{"id":846,"date":"2026-08-02T00:31:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/?p=846"},"modified":"2026-08-02T00:31:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:31:29","slug":"my-mother-the-maker-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/02\/my-mother-the-maker-pt-2\/","title":{"rendered":"my mother, the maker pt 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In part one, I explored my mother’s life and work, relative to the social conditions she experienced as a low-income, self-directed woman navigating the public health and housing systems, and asked whether, viewing her life through the arc of 76 years of continuous productivity in the fiber arts, different decisions could have been made resulting in better accommodations and better integration into her community. I asked whether it was worthwhile to reassess our standards of fitness, disability, and disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What are the conditions of disorder in an individual, and at what moment does disorder become a permanent designation, rather than a temporary condition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s use a slightly less emotionally fraught frame than a human life. Let’s observe some monkey behavior, not because of the monkey’s proximity to humans, as a primate, or because they have been fascinating to science for that reason, but because the monkey is my mother’s Chinese astrological sign, and she would like that association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are studying capuchin monkey behavior, for the purpose of developing a standard of fitness. We enter the habitat where they have evolved and adapted over countless millennia\u2014let’s say a forested area in Honduras. We observe a troop and look for a specimen that appears healthy and generally representative of the species. We settle on an individual that does not appear to be a dominant male or a highly fertile female, but a female of no special rank relative to the troop, who is socially mobile, non-aggressive, non-avoidant. Our selection appears to represent a fairly neutral specimen from which we can extrapolate our findings onto the rest of the species. She appears fit, at the median presentation for the species\u2014not the most successful, not the most disadvantaged. Just an average capuchin monkey. This is our focal individual<\/em>, our point of departure for understanding monkeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have chosen as our focal individual, our case study, an individual who exists within a social order that has many categories, and who exhibits a variety of behaviors and characteristics, monkeys being a highly social species. She is healthy\u2014fit, we might say\u2014within her environment and her social order. Looked at with more context, we can see that we are selecting an individual who has some characteristics that can be said to be representative of the species\u2014bilateral symmetry, similar arrangements of limbs, tail, organs, fur. But this individual will differ from other individuals according to their social role\u2014sex characteristics, size and weight relative to a dominant male or fertile female, specific social behaviors relative to their place in the troop, and so on. Because we haven’t studied the whole troop over generations, we don’t really know how this individual ranks, in percentile terms, for any given characteristic. But for our purposes, we call her good enough to represent the species for our study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We capture the individual and bring her into our laboratory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop. Reflect. Project. Pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the most important moment of the whole examination. Everything that follows is exposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In bringing an example of a fit individual into the laboratory, we are now examining a disordered individual. Disorder is a function of environment, not identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The condition of her disorder is the environment of the laboratory\u2014an environment to which she is not adapted. The fit individual is fit within a set of conditions\u2014in this case, forest canopy; a containing species with a social order that sorts its members into roles; a milieu of related species; and environmental resources and conditions. In changing the monkey’s environmental and social conditions, we introduce her into a natural and social environment that diverges from the one for which she is adapted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In changing this individual’s relational status from emplaced to portable\u2014meaning that her original environment was unique, and that uniqueness is due to a relationship with land\u2014the environmental conditions are emplaced\u2014while our laboratory conditions have been carefully designed to be invisible and replicable\u2014and therefore portable\u2014we change the way any data we collect can be interpreted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can no longer make predictions about her behavior relative to her embedded environment. We are now examining monkey disability. Monkey environmental disorder. Monkey social disorder. Monkey with special needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disability is defined by an environment, not an individual. Saying otherwise makes the conditions that shaped that environment invisible, and therefore assumed as immutable. Shout it loud. Steal the idea and run with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From now forward, every. single. metric. is measuring a disordered individual, relative to the social and environmental conditions she has evolved over millennia to be fit within. From now forward, the only standard of fitness is her ability to thrive in a hostile environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In defining her characteristics as representative of her species, using the snapshot of any data we collect the moment we arrive in the laboratory, there are a lot of things that we don’t know:<\/p>\n\n\n\n