Tom's Views

Low vision, faulty legs or arms, deafness, and the symptoms of simple aging can heap big challenges on people so affected, especially in dating. Further, not only is there the challenge of the disability itself to cope with, but also, the negative ways most non-disabled folks regard the disabled.  Many disabled people report that they’ve struggled over the years to date people they find attractive. The root of that struggle is this: When the non-disabled learn of the disability, they immediately bolt. They avoid dating a disabled person. This generally happens regardless of whether people tell them early on, or hesitate several weeks. No matter how well the non-disabled know the disabled, once they dub the disabled as such, natural selection seems to dictate that any romance that might have been, vanishes forever. Most healthy folks avoid the disabled men. So the disabled might as well become asexual.

Some disabilities hamper more disabled women in this way than disabled men, while for others more men are negatively impacted socially than women.  Just about any disability that impairs a man’s ability to provide well for a woman and family, discourages non-disabled women from dating him.  Likewise, any disability that impairs a woman’s ability to properly birth and raise children
discourages men from dating her.  The result is that most disabled people, regardless of sex, do not regularly date much less marry.  They are left alone and isolated.  While the healthy are lonely as they look for that “perfect mate,” so too are the disabled while they search for that rare person (disabled or not), who accepts them and who does not regard their disabilities as disabilities.

To be sure, the non-disabled (those in perfect health) will often be courteous, and perhaps even pity disabled persons, as they attempt to secure their places in Heaven with God, once their life here on Earth is done. But they’ll likely never seriously date a disabled person. They will rarely be in awe of him.  So, non-disabled women will never see disabled men as acceptable mates. He will never be the “perfect” man in their eyes due to his disability.  Nor will the disabled woman ever become the goddess in his eyes. Not even the holy enticement of the eternally good afterlife makes most of those in perfect health truly love disabled people, and view them as complete equals.

But this is so sad, because dating a disabled person can be one of the most rewarding experiences a mortal can enjoy. I’ve dated numerous disabled women and non-disabled alike in my time. I have found that helping a blind woman locate a coat that she’s misplaced, read a users’ guide for a new appliance, or describe what’s happening on TV screen to someone who cannot see it themselves makes me feel quite useful and needed.  It erases any guilt I might otherwise feel, for being too idle, and fills me with a greater sense of
meaningful purpose.  There is no more justifiable way to spend your hours, than in the service of others.  Indeed, I feel much less lonely while helping.  I sense that I’m truly making a positive difference in the life of a wheelchair-bound person for example, when I push them to lunch, or around the mall as we shop.

Helping others is perhaps the safest, yet most effective antidepressant.  It makes us feel good about ourselves, and the disabled represent a ready-supply of opportunities for helping.  Perhaps people at large would not be so depressed these days, if they’d only help others  little more. People are simply too focused on themselves and what they want for themselves.  This narcissism can leave us feeling quite sad, especially when we so often do not get what we want while believing strongly how much we deserve it.

But dating a disabled person definitely lifts spirits.  While helping them find greater happiness and joy in spite of their plights may not give you precisely what you think you want in life, helping nonetheless will attend well to your rightest needs.  True, you probably won’t make lots of money serving others day-in and day-out.  But you’ll experience increased health; both physical and mental.  You’ll truly get outside of yourself, and thus, observe a much longer-lasting sense of achievement than any job promotion, bigger house, or better car can ever provide.  Plus, you’ll lower your stress levels, as it’s much easier to please someone you’re helping than a cranky boss and his or her ever-increasing expectations of you.  So if you feel sad that you’re not making a bigger positive difference in this world, then by all means consider dating a disabled person.  I believe that the disabled were probably put here to not only test the brawn of compassion in the healthy, but also to help the healthy remain healthy by providing endless opportunities for meaningful service.  So help yourself and the disabled as well.  Date the disabled.  If you have any need whatsoever to give of yourself, you defiitely won’t be sorry.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Darwinism: Bad News For Blind Lovers
• There Is A Place For Pity Love

Yes, generally speaking, I oppose the overly mandated, self-sufficiency philosophy of the   National Federation for the Blind  (NFB).  I’ve read of NFB fighting the installation of textured edging along subway platforms that alerts anyone walking there that they’re walking dangerously close to the tracks.   Why would NFB oppose such a safety-conscious and beneficial aid to anyone blind who uses those platforms when boarding trains?  Talk about cutting the throats of the very folks they’re supposed to be serving. 

