Don't want your number. Never actually lost it.

When I write stuff here, despite based on my personal experience, the idea is to distill some sort of general understanding that hopefully applies to more people, and can thus shed some light over situations that happen commonly to others as a somewhat clear consequence of disability matters, and related prejudice.

This means that even if you happen to see yourself here, it usually doesn't really matter to me in particular anymore. My writing is exactly my way of digesting what happens, and move on, for good. So if you're cited anonymously here, you're just an example of which I like to extract some sort of general understanding that hopefully applies to more people and more situations than this specific one you've been part of. And after I do that, I can personally just let go of the situation and forget about it, once I've learned something useful from it. I don't want your number,

If you come across me in a bar, and you start questioning about one of these specific essays, you'd better just bring a clear reference so that I can first of all remember who you are, and what you're talking about, and then discuss the issue, in case I think it's worth it.

In last night particular case, I wasn't even able to remember the first part, and much less which was the damn essay I've written months ago using something you did as an inspiration. The only thing left from you was the clear idea that some people are apparently very accepting and understanding, while in fact they're not.

As time went by, I've learned to distinguish basic types of attitudes towards disability. First one is full blown open prejudice, like the one I've faced when people cancelled dates upon knowing I was disabled, not a minute before. While this one is personally the most unpleasant, it actually gives me the best chance to defend myself, since it's out there, and hopefully will be soon typified as a crime, as racism already is.

The second, in my opinion, is probably the most dangerous one: your type. People that see themselves as tolerant, and even indifferent to disability, and who will try to sell you their version of facts, namely that prejudice and oppression don't really exist outside disabled person's inner reality. These ones are probably as wrong as the first group, but since they are not openly discriminating you in your face, you tend to better tolerate them and their biased views, even giving them some space to lecture you.

But equality is a social struggle, and people like yourself actually provide the coverage needed for type 1 to openly hold on to their prejudice and privilege. Contrary to what you think, you're not really much better than them, but you're certainly much more difficult to fight. Thus the last thing I wanna know is that your excuse for rejecting me was not disability, and even less that this is evidence that prejudice doesn't exist.

It takes work and analyzing to extract truth from experience, but science progress is the proof that despite your inability of doing such a thing, others can and will do it. This is the pack I wanna be part of. And this essay is actually for you.

So this is Christmass, and dreams do come true

Last year, late November, I've written a sort of prophetic essay about social parasites, particulary the ones that were hierarchically above me at work, and who were thus far very effective in sabotaging my life and my career without any visible prejudice to their own.

Yes, they were two morons at a company that generally values intelligence a lot. However, even having lower than average IQ and education to work there, especially as people managers, they really excelled in small politics and lack of character. This has made them go much farther than what one could expect from them.

And since people above them were irresponsible enough to grant these horrible women any kind of power over whole teams, I didn't feel I should have much hope for a happy end of my story there. However, this is something I want to share with others, especially those under any sort of abusive hierarchic superiors.

The system itself was in clear favor of them, which really gave me the impression I'd be done with very soon. But there have been other factors at play I couldn't quite understand back then, but that right now seem quite obvious.

These people, were opportunistic and under-qualified. This clearly put them in a difficult position when compared to whom they were supposed to lead, and that earned substantially less money than them. It's sort of logical to think that the only way for those people to keep their inadequately high position, was to both undermine the ones doing the actual work on their behalf, while they kept busy repeating platitudes and abusing these very people.

For 2 years I was kept in this lousy situation. I was abused, underpaid, and afraid this was the end of my career, and an irreversible damage to my future perspectives in life. But luckily I was wrong. With the right people coming to the larger team leadership, these fake leads were soon uncovered by their incompetence.

And although nobody has apologized to me or compensated me for all the deep shit I've been put through because the organization has failed to control and eliminate these pieces of human garbage, as expected, I've suddenly become a top performer, as soon as they were cleared from my way.

Now I probably have a future that's more compatible with my education levels and skills. But I still intend to do everything I possibly can to avoid something like that happens ever again. This year I've got indeed a lot to celebrate. But I'll make sure not to forget a second of the hell I've been through as a means to help eliminating this sort of abuse from the face of the Earth.

Last chance

Sometimes I just get naked from any activist intentions and I try to act like any other human being. What happens is that activists need to be radical to make their point. This can actually be inconvenient because navigating life often demands lots of incoherent action. And this is exactly the kind of shit an activist can't afford.

In any case, I really do my best to be aware of my two hats. And I try to act more softly when dealing with private matters that don't necessarily make to the cover of a magazine. On the other hand, there's always a limit. And when this is reached, I feel rather obligated to make it public for the sake of my cause.

One of those nights, I've matched with a girl in Happn. She was really fun, very young, and unfortunately very compliant to some sort of primal beauty standard that must be embedded in my jewish DNA. Yes, she's like 10 years younger than me. But although I'm mentioning that to make sure it's taken into account, I don't really think it can be deemed as a valid excuse for everything that happened later on.

She was very eager to meet me after the late night chats we've had. Although tired, she never for a second hesitated about wanting to meet me on that Saturday night. But then, as I always do, I felt I needed to tell her I've had cerebral palsy. I did that only for the sake of being entirely transparent, since I don't really believe it should be that relevant, especially for making the decision to blow me off in the last minute.

But then, that was exactly what happened. When she came across this info about me, she has just decided it was OK to cancel the date in the last minute. She has used her mental state as a excuse to do so. I was angry. I was frustrated. I felt as an activist it was my duty to hold her in contempt for being such a low person.

However, I've also put myself in her shoes, and decided to swallow my pride and my hatred as a means to promote a real positive change. I knew I'd be absolutely excused to just treat her as the lowest possible creature in the world without any trace of guilt. After all, being nasty to someone that has been ridiculously obscene to you is hardly something that will give you bad dreams at night.

Fact is I didn't really want to believe she was nasty. Because minutes before I was totally into her, lost in a great chat about nothing in particular, Seinfeld style. And all of a sudden, she felt ok to be treating me as subhuman because I've told her I have a disability. In this light I've managed to control my anger and give her the benefit of the doubt.

Now I realize this wasn't really about her. I was challenging myself to turn something despicable into another walk in the park. I was obsessed. I really felt that if I could make this person treat me as another person, I would have been able to erase some of the evil thrown on disabled people all over the world, since humanity's inception.

