Inspirational porn

[kin hell]

....disabled or not, getting on with life isn't exceptional, ......it's called living.
A clear insight into the act of praising "bravely overcoming disability".


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-03/young-inspiration-porn/4107006

In this way, these modified images exceptionalise and objectify those of us they claim to represent. It's no coincidence that these genuinely adorable disabled kids in these images are never named: it doesn't matter what their names are, they're just there as objects of inspiration.

But using these images as feel-good tools, as "inspiration", is based on an assumption that the people in them have terrible lives, and that it takes some extra kind of pluck or courage to live them.

For many of us, that is just not true.

When I was 15, a member of my local community approached my parents and told them she wanted to nominate me for some kind of community achievement award. My parents said, "Thanks, but there's one glaring problem with that... she hasn't actually achieved anything out of the ordinary."

[rickymooston]

Its not porn

At my university, i interacted with a lot of disaabled students. Hell, i considered dating one. (dont think she was interested butshe was and is a hottie. Very nice girl; she is a specialist in learning disabilitis and recently helped me with my adhd diagnosis process. Bit ironic that because i always thought of her as disabled being unable to walk but i amthe one with learning disabilities)

The truth is, society spends a lot of time conditioning them to besecond class citizens.

As for the person in the article you mmentioned, sounds interesting. I mean awarding somebody forr achieving when they have not is silly

Several of the disabled people i know actually did achieve.

The thing about these sorts of programs is i would want them by ppl with disabilities

My stomach is fine. Some of the disabled people i know do face some tough challenges. One guy, who become an IT manager, has a mild case of sarapulsy which i wont spell. He does hhave some severe health problems. Its not always easy for him but he is mostly a pretty cheerful guy and ironically is a christian

Accessibilty is always an issuue for wheel chair people.

Im sorry it offends you but people adapt and the human spirit can be quite amazing.

[Kimberly]

TY kin hell ; I rather liked the article. I suppose I never really thought about it like that. Interesting perspective.

[Traveler]

When I was in the middle of chemotherapy, everyone kept telling me how brave I was. In fact, a couple of years after treatment, they still tell me that. I've never understood that "compliment." I was simply doing what I needed to do to survive. I didn't feel brave. I didn't feel not-brave. I was simply going about my business.

Anyway, mine was (hopefully) a temporary thing, and cannot compare to the experiences of a permanently disabled person, but I certainly do resonate with the feeling that praise sometimes comes about for the oddest of reasons.

And the positive attitude stuff? I get that too. I suffer from depression. Believe me, if I could just smile my way out of it I would.

[Kimberly]

And the positive attitude stuff? I get that too. I suffer from depression. Believe me, if I could just smile my way out of it I would.

If we could manufacture our own happiness I'm pretty sure many doctors would be out of a job. Though the act of positive affirmations does help in the long run, it doesn't completely remove depression.

[rickymooston]

When I was in the middle of chemotherapy, everyone kept telling me how brave I was. In fact, a couple of years after treatment, they still tell me that. I've never understood that "compliment." I was simply doing what I needed to do to survive. I didn't feel brave. I didn't feel not-brave. I was simply going about my business.

Well, the people in question were likely worried about you and feeling powerless to help you. Obviously,
They wanted you to recover. When you were doing well, they were happy you were winning. They did not
Want you to lose tobthe depression or tye disease itself. The compliment wasn't. It was an attempt as a hug. Given the universslity of desth, you should have understood thst. When somebody dies or faces death, what do you ssy? Obviously, you want to he,p but tye reality is you cannot. We all face that delimns. Its hard to just listen and express tyat one has hears or shoulders.


Most of us, would be scared shitless if we found out we hsd cancer. I am sure your reaction on learning yiu had it, was the same as anybody's. Then, faced with no other cHoice, yiu did what bumsns do. You tried to deal with the problem as best as you could, following medical advice.p, trying to make the best of it.