I feel that any advocacy organization, such as the NAACP, the ACLU, the AFLCIO, OSHA, and the NFB among others, were created and took hold because large populations were being oppressed, excluded, or discriminated against.  If these injustices had not been happening for such long periods and to the degrees that they were, these groups would not have formed because there would have been no need for them.  It’s hard to rally people without a cause that they believe strongly in.  The groups formed to campaign for greater rights and freedoms for their constituents.  If those rights had been present all along, then again, the groups would not be here today.  In short, if more of the blind had been happy with their lives and how society was treating them, then the NFB would never have formed. 

As I read about the NFB, it appears to me that they don’t want extra help.  Why is that?  Why would people be so against being helped?  I’d say that it’s because in our culture under normal circumstances, a person’s not supposed to need extra help, and the NFB, as I have seen them,  would have the public believe that the blind need no extra help and that they don’t want it in fact.  In this way, the NFB believes that it is bringing about more acceptance of the blind in mainstream society; the philosophy being that if the blind need less from the main stream, then the more likely it is that the main stream will accept them. 

Indeed, some NFB members are quite insistent about this.  I knew some of them once.  These were the kinds of people who cussed out a pedestrian who offered to help them get across a busy street, or who yelled at bus drivers for calling out the next stop for them.  But after seeing how those offering the help thereafter cowered away in the presence of any blind person they’d spot, it’s clear to me that these militant people aren’t doing anything good for the blind cause by behaving with such hostile fervor.  Thus, the NFB certainly does not represent the ideals that I as a vision-impaired man espouse.  In fact, I want more help from the sighted community; not less, thank you.

I don’t mean to suggest that all NFB members are radicals like the ones I’ve known.  But I’ve experienced first hand and read about so many of them, that it appears that extremism dominate the NFB agenda, and I want no parts of it.  Why?  Because as a legally blind man, I know that I cannot do everything that my fully-sighted colleagues can.  I also realize that my life is tougher every day because of that.  I don’t like that extra toughness and I’m looking for any ways I can find to ease it.  To that end, it would be foolish of me to associate myself with organizations who refuse to acknowledge this extra dose of hardship that all of us face as handicapped citizens.  It is tougher for us.  I’ve lived the life.  I know this, and I think that as citizens of this society, much more of the infrastructure needs to be improved to accommodate the needs of vision-impaired folks.  Honestly, I’m tired of always trying so hard to fit into the main stream.  Well, maybe we need to bend the main stream a little and make it flow closer to our lives.  Thus, I’m against the NFB’s overly-stated, self-sufficiency philosophy because how it overly downplays and dismisses the   real   needs of the blind. 

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Accepting Limitations
• Asking For Help
• Blind Hardships
• Book Of Job Lesson: Accept Your Plight
• If You Think You Can
• More Help for the Blind, Please
• There Is A Place For Pity Love
• To A Blind And Sad Job Seeker
• We Cannot Achieve Just ANYTHING We Want

How is it that we’ve come to live in such a tit-for-tat or quid pro quoculture these days? Are people just so worried about losing something that they’ve become reluctant to truly give of themselves unconditionally? 

In fact, we need not   get everything back   we   give in kind  in order to secure lasting happiness; money being the possible exception to this. So why are people so intent on keeping such detailed scores of who does what and when?  Why do they insist on getting everything back that they give in such precise measures?  That doesn’t sound very compassionate of them to me. 

It’s true that getting something back for our efforts feels nice, because it shows that our beneficiaries appreciate us.  But refusing kindness to those who really need it because we estimate that they cannot give us something equally valuable back, is crazy.  Why?  Because by passing up opportunities to   give of ourselves   without reservation, we’re also skipping over chances to raise our levels of   contentment in life.  Since lacking contentment in life seems to trouble people more than ever these days, I’d say that society in general really needs to practice more   unconditional love   giving, and be far less concerned with over-giving.

Loving unconditionally (something that the selfish person might deem as over-giving) is a joyous thing and is thus, probably the most effective anti-depressant available.  Yet so many folks fail to give in the most therapeutic ways possible (E.g. unconditional giving), because they’re so concerned that they’ll be taken or that they’ll waste their lives giving without getting the happiness they seek in return.  Indeed, they have their own agendas for reaching happiness and believe that they must stay focused on only those paths to reach it, else they’ll never be happy.  So they refuse to take the time to give in ways that others need them to do so. 

Consider the dispositions of those who do not give much, and I think you’ll find them to be chronically sad, depressed, mean, and discontented with their lives.  I’m sure most of us have observed that grumpy old man or woman neighbor; the person who sees no one, and will not allow little kids into his or her yard to fetch a ball that they kicked there by accident.  Nor will this ironically lonely individual retrieve their ball for them. He’d rather deny himself their company even though it would only be for a few minutes. This sad person paces the halls in his house, all by herself, angry, frustrated, snappy, and worst of all, unfulfilled.  If only they’d try reaching out a capable hand to help others less capable now and then, they’d probably find opportunities for lasting happiness in places where they never expected to find it.  Giving is such a loving thing; at least as much so for the giver as the receiver.

