers are reported to have had a lifespan of only about 35 years is because of statistical averages. The combination of a lack of surgeries and NICU incubators and the physically demanding environment meant that infant mortality was very high. Half the population died in infancy or early childhood, despite the relative lack of either infectious or systemic disease in their societies, while the other half of the population often lived to be 70, 80 or even older, often with much better health and a happier, more enjoyable life than the vast majority of us enjoy today. Hunter-gatherers spent far fewer hours procuring the bare necessities of survival and had more time for leisure and their families and friends.

IMAGE BY ALEX NAANIOU - BARE FEET WALKING ON A GREEN FLOOR AMID SHADOWS

Human beings as biological organisms are not well adapted to a stifling built environment, the modern diet, heavy work schedules or social structures involving more than about 150 people. Some human bodies have adapted to the modern diet better than others. But as that diet becomes more and more alien, more and more humans are being sickened by diabetes, heart disease, allergies, food sensitivities and immune disorders. This isn’t because there is “something wrong with these bodies.” It is because of a food environment that is ill-suited to those functional, otherwise-healthy bodies.

Similarly, many of our bodies and brains are breaking down or reacting poorly to the stress of 40- or 50-hour work weeks with another 20-30 hours of household and caregiving tasks piled on top. How many people with diagnoses of ADHD, clinical depression or anxiety disorders would have these disabilities or need medication for them, if they lived in a natural environment where procuring the necessities of life consumed only 25-30 hours per week? Not many, Ryan convincingly argues. Because humans lived with that level of ease for the vast majority of human history, this stress and its effects qualify as a socially constructed disability.

Most people don’t see these effects as “disability” because we all experience them, so the resulting general distress is “normal” and more severe effects in some individuals are seen as individual weakness, or weirdly, individual moral failings.

As I said at the beginning of this post, reading these books and realizing that much off what is wrong in today’s world is due to a mismatch between our human bodies and modern society will not fix these problems. Much of what is wrong can’t be fixed by individuals and some of it couldn’t be fixed, even if we could all agree and work together on it. Overpopulation is the worst of it. For us to live in a well-adapted environment, where our bodies could regain the physical health and general happiness that our hunter-gatherer ancestors enjoyed, the earth could only sustain a small fraction of today’s human population.

However, there are some things that you can do as an individual to adapt your environment for better health and happiness. Just as I, as a visually impaired person, can use various methods and technologies to make sighted society somewhat less problematic for me, I have also learned to change my environment to better suit my overall human body. I have stopped eating a typical modern diet and try to approximate the type of diet my ancestors would have eaten. This has resulted in an amazing resurgence of my health over the past two years.

I have also integrated more varied physical activity in natural environments into my routines. I utilize my brain’s natural propensity to want to remember and categorize plants as a brain boosting activity. I have stopped berating myself when I don’t work a 40-hour week at a traditional job and instead look at all the various methods I use to sustain my life as a form of modern hunting and gathering. That goes along with finding joy and meaning in things that do not require a lot of accumulation of wealth.

There are many things we can do in groups of family and friends as well. Realizing that we are hard-wired to connect in small groups, primarily in close circles of around 10 to 20 individuals, is a big help in understanding our various social problems. With modern technology today, we can in fact create a small clan of close connections and a larger circle of around 100 to 150 people who we connect with for reciprocity and the sharing of information. In such groups, we can develop mutually supportive relationships. If parenting is taken as a group effort—as it was for most of human history—for instance, rather than a task for the biological mother and father alone, a wide variety of current social problems are considerably alleviated.

There is no way to create a utopian society in which we return to an environment ideally adapted to our human bodies. Again, overpopulation precludes it. Also, our bodies are not physically prepared and our minds are full of the skills and information needed to survive in our current society and almost universally lack the information and skills needed to survive in a natural environment, even if one was available. But we can gain benefits by learning as much as we can about the natural environment and spending what time we can in it.

We can—just as people with other types of disabilities do—find work arounds, assistive technologies and possible environmental changes that will help and make life a lot healthier and more enjoyable.

Much of this insight has come through studying the social model of disability and through reading and rereading the books I listed by authors who are looking for a path forward for modern humans. What are the books—fiction or non-fiction—that have most inspired you recently? I would love to get a short list in the comments.

Corporate power and free speech

A video interview with author Arie Farnam

This is a repost of the first in a series of video interviews on hope and integrity in a perilous world. This interview focuses on the influence of corporations in society and how individuals respond with integrity. 

