The first notice that I saw about the death of the acclaimed physicist, author of A Brief History Time and pop culture icon Stephen Hawking was a tweeted “Vale” photograph of him alongside another celebrity whose face was unfamiliar to me. And even though the other celebrity was decades younger than Hawking, my initial response was to assume that he was the one whose passing was being mourned because it didn’t occur to me that Stephen Hawking was actually mortal.
Having long outlived the few short years that was forecast for him when he was first diagnosed with motor neurone disease (or ALS, as it is known in the United States), Stephen Hawking seems to have been elevated to the realm of immortality by many others besides me. And he was mourned by disabled people around the world for whom his life served as an illustration that, when provided with the necessary support and aides, their achievements could be unlimited. Hawking himself was a vocal supporter of the NHS and the entitlement of those with similar impairments to his own to receive the same support that had enabled his own dazzling career.
Many of Hawking’s fellow wheelchair-users (note: never describe them as “wheelchair-bound”) were angered, then, by eulogies that described his death as a merciful release.
As Colarado writer and disability activist Karrie Higgins tweeted “You fuckers saying Stephen Hawking is ‘free’ from his wheelchair now: Disabled people are here, reading your tweets. Do you think we ought to die? Cause that’s what you’re saying, actually. Don’t you dare try to sell us death as freedom. Hawking’s wheelchair was freedom.”
There were similarly “f-off” responses to a drawing by Melbourne artist Mitchell Toy, which columnist Rita Panahi posted on Facebook. The drawing showed an empty wheelchair whose former occupant (presumably Hawking) is shown in silhouette standing against a dazzling starlight sky.
It has been shared over 200,000 times by readers who presumably shared Panahi’s opinion that it was a ‘’beautiful tribute”. However, the image was not regarded as “beautiful” by many wheelchair-users who objected to the message that Hawking has somehow transcended the disability which was, by the time of his death, an intricate element of who he was.
In fact, Hawking himself wrote that far from impeding his achievements, his disease had enabled him to bypass the routine administrative duties in order to focus on the work that made him so famous. Certainly, the wheelchair and the synthetic voice were a crucial element of the celebrity status in which he appears to have reveled.
Hawking of course did not elect to have motor neurone disease, any more than the disabled people objecting to the representation of him as having “escaped” his wheelchair with his death volunteered for their own various impediments. I am not myself a wheelchair-user, except for very brief periods in settings like hospitals and airports and I have undergone a series of increasingly aggressive treatments for multiple sclerosis in order to prevent further deterioration of my own physical mobility (currently aided by an elbow crutch). However, I have too many high-achieving, party-animal wheelchair-using friends to regard death as a preferable option to life with a wheelchair.
But this viewpoint is still pushed by TV shows and movies, like Me Before You, which so often depict death as a sad but merciful release from lives of “unbearable suffering”. Disability activists like Silent Witness star Liz Carr and the late, great Stella Young have rallied against similar views in the debate of euthanasia legislation — such as that recently introduced by the Victorian Parliament.
The Victorian legislation is restricted to those who have been diagnosed with a terminal disease, but Hawking illustrates how unpredictable such diagnoses can be. And both his extraordinary achievements and the great pleasure that he seems to have derived from his life and success illustrate that disabled lives are need not lived as unremitting misery and should not be represented as tragedy.
I had a reservation from certain ideas Stephen Hawking expressed, for example where he stated “Humans Must Leave Earth Within 600 Years”
https://futurism.com/stephen-hawking-humans-must-leave-earth-within-600-years/
“Hawking has previously stated that our time on Earth is limited to 100 years, after originally estimating 1,000 years. But, in a new announcement in a video presentation this past Sunday, November 5th at the Recent Web Summit in Beijing, he gave the human species less than 600 years before we will need to leave Earth, according to the British newspaper The Sun.”
Aside from the dreadful standard of grammar and punctuation; to wit : the headline ”
Hawking wasn’t bound to his wheelchair, he was empowered by it” I anticipated a USEFUL, albeit short, essay. What followed was a disingenuous (qua mendacity) opportunist rant justifying some version of identity politics. Well, at least the range of submission across the sub-editors at Crikey is (now) clear : Greg Barns (to name a recent example) on white farmers in South Africa : excellent and the above (viz., this article) : ungraded.
As an aside the heading ought to read : “Hawking wasn’t bound to his wheelchair: he was empowered by it.” The placement of the comma was emphatically incorrect. Then there are the instances where sentences commence with conjunctions! Now, let’s consider some aspects of the article.
“Many of Hawking’s fellow wheelchair-users (note: never describe them as “wheelchair-bound”)”
Why not? If anyone or anything is completely dependent upon a location, place or device then the world “bound” is applicable. Other synonyms may be utilised but the word, used as an adjective, is legitimate.
Then, following closely, “As Colarado writer and disability activist Karrie Higgins tweeted “You fuckers saying Stephen Hawking is ‘free’ from his wheelchair now .. snip .. Do you think we ought to die? Cause that’s what you’re saying, actually.”
Frankly, ONLY Higgins is “saying” or making that inference. I tend to keep an eye on the news (BBC in the main) and, frankly, I was unaware of any such tweets (and I do not have an account on twitter).