My lady friend enjoys giving me long back massages, but I don’t return them because I just don’t enjoy doing them. Instead, I reimburse her favor in other ways: I help her shop. I buy her things she needs for her apartment. Plus, I bail her out when she accidentally messes up her computer.  Indeed, I devote much energy to making her day better, although it’s not the same energy that she devotes to improving my day.  So, while I’m confident that I return the general pleasure to her that she gives to me, I realize that I do not give her back precisely what she gives to me.  But there’s nothing wrong with that arrangement, as long as both people are getting things they wish to receive in the relationship. 

Thus, there’s no hard and fast rule that says that if I accept anything at all, that I must give that same thing back in return.  Who made that up?  We need less quid pro quo and more   unconditional love   both given and received, to lessen society’s need for therapists, anger management, and other expensive yet stopgap remedies for unhappiness.  Next time you feel angry, sad, or depressed, just try giving unconditionally of yourself to someone that really needs your kindness.  See if then, you don’t feel better about your life. 

Tom Hesley

Often sighted people wonder how blind men can find women attractive given that he cannot see them. Well, in short, the allure of women reaches way beyond any visual boundaries created by blindness. So while her visual appearance can indeed be a compelling reason to pursue a relationship with her, there are many other non-visual trappings about attractive women as well, that enable a blind man to still know and enjoy her beauty. Consider that:

• Without vision, a blind man relies more on his remaining senses (hearing, smell, touch, and eventually, taste) to assess just how sexy a woman truly is to him.
• While he may not be able to view her beauty from afar, a blind man can hear her voice (a prime indicator of attractiveness), listen to how she walks, hear her clothes rustling about and thus, get an idea of how she dresses, how she sings, whispers, sighs, hums, and so on.
• He can hear what other men are saying about her as well (particularly, the sighted men), and thus, get an idea of how attractive his sighted peers believe her to be.
• The blind man can appreciate how she speaks; her choice of words, her temperament, and gain valuable insights into how she thinks in general by how she addresses him and others.
• The sense of smell can provide valuable clues about the woman’s attractiveness as well. It can answer questions like: Is she clean? Is she healthy? What does she enjoy eating? How often does she brush her teeth and take a bath? Does she take a lot of meds? Does she smoke or drink, and how much?
• As he gets to know a lady, the blind man can employ his sense of touch. She may guide him to a seat by offering him her arm to hold while she leads. Or she may give him a friendly hug of greeting. From this, he can gather how thin or heavy she is, how tall, her body type, and her overall level of physical fitness. Indeed, at worst, blindness only delays attraction; it does not prevent it in most of the blind males I’ve known.
• If the relationship progress to intimate levels, the blind man, like anyone else, can use his sense of taste (kissing, caressing, an so on) to learn more about her that helps him determine whether she’s to his liking or not.
• Finally, one does not require sight to know how well or poorly someone treats them. Blind men are likely just as sensitive to this as any sighted man, and perhaps more so because a blind man must trust the woman more not to betray him in a love relationship. More on this in future posts. But here, suffice it to say that blind men are highly capable of recognizing what they want with their skills of evaluation and inference, without literally seeing it first

Again, while full vision would enable the blind man to more quickly gather this information earlier on in a new relationship, his sightlessness does not prevent him from accurately assessing her candidacy for true love. One does not need good sight to gather this critical information and thus, determine if he’s attracted to the woman. Indeed, blind men are just at “turned on” by women as are sighted men; in fact at times, more so, since there are no visual distractions or deterrents for him to be “turned off” by. While it’s true that he may have to wait a bit, until she moves close to him, to know just how attractive she is, her magnetism is still easily deduced without seeing.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Blind Hardships
• Help From Sighted Women
• Power Imbalance: Blind Men Dating Sighted Women

Darwinism and its modern incantation, Evolutionary Psychology, are difficult reading for the blind and otherwise handicapped people. As with the Old Testament in the Bible, so far I find all bad news for the mating-minded disabled fellow in several Evolutionary Psychology texts I’ve read so far.

Further, reading the book,   Survival of the Prettiest   by Nancy Etcoff was largely to blame for the relentless sadness I’ve experienced at times, because it offers little hope for anyone who is neither really pretty, nor really rich, nor extraordinarily enabled. Admittedly,   Survival of the Prettiest   is a well-written work with hundreds of references to supporting studies. That is in fact, probably why I found this book so disheartening. The handicapped are indeed at a severe reproductive disadvantage.  As such, selection pressures steer the attractive ladies away from us. Reading that book while getting many rejections from women on the Internet, I feel now as though my dream is more futile than ever. My own experience seems to bear out precisely what Darwinism predicts. It’s no wonder I was down.  I’m daunted by Darwinism, because I’m vision-impaired.  So I wonder what my chances are if, as Darwinism suggests, women typically only mate with the highest functioning (non disabled) males.

