John Anthony Dunne: Well, Dr. Clifton, thanks so much for joining us.
My pleasure, please call me Shane. It might be an Aussie thing, but
Shane Clifton DRC policy: first name basis, please. It's definitely an ozzy thing, and I feel vindicated. Thanks, Shay. Well, happy to call you Shane. I definitely struggle with difference, and I I do. I do prefer to use titles, but we'll go with Shane. That's that's quite all right. But we're really
might challenge some of those power structures that are in built in so much of society. Sorry to interrupt your inter your introduction.
John Anthony Dunne: No, Don't, don't apologize at all. I very much appreciate that point, and it is one that I have thought about quite a bit. I think you know part of it for me, too, is thinking about. You know, issues of sexism. I think that's probably one of the things in the back of my mind often is, you know, wanting wanting to respect
John Anthony Dunne: titles of out out of out of difference to people, and and specifically wanting to honor. You know people who have who have.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I'm starting to fumble
Shane Clifton DRC policy: people a against women's tweet a fade, and that is true of disability. So maybe I should be taking the doctor, not for myself, but the fact that people with disability can have that in the mainly.
John Anthony Dunne: But before we dive into that book, and and your thesis and kind of you know some of the disability ethics that you articulate in that in that text. We'd love to hear a little bit about about your story if you
John Anthony Dunne: like to share with us.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, certainly. Goodness, i'm. 52 years old. So stories are.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: How do you encapsulate a story when you're that ancient so quickly? Look! I was. I'm supposed to live in Sydney, raised on the South coast. Really beautiful
part of this country.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I was a surfer, and I was raised really non-christian. I became a Christian at about 16 years old.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: saved into a penny coastal church.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Stayed there. I think I got I feeling up with a girl that helps doesn't it. So I married my childhood sweetheart at 19,
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and we moved to Sydney.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: We were a I was an accountant for a while, and then felt God call me to
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Baba College. I went to a college in Sydney.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and spent really the next couple of decades studying and then teaching theology
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and ethics. which was a really wonderful profession. It's a really great privilege, I think, to talk about life.
and it's meetings with young people, and it's a very rich and enjoyable profession
Shane Clifton DRC policy: in 2,010. I
Shane Clifton DRC policy: had a spinal cord injury.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So I broke my fifth and my fourth and fifth vertebrae
Shane Clifton DRC policy: writing push bikes with my then teenage children. so that left me with quadruped here, and I deal with Well, it's so. That was 2,010. So we're talking 12 years ago.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: so I had to adjust to this really life changing, devastating injury.
It takes a long time
Shane Clifton DRC policy: to adjust to a spinal cord injury, and you use different techniques to adjust to it.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And one of those was writing, and so I really
Shane Clifton DRC policy: so I guess I turned my
Shane Clifton DRC policy: academic skills over to study my own disability.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and then to study disability more broadly, and it's turned out to be a really rich vein of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: thought and reflection on that, you know you wouldn't plan, for you'd
Shane Clifton DRC policy: do everything you can to avoid. But I feel really privileged to have had the opportunity to study and reflect on and made with people with disability, and it's really directed my career. So
my theology career, for
Shane Clifton DRC policy: complex reasons, really relate to the fact that I'm Pro: i. LGBT: I
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Hmm. My theological career in I guess Conservative Christianity came to an end in 2016 0r actually 2,018, and I was associated with the University of Sydney and the Center for disability, research, and policy.
So I worked for them for a while, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: since then have worked for the
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Royal Commission into violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation of people with disability in Australia. And I get that. You're American, John. And this is a broad audience. A Royal Commission is just
Australia
Shane Clifton DRC policy: who knows why is a colonial country where we still come under the now King of England. It's absurd.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So when they have national inquiries, it's a royal inquiry, and so Australia
Shane Clifton DRC policy: quite a few years ago. Now it's, I think, 2,000 and 19 set up an investigation into the violence, abuse, neglect.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and exploitation, that people with disability suffer throughout the course of their life. And yeah, which sort of
which sort of comes after the book it's not really topics we explore in the book. So there's so much you learn in life
Shane Clifton DRC policy: after you write a book. It's quite interesting.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Coming back to a book, this file later. So that's a really brief overview of my story. There may be bits of it that you've got specific questions, and you can ask me to more about, but I think that's probably enough to get us started.