I've failed miserably. After so much time trying to convince her to meet me and end that horror situation she was causing both of us, I just had to give up. She really thought she could treat me like crap, and still have a clean conscience, still being able to consider herself a decent person. Well, unfortunately I have to disagree. But I'll give her yet the last chance to make it right. You see, this essay is going out without her name. So it is public, as much as all my records about being abused at work.

Her name is not here, so no one will be able to tell she did it. Now my pledge is the following: if she really thinks what she did was OK, I think she won't mind me mentioning who she is. Otherwise, she's exactly like my ex-ex manager. Just a lousy person without any special talent abusing people to appear less incompetent and unskilled than she really was. In that case, I don't see any reason why her identity should be protected. Especially by me.

Modern love

Time goes by and things change. Yet of course basic human feelings are still the same as they were 500 BC. But the social structure in which these feelings unfold as well as the technological means by which they are exchanged have definitely changed drastically.

In a world where the vast majority of the rich people already have a smartphone in their pockets, several novel forms of social interaction emerge. Mobile broad band internet connection that enables people to instantly access thousands of high definition photos, and built-in precise geolocation systems are allowing the exponential growth of virtual dating.

Advantages are pretty large. To start with, you're not tied up to your inner social circle in order to find someone you wanna date or something else. This is very convenient, because at a certain age, most of the people around become committed, meaning that choices within a particular social group are very limited. Expanding the target socially can be great for those that either didn't follow society's common life tracks in terms of romantic relationships, but also the ones that have, and for some of several reasons, have left that position later in life. This virtual social field has the potential to give people many additional opportunities to avoid loneliness.  

Furthermore, meeting this is way is also more convenient in terms of time commitment. For those who are shy, there's also the advantage to be able to talk for a while with a person before meeting her, which can help avoiding social anxiety. Since there's no full visibility of the person you're interacting with, it's possible to do it simultaneously with multiple people, thus increasing the chance to find someone that's worth it, whatever this may mean to you.

But not everything is so great in the online dating world. Same information asymmetry about what each person is doing, causes engagement and commitment levels to be really low. What this means is that even if conversation is fun, and one thinks the other person is an interesting candidate, it's common to see them treating each other with much less respect and consideration, compared to someone that's right in front of them.

Probably there's a physiological component to that behavior. Looking someone in the eye when you talk to her definitely gives you a whole different level of understanding of what the person is talking about, but maybe more important, what she's not.

In any case, this is an aspect that really undermines how successful these relationships can ever be. If people will always consider each other so disposable, this makes them more convenient to interact with, since regular social etiquette doesn't seem to apply, and they are suitable for last minute date cancellations or just not returning messages whenever the smallest distraction comes up. But it also means these relationships will always worth very little, and the communication means be considered as a lemon market.

I'm positive about the fact one can define his own conduct to a certain extent,, regardless of his environment. I'mMeaning it's possible to be a decent polite person in the virtual world where there currently no incentives to do so. Thing is, if incentives aren't there, it means most people won't do it. The result is that the likelihood you can find someone that will respect you enough for a relationship to be started in these apps is indeed very low.

So their reputation as being platforms for enabling casual sex encounters is actually a natural outcome of how little incentives people have to behave well and engage in meaningful conversations and relationships based in mutual respect. So for the satisfaction of sexual needs of physically suited people, the apps do work quite well. But if the idea is to turn these virtual meeting points into opportunities to find compatible life companions, or even people you'd like to be around for longer than a week, developers will need to put more thought into interaction quality, rather than the current focus in quantity.

Unintended uncovering good old prejudice

I put people in a tough position. Especially women. In dating apps no one can actually tell I'm disabled just by looking at my pictures. So with a lot of these pictures and a clever profile, I probably get the female attention and interest I would if the disability didn't exist. That actually feels good. I know the kind of attention I normally have from girls in real life, and it's obviously much less. I'm good at talking, I'm smart, so many of them want to date me at some point.

Issue is, I know disability is not something they expect to come across (despite prevalence in population would grant different expectations). So from this newly acquired rapport that has been build with my inner self, I always explain to them I have a disability before the date. It's pointless for me to hide something they will eventually see when we meet. But the timing for that talk is another tricky aspect of the whole experience.

Often times, because I was procrastinating, or simply forgot about the fact I always must explain my disability to others, I'd end up telling them about it very close to the agreed date. I wasn't trying to manipulate the results or their motivation. It was naive forgetfulness or even the inability to know how to introduce the topic in the conversation.

Then I've had a lousy date (that in terms of traditional success criteria was actually pretty good) and this girl has told me I was being deliberately manipulative. Of course I don't care that much about her particular opinion, since she's someone I don't really want to see again ever. But I'm a slave to the statement "what if".

So, because of this unfair feedback I knew wasn't true, I've decided to deliberately test the hypothesis. After that, what I did was to tell the girl really early in the app after-match conversation that I have a disability. And in terms of the conversation itself, this hasn't changed anything that much.

With this strategy in mind, what has surprised me quite a bit was the number of times the girls would schedule a date with me and then decide to blow me off for no particular reason. It's relatively super high, comparing to the previous unconscious one.

This really makes me mad. Maybe I'm wrong, (I'll be glad to be this time) but what seems to happen is that even when these girls say my disability doesn't matter (which is quite different from the regular reality), this variable has a huge influence in their ability to keep their appointment or even the way they decide to break it, disappear and maybe come up with an excuse later on. Or not.

Long story short, they are lying. Not only to me, but probably to their own selves. Because if they refuse to go out on a date with me exactly when they find out I have a disability, the relationship between the two events would be just too obvious. Just as their prejudice they claim not to have. They wouldn't be able to hide it, either from me or themselves.

That puts me in a dilemma here. Because I think in a reasonable world I wouldn't even have to explain my disability all the time. After all, all my pictures are true, I never refuse to talk about the issue when it comes up, and it's not something that should make me be perceived as a worse person.

But I don't really like the shock these girls have when they meet me. It makes me uncomfortable and angry. On the other hand, knowing that if the girls know from the start I'm disabled really makes me have to rearrange my calendar around all these last minute cancellations all the time, I wonder what a hell I'm supposed to do. Any tips?

