[P2P-F] P2P-Foundation Digest, Vol 85, Issue 10

[Eric Hunting]

An experience I'm all too familiar with myself. Spent most of my 
childhood and young adulthood going through the same scenario. 
People--including physicians who should know better--assume illness is 
just temporary. You either get cured--fixed like a machine--or you die, 
but either way there's supposed to be a simple finality to it. When 
there is no such finality, then they start blaming the patient. For 
physicians, a chronic illness is a challenge to their competence, and 
they resent that. It often breaks up families. People often can't deal 
with the lifestyle changes being around a chronically ill person can 
impose on them, especially when the physicians aren't validating the 
reality of that illness. The rationalization of 'tough love' is popular 
in these situations... This subtle able-ism among physicians, teachers, 
and indeed 'professionals' of every sort, is rife in the contemporary 
culture, paralleling aspects of racism. Just recently, as I was facing 
that lawsuit from the publishers, both their attorneys and the judge 
accused me of not really being disabled because--I kid you not--I wrote 
too well for a disabled person. The attorneys actually submitted 
transcripts of things I wrote online as 'evidence'. This would seem 
outrageous except that, long ago, when I first applied for SSI 
disability income, the judge overseeing that case denied my application 
for exactly the same reason! Have you ever noticed how many people 
compulsively speak to those with obvious disabilities with the sort of 
tone they use when they speak to children? They do this to the elderly 
too. There's a common--almost instinctual--assumption that the disabled 
must be mentally disabled as well. If you don't fit these 
preconceptions, well, how can you really be disabled?

Our culture remains rather primitive in many ways.


On 1/15/18 1:29 AM, p2p-foundation-request at lists.ourproject.org wrote:
> Subject:
> [P2P-F] Fwd: Learning to Be Sick by Rabbi Elliot Kukla
> From:
> Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> Date:
> 1/15/18, 1:28 AM
>
> To:
> p2p-foundation <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
>
>
> a beautiful text, well worth reading,
>
> Michel
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Tikkun* <magazine at tikkun.org <mailto:magazine at tikkun.org>>
> Date: Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 10:49 PM
> Subject: Learning to Be Sick by Rabbi Elliot Kukla
> To: Michelsub2004 at gmail.com <mailto:Michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> -- 

-- 
Eric Hunting
erichunting at gmail.com

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