How would Dr. Albert Ellis with all his Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) knowledge, instruct on how to advance against this seemingly impossible situation, where the blind man must face the realities of Darwinism to find a true love.  Ellis believed that humans could think their way out of more problems than they believe they can.  So the love news for the blind may be not all bad with the right thought processes in place if one has enough knowledge to properly utilize REBT techniques.

One argument that the REBT student might use to persuade the handicapped to keep pressing on in spite of the grave realities of Darwinism, is that that Darwin was quite the accomplished scientist.  That’s true, and his words shall remain preeminent in psychology now and for many generations to come.  But Darwin, in spite of his apparent completeness, still omits some of the story.

For instance, the deeply thinking REBT seeker would realize that Darwinism does not figure compassion into the mating game, because perhaps, sympathy has no healthy role as a criterion in mate selection. Nevertheless, I wonder if it would be possible for a disabled person to appeal to a woman’s kindly side as opposed to her erotic side at first, to get her to lower her barriers of   prejudice   long enough to give him a real chance. Most people resent another’s pity, and quite actively seek to avoid it. This attitude is frequently expressed by the handicapped. But pity can be a potent antidote to prejudice, long enough to open up her eyes so that she sees beyond the handicap in the fellow.

The blind ought to consider asking for ladies’ pity, openly admitting their handicap up front, and briefly relating the mating hardships they’ve encountered previously. They might consider fully acknowledging the woman’s aversion to dating someone understandably poor and lacking in social status like themselves. But they would ask her in spite of all that, to give them a break, and emphasize that they did the best they could, given their difficult-to-manage circumstances.

This would a long shot, yes. But when time is marching on, desperation indeed calls for desperate measures.   To overcome the prejudices of natural selection that social Darwinism explained so well, the handicapped truly need the compassion of attractive women to help them make their dreams of true come true. If the blind could convince the ladies that only through their compassion could they ever truly touch their dreams, maybe the women would not be so brutally rejecting. If the blind could impress on an attractive woman the power she has to brighten their lives for a time, perhaps they’d not so quickly reject when they first observe that the blind man is blind.

As painful as Darwinism-based Evolutionary Psychology is to read, reading it is probably necessary study for the blind man to develop a realistic view of his place in the dating world, and to get him thinking about ways to overcome the implied drawbacks of being blind, and move forward in the business of finding a true love.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Blind Hardships
• Consider Dating A Disabled Person
• More Help for the Blind, Please
• Power Imbalance: Blind Man Dating Sighted Woman
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References

• Survival of the Prettiest   book information

Dear [Brandon],

Many views I struggle to tolerate, though I actually wish not to put up with them at all.  But I stomach them to preserve peace with others and avoid the heated arguments that face-to-face discussions of them can produce. 

One common opinion I strongly oppose is the wide-spread opposition to building   mosques   at   ground zero   or   anywhere else   throughout America.  I find this hostile view toward Muslims offensive because such unfriendliness promotes inequality and perpetuates discord and hatred among religions.  When one religion (Christian) denies another (Muslim) the freedom to build a church (mosque), then much anger occurs as seen in the near-hysterical demonstrations against building the mosque at ground zero.  Curiously though, the Muslims supporting the mosque were virtually invisible and quiet, while it was their rivals (the Christian-American majority) who were doing most of the yelling, taunting, vandalizing the construction equipment, and so on.  Those acting the most righteous in this conflict were typically the most violent and hateful in the whole mosque-at-ground-zero affair. 

It’s infuriating that the Christian-American majority is so uninformed and intolerant about how benevolent and peaceful non radical Muslims are. Ask Christian Americans why they oppose mosque building at most any location, and most are hard-pressed to answer.  Of course, because prejudice can rarely answer the tough questions like this without lots of stammer and uncertainty.  But when they do respond, their rationale seems woefully inadequate to justify the sorts of restrictions on an entire religion that opposing Muslim mosques in America embodies.

The Majority   is a great place to be as long as it never turns against you, as it apparently has against the religious freedoms of American Muslims. People hide their flawed thinking behind the banner of preponderance (behind each other), and so, never really have to justify their misguided positions on their own; without backup from others like them. It’s the old “safety in numbers” phenomenon. That is: Subscribing to majority rule makes it much easier to persecute a person, as many others are doing the same.  Majority rule (or better yet, mob rule) is  also very dangerous for those in the minority. Certainly, majority might makes not majority right. Yet Christian Americans continue to relentlessly fight Muslims who wish to build mosques. 