Good news, bad news

Do you want to make the world a better place in your lifetime? Well friends, I've got good and bad news for you. Which do you want to get first? Well, I'll go with the good one first: you're probably going to live a long life. I'm no psychic or anything to make this statement with great level of certainty. This is what's happening to most human beings that are not inhabitants of war zones or other extremely unfortunate life conditions. Even in my country, Brazil, which used to be seen as a very poor one (at least populated with millions of very poor people), average lifespan has gone beyond 70 years old. In rich countries this is even more pronounced, and general life expectancy is increasing more and more. In some cases, average is reaching 80 years of age. People usually say they wanna live long lives. So this is the good news I've had for you.

Time for the bad news (it usually comes eventually). And it is very much related to the good one. When people live that long, disability rates of all sorts go through the roof. World population is getting older. Thus it's also getting increasingly disabled (group number is currently more than a billion people). That happens because medicine has done a terrific job in preventing death from all types of disease, and trauma. But it has been far less efficient in restoring bodily functions that make people live well. A great example is paralysis caused by spinal cord trauma. Prognosis for someone that experiences that in 2015 is not that different from whom would faced the exact same issue a thousand years ago. Of course today very few people can benefit from electronic exoskeletons and other high-tech/high-price solutions. But it's not really restoring body function. It's replacing it at best, with very mixed results. So let me make it a crystal clear for you: if you're really lucky, you will be disabled at some point of your life.

This blog is almost entirely dedicated to show everyone that's interested how leading life with a disability is. So I'm not going to focus much on this here (you can refer to all the other 70+ essays I've published before). Now I'll switch to good news again: because you are not disabled yet, you can still probably change your future with far greater ease than someone that already is disabled. In so doing, you'll improve lives of these folks who are disabled already, but also make your own life much better and easier in the future.

Sure, you can wait for some brilliant scientist to work her ass of for inventing the cure for all the underlying physical disorders that contribute to disable people along with the environment we live in. It's probably the easiest thing to do now. But if you were your current age 50 years ago and had done that, you'd still be waiting for the cure to come.

Don't get me wrong. I really love Kurzweil's landscape of human future. It's based on hard science (which is refreshing per se) and it's rationally very optimistic. Everywhere we look at, it's possible to detect exponential increase in technology advancement. That means projecting the future with a linear mindset (which is usually what people do) will generate a very imprecise picture, to say the least. The world itself can be very complex and hard to anticipate, but, for some reason, our ability to create more powerful technology is not. Therefore, any reasonably accurate prediction about the future should take that into consideration. Problem is that generates leaps we can't fully understand. Because this is not only a quantitative technology revolution. It's also a qualitative social one, in the sense that as price of these tech resources drops, it enables them to be used in very different ways compared to what we currently do.

Unfortunately, young people get disabled too. It happens all the time because of traffic accidents (which are also a leading cause of death in this age group). Again, getting hurt but disabled is actually the second best case scenario. Not to mention your kids that can be born with cerebral palsy, that affects eight babies in 1000 born alive and it's only the most common disability among children. There are several others. In all these cases, you'll have to deal with disability now. And believe me, it sucks.

So my proposal for you is that you selfishly take action now. Help destroying the barriers, physical, cultural, and social that prevent a disabled person to live to her full potential. You can do it out of altruism, or just treat it as a pension plan. In any case, as with saving money when you're young, this is the best time to make most impact because you're not disabled yet. This means the current environment settings don't disproportionately offset your every effort. So do that now! And I promise, with 100% certainty, this will make the world better for every human being on Earth.

How much truth can we get to?

Human beings are flawed. They make mistakes all the time. But I feel the most dangerous mistake we often make regards our judgement, not our actual knowledge about objective facts. In other words, I wouldn't have any problem with the world if decisions were mostly made by using the best methods available to mankind at a given point in time. What really bothers me is human capacity of condemning perfectly good methods of reaching objective knowledge just because conclusions they lead to go against human intuition itself. 

The universe is huge. We won't probably be able to get to know a significant share of it. Ever. But this doesn't have anything to do with how valid our methods to build knowledge are for explaining what they've aimed to explain. For example: it's illogical to think medicine effectiveness on fighting Polio has any direct correlation with its current ability to cure cancer. These two measures are completely independent, even if the method for getting to both has been exactly the same. It's possible and it happens all the time. You can establish two completely different effectiveness levels for currently curing two different diseases and at the same time be completely unable to deny the validity of the scientific method that has produced the two different treatment protocols.

Science is not perfect. It has its limitations and it is always evolving. But making intuitive claims about its method and call it critic view is just counterproductive. The main reason why science has allowed us to amplify our collective knowledge about the world so ridiculously in a very short period was the possibility to detach its conclusions from individual sensory experience. Which means that if a study was properly conducted (this is where critic view may actually  apply) and it got to a result that goes against your own experience and intuition, probably your experience and intuition are wrong. 

This is wonderful. Because it means that this piece of knowledge generated there doesn't depend on anyone's ability, personal opinions or perceptions to be valid. It's also the main reason why science is so powerful and so great. My take here is simple: discussing can be a healthy and productive exercise. As long as we focus on the right questions. Otherwise it's just like going back to dark ages again (even if you don't leave your cutting edge smartphone alone the entire time).

Disability and romance: tough combination

Dating sites offer a near magic experience for me. One of the things I've always hated about disability, even more so as a teenager and then as a young adult, was the apparent impossibility of getting some rest of it. Especially as a social interaction mediator. I really wanted to be seen, beyond any underrated external appearance or label. But this one would never go away.

Last time I've checked, over 60% of women claimed they will never be romantically involved with some guy with a disability. Even before having data, I've already come in too close contact with these statistics. This situation has always been very perceptible with several different degrees of clarity. Actually, this was the very first aspect of my life for which disability has shown to be a rather powerful excuse for exclusion, and frustration source. Best part is nobody needs to say a word about it. But it's there. It always is.

I could go (and went) for the psychological simplistic reading that I was pushing all these girls away, because I myself wouldn't accept who I really was. Again, accepting that would give me some sort of potential feeling of control over my own life and destiny, which I guess any developing person needs to grow up with a bit of self-security. Plus, despite the fact this pseudo therapy process would transfer a lot of my parents money to psychotherapists' pockets, there hasn't been much noticeable effect over my emotional well-being.

