Manifesto of the Committee for the Sick and Useless
Those of us with disabilities form an interest group with an immense number of seemingly abled people. Everyone whose culture, beliefs, age, personality, sexuality, language, immigration status or other inclination makes them less useful to society belongs with disabled people in the fight to exist without justification.
The Committee for the Sick and Useless believe it is the innate and inalienable right of all people to:
Do Nothing
Help No One
Feel Awful
And above all else
Be Useless
In this age of increasing productivity and accomplishment, we too often sacrifice the most sacred right of all living things: to simply exist, asking much and contributing nothing. We sacrifice this right not just for ourselves as individuals but for all life on Earth present and future.
Our existence has been made conditional on the work we are expected to do, whether that work is employment, education, or caring for the home. Even plants and animals must now earn their right to exist by producing food, providing beauty, cleaning our air, warming our hearts. The ugly, unpleasant and useless are abandoned.
We, the committee, do not consider ourselves at odds with health, joy and usefulness. Rather we are united with all good and joyful people in our fight against the demand for productivity. Our enemies are those who demand that the land produce wealth, that the workers produce profit, that the sick produce medical certificates, that children grow up and the elderly make themselves scarce.
The right to exist is the foundation of all human rights and duties; it cannot be made conditional, lest all rights be made conditional. We support the right of everyone, everywhere, to live.
In this admittedly revolutionary goal, we have many allies. These include, but are not limited to: queers, cripples, drug users, the unemployed, the mentally ill, the anti-colonial, the incomprehensible, the celibate, the ugly, mutes, mystics, pessimists, mosquitoes, cats, children, teenagers, the elderly, speakers of suppressed languages, and people without a driving license.
This is Chapter 31 of Redefining Disability, with very minor edits. I held off on posting this until it was published. It is now in a real physical book that they cannot take away from me so here you all go.
If you would like a copy of this or any other chapters from the journal, I will be happy to email them to you.
Quantum physicist Dr. Vera Spillner chats with chess master Arianne Caoili — on the danger that the Large Hadron Collider might generate miniature black holes, 2009.
it occurred to me recently that this may be somewhat on purpose.
not saying there's a conspiracy or something, I'm just saying the people in power have a pretty strong economic motivation to interpret the stats this way.
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