I've recently read an article for one of my classes that dealt with deafness as its own culture or, perhaps more correctly, subculture. It brought up some very interesting realities about deafness and the deaf culture, especially with regards to their own identification and language.
The article discussed the deaf culture in America; specifically, how deafness, to the deaf, is not a disability but a culture, while mainstream America views it as more of a medical disability. Something that needs to be solved or corrected rather than integrated. It discussed how the majority of deaf Americans view themselves as their own subculture, complete with their own language, ASL (American Sign Language). This is a culture, according to the article, that does not wish to be forced into step with mainstream culture and learn an auditory language they will never completely master. They do not wish to have their "condition" corrected by modern medical procedures. Rather, they seem to desire to be as they are and have their environment and surrounding culture recognize them as being more than disabled.
What it left me with is this question: what comes first, identity or language? Does language define our identity or does our identity define our language?
This question goes far beyond ASL and the deaf culture, it is a universal question and applies to any culture and any language on the planet. It's a bit of a chicken and egg question, but can it be answered? Myself, I've always held that identity precedes and supersedes language. How we identify ourselves, I would argue, has little to do with our language. Language enters the picture when we attempt to understand our relationship to others and how we perceive their identity. Identity is personal, language is relational.
Language helps us to understand, or at least perceive, those who have at least some similar experiences and gives us a sense of comfort and recognition. For example, I lived in Atlanta and even still carry some traces of a southern accent and vocabulary. I say y'all quite often. I even do all the crazy stuff with y'all, like y'all's, y'all're, etc. When I hear someone speaking in a southern accent and dialect, I immediately know at least a few small facts about that person and can probably find some shared or similar experiences very quickly in conversation. This then builds a connection of security and/or familiarity with that person typically leading to greater openness and relationship that may not have been possible otherwise. Yet it would be a terrible assumption to believe that, purely based on a shared vernacular, I could perceive that person's identity. We may be able to communicate at a high level, but that says nothing about whether we truly have anything in common from the standpoint of self-identity. And it says even less about whether I'll be able to comprehend that person's identity and world-view, even though they could describe it to me in their natural language.
Coming back to the original article, what does this mean for deaf America? From what I've read in the article, my impression is that the deaf culture fears a loss of its own identity should deafness be "corrected" via any means. I would contend that they would not lose their identity but how they relate to each other and to other cultures. The same thing would also happen if all of America were forced, or chose, to learn ASL. If English has branched out into hundreds of variant dialects and vernaculars, who is to say that ASL wouldn't do the same exact thing? Then, a deaf person might be faced with the harsh reality of traveling from one area of the country to another and still being unable to fully communicate. Just like the rest of us.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Saturday, February 3, 2007
The Importance of Being
"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his."
-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Anyone who's known me for very long and had many conversations with me has likely heard me say that quote. Indeed, it's one of my favorite quotes from any character in any work of fiction. More than a quote to me, it's a mental puzzle I work out in my head quite often. A Chinese Box in the very real sense that, every time I consider the statement, I arrive at a new conclusion, much like opening the box and finding a completely new and independent box nested within. The very act of attempting to understand the statement and how it should apply to my life brings forth a revelation that also reveals a new challenge, a new question to be considered.
Tonight, I was considering the statement from a completely new perspective. I've recently taken a complete u-turn in my life. No, not a u-turn, precisely. Think of it more like traveling down a road and coming to a fork. You look down both roads and see very little that gives you any indication that either direction is heading where you want to go, because, in reality, you don't even know for certain where you want to go. You simply know that to stand still means death since life, at its very essence, is motion and change. Therefore death, by its very nature, is lack of motion and stasis. Indeed, cryogenic scientists even sometimes refer to suspended animation or cryogenic sleep as "reversible death". But that's another blog altogether.