Apart from that, the more these romantic relationships would grow in importance and time spending among my friends as I'd grow up, the more alone I've gotten. Not only I wouldn't be able to interact with the girls at this level like they were, and make a sense of my own sexual identity, but I'd also become so different from my able-bodied friends, that I would soon become some sort of cast away right in the middle of regular school, the place I'd be occupying if it wasn't for being disabled (in fact, a place I had occupied not very long before since at that point it was up to me).

Most of my timid experiences in the romantic arena have started happening when I was around 19. And of course there was an additional price to be paid for initiating my life as male at that point. When I say these experiences have started then, I don't absolutely mean they've become a steady flow. Quite the opposite. Too many obstacles in life would provide extra difficulties for getting and maintaining these relationships. They'd feel much more like a fortunate accident, than something I could say I've had any control over. I've had too heavy luggage to carry. So either I'd be discriminated (no words of course) or would be deemed as exaggerated and neurotic.

This has been an ever present giant hole in my life. Scale would tilt to both sides and I'd never be positive about the ground I was stepping on.  Difference was later on, unlike in my teenage years, it wouldn't be the only one. Fact I was really clever all my life has brought me safe and sound only until University prep course at the age of 18. Everything I needed to study was well organized and accessible, which gave me the chance to become a top student, despite the never ending depression, exclusion, and loneliness.

But when I went to the University, things were all so different. Nothing was organized or accessible there. Classes would happen all over the giant campus. Books wouldn't be available, and even if they were, I'd have to spend very long looking for them at the huge libraries. I'd just get exhausted and learn very little. Fun was always related to activities I couldn't take part on. I was ashamed of all that. I thought it was somehow my fault and couldn't bond with my colleagues. Plus, it seemed I had become dumb all of a sudden. There was absolutely nowhere to anchor my self-esteem to. It took me more than 10 years to understand why university was a lousy experience for me, even as a student.

Today, besides the limitations currently imposed on me in leading my quasi-normal life experiment, I still face all these other demons from the past. Exclusion is something similar to heavy-metal poisoning. You get it a little at a time, and it accumulates all over your body and your life, generating some nasty effects as time goes by. It's always easier to blame that on someone's personality. It's better for the conception of world dominant people like to live with. Only issue is that's freaking unfair.

Very often, I feel like escaping all that. And a guy  like me, whose disability is only perceived by others as I move and speak, online relationship sites are extremely refreshing. As I've mentioned in previous essays, not because I'll trick girls to believe I'm something I'm really not. Before meeting them, I always go through the very unpleasant process of telling them about my disability, explaining it in the most detailed manner I possibly can. Some of them will just stop talking to me, as if I've done something wrong in having that in the first place. Others will say it's ok. Of course ok in theory is a whole lot different from ok in practice, and I get it, really, I do. Few will like me as a man, and treat me like they would do to any other guy. I realize these are very few, and meeting them takes lots of time, effort, and emotional energy. This is very frustrating at times, since I also have extra work to do at the other aspects of my life.

However, as nice as being in the game for finding a life partner maybe, I've realized the most value I actually extract from the whole online dating experience is not very correlated with the 3 or 4 dates I can have in a very long time and in which we both get attracted to each other (and that won't necessarily become anything else, because life's too complicated). The thrill I get from swiping and talking is actually bitter-sweet. I get to experiment a taste of the life I'd have if it wasn't for my disability. It's sweet because it gives me the certainty I'm a nice, even good looking, very lovable man. It reassures me about qualities I do have, but which are often offset by stigma or any other form of prejudice others usually have embedded in their eyes. But it's also very bitter when the real date shock makes me aware of how my life is poorer in pleasant and tender social experiences than it would be in a disability-free environment like the virtual one I've had the chance to flow in. No matter what happens, I've got to come back to this concrete reality eventually. And especially in comparison, it truly sucks.

Disability and fundamentalism

Today I finally felt like a suicide bomber. Of course I didn't explode myself or anyone else. Not literally anyways. But I've had the experience of protecting a principle with my life, because as for suicide bombers, what was being innocently minimized by others is exactly what has finally given me a direction and provided a compelling meaning for my life as is.

However, contrary to what usually happens to terrorists, enemy identity wasn't really obvious. As a matter of fact, the enemy was disguised in such a way that externally we'd have been considered as equals.

This was probably the most painful part for me. Because what has likely brought us together were terribly similar life circumstances. I'm sure although she had never mentioned that explicitly, the fact she has been temporarily disabled when she was a kid, must have opened her eyes to several issues I've faced myself.  Question is to what extent.

I've told her about my disability since the beginning. I thought that was the most honest thing to do. Also, I've realized this is always a much better approach than assuming the difference doesn't matter, and meet the other person unprepared.

What I wasn't expecting at all was that she herself had something that could be disguised in pictures, and that potentially could change radically her attractiveness judgement by these. At first, I just didn't feel attracted when I've faced her true self. This wasn't new at all. It was indeed the most frequent experience I've had in these semi-blind dates short career of mine. Something I didn't expect at all, by the way.

The other unexpected came later. All these unattractive layers of her just melt away right in front of me. And all of a sudden, I was able to see a person that was actually much more attractive than the idealized and carefully edited virtual version of her. Things could then flow well, at least for me. But on the day after, she has felt the after-shock of our collision. She was hurt by the fury with which I've argued for protecting my reason to live. And she never wanted to see me again.

The impossible

I came to believe there's no such a thing as impossible. But definitely not in the inspirational porn way people use to portrait disabled folks. Rather than that, I just draw on the fact at least as long as we live, there's always another day, whether you claim you can't stand it or not.

But there're certain mechanisms in living creatures that seem to act as a circuit breaker. If you like the idea of God, maybe you'd like to blame this on her/him. These switches seem to do nothing but to abbreviate terrible suffering with death. And they can be activated in animals, usually by inducing life threats the subject can't either escape or successfully beat.

Issue is, for some reasons probably related to human distancing from a standard animal model, these mechanisms often become the problem itself, turning into an acute or chronic mental illness. Under this light, disability has huge potential to produce that as a byproduct. Because analogous to survival in lower animals, development stage of someone in a given chronological time in life is very much correlated to this person'a ability to integrate socially, and support himself and possibly a family by doing so.

