The Philosophy of Visual Disability

The Philosophy of Visual Disability

Visual Disability, the Philosophy of

Preamble:

The greatest expression of the ultimate timeless civilisation of mankind, is the embodiment of unfeigned, absolute, active altruistic reverence for the universal equality, dignity and sanctity of humanity; the inability to perceive the declivity from behind an acclivity, or rather, the proclivity to infer the depth of a river from its breath is, no less, the antithesis, for verisimilitude isn’t proof, but verisimilitude. To be or not to be then, being is but a metaphysical idiom with a being, whose interpretation bears no physical traits that bears not a being, much the same as the paradoxical question of visual disability: a metaphysical idiom with a physical configuration that is, however, open to misconstruction; by which misconstruction merely a scratch of the surface to whose bottom can be at the bottom of its sophistication; upon which sophistication its decipherment is bound to bring man to labour under a misapprehension; a misapprehension from which only appreciating the objective for the objective and the subjective for the subjective, can deliver us; a deliverance that can howsoever, never be granted by sweeping the objective under the subjective carpet; under which selfsame carpet the efficacious spearheads for the reclamation of the birthright of persons with visual disability lies ensnared, grimed with the ignorance, intolerance and indifference of man. Better be it that one be one’s own worst enemy than to bear a lifelong imputation to elsewhere; by which reason I am not to draw in my horns from meeting head-on the reality; the reality I believe, forasmuch as there is no land that is no-man’s-land, its disclosure will be worth the weight of persons with visual disability in gold.

Expounding, then, the metaphysical correlation between the variant sociological and psychological make-up of human societies and the individuals of the societies respectively, vis-à-vis the idiosyncratic perceptions and conceptions on the relative universal identity and equality of humanity, hence the ideological heterogeneity or otherwise incongruity in relation to the nitty-gritty of visual disability, is a sine qua non inasmuch as it is obligatorily imperative for the explicit crystallisation of a clear-cut, utilitarian and epoch-making expedient, well geared towards the universal transpiration of a modernistic, cosmopolitan ideology apropos of visual disability, well-tailored for the far-reaching amelioration of the status quo anent the plight of persons with visual disability, and well-defined for the effective harmonisation of the relative social standing of visually handicapped persons, pursuant to the universally veritable social, cultural and economic well-being of humanity. In virtue of this a fortiori virtue of necessity, it is a profound ethical suasion and a sound social obligation for me to enlighten in my expatiatory, a posteriori exposition – the Philosophy of Visual Disability.

The Philosophy:

Behind any course that we may pursue in quest of our bequeathed legacy, are enchanted lands – uncharted, and futile wastelands beyond – unforeseen; an unnerving fateful pursuit that, long since, begets, disconcertingly, a confounding impasse, crestfallen men of yore lethargically learnt to rationalise dogmatically in a lead balloon as nothing, but a wild-goose chase. Yet, hitherto, we still fail, warped within the obscurity of the absurdity of this twilit ground, to realise that: by giving in our insight ignorantly to that which visually we do perceive, or intolerantly to that which insularly we do conceive, verily, we lose virtually all that which we were to, but definitely will not see elementally. So much the better if we can think twice and strive to read between the lines, having a single-track mind and conscientiousness of a funambulist, only can our percipience transcend our primitive purview and descry from beyond the back of beyond, the unveiled philosophies of being, so plain as a pikestaff, along with the merged fragments of one of the segments of the assembled jigsaw puzzle of being engraved: “Denounce only the paradox of my disability to renounce umpteen blessings of humanity.”

