Why are disabled guys more deep and intellectual?

[Winston]

Back in 1995, my family visited Victoria, BC in Canada, and one night, after my parents went to bed in the hotel room, I went out looking for girls to talk to or nightclubs to go to. But I couldn't find any and the girls treated me like I was invisible.

Then, while I sat on the steps next to the Victoria ship harbor, a guy in a wheelchair passed by and we started talking instantly. He wouldn't stop talking but he was saying some of the deepest most meaningful stuff I ever heard before. I was glued to him. Hours went by and it was almost morning by the time I went back, which got my parents really worried. He was so open that he even admitted to having mutually masturbated with another guy (both helping each other) and that it was a truly intimate experience, even though he wasn't gay or homosexual. I was surprised by how open he was. But everything he said had so much substance, depth and meaning. You don't meet people like that everyday.

After that, I realized that perhaps guys who are disabled are forced to turn within and seek a higher/deeper meaning in order to cope with their predicament. After all, they can't work and are not accepted by women anymore, so going inward is the only place they can turn to. All that introspection enriches their soul and they become very deep, intellectual, philosophical, substantive, etc. Have you noticed this too?

I haven't met many disabled women, so I can't say if they are the same, but it seems to be true of disabled guys. What do you think?

Even though I'm not disabled, I've always felt alienated and on a different wavelength from other people, so perhaps that loneliness also forced me to turn inward as well? I am also sensitive and imaginative and philosophical by nature too, so those are factors as well.

[lavezzi]

It appears to me that the majority of men and seemingly all women are fickle extroverted types who only concern themselves with subjects that are of value to most others. At least in Western cultures, deep meaningful subjects don't fit into this category. Introverts are those who have always felt a sense of alienation due to not fitting into their environment from a young age. Disabled people are very likely to be in this minority. Those who feel different are less prone to accepting everything around them and tend to always question things, which results in them being more insightful.

On the subject of disabled men's struggles, here's a recent video that was uploaded to Youtube with the TFL members giving their take, mixed with Steve Hoca's usual rants about AW. You get a few mentions in it Winston. And I think near the end Steve is interviewing someone from this forum, not sure who it is though:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCMOP80Z ... ture=feedu[/youtube]

[Winston]

What Steve said in that new interview was true, but I have noticed that deaf girls in the US tend to be more humble, sweet and innocent than normal American women are. At least the ones I've met are.

[Winston]

I asked a former mental health counselor who is semi-disabled about this subject. Here is what he said.


"In regards to your comments about disabled people seeming to have greater capacity for insight, I would say this is very true, particularly if the disability is long-term and they have had to suffer with it for many years or most of their lives. I think this greater insight, in my experience, is true for both men and women--though whether this disability is connected with enhanced intellectuality I think varies a great deal, as certainly not all disabled people are necessarily intellectual, though I concur that their disability does cause them to have to turn inward and do much more reflecting than the average person usually does, thus giving them, often, far greater insight into the human condition.

With me, as an example, I type this having been sick now for over 3 weeks. I have just finished yet another round of antibiotics and appear to have acquired an allergic reaction to them and have broken out in a huge rash on one side of my body. I have basically had to be recumbent on my couch 90% of the time since becoming sick. I have also had several protracted bouts of similar ailments within the past year--more than perhaps ever before in my life. Yet at the same time, I am very grateful to be alive, even in the condition I am in, and thankful for the quality of life I have. Along with this gratefulness comes a realization that in many ways I am much better off than over 90% of the world's citizens, economically and in terms of access to health care, medicines, potable water, health food, etc. Socrates once said that "Those that have the least are nearest to the gods" and I think this saying implies that they have a greater insight and could also be said of disabled people, a great majority of black people living in former slave colonies such as the US and throughout the Caribbean and South America. The sufferings these people have undergone have given them greater insight.

Of course, the reactions to this suffering tends to vary a great deal and, for example, with many black Americans they simply want a larger piece of the great American pie--that pie which seems to be shrinking a great deal these days--many desire (and have attained) more political power and many have turned their backs on the traditional society and have embraced religions such as the Nation of Islam or Rastafarianism which are religions that lift up the black man and in the case of these two religions actually view the black man as being superior and the white man as the oppressor.

A physically disabled person must work within his or her own capacity and comes to know his/her limitations, though many have overcome or challenged these limitations in various ways. I am rambling a bit here due to sickness but my basic point is one of agreement that disabled people do generally have more insight due to having to turn more inward and due, often, to the discriminations they have faced. I do not think this always translates into the person becoming more intellectual as I think this is probably more a function of the intelligence level of the disabled person. The man you met in Victoria, B.C., in the wheelchair, for example, was probably by nature an intelligent person with a great intellectual curiosity."

I think this makes sense. People who suffer more have far more insight into the human condition than people who don't, hence why long term disabled people and blacks seem to be more wise, truthful and down to earth.