The importance of including disability

(Nimue)

Disabled people have always existed. Some people are born disabled, many become disabled as a consequence of accident or illness. It is really important that the stories we tell reflect and include this. For bards and Druids, this is highly significant around how we imagine the distant past, and how we present our ideas about a sustainable future.

There is a problematic fantasy out there to the effect that disability is a modern issue. This story encourages us to think that back in the past, when we all lived close to nature, everyone was fit and healthy, and that if we only went back to more ‘natural’ living, we’d all be well.

Some illness is unequivocally the fault of modern society. Many are not. The past offered humans a whole array of diseases and opportunities for crippling injury. The future may offer fewer such risks, but if it does, that will be on the basis of social and medical advances.

Whatever story you are telling about what we might do, it’s important to factor in that people have diverse bodies and options. For most of us, the more outlandish things that are feasible at twenty are not anything like as feasible at fifty. Simply recognising that can do a lot to make a piece more inclusive. If you write from the assumption that everyone should be able to do everything, it’s really alienating for people who can’t. Lots of people can’t.

We urgently need to imagine better ways of living. However, if we leave large numbers of people out of that vision, we’re going to have problems.

Ideas about rewilding and nature can, if we aren’t careful, invite in ideas of eugenics. Survival of the fittest is a notion that has been used to justify letting the ‘weak’ die as a natural and scientific process. It assumes that physical robustness is the most important thing, so tends towards both ageism, and sexism as well as being obscenely ableist. In terms of our collective wellbeing as a species, physical robustness is not the only consideration, and never has been.

We need stories that value an array of skills and ways of being. We need to see people as having worth beyond the labour that can be extracted from their bodies.