But for some reason, when partial integration is achieved, people around don't seem to get the weight of this deficit. Maybe it's just a matter of reference. Since these people don't identify completely with a disabled person, they can't see her as just another human being. Partial integration itself motivate able bodied people to expect less from the disabled, and therefore not get the gap dimension between the two body conditions.

On the contrary, able bodied folks seem to consider minor accomplishments as something disabled ones should nurture their souls with. This is probably the reason why it's so difficult to make things better, closer and more fair. 

Van Gogh

Today I'm playing Vincent Van Gogh. I won't produce exquisite art. I'll just play with contradiction. I'll write these words down with the sincere hope no one else will ever read them. Because the fewer people do read them, the easier it will be for me to forget them all. And in my case, as with so many other folks on Earth (over a billion), this is the best way to live, for very often only ignorance can justify hope. So I'll throw these words up, and then just forget them.

It seems like a contradiction such as the one of those Van Gogh is famous for. Everybody knows Van Gogh. He's considered one of the greatest art geniuses of all times. A painting made by him can easily be sold by dozens millions dollars. Yet when Vincent was alive, he has been mostly sustained by his beloved younger brother Theo. But this isn't the contradiction I'm referring to. The one I'm talking about is usually not deemed as such.

Most people think the act of cutting off his own ear is rather consistent with Van Gogh's poor mental health status. And in a mere factual perspective, this interpretation makes all sense. However, if one looks a bit closer, it's not difficult to realize this self-harm act was actually a clear struggle towards sanity. Very similar to my own.

When I was little, I was used to blaming myself for all the recurring social defeats I'd face. Said that way, it seems I was just harming myself like Van Gogh, which can also be seen (and it was) as a sign of poor mental health. But as with Vincent's, my case was also a big contradiction, deep down. Because for blaming myself to depression about the my consistent bad life outcomes I've started accumulating in my teenage years, I was actually protecting myself at two very deep existential levels - thus demonstrating remarkably intact mental health, despite feeling very sick.

On one hand, blaming myself would harm me by leaving me lost in confusion and uncertainty about my present and my future, which is a very unpleasant place to be. It would also be quite unfair of mine, which is usually something we don't really desire to have targeted at us. But as with Van Gogh's cut-off ear, I was actually just claiming sanity through apparent madness.

Because if I was to make myself my own slaughter, theoretically I'd be able to stop the torture when it got nasty enough. And in this case, there would be concrete reasons to keep hope for a better life one day. A life I would still be in control of. Furthermore, it would also let me keep my imagined future intact, and keep dreaming about reaching my full potential one fine day. Meaning I could still hold on to the normalcy I've fought so hard for my entire life. Of course I was hurting myself. But that would allow me to ignore something much worse.

What's indeed demanded from a highly qualified disabled person is also utterly contradictory. One has to be detached, but in an highly engaged way. She has not to care much about the relative results of her efforts, and still feel she's not considered inferior by others, thus preserving her self-worth. She needs not to dream much, but still keep motivated, because not doing so will mean an even greater level of failure and misery.

She must accept being supported by others at the age of peak of her productivity, and yet not feel scared by the fact her parents are getting older, and won't be around forever to help out. She must not feel inferior, even knowing she has to put up with conditions nobody else at her standard social position would. And she needs not to hate the world around her so she has some belief in the status quo, although she knows there lie exactly all the underpinnings of her deepest fears realization.

Since I'm meant to live in these contradictions, I'll myself seek sanity and hope to figure them out by writing down every single one of them. Forgetting is the only way my inner peace can reemerge at some point. And as in all the countless other times before, this is exactly what's going to happen. At least until I get blind with all this worldly clarity and once again have to pierce my own mind's eye while seeking some darkness to be able to finally see again.

Much better, but still not good enough

For the past two years I've been under a terrible combination: a very bad manager (in every possible way) and a working environment which would allow her to disguise misconduct as pure ignorance. The forces inter-playing in that situation didn't leave much room for hope.

But this time around I've been very lucky. Because not only the acute terrible situation went away with the people that were triggering it, but also because I finally got to face my true self and deliberately stopped the fine art of making things worse.

However, concretely, no matter how stronger and more prepared to deal with nasty people I've become, I'm under the impression some of the damage made has been sort of permanent. I guess the model of disability I've come up with, mirrors quite well the one Malcolm Gladwell Outliers has used to establish why some people get incredibly good and successful in what they do.

The book brings several staggering examples of the very same phenomenon. A combination of little recurring life advantages coupled with the chance of employing extra effort ends up producing gigantic results.

I've never read anything along the path I'm going to walk here, but I have the feeling disability functions in a very similar way, but in the opposite direction. Results consolidate overtime, which provides the possibility to someone not to understand what's exactly going wrong. But socio-economic research doesn't leave much room for doubts: disability usually results in lower income coupled with higher regular life expenses.

I'm a very good example of that cumulative disability effect. In theory I don't have any categorical limitation to perform ordinary life activities. So together with a lack of identity with any social group where disabled people are prevalent, I've lived most of my life in this very strange situation. An instant analysis of what I could potentially do at any given point in time would never reveal clear signs of incapacity, (as by the way the little ad. And because of that, I really couldn't tell until very recently what was wrong with my life, even though for someone that doesn't know me very well that seems really obvious.

Time and again I've been blamed by these cumulative results. Most of all, I've been accused of being spoiled and intolerant for either being mad at that situation or depressed after depleting my vital energy reserves fighting it. The more I interact with people, more I come in contact with these two extremes. Some will vehemently deny the existence of any significant difference. Others will despise me, and treat me as an inferior sub-race.

I reckon if there wasn't any difference at all, just this schizophrenic nature of the social treatment I and most disabled people encounter on a daily basis, would already be enough to generate a negative impact on one's quality of life, let alone self-worth and hope for the future.  So not being abused at workplace (at least not deliberately) is a great improvement in my life. However, when I think of myself as any other human being, that's really not enough.

But again, no matter what anyone tells me, disabled people are not seen or treated as people. Therefore, for everybody else, all is just fine.

Disability microeconomics: easy to understand, hard to fix

Let's begin with the easy part, since it's easier. Equation for perceived value by a disabled person is shockingly the same as for everybody else:

benefit/cost = value

Suppose someone has 2 options about what to do on a Saturday afternoon. If the choice is rational, this person will compare her/his pool of available options, observing these two dimensions to determine the best one (higher value one).  Interesting point is this expression shows that there are endless benefit/cost combinations that result in the exact same value. These combinations are equally interesting for this particular person, which makes her/him indifferent to the choice at hand.