The ideal art of mankind, though subtly je ne sais quoi, is graphically modelled by man’s spontaneous, continuous impulsion to interpret his conscious, continuous sensual experiences; thence by an inherent compulsion to be sentient of the essence of his personal world’s continuous physical experiences relative to the external world within which he abides, as a prescriptive requisite towards the imperative consolidation of a mutually interactive correlation. The intrinsic existence of, particularly, a visual sensory entity – the eye – a biological decoder that actively deciphers the dimensional chromatic information world into a systematic dimensionless information world (visible to the mind) – which is the elemental medium of sight – the pro-informative faculty, act or instance of the (spontaneous ocular) capturing of the extrinsic dimensional and chromatic configuration of the objective world; wielded by the hypostatically inherent, integral virtual vision framework of cognitively coordinated, integrated dimensionless configurations of the very same dimensional and chromatic objective world – that is, the sense of sight; emphatically substantiates, implicitly, the authenticity of the afore-professed hypothesis: a seeming obligation for man to perceive, and an oblique compulsion by man to conceive. Irrespective of the natural complexity of the continuous optical catalysis of dimensional chromatic information into dimensionless data – inclusively involving: the spontaneous accommodation mechanics; the involuntary integration of the continuous, invariably 2-D visual sensory data from the screen of the retina (isochronously along with the synchronous, continuous tactual, lingual, aural and nasal sensory nerve impulses) by the thalamus; the ensuing unconscious registration of the integrated sensations, the subsequent subjective resolution of solidity and profundity entailing the cognitive realisation of a virtual 3-D impression of the dimensional objective world, the cognitive appreciation and assimilation of the dimensionless data, and the consequent initiation of voluntary muscular activity towards the dimensional world, a well-nigh split-second’s activity - all in the celebral cortex; the spontaneous muscular coordination by the cerebellum and brainstem; and the relative evocation of emotions by the limbic system; which is, all-inclusively, a sequentially consolidated macrocosm of the phenomenon of sight, the twain to which the invariable mechanics of the eye, per se, are a microcosm of - the eye, howsoever, retains its sole raison d’etre as the liaising interface of the twain: dimensional and dimensionless, objective and subjective worlds; wherefore the extrinsic configuration of the eye elementally lies beyond the purview of the eye itself!

In the nature of the vicissitudes of being, the physical, chemical, mechanical, biochemical and biological (inc. genetic and pathological) vitiation of visual acuity – the intrinsic relative ease of ocular appreciation of the extrinsic objective configurations – which culminates to the involuntary (and oft-unbidden) detriment of the liaison between the objective and cognitive worlds, that is visual disability, predicates the latter, visual disability, as a physically, chemically, mechanically, genetically, biochemically and pathologically effected condition or situation of the relative ocular miscarriage of relative absolute reciprocity between the ever-active dimensionally expressive, chromatic objective world and the then quasi-passive dimensionless visual sensory cognitive world – nothing more, nothing less; a contingent natural phenomenon whose ultimate incidence, nevertheless, neither cuts a swath through one’s sense of sight, nor does it present insuperable barricades towards one’s inherent cognitive capacity to appreciate the configurations of the objective world, but only calls for the complementary substitution or harmonisation of the impaired ocular liaison by dint of the transcendent consolidation of the tremendous abilities of the complementary senses, particularly, the tactile, olfactory and auditory senses.

Everyone has no less than two strings to one’s bow. What though the ocular string be slacken, one can nevertheless strike out on one’s own. The shoe pinches not on the miss of the optical arrow fired from the ocular string, but on the ease of the cognitive intelligibility of the dimensions of the chromatic target; the selfsame optical target whereunto cognitively propelled (and technologically steered) tactual and auditory arrows, let fly from the complementary tactile and aural strings, will still strike. Cognitive sight having precedence over ocular sight, it stands to reason beyond a shadow of doubt that it is not because of one’s blindness to the wider society that one is blind, but the wider society’s blindness to the striking shadow cast at length by the be-all and end-all dried-in-grain sense of sight of persons with visual disability, for we see not with the eyes, but the mind; our eyes – the elemental leverage of optical sensation, much the same as an oarlock, at most, puts a premium on the rowing of the mind’s eye within the invariable expanse of dimensions; in the default of which nothing can defy one from having recourse to paddling, yet effectuating the very effect: the cognitive appreciation and assimilation of the acquired dimensionless information which, otherwise, effectuates the propulsion of motive/impulse driven impetus/stimuli towards the dimensional world.

This universal ability of any person to paddle one’s own canoe, subversively insinuates the semantic obliquity, hence the vacuity of the terms blind/blindness, conventionally adopted in popular parlance as naturalistic fallacies of the homologous, but subtly non-homogeneous terms: vision or visual disability/ handicap/ impairment, which, prima facie, shades an illusive nuance of the irreconcilability of the objective and cognitive worlds; intimating, ipso facto, that the former terms are, literally speaking, monstrous misnomers and hence are of nominal import only. Thereupon, the deliberate, inveterate, arbitrary, colloquial, or rather, the conscious or unconscious usage of the terms blind/blindness, ignorantly, indifferently, intolerantly, otherwise unless upon the foundation of literal specification or bona fide emphasis, is, off the grounds of euphemism, grotesque solecism, objectionable, deplorable, an implicit debasement of the dignity of humanity, and to crown it all, explicitly betokens one’s own intrinsic blindness. All and above, the cultural and/or religious astringent manipulation of visual disability as an instrument of, inter alia, stigmatisation, discrimination, social stratification and occultism, is profoundly eloquent of objectivistically and dogmatically bridled cold feet dragging along a yellow streak towards reaching out for universal, modernistic, complementary (technological) frontiers.