Steph Judd: Thanks so much, Shane, and I think that one of the one of the interesting little little components that you share in your book is
the fact that you happen to be reading a book by Alistair Mcintyre
Steph Judd: at the time that you had your accident. Can you share a little bit about
Steph Judd: about that. And the impact that Mcintyre's work has had in shaping your interest in
Steph Judd: in the virtual position.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, look.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I was, as I said, raised penny cost, but my postgraduate studies were with.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: They are fairly ecumenical, and they were with Catholicism at the Australian Catholic University.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: which really introduced me to the virtue tradition.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: which is a really rich
Shane Clifton DRC policy: tradition, and it has its origins in Aristotle it becomes significant in the work of Thomas Aquinas.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and it's really central to Catholic. our theology and ethics.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and the virtue tradition is, you think it's about ethics, about virtue.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: But
Shane Clifton DRC policy: in Aristotle. And then also I think, in Aquinas and others. It's really the study of the good life.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: It's a study of what is the good life, what's happiness? Actually, interestingly enough, which is.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know. What do we mean by happiness? And how do we attain? It
Shane Clifton DRC policy: is, I think, maybe a really good summary of the virtue tradition, and I was reading Alistair Mcintyre, who, I think, really is probably the best known twentieth century interpreter
Shane Clifton DRC policy: of the Virtue tradition. His work is so rich and interesting.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and I was reading a book called Dependent Rational Animals.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: which is in some ways a difficult book, and he was using.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: He was. It was his attempt to do disability.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: dependency, really dependency, and the study of disability, and combine it with virtue, ethics, and, to be frank.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: it's a pretty terrible book on disability.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: because he actually doesn't know much about it.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: It's a really fascinating book on Dolphins, and so he uses dolphins as an analogy. But anyway, all of this to say. I was halfway through this book, and I broke my neck, which is sort of ironic isn't it to be reading a book
Shane Clifton DRC policy: on Disability, and you break your neck right in the middle of it. Is that providential? I'm not sure what to make of Providence, but
Shane Clifton DRC policy: so I took the book back up actually in a hospital when I was trying to adjust to my spinal cord injury. and that then really got me thinking about.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You know I was dealing with loss and grief, and I was desperately unhappy.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and I really struggled with unhappiness, for you know you you you spend. I don't know I spent
Shane Clifton DRC policy: 8 0r 7 months, or something in hospital, so I think, from October 2,010 to the middle of 2,011,
Shane Clifton DRC policy: trying to adjust to this injury. You
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You have this in your in hospital. You imagine.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You know. You imagine you're gonna get out of hospitals, horrible places, terrible food, just bureaucratic environments. You're stuck at the whims of others. And so you're desperate. You're working hard to recover and get out of hospital, and then you go home.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Life's really complex, and you discover you Haven't gone back to the same live
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that you were living before. And so I really dug deep into. Well, how can I now? Happiness? We've this new life. That
Shane Clifton DRC policy: is yeah, I'm just dealing with so much loss. So the the virtue, tradition, and our Ster Mcintyre.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I guess, became a key platform for me to be able to explore happiness
Steph Judd: when the virtue tradition talks about happiness or you
Steph Judd: What? What's that? Landscape conceptually?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, look I. It is a word that we use in so many different ways. Isn't it.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and I think when
Shane Clifton DRC policy: way to die, think of happiness. We tend to think of it as a short term motion.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And s0 0ften, when people are thinking about the good life, they say we're not talking about happiness.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: We're talking about something more long term, and I think that is true of the virtue tradition. It takes
Shane Clifton DRC policy: a long term view of happiness.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and so you know, I think it's it's definition of happiness is something that's not blind about by the wins of emotion or the immediate circumstances. It's it's a long term vision a long term goal, I think, in Mcintyre and the virtue tradition. It's an end trajectory.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: It's something you actually can't know. You can't know whether you've lived happy life sort of earlier in the middle of it, you know retrospectively. When you look back and you make a judgment.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Wow! Through all of these absurd ups and downs.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: That's actually been okay. I can. I can make a judgment that I've lived happy life so, and that's why it does. Happiness is also then connected to virtue, because
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the
the happy life of the good life there is.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: it's it's not just the one that's had positive emotions, but you can look back on it and site.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I feel like I lived it well or virtuously. So.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Virtues are interesting for happiness because
Shane Clifton DRC policy: they enable you to achieve it, and we can talk a bit more about that later, but
Shane Clifton DRC policy: also the way in which you live your life. Well, generally part of the the judgements you make about whether it was good or happy. So yeah, it tends to be more focused on
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that longer term trajectory.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and some of the critiques of the virtue, tradition.