Another important aspect to consider in this analysis is that even if the ultimate judgement of benefit is individual, the cost is considered within a common framework: money. Surely the subjective value someone attributes to money can vary. And certainly the same amount of money can represent whole different individual costs, depending on each individual income or wealth. Still, money is the common transaction denominator that acts as a mutually agreed unit of value. In other words, if I and somebody else goes to a store to buy a TV, the same appliance model will have the same price for both of us (let's leave complex commercial terms aside for now).

The price is the same because it takes into account how much profit the store owner wants (and is able) to extract from the activities related to commercializing an item. In simple terms, it doesn't matter to this person who will provide her/him with the money in exchange for the TV set. The important is that this money is more than enough for her/him to have made all the previous efforts and investments in order to be able to sell this product.

To a certain degree, everybody in a society is doing the same all the time. Comparing the investments and efforts needed to obtain a particular amount of money, which by its turn can be converted into benefits or the investments and efforts needed for getting something good (and that can usually be priced as well). If people are rational, the equation mentioned above will be valid for almost every decision someone makes in their lives. And economically, people are valued according to their capacity of converting their efforts and time into the highest possible amount of money. Theoretically, because they can provide services, products, skills that are highly demanded compared to their relative supply.

Disability matters have been sometimes considered complicated. But reality is awfully simple. Complicated part is living reasonably well under disability conditions because of the fact able bodied folks usually don't get the problem at all (by get, I mean perceive, understand and act on it). Let's find the explanation in the simple math expression above.

Disability is not something one has. It's not a malfunctioning or missing body part. It's actually the restricted participation in social activities that results from interaction between an individual as a whole and his/her environment.  Thinking about the equation above, let's analyze the part where a disabled person exchange time, effort and investment for money. In other words, work. Environment conditions will first of all prevent the disabled person from acquiring skills to be traded by more money later on. School is a hostile environment that usually doesn't take individual needs into account for preparing someone to life.

A deficit will also happen with the purely social interaction activities, because usually the disabled person won't be able to part take in other children play. Not only this will make this child more insecure and less happy. It will also stand on the way for getting the related social skills.

If this individual is lucky and really hard working, exclusion won't be a total one. But the social benefit extracted from the interactions with others will be relatively lower, because of the partial degree of inclusion. More than that, the cost will also be higher, since it will take extra effort for this individual to achieve even a sub-optimal degree of participation and benefit.

However, western culture really loves selling hero images of disabled people. Maybe because these help to alleviate other people from the guilt of providing such awful life opportunities for the disabled ones. Perhaps they think this aura of special has any value, since real non-disabled life is not a real option. Or even that cheap pity-like emotion generated by treating disabled folks like that can also be turned into money somehow.

In any case, being an inspiration on these terms is something every disabled person should refuse. Price for being an outcast, either in the good or the bad sense, is way too high. We ought to want to be people. Let's leave the inspiration to art.

Another one on parents

I guess I've already written something along these lines. But even if I did, mentioning this aspect again will be definitely a good use of time. It's difficult to be disabled. And to a certain degree, it's really tough if your parents are not. Obviously the fact mine aren't probably made their life a bit easier in providing for me, besides covering all my so called special needs.

However, despite in my case love has never been a doubt, it's hard to identify with your folks, and especially feel understood by them. You may desperately want to be like them, and use their role model as a means to overcome the challenges of life. Yet, although most issues disabled people face are the same everybody else does, intensity, level of preparedness and timing are usually completely different.

Particularly in my case, this has also happen with all my school mates and siblings, since I've never attended special school in my life. Meaning that chances I'd meet some other disabled guy at school were extremely low. No wonder even today I still feel this urge to fit in, even though by now I'm super aware of how different I am, and also that despite others also see me as such, their portrait of me is of little use to make my life better or easier.

Anyhow, for a big chunk of my life I've been reflecting about what my parents did wrong, because since I've turned 14, life has always been very far away from where I thought it should be. Then I'd come to the conclusion they didn't protect me from others when I needed the most, because they wouldn't fight others when they would point out my differences, and make my world collapse.

In this very painful looking back exercise, I've convinced myself that if they had protected me from these external threats to my identity as a normal kid, I'd probably have felt more secure, and would have been better able to tackle these threats by myself when the time came (and it has come really early).

Although psychologically compelling, I don't really believe that anymore. It's true that feeling I wasn't facing this world alone would have probably made me stronger in some sense. But the understanding they've had that engaging in these fights would only single out my differences even more makes total sense.

In my current state of awareness about my life, I realize they were not the only ones confused about how to treat my differences. For them and all my closest friends, I was truly just like everybody else. Not just because you tend to find close people normal, but also because I did a very good job pretending I was normal.

And honestly I don't think it was such a bad idea to try that. If it wasn't for this effort, I'd probably be even less capable of living in this non-accessible world. But the issue is how much you believe you can get through all the barriers and how failure makes you feel with yourself. I'm pretty sure if I didn't believe I could live a truly normal and fulfilled life, I wouldn't have made so much excruciating efforts.

On the other hand, the gradual clarity about how unlikely I was to succeed, has left me in a tough situation. Because not only all the effort I had made hasn't brought me where I thought it would. At the same time, my success at entering able-bodied world has given me a privileged view of folks around me, going much farther with half the gas.

So now I've reached a weird place in life. Because of all these disadvantages I've had, I haven't got even close to my full economic or social potential for my age and education. At the same time, I know although my disability is said to be stable, in reality it will make me older and more tired sooner than everybody else I'm competing with.

As much as I've learned to detach from the social circus for thinking about my self-worth, I'm dead sure than when I go to the supermarket or when I pay the rent, I won't get special prices for disabled people. This means despite making more effort, I'll get less because of reduced income. And at the same time I'll need more, because of speedy aging and physical impairment evolving.

I really wanted to be optimistic about my life, and hopefully inspire some folks in the process. And I guess whoever watches me pretending my life is normal may get this mistaken impression I've made it. But it turns out I've got much better at math after turning 30, and this problem doesn't have a good solution.