WHO is brave? What is bravery? Often peoole just did what they felt they hsx to do to survive and to help others to do so.

Anyway, mine was (hopefully) a temporary thing, and cannot compare to the experiences of a permanently disabled person, but I certainly do resonate with the feeling that praise sometimes comes about for the oddest of reasons.

And the positive attitude stuff? I get that too. I suffer from depression. Believe me, if I could just smile my way out of it I would.

Well, lots of disabled people i know do actually have positive  attitudes. I do not think that means neglecting
Their medical needs. Depression is a bitch and obviously it doez not produce a positive sttitude. My cousin takes medication for that and it is working well for her.

So.e disabled people get annoyed if people focus too much on their disabilty. Some of them adapt extremely well. Some disabilities are complex. ADHD mught have positive effects for some; i gave met ppl with my condition who are offended by this but the reality is, several studies have suggested that the adhd community on the whole is very creative. Some ppl deal with it through mrdicatiin whereas others gravitate to professions that suit their temperment.

[Nick]

When I read the title of this post I thought it was about a Catholic priest and a boy in the confessional.

[kindred]

Inspirational porn is old news and has had its tentacles in pretty much everything. Happiness is a need. People will get it no matter how. Even if it means intellectual dishonesty.

Just take this oft used phrase for example: "the only disability is a negative outlook." No. A disability is mothahfuckin disability. The inability to walk is mothafockin hindrance that handicaps a person and decreases his absolute potential. It takes an above average person to be able to adapt in a world built for people without disabilities and come out as an averagely useful person.

[stuffin]

First off, I think all porn is inspirational.

Seriously, had trouble getting into the first half of the article but I did kept reading and thought it was refreshing and well stated from her perspective.

[Nam]

^yeah. Porn inspires me when I'm horny, and alone.

-Nam

[rickymooston]

Inspirational porn is old news and has had its tentacles in pretty much everything. Happiness is a need. People will get it no matter how. Even if it means intellectual dishonesty.

I disagree.

Its not about a need to be "happy" or "dishonesty".

It is generally about a need to help those one cares about even when there is nothing that can be done but them grinning and bearing it.

It is about the deep seated stubbornness to try to survive.

Just take this oft used phrase for example: "the only disability is a negative outlook." No. A disability is mothahfuckin disability. The inability to walk is mothafockin hindrance that handicaps a person and decreases his absolute potential. It takes an above average person to be able to adapt in a world built for people without disabilities and come out as an averagely useful person.

Well, if you interfaced with a lot of disabled people, you might feel differently. Obviously, the disability does limit them in certain ways but quite often they adapt/b] and many of them could be a bit offended by your approach. Perhaps others might agree with you though.

I had a few good friends who were disabled in my university years. One of them, who cannot walk, helped me years later with my ADHD diagnosis. She cannot walk. She knows this. She clearly had her stuggles but she got past that. She is a very good councelor. She is great at her job and perfectly happy as far as i can tell.

Another guy was a blind guy i worked with. He is one of the best software designers i ever met. he jokes he thinks in 3 d while we think in 2. The guy is a bit odd but thats just because he happens to be a born again christian with a huge amount of kids

My point is, he accomodated his disability. He excels as a dad and at his job. His disability isn't much of a disability in his life. He is happy. This does not mean he has no limitations but he certainly would not have achieved his considerable success by focusing on the negative your post seems to be implying.

[rickymooston]

If we could manufacture our own happiness I'm pretty sure many doctors would be out of a job. Though the act of positive affirmations does help in the long run, it doesn't completely remove depression.

Clinical depression is another issue altogether but ordinary people can to some extent "manufacture" happiness. On the other side of the coin, very fortunate peoole, with ever increasing expectations also manufacture sadness.

[kindred]

@rickymooson

A disability is a mothafuckin disability.

Being blind did not help that person. He did. He adapted and used what he had to his advantage to COMPENSATE. If he wasn't blind, he'd have more options. He could have been an athlete or what have you.