and I guess Christianity as a whole, that I might add a little bit more. Now is
Shane Clifton DRC policy: it can dismiss
pleasure
Shane Clifton DRC policy: too quickly if we're not careful, and I've
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I guess, in. If I was writing this book again, one of the things i'd like to spend a lot more time on the place of pleasure and living in the moment, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and I think that does contribute to a long, good life as well, so I wouldn't want to set.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You know that this the notion of youedmonia against joy, your pleasure.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: because I think that's part of it. So it's. It's broadening, though it I guess a more modern conception of what we mean by happiness
John Anthony Dunne: as you talk about that, and how you might do things differently, and explore the topic of pleasure in some, in some new ways. Can you tell us a little bit about how you approach it in your book, and what you would like to sort of extend with with what you've done, or perhaps supplement or replace with what you've done.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, look so interesting. Coming back to a book
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that you wrote almost 10 years ago. I think. What did I say then? But I think, look the primary. One of the things that I did in the book is, I
Shane Clifton DRC policy: brought together a few different traditions.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So I used
the virtue tradition. I bought it, together with
Shane Clifton DRC policy: sort of more modern study of science called positive psychology that does draw on the virtue tradition
Shane Clifton DRC policy: in some pretty shallow ways. To be frank, I'm. I think you know i'm i'm not a complete embrace of the virtue of a positive psychology. I think I'm.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Relatively critical of it in the book. I feel like
it. The attempt to study science empirically, which
Shane Clifton DRC policy: positive psychology tries to do.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: The attempt to study virtue empirically is, I think you know, a little flawed, and it's very attempt; but at least at least it says there's some empirical, or there some
Shane Clifton DRC policy: statistical basis for supporting
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the insight that virtue contributes to happiness. But the the the the positive psychology posits 3 levels of happiness and the the bottom, or the sort of base level of happiness it defines as pleasure.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so for me, one of the really interesting, and and then the next level of happiness he talks about fly, or just being in the moment
Shane Clifton DRC policy: with with positive psychology, that level of happiness
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that they say it's not pleasure that you know you're experiencing this sort of high you might get from
Shane Clifton DRC policy: alcohol with taking drugs, but
it's that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that deep pleasure you get from investing yourself in an activity where you might be feeling pain or hardship. So I think an example that might be used is, you know, rock climbing.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You're working hard. Your hands, and they might be really painful. Your arms might be about to fall off. But there's this really deep pleasure you get from this from investing yourself in an activity
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and hopefully succeeding in it. So that's what they call this second level of pleasure. And then that third level of pleasure is the sort of the life well lived that longer term goal.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: which I think is probably close to the traditional meaning
Shane Clifton DRC policy: of what is often sort of focused with you.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So yeah, and it's that if that first level of pleasure that i'd spend more time with.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and probably be much more critical of Christianity and theology about it. I think
Shane Clifton DRC policy: i'm.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Am I still a Christian post
Shane Clifton DRC policy: post? Some of the experiences I had in the you know, the 2,018 more recently.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and one of my strong critiques of Christianity is that it can often be an anti pleasure movement, and I think that can be true of virtue. Tradition at times as well.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So I've really had to think carefully about pleasure, and I I guess I should step back and say spinal could injury confronts you with the loss of pleasure. So when I had my injury prior to it, I was a surfing golfer.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: married for whatever number of years I was then.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and you have a spinal cord injury, and so I I've got quadrpleed, You know that means different things is different levels of quadriplegia. But I've essentially lost movement and function from sort of the chest down. So I've got biceps, and
I've got some.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and i've had some recovery, so it's a weird to say spinal injury. Can't really talk about too much detail now, but I certainly lost. I was unable to do many of the things I found pleasure in. So you know I could no longer surf. It affected
Shane Clifton DRC policy: my sexual function so could no longer get a natural direction or orgasm that has an impact on sexual relationship with your partner.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You know just my ability about to play with my kids.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so I think one of the reasons spinal cord, injury and happiness became such a big topic for me
Shane Clifton DRC policy: was.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: How do I regain happiness in the loss of all of these things? Now, in the first instance, the notion of you to me there.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: because I realized that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I can still leave this broader vision of the good life without
Shane Clifton DRC policy: focusing on those that that pleasure so much so, you know I was able to reinvest myself in my career
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and able to take students, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I, you know, was able to work out how to be a parent again, and and invest myself in deep relationships. All of those components of the good life you know there about living, for meaning, and there about investing yourself in deep relationships, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and I could do all that with this model could injury.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so that was the the the tradition really helped me there, but
Shane Clifton DRC policy: both that and Christianity Hadn't helped me think enough about pleasure. And and so, interestingly enough, the queer community is just really a great community, actually in terms of relationships and acceptance, but also in terms of celebrating pleasure.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and recognizing that life is meant to be fun and joyous and crazy and weird, and wonderful. And
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so, yeah, one of the real challenges for me in recent years is, how do I re-embrace? Pleasure?
And you know I've I've done that in multiple ways. I've managed to find some sports, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know I've been able to enjoy things that would taboo prior to my injury. So getting drunk and loving the fun that i'll have with my mates when i'm drunk, or taking magic mushrooms, all of those things that I was
Shane Clifton DRC policy: unable to do with a Christian, because you know, those things are all taboo, and you shouldn't do any of that. So yeah, rethinking pleasure
outside of the taboos of of movements that are so
Shane Clifton DRC policy: well. I think they're anti pleasure in too many of their core tenants
Steph Judd: didn't think you're going to have a theologian, and ethic is talking about drunkenness and magic mushrooms.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: but also psychedelics just for the she joy of things. So yeah.
Steph Judd: something that I think that you do also mentioned is is the way that I think you describe. I think, use the word ambivalent. So you describe it. The virtual tradition has an ambivalent relationship
to disability.
Steph Judd: What do you mean when you say that?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah. look this. There, there's so many different ways in which I think you can
Shane Clifton DRC policy: talk about that. The virtue. What what is the good life?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Well, in in Aristotle? Interestingly enough.
the good life was achieved by exercise of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the choose.
and succeed, and ends up in success.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and the and for Aristotle the good life was impossible
Shane Clifton DRC policy: for people who couldn't exercise, or who that was thought they couldn't exercise certain virtues; and in Aristotle that wasn't only people with disability that was women.