Back to the fork. So you pick one direction or the other, perhaps you just flip a coin. Heads, go left; tails, right. Either choice seems appropriate because you have little information on which to form a reasonable decision. Yet, deep inside, your intuition tells you, "go left". You take the left path and after a considerable time pursuing your choice, you begin to understand your destination. A bit further down the path and it becomes clear that the road you're on is not taking you any closer to that place you want to get to. At that moment, you have a new decision to make: turn around and go all the way back to the fork, or try to gain your bearings and head off into the wilderness.
The wilderness is not fun, believe me. I've made several failed attempts to blaze my own trail. A mathematician will tell you that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Anyone who's done much hiking in the mountains will tell you that's insanity. So after several attempts to strike my own way, I decided to turn back and find that old fork. And an interesting thing happened when I did: I found that getting back to the fork took far less time than traveling from the fork to the point where I turned back. Most people, I think, have experienced this illogical phenomenon. Ever travel somewhere, then travel back to your original location and marvel over how much less time it seemed to take coming back? Weird, huh?
In what seemed to be the blink of an eye, I found myself back at the fork. This time, however, the choice was so much more clear. I could see so much further down both roads that I scratched my head a little at why I'd ever decided to go down the left road in the first place. Intuition. Huh, who said that? Shrugging it off without much thought, I began down the right road. Pun intended.
I see the craggy peaks and dense forests ahead of me along this right road. Challenges lie ahead, but I'm ready to not only attack them with ferocity but overcome them. I wasn't ready eleven years ago when I took the left road. A mountain climber doesn't immediately go out and climb Everest. They train extensively, climbing several smaller mountains as they work themselves up to the task of Everest. In the same way, that left road was important as it trained me for the right road.
Life is not linear. A friend sent me an email recently that reminded me of this. Time is merely the fourth dimension and we exist in far more dimensions than four. We are eternal beings. So why do we always have to put our lives in terms of Point A and Point B? Origin and destination? What if we're already at the destination even if we cannot fully perceive it? Why can't we simply be? Or can we? This world, by which I mean this culture and the powers that drive the culture, would have us believe that we must reach forward and attain to some future goal, some future point to which we are traveling and have not yet reached. I lost track of how many people have told me that I should be setting goals and then working toward them. Huh? What kind of linear thinking is that? So I'm supposed to designate an imaginary Point B, realize I'm at Point A, and begin plotting points between and move through four-dimensional space-time toward Point B? That's the key to life and success? Sounds like algebra to me.
The problem, as I see it, with this type of thinking is that it backloads all sense of validation and identity to the achievement of these imaginary points in our lives. But what if I get half-way down that left road toward Point B and realize I have to turn around? Have I failed, somehow? Have I lost my identity? Not a chance! I've succeeded in being me. I've been. What I do is not nearly as important as who I am. I have a new way of thinking. I know who I am and, therefore, I can perceive where I'm going. Not the other way around. I lived like that for much of my life, striving toward everything I wanted without enjoying every moment because I perceived a lack. I perceived that I had to move forward. I had to become. No more. God sees who I am and loves me completely, and now so do I. Not where I'm going, not who I'm going to become. That's illusion. I am. I am eternal, imbued with the very breath of the divine. Outside of time, I simply am and that's who God sees. Me. The real me. All of me. Can you see yourself? The left road taught me how to see myself.
What about Oscar Wilde and the quote? Well, didn't I say it was a Chinese Box? Besides, it would only really make sense to me. The destination isn't as important as the journey. The journey teaches us the importance of being. Welcome to my world.
Anyone who's known me for very long and had many conversations with me has likely heard me say that quote. Indeed, it's one of my favorite quotes from any character in any work of fiction. More than a quote to me, it's a mental puzzle I work out in my head quite often. A Chinese Box in the very real sense that, every time I consider the statement, I arrive at a new conclusion, much like opening the box and finding a completely new and independent box nested within. The very act of attempting to understand the statement and how it should apply to my life brings forth a revelation that also reveals a new challenge, a new question to be considered.