The irony is that the tweeters were motivated by sentimentality (one might presume) but so is the cartoon embedded in the article along with the last paragraph from Ms Hussein. Sentimentality mixed with an implicit argument for quasi PC tends to end in tears. Have I missed anything?
As for Andrew, in science it is much more of a case as to WHY something was stated or said and not, actually, what was stated stated or said. I know that this perspective contrasts greatly with the topic of politics per se but there it is. Hawing made these remarks as illustrative. Hawing made NO claim to be able to predict events, lifestyles etc. in 100, 200 or n(100) years.
The ‘talks’ that he gave (his word : take a look on the Hawking web site) were intended for the scientifically illiterate but semi-interested reader or listener. If you wish to “have a go” at him I suggest that you might begin with analysing his professional (i.e. peer-reviewed) submissions and THEN endeavor to identify inconsistencies or contradictions. (I hope, for your own sake, that your knowledge of metric tensors is up to it).
Your pedantic and somewhat disjointed rant, Kyle, is an example of Muphry’s (not Murphy’s) Law. The article discusses attitudes offensive to people living with a disability, written by a person who lives with a disability. The writer made her point well. If she did so while using punctuation that you disagree with, English is a flexible language and some of the objections you make to her choice of punctuation and expression refer only to your personal preference, not to any hard and fast rule. And there is no such thing as a rule against beginning a sentence with a conjunction. It’s often done for emphasis. Shakira is a capable writer who always makes thoughtful points in her articles. You could learn from her.
“The writer made her point well.” Well I”m pleased that the article meant something to someone including your good self Rais. It escaped me.
“And there is no such thing as a rule against beginning a sentence with a conjunction.”
There MOST CERTAINLY is such a rule Rais. I was taught English by teachers who had a command of the language. My (paternal and maternal) grand parents were Victorians which, perhaps, helped. My great uncle, who was born the same year as Churchill and Somerset Maugham [they both died in 1965], and who died a few years after they, conversed as they did. I am, however, the first to admit that punctuation and grammar are ignored nowadays.
During a recent trip to New York almost every item of signage that I uncounted (from public transport or howsoever) possessed an error of grammar or punctuation. I pointed out a few faults with the head of PR at the New York Childrens’ (even Crikey’s speller does not get it right) Hospital; inter alia, the hospital misplaced the apostrophe. Lastly, for the unconvinced, let’s consider a number of items of acknowledged literature and count the sentences that begin with a conjunction.
“You could learn from her”. I’ll take your word for it Rais; always ready to be intrigued by an interesting observation; perhaps next time. As it is, my remarks illustrated the rather bad form of (over) generalising from a particular instance. Furthermore, believe it or not “most people” do know of others who have (quite serious) disabilities. Speaking for myself I do know people who are either blind or crippled.
There are serious faults with the method of articulation employed; Higgins had nothing of which to complain but was obviously loathed to pass up a tweeting opportunity to “jump onto a soap box” and I suggest, humbly, [“humbly suggest” is incorrect – hint: the answer being something to do with infinitives] that unless one is visually impaired the readers could interpret the cartoon for themselves.
Referring to my initial reply, thus keeping to the point, I was also tempted to enquire as to just HOW “empowering” Hawking”s wheelchair may have been and what Ms Hussein
might have appealed to for evidence in quantifying an answer. The grade that I assigned the article remains; your appeal, on behalf of Ms Hussein notwithstanding.
I’ll leave the discussion there then. Thank you for participating.
What’s so wrong with splitting the infinitive?
(1) It is rather bad form and (2) conveys no sense of the function of an adjective in a sentence. The practice might be forgivable in speech but unfortunate in prose. As an aside some consider speech as prose nowadays.
Secondly, one will search in vain for an instance of the incorrect use of the infinitive in the works of Marlowe, Shakespeare, (Dr) Johnson, Emily Dickinson, Joyce etc.
You have missed something, you are talking about a mobility aid. The dependence upon a wheelchair came from the need for assistance in moving, the wheelchair did this job well. Your confusion about how the wheelchair might empower someone is especially puzzling because the wheelchair was literally powered. This meant he did not need someone to push him everywhere.
I appreciate the ingenuity of the “streakers-defense” for Ms Hussien but I do have a sense of subject and object along with a bit of mechanics and physics. It is only too obvious that Hawking made the best of his disability (and technology assisted a great deal). However, the common use of the words “empower” or “empowered” result from a rather sloppy hijacking of the word from its strict legal sense to act as a synonym to the word “supersede” or near equivalent. The word does not attempt to function as a reference or indeed a pun to motorised transport – but I am sure that a creative stand-up comedian could make something of it.
More to the point Ms Hussian would be rather challenged to account for the degree of “empowerment”, qua superseding the disability, in either ordinal or (much less) cardinal terms. That Ms Hussian selected Hawing and not an individual who was similarly disabled but died “unknown” on the same day suggests a measure of opportunism and quoted those who are, apparently, similarly disposed. Any disabled person could have served in the place of Hawking if the purpose was, as one contributor put it, “[to describe] attitudes offensive to people living with a disability” but if such was the object the account failed there too.
To reiterate (re: my original post) I anticipated a useful/thoughtful short essay vis a vis a talented person overcoming a disability. I did NOT anticipate a destructive quasi identity-political rant to no purpose attended by undisguised opportunism.