Constituting visual disability is, essentially, the surmountable dimensional-dimensionless information divide and, trivially, the comparative pluckable thorn that, as likely as not, impales through one’s flesh. The former, a recondite verity, is a virtual chasm that can be spanned integrally by the systematic harmonisation of physiological sensory substitution systems along with adaptive/assistive electronic and communication systems; and the later, a microcosm of the former, is a dispensable sensation that can extensively be suppressed following psychological recuperation through effective psychological rehabilitation – if need be. If then the dimensional configuration of the objective chromatic world can take shape cognitively through this potent line of least resistance – technology – which, to all intents and purposes, redresses the balance and thus answers the purpose as the crow flies, what can preclude one from being entitled the king of the Jungle, if one can evince the heart of a lion? All roads lead to Rome! On what grounds can one stand and impugn this verity? The end specifies not the means; it anyhow justifies the means, regardless of how mean the means might be, for just as the innate buoyancy of driftwood, devoid of all conceivable will, and seemingly of no great shakes on the face of it, all the same wafts it ashore!

Apt to be riveted by the heterogeneity of the fashions of sensation, we are prone to be distracted from perceiving the homogeneity nature of perception – the cognitive conscious appreciation of the objective sensual impressions. To see is to perceive and to perceive is to see! No one is thus, literally speaking, blind, for we all are capable of perceiving; the means, justified by the perception, is what masquerades boldly without wings as a verisimilitude of dissimilitude, when, in actual fact, the similitude of the ultimate perception starkly stares us in the face. The ‘Night Writing System’, from which the conventional ‘Braille System’ was innovated, never was dreamt up with persons with visual disability in mind. Why would the soldiers opt then to adopt this system extensively, yet beyond the shadow of this brain child, were capable of perceiving with the eyes? Think it over! What lies behind the keen perception of nocturnal mammals or the practical phenomenon of dead reckoning? Ocular sensation, an elemental species of perception, is, thus, not such significant nor is it streets ahead of auditory, olfactory, tactual or lingual sensations, elemental species of perception as well, that it should draw a veil over the equal capacities of the latter, irrespective of its elemental capacity to ride runs round the latter in relation to the perception of the dimensional and chromatic configurations of the objective world, insomuch as the supplementary coordination of the latter can equally substitute it.

It only costs a rather supplementary refinement of man’s logic, and a transcendental situational scrutiny upon a non-objectivistic, impartial coign of vantage for man to dawn upon the fact that: “ Blindness exists not in man’s very eyes, but in the veriest eyes of ignorance”; the very eyes of ignorance that, in virtue of man’s partiality towards objectivism; man’s propensity towards needlessly depicting himself in effigy; man’s frivolity towards being diverted by the widow’s peak for the head of hair; and man’s proclivity towards underlining what extrinsically he can perceive for what intrinsically he cannot conceive, undermines the impalpable innate attributes inherent in the profundities of the intrinsic being: the intrinsic being that, nonetheless, fashions the extrinsic being and pro-actively influences the mutuality between the extrinsic being and the extrinsic objective world. A nigger in the woodpile then it is, that befogs the woods for the trees; a bed of quicksand so it seems, that like a whirlpool, swallows up whole the chrysalises for the cocoons; and with the acute ‘identity crisis’ of a homing pigeon, divested of its wild life to assume, in servility, the sway of man, so is the fundamental nature of the blindness of man’s ignorance that, despite it being disparate from the putative blindness of the eyes of man, sophistically assumes a feigned appearance as the fundamental nature of visual disability.

