Memory can be a tricky thing. It wobbles, distorts, and reconstructs itself – varying over time while giving us every assurance of stability. I know this because I know that my memory of the germ that grew into the Theory of Everyone is distorted. Rather, parts of it are. Let me explain.
The Theory of Everyone is a vision of an ability-centered society. The Theory has been germinating in my mind since a catalyzing incident that took place when I was six. You, dear reader, might find that a bit far-fetched, absurd even. After all, what six year old spends his free time mentally constructing a better society. However, as a young crip, ability was often all I could think about. The fundamental memory, the germ, seed that blossomed into the Theory of Everyone is the first moment I truly ran up against my own capacital limitations.
The whole thing started with a cherished weekly ritual: a trip to Prospect Park taken in the late afternoon on a Saturday once we had returned from synagogue. We walked out of our house together, my parents and I, and walked straight down the cracked sidewalk of twelfth street. It was slow-going because as part of this ritual, I was actually walking. In most of my life, there wouldn’t have been any way for my parents to get me to do that much walking, but this ritual was an exception. I think I would have walked quite a bit further to complete it; so thrilled was I by the reward – not candy or toys, nor silver and gold but an equally precious commodity, swing pushes.
During my early years of life my family did a roaring trade in swing pushes. I loved the swings because they tickled my vestibular system in a way my damaged body simply couldn’t on its own. Because I had no way to give myself vestibularly stimulating degrees of motion of my own volition I was dependent on the swings and coveted the only precious currency I knew – swing pushes. Swing pushes motivated me to behave well, to try to socialize, to follow directions. Making the extra effort to walk to the park that day earned me ten extra pushes.
This particular Saturday, however, the swing-push economy collapsed. I was happily gliding back and forth, cashing in my precious swing pushes when I saw two children I recognized from my Synagogue. They too were swinging along merrily only their parents were nowhere in sight.
I startled my father, jerking wildly to look back at him pushing me and ask about this strange new phenomenon. Is that real? Are they actually swinging themselves? He answered in the affirmative and my world changed.
For a six year old with cerebral palsy swinging under one’s own power is like finding the keys to the mint. Finding out that not only other kids but also, as I discovered, my father, mother and most people could swing whenever they wanted struck me as cosmically unfair. The blows kept coming. I begged my father to teach me – he couldn’t. I implored him to find someone who could – no dice. I tried to mimic the graceful pumping of the other children – danger! It was my first brush with my own capacital limitations, the first time I couldn’t do something I really wanted to do, and I was devasted. It was also the embryo of the Theory of Everyone.
This part of the story is true.
My despondency lasted days. I moped around the house in alternating states of self-pity and rage. Nothing my parents, normally so capable of calming me, did could soothe my anguish. Nothing, that is, until one night my father read me a Stephen Hawking that would nurture the embryonic thought taking root in my mind:
“It is clear that we are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet orbiting around a very average star, in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. But, ever since the dawn of civilization people have craved for an understanding of the underlying order of the world. There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe. And what can be more special than that there is no boundary? And there should be no boundary to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there is life, there is hope.”
This part of the story is not true. Or rather, it is not entirely true. It is based on a memory distorted by one of the most valid uses of artistic license I’ve ever seen.
The quote you see is an amalgam of three separate Hawking quotes1, only two of which had been articulated that fateful day I learned that some people can swing on their own. In fact, Hawking may never have even spoken those exact words. Looking back, the first time I encountered them was in the 2013 biopic, The Theory of Everything. I make this admission of flawed memory because I believe anyone with even a modicum of awareness of the human condition in this historical moment would agree that it can serve no useful end to be casual about the truth, particularly not for the sake of communicative expediency or to leverage rhetorical power.
With that in mind I can promise you that I am certain of two things, dear reader. First, that my father did share a Hawking quote with me that night. In doing so, he filled a void that confronting my limitations had opened up in me and filled it with hope. And second, that this hope, and by extension Hawking’s words and work, has mixed with my crip-experience and academic training to produce the Theory of Everyone.
In this blog, I will have a lot to say about space, time, reality, truth, knowledge, imagination, and most of all, the limits of possibility and their expansion and contraction over time. I will imagine a word of boundless capability, of cultivation of capacity and nurturing of talent, and of acceptance of difference through the recognition of value. In this blog I will explore and develop these ideas, engage in the broader public discussion of disability rights and reflect on capacital realism. And I will take soaring leaps, play with artistic fire, and endeavor to make the world a better place. Join me, dear reader, and welcome to the Theory of Everyone.
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1. These quotes are: First, in 1981, Hawking was invited to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to present alongside some of the world’s leading cosmologists and said, “There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe, and what can be more special than the condition that there is no boundary?” Next, in 1988, Hawking told Der Spiegel, “We are just a slightly advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet orbiting an average star. But we can understand the universe, and that makes us something very special.” Finally, in 2006, at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, in response to a question about a paralyzed accident victim in Hong Kong, Hawking said, “However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope.”