Essay: A More Inclusive Outdoors

 This is an essay I wrote for a class I took in Spring 2023 called Wilderness Medicine and Ethics. Some of the discussion is specific to the class, but much of it is deeply relevant to both outdoors and philosophical discourse and I thought it would be valuable to share with a wider audience. I have included sources here both to give credit as necessary and provide links to the resources I reference.

My experience with athletics has been, frankly, less than stellar. Although I’ve participated in a wide variety of activities, from climbing to taekwondo, none of them lasted past my first year of high school, and getting me to attend my regular practices was like pulling teeth. It was only recently that I realized part of the problem was how alienated I felt as a disabled person – even before knowing I was disabled, I knew that I wasn’t the same as the people around me, and I knew that fact made me unwelcome.

Disability access and inclusion is perhaps one of the least developed frontiers of outdoor diversity; indeed, most outdoor activities are developed exclusively with the able-bodied in mind. Although there are certainly programs developed to address this exclusionary model, ableist rhetoric remains deeply embedded in the very psyche of outdoor philosophy. One of the most pernicious examples of this is the idea of a “mercy killing,” which has appeared throughout history, but perhaps most notoriously in Nazi ideology, where it was weaponized to rationalize the systematic murder of disabled adults and children alike. This paper will discuss the programs designed to make the outdoors more inclusive and then move on to analyze the notion of a “mercy killing,” how it appears in outdoor philosophy and the ethics behind it, and the necessity of eliminating ableist rhetoric in order to create a more fully inclusive outdoor environment.

Especially in recent years, a variety of groups have developed to promote accessibility in the outdoors. They range in scope from groups focused on particular sports to general outdoor inclusivity and cover a wide variety of activities, target audiences, and geographic space. For instance, the group Disabled Hikers was founded in 2018 to address the fact that there were few resources available to help disabled hikers understand which trails were accessible. Even many of the trails labeled ‘easy’ in most hiking guides include stairs, narrow sections, or otherwise inaccessible features. Disabled Hikers provides guides to accessible trails across the country, and has expanded to hosting group hikes and raising awareness about the issue (Disabled Hikers 2023). The organization Adaptive Climbing Group is similarly focused on a particular activity – in this case, indoor and outdoor climbing. This group was founded in 2012 and hosts climbing competitions for people across a wide variety of ability levels. They also provide paraclimbing sponsorships for athletes (Adaptive Climbing Group 2023). 

One unusual example of an older organization dedicated to accessibility in outdoor athletics is the Adaptive Sports Center, which was founded in 1987. Unlike the first two, this group doesn’t focus on a particular activity, instead providing instruction, equipment, and opportunities for a wide variety of activities, from kayaking to mountain biking, all adapted to a variety of different needs. They also host camps targeting different demographics, including veterans (Adaptive Sports Center 2023). In recent years groups have also developed to target more specific groups of disabled people, including Black and Indigenous people and those living in urban areas. This is valuable progress towards creating a more inclusive outdoors. However, it is insufficient to provide opportunities for participation if the overall climate remains hostile.

Despite the strides made in outdoor accessibility and inclusion, disabled outdoor athletes remain relatively rare outside of these specialized programs. This is, in part, due to a culture of ableism that permeates the mindsets of many prominent voices in outdoor activities. For instance, in class we read an excerpt from the book “Desert Solitaire” by environmentalist Edward Abbey. This is a well-known, well-rated book – it has 4.5 stars on Amazon produced by 4,290 reviews and 4.12 stars on Goodreads produced by 47,048 ratings. Yet the small excerpt of the book read by the class was loaded with deeply ableist rhetoric. 

Abbey repeatedly connected disability and wheelchair usage with laziness and disparaged the needs of the disabled, writing “What does accessibility mean? Is there any spot on Earth that men have not proved accessible by the simplest means – feet and legs and heart?” (Abbey 38) and “How to pry the tourists out of their automobiles, out of their back-breaking upholstered mechanized wheelchairs and onto their feet, onto the strange warmth and solidity of Mother Earth again?” (Abbey 40). These sentiments suggest first that everyone is capable of conquering physical challenges if they simply try harder and equate disability with a moral judgment – that anyone who cannot meet these challenges is lazy and burdensome to the rest of society. Abbey’s point isn’t to say this is the case, necessarily – it is simply a deeply ingrained way of thinking about disability, and therefore becomes a rhetorical tool to prove a point in his writing. This attitude permeates sports and wilderness communities. Such judgment alone would be enough to create a hostile environment for disabled people looking to get involved in outdoors activities, but it is not the sole problem; rather, it is a symptom of a much more sinister mentality that frequently crops up when discussing survival situations.

