My Quadriplegic Husband and Me
I feel like there&#x27;s this weird preciousness fetish that comes up around hardship. &quot;Oh, you poor thing! Life must be so difficult and interesting for you. Please, tell me about your struggles, preferably in 15-20 minutes while alternating personal anecdotes with general observations about society.&quot;<p>I see this in how we think about disability, but also poorer countries, where the gold standard is the noble African tribeswoman, carrying water for her family, living in a hut, eating soup made of sticks or whatever. Shame she has a cellphone and wears a t-shirt. It kinda ruins the magic.<p>And I think deep down we want that magic, the idea that things could be <i>so different for us</i> that we try to amplify differences beyond understanding and into caricature. It&#x27;s hard to believe that if we were in a wheelchair, or carrying water every day past all the World Vision cameras, it would just be mundane for us. How&#x27;s things, N&#x27;gatu? Oh, y&#x27;know, carrying water again. Same old grind.<p>It would be harmless enough, except that you really want to be firing on all cylinders against hardship and deprivation. These aren&#x27;t problems that need wide-eyed mysticism or hand-wringing sympathy. They need pragmatism.<p>Why is someone in a wheelchair disabled? It&#x27;s not because they can&#x27;t walk, it&#x27;s because they can&#x27;t walk in a world that expects them to walk. If they went through a portal to nobody-has-working-legs-Earth, they&#x27;d fit right in. But of course, on that Earth stairs would never have been invented. The nobody-has-working-legs-Earth scientists would have been hard at it on wheels and ramps from day one.<p>Which isn&#x27;t to say someone with legs would be just as disabled in that world or some nonsense like that. Legs are better than no legs. But also being able to fly or see infrared is better than being stuck here on the ground with nothing but the boring visible spectrum to watch. Without society as a reference, there&#x27;s no disability, just degrees of ability. And more is still better.<p>So finally we come to enhancement. Technology enhances a paraplegic into a person with wheels for legs, the same way it enhances N&#x27;gatu into a person with a detachable water stomach, and the same way it enhances you into a person whose hydration comes through a vast external network of water arteries. There&#x27;s nothing mystical about any of these examples; it&#x27;s just ability being enhanced by technology.<p>So I think we could do a lot worse than just taking disability to mean &quot;has the most to gain from technology&quot;. I mean, I&#x27;d gain a lot from a jetpack and infrared contact lenses, but if my quality of life could be significantly improved by an inclined plane, well, that sounds like the definition of an easy win.