So the good life was restricted to.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You know, I I think, in modern terms we'd say, wealthy white men. people who could exercise virtues in power in certain ways.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so the good life was definitely impossible for the sick and the disabled.
and for multiple ways, because it just looks
Shane Clifton DRC policy: it it just when you look from the outside. In it seems obvious that the disabled life
Shane Clifton DRC policy: is not a good life.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: but also because people with disability, you know, looked to
Shane Clifton DRC policy: looked, it looked to be impossible for them to exercise.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: which is and succeed. Because.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: yeah. So so people with disability. Our
are the people that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the Us. Then are supposed to help out and support. So there's a sense in which
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the virtue, tradition. And and, by the way, a lot of Christianity is about that it's really interesting. Again, a critique of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Christianity. If I was to look at this book again.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: is, it understands Christian virtue about a. As to be what's the good life? Well, it's about caring for the poor and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: looking after the outcast and all of that sounds noble and good. But notice how actually, that's
Shane Clifton DRC policy: often
Shane Clifton DRC policy: about the virtuous person caring for the other, and that virtue often operates in ways that cement the power
Shane Clifton DRC policy: of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the good, virtuous person often in ways that
surprisingly
Shane Clifton DRC policy: impressive of the marginalized person who you're trying to help.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so
Shane Clifton DRC policy: disability theory, and I don't think again, I do enough of this in the book. I do some of it. Disability
Shane Clifton DRC policy: really critiques the sort of paternalism
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that is endemic, I think, in both virtue, tradition, and often in the way in which Christianity thinks about
Shane Clifton DRC policy: are saving others, whether that's whether that's saving in terms of the sole or saving in terms of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the justice message that's often out there. There's some interesting sort of parallels, often between
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Christians on the right, who are focused on saving the soul and Christians on the left, who are focused on justice
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and saving the poll.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Often
Shane Clifton DRC policy: they're less about listening to and being confronted by the perspective of others and empowering others than they are about. They're about
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the people doing the saving in both cases, often. So yeah, that's a I know a long winded way of answering your question. I hope I sort of did so.
Steph Judd: That's that's a good Shane, and that's that's been one of the things that comes has come through in our series today is the challenge of when you, when you see whether it be in interpretations of Scripture or in just
tacitly absorbed practices within communities with a church or otherwise, of seeing
Steph Judd: people with disability or disabled people, as recipients, objects
Shane Clifton DRC policy: of action, rather than having agency themselves, and and you know, like there's so much there so much gift that is for gone when when that's the paradigm that you're operating under, because
Steph Judd: when you're not paying attention to the surprising, I mean, just paying attention to humans generally, and and and the surprising
Steph Judd: the way that they disrupt your assumptions.
whether they have a disability or not.
Steph Judd: I think that's a really it's a really important.
Steph Judd: It's really important critique, and and one that if if we hate it, we'll actually improve the improve the way that we do life
Shane Clifton DRC policy: together.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, I agree. And look, it's not that's not just a critique of Christianity, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I don't think I touch on much again in that book. Something I explored a lot more later. But I mean you can see the parallel that the parallels with racism.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: but it's more than that, Ableism. It's about the way in which.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: where most we frame our our life by assumptions about what is normal.
so.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and have sort of implicit biases
Shane Clifton DRC policy: against what we judge to be abnormal. We pity them.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And and the why in which then that results in a sort of a
Shane Clifton DRC policy: yeah. It results in us dismissing and disempowering people who are abnormal or different.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so I.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: A disability theory is a is a lot of critique of ableism and a reversing of those paternalistic assumptions, the realization that people with disability
Shane Clifton DRC policy: aren't different aren't less than aren't incapable aren't a burden.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: But in fact, I the same as us. We're all, you know, limited. We all have different capacities. We all need support
Shane Clifton DRC policy: to be able to succeed. And when we think, when we just realized that actually people with disability.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: they they they function differently to us, but they're remarkable, and provided they have the sort of supports that they need.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Not only can they or we flourish
Shane Clifton DRC policy: in ways that are surprising. You know. We imagine the disabled life to be a terrible life, but it turns out it's not. It can be a rich and beautiful and wonderful life. but they can also make a rich contribution t0 0ur flourishing in our world.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so, yeah, it it disability changes the way you think, or it changed the way I think
Shane Clifton DRC policy: about what it is to be a person about what it is to live in the world. and that's why it's such a rich area for reflection.
Steph Judd: Yeah, I think that that's that's certainly been my experience as well in that it it's it's not just. And I think this is something that you say at the beginning of your book like this Disability isn't a fringe topic.
It's at the heart of what it is to understand what it.
Steph Judd: You know what it is to be human. And if you, if you get something that doesn't apply for people with disability. Odds that it actually doesn't have legs.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: On one another. We grow and learn to maximize our independence with support of everyone around about us. even at the height of our independence, when we're when we think we're at our strongest. Actually, we're completely reliant on everyone around about us for
Shane Clifton DRC policy: everything that goes on in the day, most of which we don't acknowledge we're always at risk of an illness, an injury, a difficulty that could render us
Shane Clifton DRC policy: my case a quadruple you can Another person's case. They could give birth to a person who has a disability. Another person might, it might experience a significant sickness. Another person might have.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know, quite socially debilitating mental illness. And then, if we're lucky and they've t0 0ld age, aging is itself a process of disablement. And so the stupid thing about society is, we set our society up to function.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: or or to suit
Shane Clifton DRC policy: sort of people when there.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: at their most independent but actually most of life.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: he's not lived at that point. And so there's things in disability, thinking like universal design. If we designed the world.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: not for for the powerful people, but for people on the margins. It would actually suit work for us all in so many better ways
for the whole of our life.