In multiple discussions in class, classmates brought up the notion of a “mercy killing”: the idea that an injured person would be better off dead and should therefore be sacrificed for the good of the many. Two notable cases of this were described in class as “cut the rope” and “use the knife,” two situations in which an individual had to be sacrificed after being injured. In the first situation, Simon Yates decided to cut the rope that attached his climbing partner Joe Simpson to him to prevent both of them being dragged off a cliff. In the second, three individuals stranded on a lifeboat chose to kill and eat their fourth companion, a cabin boy who had become delirious after drinking sea water. Both of these cases are deeply complex, can be analyzed through many different lenses, and arguably have no right choice – certainly not an easy one. However, a certain argumentative crutch appeared repeatedly in class debates on the topic: the notion that it was okay to take an action resulting in the death of another because “if I were in that position, I would want to die.” The argument that a fundamentally egoist action – taking a life to save one’s own – is actually for the benefit of the greater good or the person being killed is a method of attempting to assuage guilt over the impulse to value one’s own life over theirs. This is more than simply an innocent psychological sleight of hand; when carried to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking leads to horrific consequences.

The idea of a “mercy killing” is, by its very nature, a violation of individual autonomy and the fundamental right to life, as exemplified by its most notorious proponents, the Nazis. In 1920 the book “Approval for Destroying Life Unworthy of Living: Its Dimensions and Form” was published by German scientists Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche. This book argued that the lives of disabled people were too filled with suffering to be allowed to continue and that they should therefore be ended. As the Nazi party came to power, they used this book and the supposed science of eugenics to argue that not only were disabled lives not worth living, but that disabled people were a burden to society, described by Hitler as “useless eaters.” Nazi officers and doctors were responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of disabled people.

Ulrich was found guilty of helping put to death at least 4,500 patients during the so-called "Euthanasia Action" carried out by the Nazis in 1940 and 1941. Bunke was convicted in the deaths of at least 11,000 people during the same period. The "T 4" program started in 1940 after Hitler denounced the mentally ill as "useless eaters." An estimated 70,273 people were gassed until the program was stopped in 1941 [...] Both served at the Brandenburg and Grafeneck camps, where thousands of handicapped people, mostly mental patients, were gassed. The Nazis claimed their "euthanasia" program was designed to help hopelessly ill patients with no hope of recovery (AP-Reuter 1987).

The Nazis’ logic in developing this program was not an extreme misinterpretation of the logic behind the concept of a “mercy killing” as discussed in class, but rather the natural conclusion of the belief that a disabled life is not worth living and that an external actor has the right to decide that question for another person. 

It might be argued that a survival situation and a society-wide policy are not comparable. However, it’s important to keep in mind that for many, interwar Germany was a survival situation. Due to the impacts of World War One, many within the country faced extreme suffering. When Hitler called disabled people “useless eaters,” he was not speaking rhetorically; he was speaking to the desperate people who saw the disabled and mentally ill as taking up resources that could be used to feed their children. This is not to excuse the murders; rather, it is to illustrate that the line between a survival situation and not is not so clear cut and should not be used as an excuse for applying ableist rhetoric to the above cases. 

It might also be argued that the intent of these “mercy killing” comments is not to reference ableism, and certainly not to promote Nazism, but rather simply to provide a good-faith altruistic or consequentialist argument. This is, in fact, likely the case. When making these ethical arguments, it is easy to slip away from the real-world implications of a line of reasoning. This does not, however, absolve us of the obligation to consider our own arguments from all angles and interrogate the biases that may inform them. The problem is that many people are far more willing to make philosophical arguments that undercut the humanity of disabled people than they are for other marginalized groups. For instance, we recognize the treatment of women as property as abhorrent, not because of any consequentialist implications, but because it denies a class of people fundamental equality and rights. Yet it is far less atypical to see rhetoric such as Abbey’s or arguments that imply a disabled existence is a worthless one – or even claims that disabled people should be prevented from reproducing. Indeed, people with disabilities or conditions like autism are in most countries not allowed to donate eggs and sperm because it is so accepted that it is better for a child to never exist in the first place than to exist as an autistic person. In a world in which disabled people are so frequently denied autonomy and equality, it is crucial to interrogate our ethical arguments not just for intellectual validity, but also for biases that have historically been used to target marginalized communities, including disabled people.

This paper is not intended as an argument against cutting the rope or using the knife, nor should it be understood as arguing against the right of a person who is suffering without hope of escape to end their own life or to choose to give it up to save their starving companions. It simply seeks to demonstrate the subconsciously ableist roots of an argument which, much like the Nazis’ belief that a few disabled people should be killed to benefit both them and the majority of society, assumes that a painful life is a worthless one and denies the injured and unwell the right to make their own decisions. It is this deeply ingrained belief that inspires the rhetoric appearing in class, and it is this belief system that must be addressed in order to make the outdoors truly welcoming to people of all abilities.

Bibliography

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire. Ballantine, 1994.

“About Us.” Disabled Hikers, https://www.disabledhikers.com/about.

“Approval for Destroying Life Unworthy of Living: Its Dimension and Form.”

Nazi Ideology and Ethics, edited by Wolfgang Bialas, and Lothar Fritze, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utah/detail.action?docID=1661283.

Created from utah on 2023-04-27 00:41:54.

“Desert Solitaire.” Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/214614.

“Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness / by Edward Abbey.” Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Desert-Solitaire-Wilderness-Edward-Abbey/dp/0345326490.

“Experiences.” Adaptive Climbing Group, https://www.adaptiveclimbinggroup.org/experiences.

“Summer and Fall Adventures.” Adaptive Sports, https://www.adaptivesports.org/adventures/summer-and-fall-adventures.