If it is obvious that we should accept and affirm the humanity of all regardless of bodily configuration, it is not as obvious as one might think just what it means to affirm the humanity of all regardless of bodily configuration. The straightforward reading is that we should be fully committed to affirming the humanity of the physically challenged, be they blind or deaf or lacking a limb that is function or absent altogether. These individuals should not be cast aside as lesser human beings.
But wait a minute. Some would say that this very wording bespeaks a bias. The new line of thought—that is, the political correct line of thought—insists that all human beings are physically challenged but simply differ in terms of the way in which that is so. Accordingly, it is inappropriate to speak of the blind or the deaf or a person without a limb as being more physically challenged than someone who has his sight and hearing and the use of all of his limbs. It is merely that the blind or the deaf or a person without limb is challenged in different ways than is the person who his sight and hearing and the use of all of his limbs.
This is the politically correct attitude towards the deaf or the blind of those without a limb. And it is a ledger de main moment if ever there was one.
It is manifestly clear that, once upon a time, societies did what was terribly wrong: the blind or the deaf or those without limbs were cast aside as lesser human beings. But there is non-trivial difference between saying that (a) deafness, say, does not make one a lesser human being and saying that (b) there is no rational reason to prefer having the capacity to hear to being deaf, since the difference merely amounts to no more than different ways of getting about in the world. The animal kingdom makes it manifestly clear that the capacity to see or hear is, with very rare exception, an enormous asset.
Something has gone wrong with human reflection when we cannot acknowledge that each and every one of the senses is an asset to have. And it is simply fallacious reasoning to hold that this is false merely because any given human being can learn to survive without any given asset—and survive well in fact.
This brings us to the very heart of what motivated this blog-entry. It is not uncommon nowadays for deaf people, in particular, to wish to raise children who are deaf. To this end, deaf couples are choosing embryos who most likely to result in a child who is deaf.
Quite simply this is none other than a most heinous form of narcissism. The issue is not whether deaf people can have an enormously rich and meaningful life. Obviously they can. They can live a life so rich and meaningful that they are not mindful of their deafness. Indeed, it is impossible that a deaf person may succeed in ways that he would not have succeeded has he not been deaf. In a like vein, it is not at all clear how Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder would have been more successful were they to have had sight. Regarding the point that one might actually do better as a deaf or blind person, one has to be careful about what follows from it.
It can also be claimed that had American Slavery not existed and had Frederick Douglass not been born a slave, he would not have become the distinguished person that he became. Yet, what most certainly does not follow from this is that slavery was not a bad thing as such. And it would horrific for Douglass to think that his children needed to go through slavery in order to build character.
Slavery, of course, is an evil; whereas deafness as such is not. But what exactly is imposing deafness upon a person, if not an evil? And what right does another human being have to do such a thing? However, successful a deaf person might be in spite of his deafness, he has no right whatsoever to impose deafness upon his child.
One of my most successful students—indeed, one of Syracuse University’s most successful students—is deaf. His name is Geoff Herbert. In my Philosophy 191 course, Herbert sat on the front row of Grant Auditorium and for each lecture he had me a gadget to put around my neck during lecture that facilitated his hearing my lecture. He often attended my office hours; on numerous occasions we had face-to-face discussions.
Geoff Herbert claims that he does not want to have hearing; and I can, in fact, see how he might make such a claim; for he has clearly turned his deafness into one incredible asset, as his MySpace page makes abundantly clear. In fact, his handle is DeafGeoff. If there is anyone who might be called the Frederick Douglass of deaf people, Geoff Herbert certainly has as good of a claim to that appellation as any deaf person whom I know. Mr. Herbert, whom I admire profoundly, was masterfully at-ease with himself.
Still, if someone exactly like Geoff Herbert—say, Opidopo—were to arrange that his children should be deaf, he would be inflicting a horrendous wrong upon them. Not because being deaf is wrong, but because he has no right whatsoever to impose deafness upon his children because this would make him feel good about his deafness. He would have no right to valorize deafness at the expense of his children. It would be utterly narcissistic for Opidopo to do this.
Why? Because none of Opidopo’s successes would change the fact that by and large hearing is an extraordinary asset. It is precisely because it is such an asset that we marvel at people like Geoff Herbert; for he flourished mightily without it. More accurately, he flourished mightily in spite of a considerable biological disadvantage. He has not shown that there is no difference between being deaf and having hearing. Not at all. Rather, what he has shown is that it is possible for a person to surmount that biological disadvantage with considerable majesty.
A phenomenally successful deaf or blind person does not have the right to be so besotted with his success that he refuses to acknowledge that in point of fact he has surmounted an enormous disadvantage.
Now, as a matter of fact, I think that it is true that deaf person will never be able to hear a Mozart or a Marvin Gaye or a Pavarotti. Similarly, a blind person will never be able to hold a majestic sunset or rainbow. It was 10 years ago that I beheld Cape Hope with my very own eyes. I will treasure that moment for ever.
At any rate, I am willing to concede that the deaf and the blind may experience in extraordinarily majestic ways that surpass anything that I can imagine. But from this truth, what surely does not follow is that being deaf and being blind are on a par, respectively, with having hearing and having sight. A blind person can never be concerned with racial differences in the way that a person with sight is. So in this regard there is an innocence to being blind that has no equal among the those with sight. This truth hardly shows that being blind is on a par with having sight. Certainly, what does not follow is that as we are now biologically constructed human beings in general would be better off blind.
And this brings us to the heart of the matter. Given the way in which human beings are now constituted, the success of phenomenal success of this blind person or this deaf person or this person shorn of a working limb is very much tied to the existence of one person or another who can see or hear or who has limbs that are functional. Not so the other way around.
This means, then, that by itself blindness or deafness or being shorn of a limb cannot possibly be seen as independent good in the same manner that we rightly regard having sight or hearing or having the use of all of our limbs. That is, no one thinks that sight is an asset only there is blindness; and so on. This is not shown to be false because there are those here and there who prove to be enormously successful in the absence of the asset of sight or hearing, any more than American Slavery is shown not to be the horror that people suppose because some blacks flourished in spite of it.
Self-deception occasioned by narcissism can be the only explanation for why adults who are blind would want to bring it about their children are blind; or adults who are deaf would want to bring it about that their children are deaf. And so on.
