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Amputaion Nation
It has been a while folks so I thought I should share some interesting thoughts that I had while routing thru some hospital garbage looking for that rare gem of a misplaced dead body. So today I will share my thoughts on amputation.
Amputation is not going away! Due to accident and disease there are over 156,000 amputations each year. Various estimates place the amputee population at over 2 million within the United States. This target group is slowly organizing as a strong body of individuals and many of the self-help groups are becoming active in legislation, peer support, and education programs..
---From an American Amputee Foundation flyer I found while corpse hunting
Now let me tell you. A string of phantom limbs is holding hands across America. Scorned by society, amputees are finding membership among the dismembered. Flapping their pink chicken wings in protest, they form a solid line of differently abled agitators, forcing limb-negative bigots to reassess their opinions or face possible hand-to-stump combat in the streets. Jousting with their stunted extremities, out limbless comrades challenge the notion of white male patriarchy at its core. But theirs is not a message of hatred. They seek to limb-erate us all.
Welcome to the prosthetic underground. Having no extremities is the new extreme. Amputation is the necessary mutation.
The amputees are organizing. Emboldened by the widening horizon of cybernetic possibility, encouraged by their emerging identity as an oppressed minority, and empowered by the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, they are grafting themselves into special-interest groups with astounding speed. Amp cabals with cute acronyms abound: WALK (Worried Amputees Lack Knowledge); FAST (Functional Amputee Support Team); LEAPS (Lower Extremity Amputees Providing Support); ALARM (Amputees of Legs or Arms Resource Meeting); and CAST (Community Amputee Support Team) are only the tip of the stump. Each day, new amp organizations seem to gush forth like hot blood from freshly severed limbs.
Cruising catalogs such as Spinal Network, the adventuresome cripple can establish a database of like-limbed individuals. Specialty groups and ampu-zines that cater to each taste bud on the disabled palate. Want to trade bathing tips with other paralytics? Been aching to go pistol shooting with a group of armless pen pals? Trying to find an art gallery where you can showcase etchings you did with your steel claw? Looking for love? Bilateral below-knee male in to travel and old B/W movies seeks that special quadriplegic gal for some gourmet popcorn and rainy afternoon snuggling. Its all such armless fun. The more these people cease to be human, the more lovable they become.
Youve limped a long way, baby. Superior technology is rapidly creating superior beings. But it wasnt always like this. The Hindus sacred Rig-Veda, scribbled in Sanskrit at least four thousand years ago, recounts the saga of brave, one-legged Queen Vishpla. Injured in war, she had her stump rigged with an iron prosthesis and hopped back into the battlefield, slaying souls and racking up good karma. In past eras, the stereotypical wooden peg leg has been little more than a baseball bat: stiff, impractical, and drawing inescapable comparisons to scarecrows and hostile pirates. The advances have come a painful step at a time: an articulated joint here, a flexible foot there. Until very recently, amputees have lagged far behind their four pawed oppressors.
But explosive innovations in computer aided design and manufacturing have put futuristic prosthetics devices within every amputees reach. Equipped with the broad promise of bionic technology, amps may soon be able to outrun, outfight, and outfuck us. And aided by wetware, computer programs plugged into humanoid nervous systems, they may soon be able to outthink us, too.
The human animal is an odd melding of physical weakness and mental craftiness. Our inability to outrun tigers and bears was considered a chink in our armor until we invented Chevrolets. In the same way, amps limbless ness will be seen as an infirmity until engineers fashion fake limbs that are preferable to the originals. When prosthetists invent legs which can run faster than a Porsche, regular legs will seem socommon.
As animals, we weaken with each generation. The bullies of the next genetic kingdom will not be a traditional animal life form. Prosthetics devices wink knowingly at a future of digital ascendance. One or two more technical innovations and amputees will leapfrog over the normies on their path toward dominance of the species. They will have arms and legs of indestructible polymers; super-zoom crystalline eyeballs; Mac- and Windows-compatible vertebrae; and hydraulic genitalia.
Their virtual-reality wheelchairs will roll with lightning speed along the Information Superhighway. Victims of limb loss have transcended the flesh, yet they are humanitys finest fruit. Their prostheses are actually more human than our so-called real limbs, because theyre man-made. What could be more human than something created by a human?
Amputation is the natural catastrophe which nudged the evolutionary process forward. Along with law enforcement, bionics represents one of the last outposts of hope. Genetic engineering allows us a precious chance to redo humanity the right waywith a keyboard and a computer screen. I cant wait for the day when humans reinvent themselves as robots. I want a world of cheap prosthetic meat traded in human junkyards. Then, with a little luck, Ill be able to program these fearsome new UberAmps to go and kill all the cyberpunks
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Originally Posted by mammamaia
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