Steph Judd: just to let just do a question. I'm. I'm wondering if it i'm just conscious of like sketching out some more of the terrain in terms of, because I think this is relevant to your critique of the way that the Christian tradition
Steph Judd: interact with oh. like the the the stuff around the critique of the way the Christian decision interact with disability. Do you mind if we kind of
Steph Judd: switch back and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: like I asked you that
Steph Judd: I want to let. I want to land on the stuff that you I mean. You talk about like trying to rehabilitate the virtue tradition a little bit.
Steph Judd: but i'll, I think, to get there. I'll first ask about
Steph Judd: what how does Aquinas treat the virtual addition? And then how do we
Steph Judd: then move towards like
Steph Judd: like a other other other thing is in like.
I mean, I would like to took.
Steph Judd: I don't know if it's necessary to talk a little bit more about the positive psychology stuff. I I find that interesting but
Steph Judd: cool. Okay. sorry. No, do not apologize. This is the good stuff.
Steph Judd: So, Shane. when we talk about the way that
Steph Judd: you've just spoken about the way that often society and our church communities misconstrue what flourishing is to the to the detriment of often the experience of people with disability.
Steph Judd: What does the virtue tradition say about flourishing, and and how what the relationship with flourishing and virtue is.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah. Well, we've talked about, I guess
Shane Clifton DRC policy: what flourishing is, and we've mentioned virtue along the line. But I haven't said what that is, and it's an old word actually, interesting that we don't use much anymore. Is it so?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So Virtues are habits of character that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: enable success, I think, is probably a way of summarizing it.
So there's something that we.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I guess, learn from our parents and society. So what the virtues are that you can teach them in a school or your parents can sit down and talk to you about them, but
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you learn them more by
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the way in which your parents or your society models to you. So
Shane Clifton DRC policy: they're the habits of the why you should leave. And look there's lists of virtues, you know, in the Scriptures these patients kind of self control against such things.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I'm having. It's been a while since I've read the Scriptures. I used to be able to quote that there is no law. Yeah, you can. You can redo that part if you want. You know what I didn't think. It's a bad thing to say. I feel agents forgotten how to use descriptions. I. If they're in the back of my brain, we'll call it aging and lack of rating.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So now i'm not embarrassed about that at all.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: But there there is list of virtues, and you think about them courage, patience, kindness, courage, and and virtues. The rich tradition says I lived in the main or the middle.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And I think, by the way, it's one of the ways in which positive psychology gets virtues wrong. It just comes up with a list of virtues and doesn't think of vice so positive, so the virtual tradition sort of always thinks about virtues in the context device, and there is a vice of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: deficit or advice of access. So courage is
Shane Clifton DRC policy: is an interesting one. You can think about courage as the midpoint between the lack of courage, which is, you know. the failing to move through fee
Shane Clifton DRC policy: or excess courage which is rash action. And you think about how do you win a battle?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Take courage. Well, you win a battle
Shane Clifton DRC policy: by not exercising either of those vices, by knowing when, by having the courage to move in the face of the sort of stagnancy that comes from the
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and but not moving rashly, does not launching into any battle.
And I think and you know that's true of patients as well.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Patience is the virtue that is the midpoint
between
Shane Clifton DRC policy: impatient
Shane Clifton DRC policy: or
Shane Clifton DRC policy: or waiting too long for something. And so there there is this I I love the virtue, tradition. It's a really rich way of thinking about the habits of life.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And I guess disability interact. There's a really interesting interaction between disability
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and the virtue tradition, because i'd lived a certain way, and certain habits had suited me
Shane Clifton DRC policy: prior to my disability. But I had a disability, and I need to think, through new habits
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that would enable me to flourish. and I think particularly those
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that's what I do. We've
dependency
Shane Clifton DRC policy: so prior to the injury, you know you you just sort of get along as a of 39 at the time of 39 9 year old independent mail, and suddenly you know, i'm stuck in bed, and I can't turn on the light or
Shane Clifton DRC policy: brush my teeth, or.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know, get myself
Shane Clifton DRC policy: dressed. I have a shower, so I had to learn
Shane Clifton DRC policy: new habits to be able to make a g0 0f this disabled life, because if I didn't do so.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: then i'd be constantly frustrated and annoyed and angry, and you know there's so many ways in which I've I've had to learn.
you know. Let's just take patience. I'm sitting here
Shane Clifton DRC policy: doing this podcast in bed, and that's because I've managed to get a pressure s0 0n my bottom.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Well, it's because of spinal cord injury. When you're seated
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you don't move, and you don't feel pain. You can sort of kill. you can cause yourself damage on your bottom, which can take ages to heal. And so, as a consequence of this, i'm probably going to spend the next week in bed.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Now I think problem injury that would have killed me. But I've had to learn
Shane Clifton DRC policy: to rest with the rhythms of the body and to exercise patients when I'm. Dealing with a medical system which is slow and frustrating and better in Australia than in America on you. That's a conversation for another day. But
so I've had to develop
Shane Clifton DRC policy: habits that I didn't have before. But of course you can be too patient.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and if I don't sometimes.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know, say to the medical system, enough is enough. Look after me now, then.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know I could passively sit here waiting for help forever. and not accomplish it. So
so, dealing with dependency.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: help me to rethink, or to re-imagine the habits of my own life that enabled me to succeed. Sorry. Yeah, there you go long way of talking about virtue.