You and I have lived in the minority throughout our lives.  Your sexual orientation makes you a minor (so to speak), as does my visual impairment make me a minor. So perhaps this has given us a keener appreciation and thus sensitivity about the sort mob oppression that happened surrounding the building of the Muslin mosque at ground zero. Nowadays though unlike yesteryear, I’m happy with my dealt hand of vision impairment, because it has made me a more tolerant and compassionate person toward those who are different.  I’m different myself, and I believe that that has enabled me to better appreciate and more fully accept others’ differences.  I understand the supreme benefits of a diversity-appreciating society, and the need to promote such a collective yet diverse existence.  Thus, I have no problem with Muslims building mosques anywhere they wish so long as the adhere to local ordinances.

Christians may dominate the American political landscape currently. But America is by no means an exclusively Christian nation.  We’re not supposed to be of one faith here; but a diverse and numerous set of faiths.  Both Christians and non Christians alike should keep reminding the population at large of that.  We need to replace this Christian righteousness regarding the mosques with a healthy dose of good old fashioned humility.

Many Christian American newspaper columnists I’ve read seem to just want to fight with all Muslims; particularly when they argue that the connection between Islam and terrorism is immutable — like Islam is a single person, and when a small few of them commit a violent crime, then the Christians fault all of Islam.

Finally, liberalism is sometimes discredited in America these days because it supports Muslim mosques. Well, liberalism has prevailed in most of the election cycles in the past century due to the high regard it places on the ideal of total equality. But while liberalism proved to be out of vogue in 2010 elections, many folks nonetheless espouse the liberal agenda. Numerous conservative columnists are dreaming if they think that liberal ideals carry no weight with folks.  When people are hard pressed, their conscience punishes them when they show too little compassion.  Many folks today are feeling ashamed that at one time, they opposed Muslim freedom, gay rights, enfranchisement of all races, and so on.  So too will it be the case with the Muslim mosque at ground zero. 

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Majority Oppose Muslim Mosque Near Ground Zero
• Mosque At Ground Zero
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• Two Weak Arguments Against Mosque At Ground Zero

[Emmy] and I recently discussed the extra troubles that the   blind   and   vision-impaired must face daily, particularly when growing up in the US foster care system.  One common hardship happens when the foster parents favor blood (their own biological children) over the foster children they care for.  Foster parents can show consistent and at times, relentless favoritism for their own blood over the foster kids. Add to that the difficult of a foster child being a blind girl, and this can further amplify the difficulty of   blood favoritism, and drive the foster parents away from that foster child and toward their own fully sighted biological children. 

My friend [Emmy] wrote this very heartfelt note on my blog about her hardships playing the dual roles of blind girl and foster child.  Raised in the confines of the foster care system for nearly fifteen years, [Emmy] offered some poignant descriptions of her feelings as a foster child, and how sad she felt at times.  I’ve included this letter below.  For the previous part of this discussion, see here.

—–

Dear Tom,

I agree with you that the blind need more assistance from the government. I know from personal experience how hard life can be. I was placed into the foster care system at a very young age and found it extremely difficult to fit into my foster parents’ biological family. I felt like an outsider because I was blind as well as not being their [biological] child.  I also felt like they were showing favoritism towards their younger child.

My parents have gone through some tragedies of their own, but that still doesn’t change anything. My parents’ younger daughter suffered a horrific sledding accident which left her in a coma for six weeks. Doctors didn’t think that she would make it, but she did. She’s very different from other people because of the accident. She’ll never be able to live on her own or be one with society. Sure, she has a part time job filing papers and that sort of thing but she’ll never be able to provide for herself which is very sad.

I feel sorry for her that she’s different from others but my parents should not have treated her better than me. Just because my sister’s mental capacity isn’t the same as mine doesn’t give my parents the right to favor her over the rest of the foster children they took care of.  I always felt sad when I observed my sister getting to go everywhere with my parents, where I had to sometimes stay at home and baby sit the foster kids.  This didn’t happen all the time but I didn’t like it any better than she did.  In fact what saddens me the most is that my family has a monthly get together where they all go out to eat and spend quality time with one another.  I never went to these dinners due to not being their own child.  I often felt like I should not have been born because even though my foster parents took me in, I felt like I really could never be part of their family.  It’s not fun growing up in a home where you don’t feel like you’re equal with everyone else.  It’s almost like they keep you at a distance from them and their family.  Yes they take care of you and yes they show affection to you but you know that you’ll never be truly theirs as a fourth child that they never had.  Nothing will ever take this pain away from me. 