While I want to thank my parents for all the effort they've made, and absolve them from any guilt of raising someone that will face increasingly serious economic issues, despite of a high educational level, I'm afraid I can't provide much hope to anyone right now. I feel my parents and I did the best we could, and still we've failed to overcome this disability related vicious cycle. And some days I just don't know how to carry on along this road.

On inspirational porn

Few days ago I was discussing this issue at work. Specifically, we were talking about the emotionally loaded media campaigns that would portray a disabled person as "inspiring". At the time, I was definitely one of those that didn't like the idea to raise disability issues awareness this way. Rationale is that disabled people are objectified in these communication pieces for the inspiration and amusement of the non-disabled (or able-bodied if you will). Some of the disable folks in this group felt this didn't do any good to disability related causes. Quite the opposite: it would put us at this hero-like position, who for this very reason cannot afford to be a regular human being, thus remaining as excluded as he/she has always been.

Well, while I still think this portrait isn't something disabled people should support, I must say that the reading able-bodied people make from this is actually pretty accurate, even if not for the reasons they believe it is. The almost super natural ability disabled people need to have is not persistence and indefinitely sustaining extra effort for performing ordinary life tasks. If this was the only issue at hand, probably disabled people could be admired as the athletes usually are.

The skill these folks need to possess to survive is much greater than that. Disabled people need to live with chronic and increasing disadvantages in every aspect of their lives. And they need to do it very gracefully, otherwise besides excluded from regular social participation to several degrees, they will also be labelled as lazy complainers.

So the equation is quite simple (and this gets more and more clear the more qualified the person succeeds to be against all the accessibility odds). When disabled people don't get qualified enough (again, not because they are lazy complainers but because they couldn't, even if they almost killed themselves in the process of trying) it's quite easy for the employers of the world to justify their exclusion by that. And in a purely logical way, they are correct.

It gets more interesting as the disabled person achieves greater levels of qualification and therefore has the ultimate luck to be hired and to have some income. But then another purely logical excuse usually works quite well for justifying why person doesn't get promoted and also why there is hardly any disabled person at a reasonably high leadership position at any large corporation. Common statement is "He/she is not delivering". And now this gets really tricky. Because there are some different cases to be analyzed here:

1- Person is really not delivering. And then you can subdivide this case in two: she's not delivering because of lack of environmental conditions or he's not delivering because of individual reasons. Since these people are really few and rethinking the organization would require a lot of hard work, the latter is very much preferred. Person hasn't adapted because of some intrinsic personality trace, nothing to do with disability in the employer expert opinion.

2- Person is delivering, but the way she's able to do it doesn't quite show in the corporate radar, which kind of equals that to "not delivering". Or this person is clearly delivering, but so is everybody else to a certain extent. And then the different manner in which this person works prevents her to be recognized for it.

Now, before someone says both interpretations are very convenient for me personally, let's add some spice to the discussion. If from equally qualified people, the ones with a disability make systematically less money (which is a measurable fact), how likely it is that all these people have a common behavioral problem? Unless one believes disabled people are more prone to be lazy, what would be a suitable explanation for this phenomenon?

And if you haven't got the link of all that with inspirational porn, this is time for me to bring the issue back. Because the problem with portraying disabled people as heroes the way it's usually done is not to consider them as such. The more I live with a disability, the more I feel what's demanded from me is totally unreasonable for a normal human being. But not because I drive, I speak 5 languages, I take care of my own house and I work my ass off for my employer. Actually it's because for doing so under able-bodied conditions takes significantly more effort and energy. And for keeping up with this extra load I need to give up my own free time, because none of this is taken into account when I'm judged by the able bodied fellows.

However, the best is still to come: as mentioned before, even doing all that and having all the credentials, able-bodied folks still think disabled employee is not good enough, which explains the income deficit despite the lack of qualification deficit in my specific case. So again, I'm not a hero for doing all that, because in the end life sucks now, but it would be much worse for me to be completely left out, as it would probably have happened 50 years ago. I must be a hero because I must face all that gracefully and try my best not to let all this nonsense disguised as logical status quo drive me insane, or loose all hope in some of my effort being recognized with financial independence with decent life standards at some point in my life.

So yes, I guess all that really qualify me as a true hero. Especially if like most of them, I die doing my best to get to experience some dignity, without any honor that would make my struggle a bit more personally meaningful.

How to make Tinder Work?

Maybe one day someone will use Tinder data for real scientific research. I think a post-modern study on this could bring a new perspective to what Hofstede did on culture traces on the IBM Employee database 40 years ago.

But while this doesn't happen, let me have a bit more fun by analyzing some interesting findings about how Brazilian women behave on the app. And before anyone label me as a sexist or something like that, I must say I'm concentrating in women because this is the pool I've interacted with. Some of my conclusions may also apply to male behavior and maybe a girl could partner with me for sketching this other side of this picture. I don't have the intention to diminish anyone here.

What I want to show is that Tinder is really similar to any other high information asymmetry environment, such as the used cars market. Thus it requires a bit of attention and effort to provide users with meaningful actual social experiences. I'll draw from direct observation to back this up.

Tinder use is basically driven by two different conflicting desires. The first and most obvious one is to find attractive people to interact with and meet. This is usually what motivates people to install the app in the first place. But usually the second reason is what keeps people coming back to the app everyday, somehow addicted to it: the inner wish to be considered attractive by other people. At a first glance, the two goals may appear to go hand in hand. But in fact this is not the case. Let's take a look at its underlying rationale.

Thinking about logistics of busy people's life (to which Tinder usually appeals), it's much more frequent and less time consuming to have a match in the app than meeting interesting people in real life. Meeting takes time, effort, coordination, and experience shows it's often disappointing (we'll come back to this in a moment). Therefore, behaviors that would otherwise seem irrational become indeed widespread.

Perhaps because people in general accept and admit easily the first motivation to use the app (the meeting part), because finding a life mate is usually considered important even by those who don't reserve much time for that in the real world. But the second motivation may feel so small and petty, that probably it's a bit harder to admit it, even for one's own self.

However, after putting some thought on the patterns the women's pictures exhibit, it becomes fairly easy to make some deductions that point exactly to privileging this second internal agenda over the first and more obvious one. Curiously, often times the pictures chosen by them to illustrate their profile, exhibit characteristics of an old film negative. Lighter parts correspond to the dark opposite shade in the revealed picture.