Steph Judd: I certainly think that
Steph Judd: as as I mentioned to you by email, and as we've spoken about on on this in this series before I I have a I have a physical disability, and it's I've had some quite severe pain that's fled up in the last few months.
and it's been really interesting the way that
Steph Judd: you know. I think that the story of the last
Gosh, it's like 18 years. 17 years now
Steph Judd: my relationship to independence, dependency, and the intimacy that that you
Steph Judd: you can have with other people when you have to ask for help when you need help, and you can't, Just because I think that my default has always been I I'll just absorb.
Steph Judd: I can just. I can just barge through. I can just barrel on through.
and I think particularly this last kind of flare up.
Steph Judd: Since about October, November.
Steph Judd: I've had to pay more attention to my body and and respect it in it in a different way. and I think that that
Steph Judd: there's an interesting relationship to patience on the one hand.
frustration and grief
Steph Judd: on the other.
Steph Judd: But then also just kind of submitting yourself to
Steph Judd: the body you find yourself in in in ways that Don't Don't give oxygen to resentment. I think that. That's that's I. I feel like I I've had that a microcosm of that. And I think that over the course of your experience you would. You would have experienced that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: it's so interesting.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: One of my friends. Actually, it's one of the interlocutors in this book, Sarah.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Sara chested, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: she's She's the what she's the girl I talked to later in the book. She had a child, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: one of the things she said to me, and I might have been after this book we were talking about dependency and having to have others help you.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I said, You know how do you deal with the fact that you're always having to ask others for help, and you feel like a burden.
She goes actually, I see that as my gift to them. because generosity
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and giving is one of the virtues and one of the ways in which they can live the good life because they can look back and say.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You know that they helped me to be a mother, and to flourish so weirdly, so reluctant to ask for help.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and yet weirdly
Shane Clifton DRC policy: it's that
that backwards and forwards.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: risk being willing to receive.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: recognizing that that actually isn't necessarily a burden that you're giving people the opportunity there to give.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and then creatively finding ways to give back.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and I think that come up sometimes be hard for us. We feel like, you know, because paying can be so debilitating
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know we're constantly asking for help. So that's why there is that sense of burden. But
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I found it, Cyrus. Why, of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: really challenging my sense that even that can be a give really just yeah, really such a different way of thinking about dependency.
And I think that I it experientially
Steph Judd: learning to receive from others in a way that isn't associated to shame a in the sense that I think that I used to think of. I mean it's such a deep-sated kind of subliminal thing to think of
Steph Judd: needing help and receiving help as being weakness and weakness being a bad thing.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah. Well, in the virtue tradition can be partly responsible for that stiff
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Well, because the exercise of virtue
Shane Clifton DRC policy: is so. The virtuous person in Aristotle is the one who gives rather than received. So actually, that's inherent. You know that's actually explicit
Shane Clifton DRC policy: in the virtue Tradition
Shane Clifton DRC policy: so virtues are the
Shane Clifton DRC policy: He's, the person who's breaking through, who is exercising courage rather than the person who is being saved, or is the recipient of care. But I I i'm with you. I mean, I think I do say I talk about this in the book, my relationship with my kids being willing to receive help from my kids. One of the challenges I had
Shane Clifton DRC policy: was, I
Shane Clifton DRC policy: broke my injury playing with my kids. So why in which I related to my teenage kids at the time was surfing and sport, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and we were riding a push bike jumping push bikes at a church Youth, facility, and that's when I broke my neck. And
Shane Clifton DRC policy: how do I, parent now, when I can't play in the same way with my kids, and I realized if you use down the track that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I could do my care. And so you know, my care involves nudity and
showering and dressing, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: so I faced up to all right. Here's the shame of having my teenage. Kids.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know, deal with my body.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And then, all of a sudden in doing so we're spending the care time together.
talking about life and its meanings and hardship.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: They're learning that bodies are bodies, and we should normalize the the weedness and mess that comes with bodies. And you know all this time later it's developed
Shane Clifton DRC policy: rich and different relationship. That's still a loss. I don't want to say that. but that's all good. I think. Disability. you know. It's both
Shane Clifton DRC policy: terrible
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and wonderful, ugly and beautiful. You don't want to sort of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: talk about it all as term of. But that's life, too. Isn't it. So yeah. And you you talk about paying there and managing pain. Yeah.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: i'm sure you've learned a lot about Disability staff.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: But
Steph Judd: you you could live without pain still couldn't you, even though it's teaching you a lot, and you're learning a lot that it's.
