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capri0mniThere has been a school of philosophy that has been tickling my brain muchly of late -- namely, Cosmopolitanism.
I first heard about it from a interview with Kwame Anthony Appiah on the show Tavis Smiley, which just happened to air on my father's birthday (February 10). Perhaps it was the date, as much as what was what was said, that caught my attention, since it was just a few weeks after I learned of my father's diagnosis with lung cancer -- a kind of shock like that blows your mind and heart open, and new expressions of ideas can find their way inside a lot quicker, and deeper.
I particularly like this definition of cosmopolitanism by Proffessor Appiah:
This struck a really deep chord with me. From the moment I was born, I had no choice but to be different from everyone around me, because of my CP. And from the almost the moment I was born, I've had people asking me: "But don't you wish you could walk? Don't you want to be just the same as everyone else?"
NO!!!
Everytime someone asks me that, no matter how well-intentioned they are, they're basically telling me I'm not enough of a human being, just as I am -- that the experiences I've had as a person with CP aren't enough to enrich my life, or the lives of anyone else. And that hurts. Pity hurts dammit! It particularly hurts when they say things like: "If you become Christian, Jesus will heal you." (and I have had that kind of thing said to me, both directly and indirectly.
And that's why I love Doctor Who: from its very beginnings in the early 60's (right around the time I was born), its driving philosophy has been truly cosmopolitan. Even when the sets were at their wobbliest, when the characters were at their most two-dimensional, existing-only-as-plot-devices selves, what drove those outrageous, silly plots has always been a deep, cosmopolitan ideal of the universe, and of the people who inhabitit. The one thing that the Doctor is intolerant of is intolerance. Besides, it's also great fun... but it is more than that, to me...
Yay!!
And I want a Cosmopolitan!Doctor icon for this ellejay... maybe with his arm around an alien, or something...
I first heard about it from a interview with Kwame Anthony Appiah on the show Tavis Smiley, which just happened to air on my father's birthday (February 10). Perhaps it was the date, as much as what was what was said, that caught my attention, since it was just a few weeks after I learned of my father's diagnosis with lung cancer -- a kind of shock like that blows your mind and heart open, and new expressions of ideas can find their way inside a lot quicker, and deeper.
I particularly like this definition of cosmopolitanism by Proffessor Appiah:
[E]verybody matters, but everybody doesn't have to be the same. Many people who think that everybody matters want everybody to be the same. The Mormons think everybody matters, but they want everybody to be Mormon. Cosmopolitans don't want everybody to be anything. We think it's great that the world is diverse. We like the fact that there are different civilizations, different cultures, different ways of going on.
This struck a really deep chord with me. From the moment I was born, I had no choice but to be different from everyone around me, because of my CP. And from the almost the moment I was born, I've had people asking me: "But don't you wish you could walk? Don't you want to be just the same as everyone else?"
Everytime someone asks me that, no matter how well-intentioned they are, they're basically telling me I'm not enough of a human being, just as I am -- that the experiences I've had as a person with CP aren't enough to enrich my life, or the lives of anyone else. And that hurts. Pity hurts dammit! It particularly hurts when they say things like: "If you become Christian, Jesus will heal you." (and I have had that kind of thing said to me, both directly and indirectly.
And that's why I love Doctor Who: from its very beginnings in the early 60's (right around the time I was born), its driving philosophy has been truly cosmopolitan. Even when the sets were at their wobbliest, when the characters were at their most two-dimensional, existing-only-as-plot-devices selves, what drove those outrageous, silly plots has always been a deep, cosmopolitan ideal of the universe, and of the people who inhabitit. The one thing that the Doctor is intolerant of is intolerance. Besides, it's also great fun... but it is more than that, to me...
Yay!!
And I want a Cosmopolitan!Doctor icon for this ellejay... maybe with his arm around an alien, or something...
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snappy comeback
Date: 2006-04-16 06:11 pm (UTC)"No, I wish I could fly. Don't you?"
Re: snappy comeback
Date: 2006-04-16 06:46 pm (UTC)And as I was struggling to get through the too-narrow door on my crutches, someone inside announced my arrival with: "Hey, look! It's Peter Pan!"
To which I replied: "That's right! I can't walk. But I can fly!"
(I still think that would make a great tee-shirt/Sweatshirt design)
Another snappy comeback:
"How long have you been in that wheelchair?"
"Since about 9 am..."