Iridescent then; visual disability isn’t what we do perceive it as being that it is what it is, but that which we do conceive it as being that it is what it seems; insomuch as the sociological form of the social matrix within which we do culturally and socially fabricate visual disability to be, so is the psychological form of which visual disability does sentimentally manifests to one as being; wherefore the flaw of human sentiment is with impunity and substantial ethical immunity to the detriment of the de facto and de jure dignity and sanctity of persons with visual disability. In line with this last straw that breaks the camel’s back, is the existence of innumerable societies of man, whose rationale for the relative characteristic attitudes within the societies towards persons with disabilities are variant and significantly incoherent. By virtue of the ease of one to conform with, and adhere to the (time-honoured) customs and/or the (orthodox) beliefs of one’s culture/religion respectively, it is, therefore, not uncommon that one is disposed to ignorantly give credence to bigoted customs and beliefs as regards persons with visual disability, so customary is it that one is inclined to contemplate one’s navel apropos of visual disability; no wonder, in oblivion to our liability for the so reputed realities underlying visual disability and our accountability for the desecration of the sanctity of humanity, we fail to realise… As a complement to the debt of nature, every man is born to be great, endowed with equitable talents and abilities, along with the inalienable faculties of will and consciousness. This greatness, however, blossoms to culmination if one can realise one’s abilities and wield one’s will with diligence, patience, persistence and perseverance within an enabling and an empowering sociological milieu, and a psychological climate of unbounded self-assurance and unrestrained self-motivation, A needle in a haystack, as it might be to the benighted; idealism, as it might sound to the sceptics and cynics who may, as well, take this axiom with a pinch of salt, it is, empirically, a fiat of fate that ultimately vindicates the absolute dispensability of the question of visual disability – a sociologically induced, psychological virtual scarecrow simulation on the threshold of one’s excellence and eminence – amid one’s pursuit of excellence and/or one’s quest of eminence , if only one, in one’s realism, can be conscious of existentialism and resolutely exercise one’s will-power and one’s staying power collaterally by valiantly bearing the patience to persist and persevere with one’s diligence over one’s abilities, within a socially, culturally and economically inclusive society - thereby treading triumphantly upon the scarecrow.

Nevertheless, swathed in oblivion beneath the inexorable shrouding murk of man’s very ignorance, lies a priceless treasure trove of multifarious untapped superlative latent talents and abilities, above rubies, under the façade of visual disability, bursting at the seams of dreams unborn, borne with prodigies, geniuses and virtuosi – unrecognised; untold Keplers, Goethes and Aristotles – unsung; one great hope fountain of white hopes – unhoped-for, oft-brought to nought down the drain, to hope against hope in dire strangulation betwixt the stifling stiff jaws of a mummified ogre, wrought of prejudices, myths and fallacies; intolerantly enshrined, with indifference, within a consecrated frigid abyss of objectivism, fraught with stereotypes and inundated with a deluge of discrimination and marginalisation; one great pedigree of entitled legatees whose bequeathed legacy, hitherto, lies at stake on the verge of a stereotyped precipice, imminently to the prejudice of their rosy morrow in the wake of a recondite cause – the ‘disability of the societies’

In full view of this disability of the societies, in the least, the inability of able societies to be universally socio-economically inclusive, the subsequent inability of any individual within any society to implicitly cherish visual disability as, ironically, a crystal-clear paradigm of the essence of an ideogram, or explicitly as one of the greatest nature’s finest ironies, inductively authenticates that visual disability is, to outward seeming, a phenomenal, delusive skin-deep verisimilitude of the objective visual sensory world’s irreconcilability with the subjective visual sensation world; the universal psychological and sociological cradle of the wider society’s monstrous impressions of the relative inability and relative inferiority of persons with visual disability, actively fortifying the involuntary impairment of one’s proclivity towards the crystallisation of one’s latent abilities, the actualisation of one’s utmost capacity and the consolidation of one’s de facto integrity; consequently effectuating, more often than not, the pro-active inhibition of the extensive recognition of one’s de jure dignity, relative equality, social mobility, and the full realisation, thereof, by the wider society.

Translucent! Being a psychological legacy of objectivism, impregnated within the imagination through comparative perception, fostered by the wider society’s nescience of the ironical essence of existence and callously immolated in its infancy as an oblation to cultural and religious intolerance, the run-of-the-mill prima facie impression of visual disability – an a priori arrant travesty of the capacity of persons with disabilities, en masse, bears a substratum of grotesque ideological grave misrepresentations of the destiny of persons with visual disability – the root cause of unfavourable presuppositions and unbefitting predispositions by the wider society towards visually handicapped persons which relatively rubs salt in their wound insofar as taking the wind out of their sails.