I would like to be given a chance to be part of someone’s family not because they feel obligated to but because they truly want to.  I believe that my foster family had their heart in the right place in taking me in but how they showed their love and affection towards their kids and to the foster kids were totally different. How I felt towards my sister while growing up is still haunting me to this very day. I know that I will never be able to change what happened to me but how they treated me whether it was a conscious or unconscious decision to put their own kids needs ahead of the foster kids is down right hurtful. 

I’m not trying to make it sound like my parents didn’t care at all about me because that’s not true.  They gave me more than my biological parents would have ever done for me.  I guess I have a lot of resentment for not just my foster parents but for my biological parents as well.  I just feel as though their children were more valuable than the foster kids.  Yes, my mom would express her love to me and showed this by giving me hugs.  I did get rewarded for getting good grades and being a somewhat good kid.  I just wish that I didn’t have to prove myself that I too was a good person despite not being part of their special bond.  It doesn’t matter how much people care about you and offer to add you to their family. Somehow you still feel like you’re not part of the family.  I believe that blood is thicker than water, and it saddens me to say that I will never have a family to call my very own and whom which I can totally feel at peace with and that they can truly except me for me and not to compare me with others.  Even though I was loved by my parents, it never took the insecure feelings away but somehow I managed to move on. That doesn’t mean I’ve actually embraced this pain and insecurity but I’m seeking professional help for it.  It wasn’t my fault that I ended up in the foster care system and it wasn’t their fault for having a good family.  Even though these facts are true, it doesn’t make it right for people to be treated better than yourself just because of a brain injury.  I’m not trying to sound insensitive but talking to my parents about what ales me won’t change anything.  I will just have to accept this.

Fighting to just fit into normal society is bad enough but when you add a visual impairment to the mix, it makes it just as hard to fit in with society. Even getting good medical care has been difficult for me. I suffered with GI problems for quite some time and when I finally got settled in my current apartment, I tried seeing a GI specialist to see if they could run additional tests on me to figure out what was going on with my body. The doctor looked at me as if I was crazy because she asked me if that was really necessary. After hearing that, I never saw that doctor again. She was no help whatsoever because she wanted me to take prescription drugs for the rest of my life.

I decided to be my own doctor and slowly got off the medications. With time and some patience my body resumed to its normal routine. About four months ago I saw an oral surgeon to remove my wisdom teeth. He did this in such a short amount of time, I felt like he rushed the procedure.

The problem with being on some government programs is that not everyone takes your health insurance. You’re very limited in your selection in order to get good quality healthcare. I feel as though they just want your money and that they don’t really want to help you. It’s bad enough that the co payments can be quite expensive. That’s not always the case but it does happen.

Seeking psychotherapy is difficult too because a lot of therapists ask you to pay more than what you can afford. Sandra was very fortunate in getting help for obtaining psychotherapy. Not all blind and visually impaired individuals are that fortunate. It would be nice if the government would step up to help the blind and visually impaired individuals by having funds or just setting up programs that would actually help these people become equal with their sighted counter parts.

Being blind or visually impaired makes it hard to be competitive in the job market. Sure, the ADA has helped a lot with having equal treatment but I believe that we have a long way to go  before we can be equal to others. If we just had more services offered to us in order to better ourselves, we would be a lot better off. 

Also, sighted people have to be educated with the blind and visually impaired.  Yes there are trained professionals who come into the schools and teach the children Braille and mobility skills so that you can learn how to be independent someday.  We could improve this by expanding adults to learning more about the blind and visually impaired and how they can assist us.  We as blind and visually impaired people want to be just like everyone else but most people don’t give us a chance.  They just see our handicap and don’t wish to be bothered with us. I hope that we can turn this around in the future.

[Emmy]

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• More Help for the Blind, Please

Dear [Mentat],

Certainly there is a degree of   free will   associated with self-actualizing people [referencing here Maslow's hierarchy of needs triangle]. And until science can better quantify the proportions of what is   determinism   and what is  free will,   this debate will continue.

However, we can’t dismiss the  part of what a person accomplishes that is beyond his control.  This part is, though not measurable, a big piece of the accomplishments pie. The following will hopefully illustrate the non-voluntary parts, the  determinism   or   fate,   of any success:

• Did you choose your country of origin? No way. No free will here.  Yet clearly, where a person begins life strongly affects what he subsequently achieves. Americans come pre-bundled from the womb with more opportunities than third-worlders from Africa or the South Pacific, where chances for advancement, not to mention the diversity of disciplines one might pursue, are drastically limited.
• Did you make yourself blind? No! Again, where’s the free will in this?  Yet your overall productivity was severely impacted by your blindness. See my    Blind Hardships   post for a discussion of how blindness can seriously impact numerous dimensions of normalcy in a person’s life. 
• Did you choose your aptitudes? Again, no! Free will must have taken a vacation when innate aptitude was divvied out.  As we’ve discussed at length in our talks about Maslow’s work, people don’t seem to choose their motivations. Do they discover them? Perhaps. But they don’t choose them. If you don’t want to do something, all the free will in the world won’t make you into a world-class performer at it. Since we don’t control very much at all what we want and need, and since our desires overwhelmingly influence our proficiency at various endeavors, we therefore can only take a small part of the total credit for our accomplishments. Without desire, accomplishment of things of a higher complexity than routine tasks becomes unlikely, if not impossible.
• Did you pick how tall you are, the color of your skin, or the texture of your hair? Absolutely not. No free will again.  Studies have shown that a short person is less likely to have children or lead corporations, again, through no fault of his own. Sometimes, there may in fact, be nothing inadequate about a person’s motivation or effective efforts. Yet he still won’t win the prize if he’s too short. Not every hardship can be overcome by willfully pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps, contrary to conservative opinion. The presence of   prejudice   significantly mitigates one’s responsibility for his own successes. 
• Did you choose your parents, or the quality of rearing you received from them? Nope. Yet child psychologists agree that the single biggest influence in a child’s ultimate development is his parental structure – specifically, for boys, it’s the father who affects their growth most profoundly, and for girls, it’s the mother.  So where was the free will in this?
• Did you have any say in the fact that you were born with all your legs, arms, fingers, and toes? I don’t think so. Like vision, the absence or deformity of any of these affects the set of potential accomplishments we’re likely to achieve.  All the free will in the world would not completely compensate for a missing arm or leg; not in this day and age anyhow. 
• Can you take any credit for the fact that you were born with good hearing? No. Often, people site the accomplishments of that Miss America, Heather Whitestone McCallum, in the 1990s who was deaf. True, her will and tenacity were essential ingredients in her success. However, these were just two of many ingredients. Had her mother not worked with her for over twelve hours each day as a child to teach her communications skills and poise, I’m sure that this woman would not have become Miss America, no matter how completely and effectively she devoted herself to the task.  Though Heather exhibited a lot of will, her free will was just s part of what made her successful. 

My point is that no person ever achieves greatness entirely on his own free will.  Thus we humans cannot escape reliance on factors beyond our control to win. Survey after survey shows the high extent to which these attributes of determinism influence the types and degrees of successes we achieve. People come into this world with certain gifts as well as  crosses to bear,   and they have absolutely no control over just what that set is. They can decide (to a measure) what to do with these gifts. But what nature bestows is indeed, from the person’s perspective, a luck of the draw.  It’s fate.  It’s determinism. 

It’s true that a person who has achieved self-actualization did not do so entirely through luck. But a large part of his success is  indeed  luck, since his success rests on many pillars, of which only a few fall into the free will category. While luck is not a sufficient condition for success, it is a necessary condition.

See my   Accepting Our Personal Limitations   piece for a discussion about how detrimental it can be to assume too much personal responsibility for our natural limitations, and why it might be better to accept more of them.   

We should therefore not underestimate the importance of determinism, in driving how successful we become.  In my view, determinism is at least as big a factor as the free-will component.

Take care.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Accepting Our Personal Limitations
• Blind Hardships
• Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs
• More Than Effort To Outperform Our Parents
• Thoughts on Bigotry

References

• Determinism   definition on Wikipedia
• Fate   definition on Wikipedia
• Free Will   definition on Wikipedia
• Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs   definition on Wikipedia

Dear [Mentat],

Just an addendum to earlier discussions about the degree to which the person suffering   unrequited love needs   is socially well- or mal-adjusted: I came across this tidbit in Abraham H. Maslow’s   Motivation and Personality   book, third edition, page 63:

In our society the thwarting of these [the love] needs is the most commonly found core in cases of maladjustment and more severe pathology. Love and affection, as well as their possible expression in sexuality, are generally looked upon with ambivalence and are customarily hedged about with many restrictions and inhibitions. Practically all theorists of psychopathology have stressed thwarting of the love needs as basic in the picture of maladjustment….

So, while we can’t assume that a person with lots of   unrequited love needs   is indeed disturbed, I’d say that the likelihood of maladjustment in the lovelorn is markedly higher. It’s reasonable to assume that the man walking alone may be in trouble, because so many before him, who also walked alone, committed crimes. Their failed gratification of the love needs seems to have either caused their deviance, or it is a symptom of another pathology that causes both lack of love as well as their anti-social behavior. While it’s not as clear that anti-social behavior causes lack of love, or that lack of love causes anti-social behavior, what does seem plain is that the two very often accompany each other as symptoms of social maladjustment.  Unrequited love needs often cause people to become socially devient and commit violent crimes.  Ficticious but apropo example of the mechanism at work: Frankenstein’s monster, who was at first benevolent and only wanting to help, serve, and love, eventually became a murderous fiend due to the consistent denial from humans of his love needs. 