You cannot move goalposts like that. I do not accentuate the negative, I only try bring everything in perspective. Just because reality is letting down your optimism bias doesn't mean you can reject reality and substitute your own.

There are far more honest ways of dealing with disability. For example: if you don't have legs, you find another way to move around and try to find compromises. You get encumbered by things normal people aren't encumbered by BUT you don't go around trying to make yourself feel better by saying it isn't a disability. A disadvantage is a disadvantage and should be dealt with accordingly. Actual solutions to problems rather than emotional fixes so you don't feel the problem at all.

[rickymooston]

A disability is a mothafuckin disability.

A tautology is a mother fucking tautology. Google it.

Being blind did not help that person. He did. He adapted and used what he had to his advantage to COMPENSATE. If he wasn't blind, he'd have more options. He could have been an athlete or what have you

We ALL have strengths and weaknesses. I have good vision, good hearing and can walk fine

Reality check, i do not have the body of an athete and i suck at art/music

I can dwell on this, become an alcoholic, even kill myself over it

OR, i can look at tbe positives of what I DO have.

I have a different perspective than the average jock

YES, i am compensating but i am also specializing. Spending more time on other endeavors, i may in fact excel at them. Very few people are good at everything

You cannot move goalposts like that. I do not accentuate the negative, I only try bring everything in perspective. Just because reality is letting down your optimism bias doesn't mean you can reject reality and substitute your own.

That is not moving goal posts. Perhaps you should learn to memorize your logical fallacies better.

Let me repeat it again. A lot of disabled people would find your point of view unhelpful

There are far more honest ways of dealing with disability. For example: if you don't have legs, you find another way to move around and try to find compromises. You get encumbered by things normal people aren't encumbered by BUT you don't go around trying to make yourself feel better by saying it isn't a disability. A disadvantage is a disadvantage and should be dealt with accordingly. Actual solutions to problems rather than emotional fixes so you don't feel the problem at all.

Its a disability if you focus on the things you cannot do. Likewise, my lack of athletic ability is a disability if i want to be who i am not.

Happiness has a lot to do with expectations. This is why many rich people are miserable.

i agree with you on one key point. They adapt.


I have ADHD. Sometimes its frustrating. However, i feel a lot better when i realize i will never be an accountant and focus my energies on areas where either a) my ADHD is not a disadvantage or b) where
The compensation you mentioned offers potential advantages.

Go back to the original and typical example. A disabled guy compensated and made well with his life. As a
councelor[/b, some of his struggles made him a stronger person and one who has credibility with depressed kids.

Get your mind out of the box and often, being an optimist offers ways that you can find opportunities.

Or you can memorize logical fallacies and be a parrot.


A last thought striving makes you stronger. Some people who are geniuses are horrible teachers
Because they never had to overcome obstacles themselves.

I dont deny a disability is a disability. Sometines, as a result of having one, other doors are opened. We are
All different

Does this mean i will cut off the kegs of children at birth? Of course not.

[rickymooston]

One note. I do agree with you on one point. 

A disability is disadvantage but my point is that onky matters if you focus one what you cant do

If i want to be an olympic athlete, my inability to keep up in sports was a disability.

Likewise, my ADHD is most certainly an obstacle for me in terms of a few things. But some of those things dont matter to me and some do.

We all learn fro our life struggle. I experience thibgs you dont snd vice versa.

Life is short

To a very lsrge extent, happiness is a choice

Does this mean one should never be sad? Of course not. Indeed all our emotions in moderation have purpose.
They evolved for a reason. When you are sad, if you are healthy, that is a driver to eventually do about your sadness.

Humans adapt but i dont see focusing on the negative as being helpful on helping them adapt.

If a crippke person simple thinks about what a shitty runner she is, how she she discover she is a rather good administrator?