These sophistic, erroneous ex parte impressions and implications of visual disability are but mirage phenomena diffracted at the cognitive interface of the physical and the metaphysical, that by virtue of the wider society’s susceptibility to the pervasive influence of the withering cultural and religious indoctrination, absurdly predicated upon mere conjectural speculation and/or upon the materialisation of self-fulfilling prophesies, artfully sculptured and principally fostered into transpiration, particularly, in consequence of the ideological apotheosis of an idealised extrinsic being (as the basis of, inter alia, the societies’ individualistic ideologies), hence otherwise by the upholding and cushioning of the spirituality of disability, en bloc, {which ultimately papers over the cracks and upon which the spacious convictions that attributes the phenomenon of disability as of supernatural causality, that is, inter alia, as manifesting an imprecation, infliction or a repercussion for some past (lineal) transgression(s) }; simulates a semblance of intricacy and delicacy, and thus broods a hoodwinking mentality of the inscrutability of the question of visual disability that belies its insuperability, effectually spurring the indiscriminate and indelicate assimilation of superficial, larger-than-life non sequiturs refutable by reductio ad absurdum; thence engendering a nodding acquaintance which eventually conduces to the proliferation and ossification of hives of abysmal ignorance that resonates cognitive dissonance upon the wider society’s revelation to the nitty-gritty of visual disability.

Though we cannot wave aside the possible relative contributory ignorance and/or pessimism by the individual, this cumulative preponderance of the disability of the societies over the façade of visual disability makes it rather insignificant, hence making the contributory social, cultural and religious ignorance, intolerance and indifference too far-fetched an extraneous nuisance value to be overlooked. Not to put too fine a point on it, the pith of disability underlying the predominant idée recue anent visual disability is, substantially, psychological and is substantially psychological and sociological in nature, rather than being, practically, a physical or physiological condition. That is, it has a psychological and sociological foundation and not just is it of biological, physical chemical or mechanical causality. It is notably a cognitive phenomenon, (the Cognitive Theory of Virtual Disability – Gary Ngara), that is, however, ignorantly generalised sweepingly as being an objective phenomenon, (the Objective Theory of Literal Disability – Gary Ngara). The latter, literal visual disability, (oft-passive), which is the apparent disability as perceived by the wider society, entails the former, virtual disability, (oft-active), which encompasses the subjective acquiescence by one to intra-psychological frustrations in virtue of one’s literal visual disability – (Intrinsic Impairment of one’s Competence) – which, for the most part, is an upshot of the influence of the sociological generation, implantation/instillation and fortification of the fallacious and delusive sense of the relative incompetence of persons with disabilities, en bloc, by virtue of the society’s culture(s) and religion(s) – (Extrinsic Impairment of one’s Competence). In the nature of the case, the synergy of the mutually inclusive – literal and virtual disability – gives rise to an abstract phenomenon of infused literal disability – (the Abstract theory of Conjugate Disability – Gary Ngara) – the nub of the question of disability; hence, the absence of only a dual-pronged approach towards the twain phenomena in brazening out the question of visual disability, accounts for its ostensible complexity and formidability, (the Fundamental theory of the Duality of Disability – Gary Ngara).

Virtual disability – a sociological taint and a psychological trait governing human misery – refers to the voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious inability of one to avail oneself of one’s abilities. Thus, anyone can disable oneself or can extrinsically be disabled, consciously or unconsciously by being, voluntarily or involuntarily unable to actualise oneself with what one is capable of, or by being, voluntarily or involuntarily, unable to effectively utilise one’s abilities; to wit, the failure of one to apply oneself to one’s abilities, or the deflection of one from capitalising on one’s abilities, voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or unconsciously, is manifestly symptomatic of virtual disability. Virtual disability, which is out of all proportion to literal disability, is a universal trait, common to every human being, for as long as our societies shall not epitomise Utopia.

As a species of self-efficacy, it is mercurial and hence a continuous variable, whose degree is fostered or repressed both by the social environment within which one is enculturated, physically and cognitively develops; and by oneself, owing to the extent of one’s self-assurance and self-motivation. However, although the degree of virtual disability is somewhat inappreciable in most individuals of the society, owing, in the main to the sociological flexibility of the compensation psychological defence mechanism, its impact is rather more pronounced in situations where the sense of relative deprivation prevails; those governed, chiefly, by the wider society’s ignorance, indifference and intolerance; those characterised by, inter alia, stigmatisation, marginalisation and hence discrimination – which is largely attributed to the underprivileged vulnerable groups within the societies viz. persons with literal disabilities, women, children, the minority groups and the destitute.

