A couple of weeks ago, YouTube sensation MrBeast posted a video in which he helped cure the blindness of 1,000 people. The video ignited a storm of controversy. Buzzfeed‘s Kelsey Weekman said there was a “huge problem” with it: “MrBeast’s video seems to regard disability as something that needs to be solved.” In TechCrunch, Steven Aquino blasted it for putting “systemic ableism on display.” Aquino takes issue with the viewpoint that “disabilities should be eradicated — cured.”
The idea that curing disabilities represents ableism and is somehow bad has deeper roots than Buzzfeed and TechCrunch. In Is Everyone Really Equal?, an influential textbook for education graduate students, authors Robin DiAngelo (of White Fragility fame) and Özlem Sensoy condemn the idea that disabilities are “undesirable” and something that “no one would ever choose.” In a passage that foretells the current controversy, they describe a hypothetical scenario involving a visually impaired person. They speak with horror of a hypothetical doctor who asks the person “We have the technology, why suffer unnecessarily?” To the authors, this is a key component of ableism. By offering to fix the person’s disability, the doctor is supposedly erasing their humanity.
This perspective rests on a false dichotomy: the idea that if we try to help someone to overcome their disability, we’re not seeing them as fully human. This dichotomy, in turn, comes when people identify with their disability. When someone asked Aquino whether or not he would choose to be born without his disabilities, “I told him rather unequivocally that I wouldn’t…It would change who I am.” Aquino has found a silver lining to the cerebral palsy he was born with. That’s admirable. But the fact is that as humans, we can build our identity around whatever we want. When we build our identity around the thing that causes us our most intense suffering, we’re merely asking for more suffering.
This false dichotomy is something I had to work through first-hand. When I was younger I dealt with abuse, as well as a cocktail of mental health problems (including intense depression and addiction in my early 20s) that grew out of that abuse. I used to identify with those mental health conditions. When someone suggested that I work on my depression, I would become defensive. I even saw them as a gift; after all, what writer hasn’t drawn from their pain to make their words shine? But the truth, as anyone who’s dealt with depression and addiction knows, was less glamorous. My conditions were causing me unnecessary daily suffering.
Once I began doing deep spiritual work, I was able to see myself as more than the sum of my pain. From a moral standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with conditions that make your life harder. But there’s nothing virtuous about them either. Once I developed an identity based on my spirit–my deepest sense of self, my passions and my calling and my connection to God–I stopped identifying with my mental illness. Once that happened I could start meaningfully seeking treatment without feeling like I was attacking a core part of myself. It wasn’t easy, but the rewards–a life of joy and peace and love that I would have found unimaginable back when my brain was telling me to die every few days–have been worth it.
Aquino takes issue with the idea that society should help people with disabilities. “We don’t need cures from ourselves,” he writes. “What we desperately do need is some recognition of our basic humanity.” We should certainly all take pains to see our fellows’ humanity, whether they’re disabled or not. But there’s also a sense in which seeing peoples’ humanity requires that we try to help them. After all, if we see our brother or sister in pain, and we have the tools to help them, and instead we just sit back and watch them suffer, do we really care about them? True compassion requires that we see the noble spirit inside of every human being and try to help them to live their best life. When my mentor helped me beat my depression and addiction, he did it because he saw my humanity: he saw the soul trapped in unnecessary suffering, and he worked to liberate me from my pain.
When Jesus saw people suffering, he didn’t just sit on his hands and watch. He cured the blind and healed the lame. Ultimately he died for us, in order to save us from the unnecessary suffering of our sin. A God that simply watched us suffer, perhaps while mouthing a couple of platitudes about how “blindness needs no cure”, is a God I would never follow.
Aquino argues that “Disabled people are not freaks.” On that, we whole-heartedly agree. But sometimes, the desire to help someone escape their pain flows naturally from seeing them as fully human. If we as a society stopped caring–and stopped trying to help–would that really be better?
Julian Adorney is a freelance SEO and content marketer serving nonprofits. My content’s been featured in The Hill, National Review, and more. His website can be found here.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.