Steph Judd: I think that that's and that's an interesting thing that's come through in in a bunch of the conversations we've had with people.
Steph Judd: particularly when it comes to what? What you.
Steph Judd: what your hope is for yourself in the future. And on the one hand, you want to correct the the kind of the ableist
under currents that sit below a lot of the way that we organize our common life
Steph Judd: in saying that you know there are differences in disability that
Steph Judd: that shouldn't be. You know they're not just maladies to be corrected. There are differences to be impressed. Yes.
but we feel like when pain comes into the mix
Steph Judd: it's
in my in one of the things I've been grappling with is is how how that modifies the conversation, particularly if you know for me in terms of my face.
Steph Judd: and one of the conversations that we've had, you know, for example, with Amy Kenny Recently Dr. Kenny was around.
Steph Judd: What is the hope you have for, like, what is the what is the hope for the new creation? Do you hope that you have a body that that doesn't experience pain, or you know, do you hope that you'd have a body that isn't disabled, and that conversation is really for
Steph Judd: fraud?
Steph Judd: I wondered if you what, what what kind of what are some thoughts that you would add into that conversation chain?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, look I. And i'm not thinking about that conversation in terms of heaven or hell, or because I think it's actually very this worldly, You know. What do I hope for my children? What do I hope for my future?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And you know I we we have kids, and we
Shane Clifton DRC policy: we might hope that they don't have a genetic disability, or that they don't
Shane Clifton DRC policy: right there back, and I still hope for that for them. I hope you know I living with spinal cord. Injury is hard, and I hope my kids don't go for a push by row right tomorrow
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and and break their back. I it might be worth just briefly commenting. Have you talked in the podcast before about the social model of disability.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah. So so the social model of disability tends to
Shane Clifton DRC policy: set the medical and the social model against one another on.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I think that maybe in its original thinking it does, and one of the sort of more modern
Shane Clifton DRC policy: critiques, or at least nuances of that social model, is to recognize that we are
Shane Clifton DRC policy: embodied that disability. Isn't. Just a social problem. But it's it is an embodied problem.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so. you know, we can embrace and celebrate disability
Shane Clifton DRC policy: while also wanting to maximize our physical well-being, and minimize our pain
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and and maximize our psychological. Well-being
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I mean I I've got a real interest, you know, in a mad studies, which is sort of I don't know if that's a term with which you're familiar. It's it's a it's sort of a an outreach from disability with mental illness which is celebrating mad pride.
You know pride in mental illness, and embracing our brains for all of the
Shane Clifton DRC policy: quirky weirdness, and recognizing even
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know, the
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the more bizarre things that our brain might do with the very different things that I might do it Just part of who we are. We can be proud of them. But that doesn't mean
Shane Clifton DRC policy: just because you can
Shane Clifton DRC policy: eliminate the shame that is t00 0ften associated with mental illness, that it's therefore wrong
Shane Clifton DRC policy: to take medicine that might help you out. or that might maximize your functioning of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: of your brain. So there! There's a really nuanced and rich conversation, and I and I do love that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: ambiguity that comes with studying disability. And I think that is in the best theology as well. Isn't it
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that yeah, that theology and disability are about
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I the cross. But about joy in the midst of the cross so. or you know the cross and the resurrection go together, don't they it's about this death. But this fullness of life
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and that wonderful sort of paradox that's at the essence of Christian theology is also.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I think they're in thinking about disability. So yeah, so I want my kids to live as well as they can. I then be able to flourish in whatever hardship
comes their way both from the sheer lock or the choices of life.
Steph Judd: Yeah. And I think that that that notion of resilience and the kind of the bounce back.
Steph Judd: you know you can have when you have a traumatic event. you know, in in your case, your accident. you know there are different tools at different points in our journey that become important resources that we can draw on.
Steph Judd: And I think that that's I think, that that's evident in your book that there are different points which different parts of the virtual tradition become helpful, helpful tools in a toolkit that may serve you well at 1 point, but not in another.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I completely agree. And look. If I started by saying I'm. Critical of the book, I actually still love the book. I think it's rich in many ways that there's there'd be things like nuance, but
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I use it in multiple ways. Some friends of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: mine, a pain specialist, actually and recently developed a program. working with people with spinal cord injury. It's called the Engage program. It's now run by spinal cord injuries Australia.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and it really is grounded in the virtue, tradition, and it's thinking about
Shane Clifton DRC policy: ways in which thinking about what the good life is. You know what are the components of the good life?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: What are the virtues, we need to succeed in it. And you know what are the components of the good life that's really interesting, and it is relationships it's, we
Shane Clifton DRC policy: finding meaning and living for some sense of meaning. Now for some that might be a deep sense of the Christian faith living for God, for others.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that that that meaning might be found
Shane Clifton DRC policy: in their children, in their relationships, in their community, in the work. So there's lots of different ways looking for or or finding beauty.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and I think spirituality and Christianity hopefully
Shane Clifton DRC policy: is about that as well to living for these deeper
Shane Clifton DRC policy: sense of purpose. And I think when you go through crisis and trauma. You, it can cause you to lose sight of.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, of all of these, the deepest sense of meaning and purpose. And what's beautiful, you know, as a spinal could. Injury
Shane Clifton DRC policy: can disrupt your relationships, your work.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and it can be hard to regain meaning in the in the light of that, and so much of life is actually about that isn't it, I think if you think about.
you know
Shane Clifton DRC policy: life
Shane Clifton DRC policy: often, we'll, we'll have a relationship, and for whatever reason we'll have a divorce. And suddenly the crisis that comes from divorce is about.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: or in this new situation.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: How do I reimagine meaning purpose relationships?