While the vast power of corporations often feels indomitable and the manipulation of our culture and media can be demoralizing, understanding of and resistance to tyranny is spreading.

As the progress of the past fifty years in civil, economic and environmental rights is under threat, we come to see that we have come a great distance and have much to believe in and lives worth defending. 

YouTube Link

This interview also touches on how the struggle for social justice inspired my writing in 2014. The dystopian series that came out of that time is eerily predictive of our waking reality in 2017. That's why I'm reposting the video. As we struggle with immediate danger, we must also remember how we came to this situation in order to prevent its repetition in the future.

I write my stories because I cannot help myself. Writers must write. But I also write them to reach out and wake up the world from the malaise of apathy and despair. Mine are stories of hard-won and authentic hope and these video interviews tell how and why.

Learning interconnection: Where did we go wrong in trying to eradicate racism through education?

"She's kind of brown!" my daughter's friend from first-grade giggles, holding her hands over her mouth. 

My daughter giggles along with her, but covers her drawing with her hand. I'm glad to see my daughter adding realistic skin tones to her drawings, but also frustrated at how quickly she is getting an embarrassing reaction from peers. What are the chances she's going to draw a brown-skinned figure the next time she draws with a friend?

We live in the Czech Republic where political correctness and multicultural education has never been a societal or political priority. Until recently, I had difficulty explaining the confused and even outright racist comments of many Czechs when writing for American readers. Even last summer, comments on my posts about racist or ableist problems in the Czech Republic were met with shocked disbelief. 

But this past winter that has changed for painful reasons.

Creative Commons image by Guilherme Jofili

Jewish landmarks have been vandalized in the US. The winning presidential candidate called Mexicans "rapists and criminals" and publicly mocked a disabled journalist. The numbers of people killed by white supremacist vigilantes because they are or were mistaken to be of Middle Eastern background grows every other day. And of course, there hasn't been this open a display of racism against African Americans or Native Americans in decades.

We are no longer shocked by what used to be almost unthinkable. We thought our system of multicultural education was enough, that general social norms had shifted and that racism, ableism and faith-based discrimination was fading, if not entirely gone.

We've been rather rudely awakened to reality as Americans. The situation begs the question. If racism is still so alive and well in the US after so many years of celebrating Black History Month. teaching a unit on the Holocaust and a chapter on Native American history in elementary school, where did we go wrong and what should we do differently in the future?

I have thought a lot about these issues for the past ten years because I have been living in a country where racism is much closer to the surface and I am the adoptive mother of children who are among the primary targets. Their situation is like being an Arab Muslim in America. I worked as a journalist for years before I adopted children and I knew very well what I was getting into. I had seen Romani children harassed in schools, segregated by teachers and sometimes physically attacked.  I had seen them bravely and cheerily go off to first grade only to be beaten down and in complete despair by third grade. 

I knew that if I made my family this way, I would have to deal with the issues daily. I would have to educate teachers, schools, other parents and even my children's classmates. I have now begun that work, talking to teachers and volunteering to do multicultural education in the schools. The situation is so tense that I am lucky to be allowed to broach these subjects in a classroom at all. 

I know that my efforts are too little alone, but my experience has given me some understanding of what can actually change attitudes. Here then is my recommendation from the trenches on what can and should be done to provide real diversity education: I call this model "interconnection education."