Tonight, I was considering the statement from a completely new perspective. I've recently taken a complete u-turn in my life. No, not a u-turn, precisely. Think of it more like traveling down a road and coming to a fork. You look down both roads and see very little that gives you any indication that either direction is heading where you want to go, because, in reality, you don't even know for certain where you want to go. You simply know that to stand still means death since life, at its very essence, is motion and change. Therefore death, by its very nature, is lack of motion and stasis. Indeed, cryogenic scientists even sometimes refer to suspended animation or cryogenic sleep as "reversible death". But that's another blog altogether.
Back to the fork. So you pick one direction or the other, perhaps you just flip a coin. Heads, go left; tails, right. Either choice seems appropriate because you have little information on which to form a reasonable decision. Yet, deep inside, your intuition tells you, "go left". You take the left path and after a considerable time pursuing your choice, you begin to understand your destination. A bit further down the path and it becomes clear that the road you're on is not taking you any closer to that place you want to get to. At that moment, you have a new decision to make: turn around and go all the way back to the fork, or try to gain your bearings and head off into the wilderness.
The wilderness is not fun, believe me. I've made several failed attempts to blaze my own trail. A mathematician will tell you that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Anyone who's done much hiking in the mountains will tell you that's insanity. So after several attempts to strike my own way, I decided to turn back and find that old fork. And an interesting thing happened when I did: I found that getting back to the fork took far less time than traveling from the fork to the point where I turned back. Most people, I think, have experienced this illogical phenomenon. Ever travel somewhere, then travel back to your original location and marvel over how much less time it seemed to take coming back? Weird, huh?
In what seemed to be the blink of an eye, I found myself back at the fork. This time, however, the choice was so much more clear. I could see so much further down both roads that I scratched my head a little at why I'd ever decided to go down the left road in the first place. Intuition. Huh, who said that? Shrugging it off without much thought, I began down the right road. Pun intended.
I see the craggy peaks and dense forests ahead of me along this right road. Challenges lie ahead, but I'm ready to not only attack them with ferocity but overcome them. I wasn't ready eleven years ago when I took the left road. A mountain climber doesn't immediately go out and climb Everest. They train extensively, climbing several smaller mountains as they work themselves up to the task of Everest. In the same way, that left road was important as it trained me for the right road.
Life is not linear. A friend sent me an email recently that reminded me of this. Time is merely the fourth dimension and we exist in far more dimensions than four. We are eternal beings. So why do we always have to put our lives in terms of Point A and Point B? Origin and destination? What if we're already at the destination even if we cannot fully perceive it? Why can't we simply be? Or can we? This world, by which I mean this culture and the powers that drive the culture, would have us believe that we must reach forward and attain to some future goal, some future point to which we are traveling and have not yet reached. I lost track of how many people have told me that I should be setting goals and then working toward them. Huh? What kind of linear thinking is that? So I'm supposed to designate an imaginary Point B, realize I'm at Point A, and begin plotting points between and move through four-dimensional space-time toward Point B? That's the key to life and success? Sounds like algebra to me.
The problem, as I see it, with this type of thinking is that it backloads all sense of validation and identity to the achievement of these imaginary points in our lives. But what if I get half-way down that left road toward Point B and realize I have to turn around? Have I failed, somehow? Have I lost my identity? Not a chance! I've succeeded in being me. I've been. What I do is not nearly as important as who I am. I have a new way of thinking. I know who I am and, therefore, I can perceive where I'm going. Not the other way around. I lived like that for much of my life, striving toward everything I wanted without enjoying every moment because I perceived a lack. I perceived that I had to move forward. I had to become. No more. God sees who I am and loves me completely, and now so do I. Not where I'm going, not who I'm going to become. That's illusion. I am. I am eternal, imbued with the very breath of the divine. Outside of time, I simply am and that's who God sees. Me. The real me. All of me. Can you see yourself? The left road taught me how to see myself.
What about Oscar Wilde and the quote? Well, didn't I say it was a Chinese Box? Besides, it would only really make sense to me. The destination isn't as important as the journey. The journey teaches us the importance of being. Welcome to my world.
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