[kindred]

@rickymooston
Equivocation. You don't like how the word disability makes people feel. So you replace it with another word that is not as well suited but makes you feel better.

Intellectual dishonesty. A persons will to live is not as important as integrity.

Being blind by definition is not having a sense that other people have. It is a disability by definition and you cannot change the word to describe it just because it'll motivate you. I don't care if its the only way a person can continue on living. Intellectual dishonesty is dishonesty and should not be tolerated even if it stops a person from leading a miserable life.

You even said it yourself, you COMPENSATED. Which means you put more effort into things just so you can be on par with other people. Less efficiency and less versatility resulted from your ADHD. Which it turns it into a disability. It is another con in the pros and cons of the skill pool you have. You used more of your limited resources on something so you could live normally.

To simplify, think of a disability as an RPG skill where there is a negative and positive penalty where the negative far outweighs the positive. It can be used in certain builds but it is still a crap skill. Just because you can make it work doesn't mean its good. 

Though I concede the wrongful use of the fallacy of moving goalposts. I used it as a way to express an emotional reaction to your statements rather than as it should've been used.

[rickymooston]

I must apologize in advance. My response was written on my tablet. It was wsy too ,ong and detailed.
A quick summary is this.

I am trying to convey the value of seeing a disability as a two sided coin rather than only as a negative thing.

Both the positives and the negatives are valuable in certain contexts.

I also talked a bit about ADHD. That is probably a bad idea. It is a complicated topic. The same ADHD can actually be an advantage in some situations and a disadvantage in others. On the other hand, because ADHD is an invisible disorder, many people with it actually get frustrated because people don't believe they have a problem. None the less, understanding how we are different is more useful to me than calling it either "positive" or "negative". Each individual has different goals. Once he understand himself, he can decide whst if anything is "broken". (Now to get diagnosed with ADHD, one has to experience some difficulties. Often this occurs in school, where the school system is not "designed" for ppl with ADHD. This also depends on the form of ADHD one has.

Sometimes the positive is a compensation. Sometimes a trait is oositive in one scenario and negative another.

The blind guy, feels he rlthinks in 3d because he is blind. We often read on 2D paper. Ks he right? We, i am not blind but he was one of the best designers i ever met. He had a different perspective

What i am discussing here is pdrspective

Each person is different and so is each disability.

i could anger some by discussing deaf culture. Some deaf people like it and are proud of it. Sign language has a unique richness.

Some ADHDers hate so called "gifters" because its an invisible disability as ive explainers. Gifters like me, see it as empowering. Indeed, it is helpful to me to understand bith where my adhd is an advantage and where it is not. Its scary when some ppl misrepresent it or when i get forced to do things that "target" it

A wise man knows his strengths and his weaknesses. Only emphasizing one is bad.

Where a person needs to deal with a barrier, it is useful to see the disability

Where a person is a round peg, it is useful to see their ability and to find the round hole.

It is not about intellectual honesty. It is about being open to seeing more than one perspective. This is
How one can adapt.

[kindred]

@rickymooston

All fine and dandy but ,forgive me if I am wrong, you seem to be doing the same. You are focusing on only the positive forcing me to point out the negative. You seem to function by only acknowledging the negative when it is useful to the situation and trying to bury the negative in compartmentalization.

I am averse to that kind of thinking. Take for example:If you are a beautiful woman and you only look at the positives(favors and whatnot) then you are intellectually dishonest. If you are a beautiful woman and only look at the negatives(difficulty to have your non aesthetic merits taken seriously) then it is also dishonest. Both lines of thinking need to be recognized and you are not allowed to bury in emotional thinking the facts that you do not like.

The only reason a blind person would unable to deal with his condition is because he is screwed over by that compartmentalization. If try to asses and accept the truth, nothing will ever phase you. The only reason people with disabilities wouldn't be able to deal with life is because they have yet to adjust their baseline of thinking to how they are actually going to live.