Creative Commons image by Oregon Department of Transportation

• Start in preschool. This is the time for multicultural exposure programs. Use holidays and events from various faiths and peoples to create a lively and fun multicultural curriculum that will serve students well both in understanding the society they live in and in future history and geography courses that are crucial to general education and responsible citizenship.
• Require teacher training in bullying-prevention, understanding the roots of prejudice and cultural sensitivity from preschool on up. In designing such programs both the perspectives of people of color and of those who have experienced a shift in understanding from isolation to diversity must be heard in order to design programs that are both sensitive to vulnerable groups and accessible to those without much experience in multiculturalism. A moralistic "we are multicultural because we're not bad racists" approach may silence prejudice temporarily, but it will not erase it from the classroom or from society. Teachers must be the first to understand how interconnection works and why we take these issues seriously is a matter of self-preservation.
• When conflicts arise between children over sensitive cultural, racial or faith-based issues, avoid an immediate punitive reaction and call parents from all involved sides in to discuss the issues with involved children and trained teachers present. Be staunch in support of vulnerable groups in these situations, but ensure that complaints by parents and students of majority groups are addressed fully rather than being quashed and swept under the carpet without discussion. We will not solve prejudice by labeling those who have less cultural experience as bad and further isolating them.
• Many holidays are primarily religious and so they are a difficult point in non-religious, diverse schools. There is always the issue of holiday programs in elementary school. We want our children to experience community holidays and yet it is logistically difficult to include the holidays of all groups. One way to ensure a better balance is to focus on a given holiday fully for a day and move on to another the next day, rather than spending weeks on majority holidays. Another way is to have a general seasonal holiday program and assign students or small groups to learn about and reflect a holiday from a particular culture through art, costumes, food and song that can be shared with the rest of the class.
• While holidays extend beyond the individual and thus must be dealt with by the group in some way, individual differences that point to culture, race or faith must be allowed expression by individuals. There have been extensive arguments about the wearing of garments required by one's faith in public schools. One argument is that allowing, for instance, Islamic head coverings for girls promotes the oppression of women. If other parts of the program are open and diverse, it must be noted that whereas it is possible that a girl might be pressured to wear religious clothing by a family, being included in a diverse school would certainly provide greater multicultural education than a requirement to conform to a dress code would. I still see no reason for the restriction and significant harm can come from imposing it. In many other cases, the wearing of identity-specific jewelry or other symbols is simply a means of ensuring confidence and should be encouraged rather than discouraged. 
• In elementary school and high school, diversity education need not be a separate program. It should be an integral part of language arts, social studies, history and geography programs. If we hope to have a democratic and multi-racial society and if we hope to weather the currents of international relations as a nation, the next generations must have an understanding of history and geography that is balanced. rather than focused through the lens of immigrants to our nation from one particular continent and their struggle for freedom from Britain. Each piece of the puzzle that is history and geography should be set in its context. History is not about blame or victimhood, but rather about an understanding of social, economic,religious and political currents that affect us today. Historians from a wide variety of backgrounds MUST have real and active input. A balanced account of history would require significant changes in history textbooks and teacher education. But it is crucial. Without that our current troubles will recur. 
• In each of these tactics it is crucial that we recognize the need for identity concepts for all students, not only those from backgrounds outside the majority of a given community. A healthy sense of one's own cultural roots and appreciation for one's traditions as specific rather than "the way everyone does it" is the best defense against resentment of other groups. Students should recognize specific origins within larger continental or racial backgrounds. Africa is not one culture, any more than Europe is. People of European descent differ in cultural perspective, just as various groups from Africa differ. An understanding of culture as the complex ecosystem in which the various parts move and affect one another will go a long way toward practical understanding in the social sciences as well as diversity education. In music, language and art, students should be encouraged to combine cultural influences consciously rather than by automatic cultural appropriation and learn about the natural mixing and divergence processes of human history. 

Clearly these methods and strategies are far beyond our current capabilities. We must have clear-eyed goals. We can also use the concepts of this type of "interconnection education" even on the smallest scale. 

One of my current projects in this direction is the Children's Wheel of the Year series. This is a set of books aimed at families in the earth-based or Neopagan traditions. This is the fastest growing religious group in the United States and Europe and in many areas has more adherents than more widely recognized groups such as Buddhists. This is also a group struggling internally with racial and historical tensions. 

The stories in the Children's Wheel of the Year series are first and foremost engaging and fun for children. High quality educational materials are those that encourage learning through genuine interest. Secondly, they provide a realistic, modern view of how families in the swiftly growing earth-centered religions may celebrate eight major holidays. Each holiday embodies important cultural and ethical values that are important to the adventure story of the book. 

Throughout these stories there runs a common thread of interconnected diversity. While the stories focus on one particular faith, they are inclusive and irrepressible in the joy of connections to others and supporting others in their own strong and unique identities. The Children's Wheel of the Year attempts to provide a model for addressing specifics within an overall interconnected diversity program.

The story Shanna and the Pentacle specifically addresses the issues of multicultural and diversity education in the schools, while focusing on a practical issue many earth-based families report encountering in the United States--namely the banning in some schools of pentacle jewelry. While this story addresses a difficulty encountered by one group and the responsible methods children and adults can use to solve such difficulties, it does so while bringing the reader closer to the perspectives of other cultures in the story, emphasizing the need for mutual support. 

Our need is clear. We must foster an interconnected openness and the strength of diverse identities in our society and in our schools. No matter which group we belong to, we need this and our safety depends upon it. If any group is marginalized or denied expression of their identity, we know it is only a matter of time before that same marginalization and denial is visited upon others.