Don't usually listen to NPR but tuned in briefly today to an Odyssey program, interviewing someone on "disability" and the place of the ADA. He attributed it to the Frederick Taylor efficiency expert mode circa 1900, which created the idea of "able-bodied" as the norm and therefore "disabled" as the inferior. (He used "valorized", a term I'm too old to touch.)
Meanwhile, yesterday got word that my 69 year old sister will need a hip replacement. Also, recently discussion about the ethics of infant euthanasia--doctor in Netherlands drew up guidelines for ending the life of children under certain instances (like lack of a functioning brain, a skin condition that leaves the infant in pain and the skin peeling off from any touch).
Strikes me that humans, and other animals, are innately competitive so we always have a pecking order. Taylor conceptualized and categorized it, but a good part of the rise of "disabled" must be from the growing wealth of society which permits us to express (occasionally) our better instincts. We want to preserve all life, but the reality is that the harder the life, the more likely the "weaker" will not survive. Think of extreme cases--the Donner Party the women survived, the weak and isolated did not. Before hip replacement surgery, my sister would have faced a painful, immobile, and probably short life. Now she can look forward to keeping her kid brother in his place for another 15 years or so. So while there may be a bit of truth in the guy's take, which seemed a slap at industrial capitalism, it also hides truth, the truth that we are making progress.
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