 In blocking the inference from disability as a harm to disability as a negative difference-maker, Barnes adduces instances of the positive consequences that disabilities have had for specific individuals, despite or sometimes because of the “local” hardships they cause. It may be, however, that no positive consequences are needed to “neutralize” the hardships associated with a disability. Those hardships may simply get absorbed in the immense complex of factors that make a life go better or worse. It is only on a simple additive view of the relationship of parts to whole that a local harm would necessarily make a life go worse unless compensated for. It is difficult to be more precise about the impact of disability on whole lives, however, because it is not clear how the goodness or badness of parts of a life contribute to the goodness of the whole, on either objective or subjective accounts of well-being (Feldman 2008). David Velleman has argued that whatever one’s particular theory of individual well-being, the parts of a life do not contribute to the goodness of a life additively. That is, the goodness of a whole life is not the sum of the goodness of its parts. Instead, the goodness of a whole life is to be understood in terms of the narrative relations between its various parts. From this perspective, successes or failures at particular times in one’s life can retrospectively alter the meaning or significance of earlier ones (Velleman 1991).