My initial blog post, “hello WordPress”, illustrated- to the best of my ability how the social model of disability is essential to building back better from COVID-19 and Brexit. This post will develop the foundations on which the previous post lay.  The fundamental point raised from the initial blog post; as a disabled person that has been living with sight and hearing difficulties since five years old, due to a childhood Medulloblastoma, I am best placed as an expert by experience to develop the policies required for me to live well in the future. Let me clarify. As a disabled person, I know what products and services I require to create inclusion for myself in society. However, 14 million disabled people are living in the UK. I am not, no one could be. An expert by experience, of 14 million long term conditions. An expert by experience, though, is the pedestal, citizens place the social security system.

Do not consider what am about to say, as an attack on our political institutions. As a Politics, philosophy and economics graduate, my view of the UK political institutions is they are dated, they are crumbling and they need a refit. Without improvements to political institutions, promptly, I am sceptical about how society can create inclusion for 14 million disabled citizens. At this point, I would like to remind readers it is not about inclusion. It is about belonging. My latest podcast discussed lived experiences, at 11:00 minutes in I talk about diversity, inclusion and belonging. I have said somewhere in the past I don’t feel I fully belong to any group in society. I have the privilege of having membership in several disabled peoples organisations. However, I have always perceived I don’t fully belong. I know the not belonging is a subjective perception. Perhaps it is just a barrier as a “person” I have placed on my-“self”.   

Am going to let the reader into a secret here. I have no idea what am going to write in regards to these blog posts before text appears on paper. Anyone that has written academic papers will know how good it feels just to have a blank page and have the ability to rabbit on. There is something to be said for academic writing style though. If using academic English, 364 words would not have been required to define what I mean by “person” and “self”.         

I have eventually got around to reading Joseph LeDoux book Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. Get your copy here. I bought the book in 2015, I’ve just never found the time to read within my schedule. As LeDoux 2002, p 13 points out

Before we go looking for the essence of a person in the brain, it would help to have some conception of what we are seeking.     

LeDoux, 2002, p. 13

What we seek, is a definition of “person” and “self”. Luckily for me and the reader The Open University provided me with a copy of “The Self” written for A222 by Nigel Warburton. “Person” as I am using the term here is the same as John Locke used it in the Seventeenth-century.

You can be the same man as you were ten years ago without being the same person     

Warburton, 2011, p. 36

On my home page, I ask the question if I do not remember the child, I once was. Am I still him? Locke would say no. Me, I don’t know. Did I become active in the third sector because of the child I once was-  but have little to no memory of? Or because I think society is unethical. The Open University provided me with a book on Ethics too. Chapter 2 is on Bentham and Mill: maximising happiness. Perhaps I look at society as been unjust and that is why I strive to better myself and society via the third sector. 

Before returning to the idea of belonging, I am required to consider, if I am not the same “person” as the child with the Medulloblastoma. Who am I? Where can I find “the self”? The self, Hume thinks

[is] some kind of construction of the mind, not something which exists independently of our patterns of thought.    

Warburton, 2011, p.61

Hume’s thinking is not too far off from what LeDoux is saying in the Synaptic self, even if LeDoux’s methods and analysation of the data is a lot more scientific.  

Now the reader has an understanding of what I mean by “person” and “self”, let me explain why I do not feel I fully belong in disabled person’s organisations. Whilst studying professional practice- a module for my MSc. I had a light bulb moment- recognising my professional and personal identity is linked to my lived experience of growing up with the side effects of childhood Medulloblastoma. Despite the revelation, however, something subconsciously is preventing a full belonging to the group.            

Another group where I no longer perceive I fully belong is in political networks. Disengagement here is difficult to explain. I stood for vetting- candidate selection twice. The real reason why I have distanced myself from party politics, is, as I now see party politics as exclusion and alienating. As I said above I am not attacking our political institutions or any political party. Again I just perceive after several years of achieving nothing in politics, that I no longer belong in the political circle. I have friends in high positions in politics, I am grateful for my time spent campaigning for political candidates. From a professional and personal perspective, however,  having studied politics, philosophy and economics and then my MSc in social innovation the political system just is not working. The political systems, despite the UN conventions, sustainable development goals, European human rights – the international political systems cannot bring about diversity,  inclusion and belonging. When I came to that understanding, as a person, I have no place in society to belong.

Having a perception of not belonging is why I came up with the prospect of A-LEAF. If you are still reading, I do hope you will rally behind my call for diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIBs) alongside the social-platinum model.      

Our societies are diverse; to a point our societies have inclusion. Belonging is what we seek!    

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