This virtual disability, a phenomenon wrapped in mystery, is, principally, the essence of ‘’infused literal disability’’, that accentuates as good as it distorts the prima facie perception of literal and hence visual disability, by which same brush the wider society tars visual disability. The stigmatisation by the wider society which follows and, on the whole, reflects upon and decries the relative competence of persons with literal visual disability, thereby defying the unsnarling of the resultant Gordian knot, fuels their stratification, more often than not, to the lower social strata, where they are prone to sustain undue privations, in particular, the deprivation of de facto social recognition and acceptance. This sociological catalysis of the psychological metamorphosis of the fundamental conviction of the sublimity of the abilities of persons with literal visual disability into the absurd impression or supposition of their mediocrity effectually sparks intra-psychological approach-avoidance conflicts – one’s feelings of ambivalence towards one’s ability to avail oneself of one’s abilities – and thus triggers off a psychological warfare between the "need for achievement" and the "fear of success", which, ultimately, can leave one who knows not to shrink from succumbing to the compelling sociological sterilisations and demoralisations, on the brink of the jeopardy of the crystallisation and/or realisation of one’s (latent) abilities, hence also the fruition of one’s self-actualisation, ipso facto, intensifying one’s virtual disability, and thus one’s infused literal disability.

Buttressed by the extrinsic impairment of one’s competence, it paradoxically follows therefore syllogistically that: one’s abstract disability ain’t a matter of one’s literal visual disability, neither is it of one’s virtual disability, but the disabilities of one’s society – the inability of an able society to be universally inclusive; its reluctance to facilitate the social mobility of persons with literal disabilities; its imperviousness to their cries and grievances; its insensitiveness to sympathise and empathise with their plight; its unawareness to the superb latent abilities endowed to persons with literal disabilities; and its unconsciousness to the power of empowerment and equal-status interaction as the efficacious antidotes for the repression of virtual disability, dissolution of the significance of literal disability and the obliteration of its own disability.

Nevertheless, it is a moral certainty that visual disability is not the last extremity on humanity for it never predestines the futility of the fertility of one’s latent abilities. Lo and behold, notwithstanding his blindness, the quintessence of fortitude, Eric Weihenmayer, made it to the top of the world by climbing to the summit of the world’s topmost mountain – Mt. Everest (8848) – a phenomenal expedition dreaded by many: accomplished by a few; the awe-inspiring Kent Cullers (PhD), a physicist and an astronomer, is going strong; Dean Du Plessis is an international cricket analyst; Peter Torpey (PhD) is an engineering physicist; Amy Bower (PhD) is a research oceanographer; David Hartman (PhD) is a psychiatrist; the charismatic chemist, Judy Summers-Gates, is specialising in colour analysis; the inspirational Hein Wagner, is a motorist; the astrophysicist, David Mehringer (PhD) writes astronomical software; Joseph Monks, is a movie director; Pete Eckert, is a photographer; Michael Borgonia (Dr) is a medical transcriptionist.

There are economists, advocates, mathematicians, to mention but just a few of the very many self-willed paragons of excellence from all walks of life, who never hitched their wagons to the stars, but under the moral courage of their solemn convictions, extricated themselves from the dragnet of stereotypes; valiantly stood up, head over heels, to the scourge of swimming with the stream against their better judgement; feeling their way clear, put their best foot forward and took in their stride, straining every nerve shoreward; high-flyingly going great guns with a stiff upper lip from strength to strength in the wind’s eye, but on the scent, and made their way into the world to their hearts’ content ,only to be attestations to the fact that: visual disability, per se, is by no manner of means an impediment to one’s self-actualisation; on no account does it govern one’s level of intelligence; not in the slightest does it guarantee the curtailment of the ultimate degree of one’s competence; and thus therefore, in no wise does visual disability encumber one from attaining one’s beau ideal, or rather, ne plus ultra excellence – but the disabilities of one’s society.