I don't want to go into a long rant here so here's a quick rundown. I sense optimism bias from you and I want to pummel it out of you.

[rickymooston]

The topic of the thread is this so called porn. Hence was "focus".

As i said both views are useful.

As for being an "optimist", in our sink or swim world, it is neccessary to survive. You have to find you path of least resistance or be left behind.

As for beauty, too complicated of a topic. Beauty is somewhat subjective. Being beautiful and being ugly can both be bad in some scenarios.

Beautiful women sometimes are given advantages but they also are sometimes subject to prejudice and harrassment.

You cannot pommel Taoism out of me. You certainly can find ibstances where i fail to follow the path of least resistance

Consider for a moment, a Canadian hero, Terry Fox. He had a bitter battle with cancer. Don't get me wrong, it ruined his athletic career. It killed him. He died a painful, early death

All the same, faced with adversity, he ran half way across Canada. Able bodied and disabled celebrate him to this day.

Life is short. Celebrate it. Make the best of your oppirtunities.

And read tge Tao de Jing.



There is no telling what feats he would have accomplished had he not been struck by cancer
But certainly, logic says he would havr been an ordinary man, like you and me. Perhaps
he would be taking a stroll with his kids right now.

I am sure however, he would not have rsised millions for cancer or inspired millions to
Refuse to give up.

You have to play the poker hand you are given. A good poker player can sonetimes make more money
With a bad hand

Don't focus on positive or negative. Focus on making the best of what you have and look out for
Opportunities to find silver linings.


Considrr also Rick Hensen who followed terry's foot steps and toured the world in a wheel chair

He raised 200 million dollars for spinal chair research. Had he not had that terrible accidrnt at 15,
I am sure he would not have achieved the success he did. He married his ohysiotherapist
And has 3 kids.

People over come adversity and  sometimes achieve greater ends. Obviously, he was strong and has strong character. His success was still born out of adversity.

[rickymooston]

I find this guy quite inspiratiinal and to my knowledge he doesnt push religion on anybody



Apparently he and Terry Fox actually met.

The interview is quite interesting.

[kindred]

Focusing on the good is intellectually dishonest. There is bad and good in the world. Ignoring one or the other is not very honest.

I would rather live and die unhappy but content with knowledge that I sought the truth and accepted it even if I found it wanting.

[rickymooston]

Focusing on the good is intellectually dishonest.

It depends on the context.

I am not a good athlete. I can worry about this or I can accept it and move on.

If I focus on what I AM good at, I can find my niche in life and be effective. The world has other
people to fill that niche.

The guy I talked about was a gifted athlete. When he was 15, he could plausibly dream about being an olympic champion. He was almost killed in a car accident.  He was denied that opportunity. He will
Never get a mainstream olympic medal

What he did do, was he worked very hard as a paraolypmian. He also crossed the world in a wheel chair to raise money for research.  He got a university degree in physical education

He has inspired many people around the world to make a difference in life, whether those people have a disabikity in life or not

Would he liked to be able to walk? Probably but he has lived a very high quality of life, trvaled around the eorld and even represented his country without being able to walk.

What you seem to be missing is how much disabled people are told by society that they can't.

Unlike others, he has not openly declared what his religious views are. He is all about building on what you have

[kindred]

Move on? You never just move on after a tragedy or discovery of something negative. You get on with life but the event changes you forever. That is how its supposed to work. The tragedy is supposed to illuminate you to the truth and allow you to have a clearer understanding of yourself and the world.

Drawing from my own experiences here, if you find that you have the compulsion to torture and murder small animals, you don't just move on and try to get on with your life. You remember that and keep it in mind when making decisions. I have cat, a small animal, and I always need to remember that or else I might choke the cat to death and come up with rationalizations to justify caving in to the compulsion. Can you imagine if I never acknowledged it and just "moved on?" It'd be bad because traits don't work that way. They don' just disappear. It'll affect you for your entire life.