This makes sense too from a handicapped person’s perspective. The handicapped are very often excluded from social circles as was Frankenstein’s monster through no fault of their own.  Since unlike Frankenstein’s monster, the handicapped have no super ability, they don’t as often commit violent crimes.  Instead, they become depressed.  In fact, their depression rates (symptoms of social maladjustment) appear much higher than those in the fully-functioning sect. Indeed, a major horror of being handicapped isn’t so much the handicap itself, as it is the invalidation it creates in the eyes of others. Others pull away and refuse their love to the physically challenged. This results in hurt, then anger, and finally can spill out into the material world as temperamental outbursts like we saw in [our old friends]. You would agree I think, that such outbursts themselves denote a certain absence of adjustment. Yes?

In short, the chances of being socially maladjusted when suffering the frustrating effects of unrequited love needs are clearly greater in my opinion. So lets get adjusted, and get love.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Celibacy Turns Priests Into Dangerous Lustful Predators
• The Lovelorn, Antisocial?
• We Don’t Live Happily Without Love

References

• Frankenstein’s Momster   definition on Wikipedia
• Motivation And Personality   book description
• Unrequited Love   definition on Wikipedia

Seeking   pity love, or striving for affection from a woman who pities but does not actually love us, is generally a dismal proposition to be sure. Details here.  Yet sometimes, doing this can seem like a very good idea. Sometimes pity love does quench the thirst for real love; temporarily anyhow.  Pity love is neither real nor sincere love by any means, and I would suggest that no one settle for it for long if at all possible.  But pity love is more satisfying than no love at all, and if that’s the only love one can get at times, then it’s helpful not to underestimate its usefulness.

It has crossed the minds of many vision-impaired men to accept pity-based affection when they lack access to genuine, love-based affection. If you can’t find someone to really love you, then at least, find someone who pities you.   Any amount of affection is better than none at all, and when one is truly starving for romantic love, a bit of pity love can indeed satiate the love lust.

This can indeed enrich the love lives of handicapped men.  Why?  Such men live typically lonely lives.  Fewer than the usual number of ladies agrees to date these disabled lonely people in part, because an apparent physical handicap puts off most able-bodied women.  So, an obvious physical impairment tends to render a person isolated, dejected, and at times, desperate for love.  Sometimes, the sadness can grow so intense that a fellow might start entertaining unusual strategies for getting a pretty woman to allow him to hold her hand for a while.  Seeking pity love is one such strategy.

Why?  Because physically handicapped men have spent much time without romantic love, to ask pretty ladies to take pity on them and allow the fellow to love them, if only once, even when they know that the guy is not their dream guy, would offer some relief for their loneliness.  Indeed, the enthusiasm to care that compassion motivates, does not substitute for the thrill of the self-centered  instant attraction  of love at first sight, at least not in the short term. In fact, should such a helping-based pity love relationship ever take off, questions about its legitimacy will arise; especially if the able-bodied person never quite manages to really fall in love with the handicapped man.  Pity love therefore, has a definite downside.

Then, there’s the question of whether love born of sympathy (pity love) can ever grow into as renowned and enveloping a love, as love can that has more selfish and lustful beginnings. Examples of handicapped / non handicapped couples suggest that it can, though like most readers of this, I still have trouble accepting that. After all, if an unattractive woman asked me to take a compassionate leap of faith, and date her a while, I doubt I would. I doubt I could with maximum sincerity. A plea for pity love would most definitely not induce love feelings in me, though I might be inclined to help her through a rough time now and then. I suspect that the same is true of most women.

Securing pity love   could   over time, lead to real love, because it gives the lonely person an opportunity to show that neither their loneliness nor their disability makes them as pitiable as folks first imagine them to be.    People harbor lots of unjustified prejudices about the handicapped and about people they do not know in general.  Sometimes, the only way into their hearts would be for the handicapped man to first align herself with the position of   prejudice.  “Yes, I may lacking in every way you imagine.  But it would mean so much if you would talk to me and hold my hand, just for a little while.  Say yes because you pity me if not because you like me.”  If they have an ounce of compassion in their bones, they may relent and give the handicapped man a fair hearing.  Then, they may find that he’s much more loveable than they at first gave him credit for.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Accepting Limitations
• Blind Hardships
• Consider Dating A Disabled Person
• Society Dictates Pecking Order Without Pity
• The Pitfalls Of Pity Love

References

• Love-At-First-Sight   definition on Wikipedia