Born visually impaired with only two percent (2%) sight, an exceptional electronic engineer of eminent ingenuity who blossomed out to be the father of, inter alia, the Galarneau Braille Computer and Printer – Ronald Galarneau (Engr.)(Canada); the kindered spirits, uncrowned Queens of determination, twin incarnations of tenacity and sagacity, famed poets, writers and lecturers who all died in the last ditch striking blows for the ultimate inclusion of persons with literal disabilities – Tilly Aston (Australia) and Helen Adams Keller (PhD)(US); Zimbabwe’s very own unprecedented touchstone who set the Thames on fire as the first Zimbabwean visually disabled advocate, lecturer and, among other things, professor (of Law) – Pearson Nherere (Prof.); the legendary Louis Braille (France); Bob Artkinson (US); Robert Irwin (US), and many others beyond mention, godsend, set no one on their pedestal, but with the will of their own, squared up to winning their spurs up their solid resolution: never to stop short of taking the (reputed) bull by the horns, and of course, on a winning streak, as anticipated, found a niche for themselves in the temple of fame, coming into prominence as icons of the cardinal virtues – truly, idols of an era, today’s era and the untold eras to come!

Although they lived as visually handicapped, they are today ’living lighthouses’. Some enlightened upon issues that, for long, had been held in obscurity; others dazzled the entire world with their second-to-none capacity; others blazed the trails and set the trend, which the forthcoming generations shall still follow. The selfsame spirit is still existent and shall forever be, since everyone is destined to flourish in one-way or the other, profitable to one’s society and the world at large. Thus, the indifference and intolerance by the wider society towards persons with visual disability on the strength of adhering to the ethos of one’s society, or under the banner of cultural fundamentalism or religious conformism, is not braced by rationalism, pragmatism or utilitarianism; neither is it logically vindicable, nor is it ethically creditable, but a grave act of undermining the tower of strength for the progressive sustainable, social, cultural, economic and political reformation of our societies into Utopia!

We need, then not to culturally standardise humanity unless otherwise we standardise the cultures of humanity. In other words, that standard which best stands up for the standards of each and everyone as individuals is the best standard that stands out best. Subservient to the ultimate realisation of this standard – individualism, if only we can learn to dignify and sanctify mankind veritably with a common resonant heart of impartiality and benignity, and consensually strike a blow for the intensive adoption of the principle of egalitarianism, that seeks to, inter alia, give prominence to the de facto and de jure respect for, observance of, protection and promotion of the fundamental rights, freedoms and privileges of persons with visual disability; profusely staff the pro-social behaviour cushion of the norms of altruism and humanitarianism (inc. social responsibility); supplant any obscurantist feelings of pessimism or negativism by subversively inculcating the reality of the very same relative great potential of visually handicapped persons, viva voce and by actively advocating for equal-status contact; stipulate for the streamlining of their independence and self-help socio-economic endeavours by dint of the mobilisation of sufficient efficient (assistive and adaptive) technical resources; and fully integrate persons with visual disability into the mainstream of the society’s social, cultural, economic and political activities seeing to it that the contact between the wider society and persons with visual disability is on a fifty-fifty footing, in whatsoever situation and under whatsoever circumstances…

… Definitely, persons with visual disabilities will arise, en bloc, by leaps and bonds from their misconceptualised level of mediocrity with the ethereal effulgence of unfathomable self-efficacy, ultimately immune from any dissuasions and disparagements, overwhelmingly shining with an empyrean resplendence to excellence, eminence and prominence as the diadem of their societies, never to be eclipsed again by the disability of the societies – if ever it shall be prevailing. It is not a prophecy, but philosophy. The incredible is to the incredulous, but it shall never be too late to mend.

It is an ill wind that blows no good. Verily, there is more in persons with visual disability than meets the eye. A modicum of sight that man may recognise in visual disability is but a tip of the iceberg, the thin end of a wedge, and a drop in the ocean of sight that lies behind the eyes. Verisimilitude is no proof, but verisimilitude. The only proof of the pudding lies in the eating. Why then prejudge one’s paces if we are capable of putting one through one’s paces?

The so purported ‘able-bodied’ are not the only pebbles on the beach. There is absolutely nothing to choose between man, neither is there a logical ground upon which we should make a difference between man. For how long, then, shall we keep on rubbernecking relentlessly to the warbles of winchers on the wing, hither and tether, yet deliberately impervious to the whimper of that wincing within the clutch of our very hands? What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!

Visual disability is not what it is!

by Gary Ngara, garyngara at yahoo dot com, proximaxentauri at yahoo dot co dot uk

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