Light & Illusion – Art by Randall Klopping

Society, Philanthropy & Hope

“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” – Albert Einstein

Philanthropy – altruistic concern for human welfare and advancement, usually manifested by donations of money, property, or work to needy persons, by endowment of institutions of learning and hospitals, and by generosity to other socially useful purposes.

Society often baffles me and always has. That is part of what life is like for persons with mental disabilities and conditions like Autism. For many years I have watched people with obvious physical disabilities have to fight tooth and nail for accommodation of their conditions even long after the ADA was passed, and those with not so obvious conditions just blatantly discriminated against in day to day life. I’ve had to face it and fight back many times.

I see many organizations & charities formed and do a lot of good but they can never raise enough funds to truly tackle the whole problem and they often have to send letters to people in need stating they have limited resources and will not be able to help. To those able to get help it is a miracle and those who don’t it becomes disheartening blow after blow.

Here in the United States trying to get help from the government is basically a case of a person having to give up their rights, even those protected by the Constitution! The SSA is one case I can testify to personally as during the “evaluation” process I was never at any time treated as a person who was innocent but instead was even denied due process because they weren’t even doing proper testing, rather just going through the motions and then issuing automatic letters of denial. Never at any time in the almost two years of runaround did they do tests like x-rays or MRI’s, in the first appeal they evaded ever scheduling the informal hearing I had filed for and instead tried forcing me to undergo psychological evaluation even though I had not filed under my mental disabilities! When I finally did get to go before a Judge in a formal hearing, I won my case without an attorney representing me, something just about every disability advocate & attorney will tell you is basically doing the impossible. Even after winning that battle nothing really changed because nearly a decade has shown me that they just break other rules. Part of the problem is our leaders are not properly funding them, even under Obama’s administration we are being sacrificed more and more even as he claims he can juggle the books and pull off a miracle called health care reform.

Many people out there, whether their hard times come from disabilities or just from circumstances, are working hard to rebuild their lives. But trying to get help from Charities or the Government eats up so much time and yields so little help that it often isn’t much help in reality. Too often we can’t get them to listen to what we need , thus it doesn’t fill the need and so we give up on asking for it.

There are many ways in which philanthropy can be done beyond the donating of money or volunteering time. With the invention of Social networks such as Facebook & Twitter we can communicate a need or show the hard work we do and yet most people don’t often pay attention. People will share and retweet the goofiest things to no end and yet ignore people working for something when 10 seconds spent passing on their post to others could make a real difference. I’ve watched many try to raise awareness of important issues such as victims of abuse & stalking and seem to be completely ignored. I see many like myself working hard to overcome hardships and yet it seems to mean little except to a few here and there.

Personally I would rather have a thousand people help me let others know about my art so that I can earn money with which to rebuild my life, than I would 10,000 people offering me money (charity). Why? Because the former gives the person in need a helping hand and allows them dignity and real hope! Think of it in terms of the old saying, “give a man a fish, you feed him for the day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

The biggest difference can often be made in the day to day. There are many people out there in need that have talents & skills that with a little help offer the potential of supporting themselves. But often our society is in such a rush and gets so caught up in competition that people like us don’t even get to compete. Imagine what it feels like for them, to have a gift and live in a world in which we don’t get an equal opportunity to show what we can do.

Without proper help and opportunities we have little or no chance of earning money and without that we can’t really develop and build a life for ourselves. That is an environment in which it becomes nearly impossible to pursue happiness no matter how hard we work for it. Without the opportunity for development we don’t really get to live, we get mere existence and that over time destroys hope.

To truly give hope to others then must not philanthropy become a part of our day to day activities as well as giving money & time to charities and organizations?

To Build a New Life

As a disabled person trying to build a life for myself is very difficult. My mental disabilities go back to childhood, some pretty sick things were done to me and another relative, leaving me to struggle eternally through life. An auto accident I was a passenger in 15 years ago has left me physically disabled, each day filled with endless pain and only able to spend brief periods standing/walking and briefer periods sitting (sitting is agony for me). I have little choice other than just trying to endure it, painkillers are a depressant and not advisable for someone living with depression.

Life for me these days is VERY frustrating as I work to enter into the world of art. As an artist, I love to create but in trying to get established on the Internet I quickly get overwhelmed, each site has different variables such as image size & file size, some I have to host image somewhere else, etc. Most of the art sites, contests & exhibitions all have fees (as well as costs of having a print made, etc) which I have no means of affording with only SSI for income. I also have to live with other problems, like extremely loud stereos, specifically the bass beat just instantly jams up my thought process, robs me of even being able to focus till it stops. I try hard to absorb it all but get so overloaded that I confuse things with another site, or something someone else said. It causes me a lot of problems but all I can do is the best I can, be honest about myself (good & bad) and hope my hard work & determination somehow makes a difference. And I apologize in advance if sometimes what I write doesn’t make sense.

Since my physical disability forces me to spend most of my time laying on my side, I keep my computer set up right next to my bed so that I can work as much as possible. I put a lot of my time into my art and I recently signed up in Dr. Kaku’s forum because I often do artistic representations of various elements of String Theory (black holes, white holes, wormholes, parallel worlds, etc.). I have to read articles & posts over and over again to grasp at least part of it, but Stephen Hawking is one of my heroes for what he has overcome in life. I too seek to rise from the ashes life has dealt me.

Some days are better than others for me. There are periods sometimes for weeks that I am so bad I can’t focus on much of anything, those days all I try to do is rendering and I withdraw from the rest. Partially so I don’t subject others to my problems and a lot because I just mess up left and right, like a moment ago going to check my email, closed the program instead. Realized it about 5 minutes later and had to reopen it. When I am like this it is impossible to design/create new artworks so I try to do little tasks. Usually I wouldn’t try to write but as this is like a journal entry, I wanted to get it done so you might understand a bit about me.

I am finally going to get to enter a competition for placement in the “Embracing our Differences” Exhibition. I really don’t know if I stand a chance but there is no entry fees and them make the print, so I get to take my first baby step I guess one could say. I’ll post it at the bottom for all to see. I like the theme because I can relate to it. Functioning in life is difficult because often people, businesses, government, etc, expect me to be able to do anything anyone else can and that is not always true.

Though I suspect they may not realize it, they often expect more out of me than they do themselves. I won’t even shop at a K-mart store anymore because the one here always closes out the handicapped lane and I got too many insulting remarks for asking someone to open it (can’t even count the number of times I just left because I couldn’t get checked out quickly and was in just too much pain). It happens with many non-profit organizations too. For example, when I was getting an endless runaround during the SSI process rather than proper examinations (the gov never took a single xray or MRI and didn’t request them from my doctor or hospital, just ruled against me), I contacted ACLU. When I received a reply it wasn’t to help but to tell me about their limited resources, which I probably would have accepted except the next day in the news is them using those precious resources to push for a girl to wear to school a t-shirt stating something to the effect that Barbie was a lesbian! Things like this confuse the heck out of me and I wonder if they just represent members/contributors and aren’t really about civil liberties for others.

This is about all the embarrassment I can handle right now, I will save more for future entries.

Randall Klopping

Artist’s Note – This was written yesterday and it was not a good day. I have left it as written so you & others can see what I struggle with. It took almost two hours to focus enough to write that little bit (I hope it makes sense).

disabled artists