An example of that is the presence of full body pictures in the profile. There's an epidemics of excess body weight in the world, which means most of the population is above ideal weight as defined by public health agencies. At the same time, all sorts of media reinforce the stereotype of attractive women as being thin. The result is that by this simple fact, most people fall out of the standards attractive category. As a result, almost all the thin girls use full body pictures on their profiles while the others don't.

In real life, so many people engage in great efforts to comply with this socially accepted standard. They go on diets, exercise intensely, even get surgery of several kinds. In Tinder, however, the visibility window is somewhat narrow, and very often people take advantage of that to hide their undesired appearance traces, showing an edited version of themselves that's actually a non-representative portrait.  Maybe they don't realize it, but by doing so, they're in fact drawing upon an information barrier to passively deceive whoever they are coming across online. Even more curious than that is perhaps the fact these very people also write angry disclaimers in their own profiles against dishonest and just-sex-oriented guys in the app.

But wait, it gets even more interesting. Because sustaining this illusion relies precisely either in the fact these girls don't really have the intention to meet anyone or that they are just incapable of perceiving and accepting themselves the way they are. In the first case, it's just a classic case of asymmetrical demands that don't keep any relation with what she is willing to bring to this relationship. That's different from case number 2. This one is very similar to the behavior some people from discriminated minorities have. They simply can't accept their identity with this group because social pressure against it is too high to stand.

For both cases, the remedy to all this imbroglio is that people use Tinder first with the intention of interacting honestly with each other. This may sound tacky or moralist, and it would probably reduce the number of likes one person receives. It would surely kill a bit of the hype of being constantly ego-massaged by strangers. On the other hand, it would definitely improve the quality of these likes.

Verisimilitude in your Tinder pictures not only denotes honesty where this important character trace could easily go unnoticed. It also creates the chance for you to attract exactly the kind of people that will really like you, just for what you are, inside and out.

In conclusion, I think Tinder can be an awesome additional tool for people to meet, talk, fall in love, you name it. But since it's currently a highly information asymmetrical environment, it's key that besides demanding honesty from others, people also actually put it into practice themselves.

Meta Essay

This blog is a funny exercise. On one hand, I've shared things that are among those most delicate and intimate to me. I've also said things, based on true first hand experience, which acknowledgement would theoretically have the potential for very serious and tangible implications, sometimes including jail. On the other, the lack of feedback, in the form of comments, criticism or even views of this content gives a weird impression that there's no difference in publicizing all this here, or just storing these thoughts, ideas, and experiences on a hard drive no one will ever read.

I know during this journey I've sometimes added perspectives and ideas here that are not mainstream at all and which understanding could lead to a whole new way to approach certain issues. I think I've done that ad nauseaum when it comes to disability related topics.

Living on the wrong side of this fence, I'm positive about both the implications of the status quo manner to treat these issues at the same time I can see clearly why people on the other side keep doing it. And by the means of a very hard and painful experience, I feel I have come up with valid alternatives, that would make the world a better place, certainly for people with disability, but not only them. And much sooner than all the research dedicated to cure so called disabling conditions.

But maybe precisely for being at the wrong side of this fence, my words don't carry enough weight. Maybe people consider me as just a moron that advocates for his own interests, using disability as a lame excuse. Hence, I'm having second thoughts about keeping writing all this down here.

Whereas this has helped a great deal to make my mind clear about countless issues that would happen to me over and over again, without creating the ability to extract any useful wisdom from them, I think throwing this clarity in the virtual air has probably reached the top limit in terms of actual social change. And unfortunately, it is ridiculously low.

I'm surely at a more comfortable position now. It's much better to know why you're being repeatedly beaten up, even when this awareness can't do much to avoid the beating in the first place or that people around me will keep themselves comfortably in warm denial. I now know who I am, and above all, I finally came to the realization about why my outcomes in life are so much smaller than the effort I've had to put up in order to get them. I'm sure I did my best, and I don't have to beat myself up because playing the game never did, and never will get me where I was promised to go.

I'm also positive to have finally been able to crack this code in the last 9 months or so (even though I had been trying to do that since I was first able to have some degree of self-awareness). Now what? I'm far from contempt, although I'm not desperate or sick. Together with all these findings, I've also figured out most people around me consider my under rewarded position to make sense. Some of them can't grasp the asymmetry in terms of conditions at so many levels disabled folks are usually cursed with. Others just don't give a damn.

This tends to reinforce my understanding that the only way to put these matters in the general agenda is to collectively mobilize as a group, and basically fight. When I've considered myself part of the status quo, even against all the odds, I'd also think breaking and burning things was pointless. There were surely more constructive ways to make a point. But if you look at history, it's quite easy to relate social change to war, violence, revolution, insurgency, you name it.

It's only logical people that are privileged by the current socioeconomic structure find a lot of merit in it, and create several mechanisms which compliance keeps things exactly the way they are. Transformation can only come if there's a force to tilt the scale to the other side. Mere reflection about right and wrong, or revealing the true nature of prejudice and abuse won't do that. This is why it's probably time this blog becomes a book.

This is likely the form in which it can be most useful to those that actually want to understand things under a different light and do something about it. And then, as with my own life, I'll also need to find a different way to make the world a place a bit less frustrating and unfair. But right now, I'm totally clueless about how to do either things.

A short one for a change!

When you feel you've been integrated and accepted, you're hanging out with friends and having a good time, there's a huge probability something really simple related to how our external environment is organized is going to happen, and that will automatically make you hop off your cloud and go straight to hell. Alone.

It might be an activity you can't perform well enough, the speed you're able to move around, aesthetic considerations from people inside or outside your inner social circle, or the awareness about the cumulative effect of all that over your life so far and beyond.

The world is too large, and the external environment that causes this asymmetry appears to be just too resistant, too hard to change. Especially when most people around don't even see what might be possibly wrong with it.

Automatic thought that pops up in the disabled person's mind? Wouldn't it be much easier if I just wasn't here? Everybody is happy in this situation except for me. So why the hell is someone going to change anything, ever?

I must confess although I know this is unfair, and not the truth about how the world really works, I still have this recurrent and automatic thought. And although I'm theoretically convinced things must change, something inside just wants me to disappear.