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And how do I look at my life and the habits of character that might have damaged my past relationships. and that I need to rethink or rework on myself.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: so that my next relationship or relationships that i'm in a healthy and I don't repeat the same mistake. So you think about how the virtue, tradition and the tools that it gives you
Shane Clifton DRC policy: can help build resilience. I I think that's the the key word, because life is hard, man, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and so
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the virtue. Tradition is a rich way of thinking about what it takes to live a resilient
Shane Clifton DRC policy: lot
with others.
Steph Judd: How has some?
Steph Judd: And I know you spend a quite a bit of time detailing this in your book.
Steph Judd: but at a relatively high level. How would you describe the way that Christian theology has
Steph Judd: interpreted and interacted with the virtue tradition. both at the time of Aquinas, and also subsequently.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Well, I I think I think Aquinas is a really rich interpreter of tradition. but maybe a quieter since, and subsequently, I think, ends up focusing
Shane Clifton DRC policy: or giving too much attention to the eschatological to this
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and call.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so I don't think is enough attention to the here and now.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: which I guess resonates back with my focus before about pleasure. So a lack of attention to pleasure.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, it's why i'm not that interested in eschatology i'm quite ambivalent about. You know our bodies after death. I don't think we actually can know. And i'm not that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: interested in that topic at all? That's not to say other. I can. You know i'm. I'm happy to find others who might find interesting and value in it. But I don't care very much about
Shane Clifton DRC policy: what the nature of heaven might be like. I don't believe in Hill.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So
yeah, so for me
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that reflection on the here and now.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and how to live live well in the here and now. I think he's probably my biggest critique of Christianity.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: because I think
this focus on heaven and hell, then
Shane Clifton DRC policy: also becomes a means of controlling others, and I think
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the Christian tradition has
Shane Clifton DRC policy: used
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the future
and virtue
Shane Clifton DRC policy: as a means for controlling the way others behave.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And so I think the virtue tradition is at its richest
Shane Clifton DRC policy: when you take it on yourself and think about your own flourishing. and I think it's at its most dangerous and damaging
Shane Clifton DRC policy: when others use it, to tell you how you should. You know what meaning you should find what virtues you should exercise.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and the ways in which
you should suppress certain have certain actions and habits for some
Shane Clifton DRC policy: future goal, or for some. you know, for some function that the church tells you is important.
and you know I think you can just see the way in which this is caused.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: You know the horror that is contemporary Christianity. Whether that's
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know, I think, in Catholicism the way in which they frame the life of the priest is the obvious example of that. So they're living for for God exercising virtue. But what they're actually doing is developing a priesthood
Shane Clifton DRC policy: where you know where celibacy is at the core of it. So it's resulted in really distorted attitudes to the pleasure of sex and sexuality
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and to life in the here now, and we we see the consequences of that repression. for some future goal leads to all sort of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: well horrors, and I think it's done that in the Catholic churches.
sexual abuse, crisis.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and and and yeah, the ways in which it then talks about virtue and masculinity and
and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and I think that's true of Catholicism.
But true of evangelicalism as well.
Steph Judd: Shane Stock. 12,
Steph Judd: 13 years since your life took a dramatic
Steph Judd: 10.
Steph Judd: What would you say? The K. That she's that you found
Steph Judd: have helped you flourish when you've sought to cultivate them in in your, in your, in your new, in the in the change that your body has undergone.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah, look, I I think I might even just bounce out of the last chapter of this book the I think it's disability, grace, and virtual letting of control, which is a is a chapter
Shane Clifton DRC policy: right periodically re-read and still really love.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: And I think it's in part because
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I don't want to list. I you know I I don't think we should say list. These are the virtues that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: are the ones that are most important. and that you should all adopt so I wouldn't want to sort of give a list of virtues and tell people what they should do with them. But for me.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I think you know some of the ones that have been really important is thinking through pride and humility, for example, and
Shane Clifton DRC policy: thinking about humility. and we tend to think of them as polar opposites, by the way, and I don't think they should be, or are they
humility? Something that we don't want to experience, or
Shane Clifton DRC policy: that we experience
Shane Clifton DRC policy: in oppressive ways, I think, in Christianity.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So reflecting on humility's been significant, you know, as I think you talked about before, the humility of the dependency that comes from, you know. So much of disability is about shame.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know, but I've had to sort of deal with the fact that people are dealing with my naked body and my.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know, and I can be. I can be out and about in the capital will block up, and i'll have to ask one of my work colleagues, to stick their hands down my pants and unlock my capit. And you know there's so much of
Shane Clifton DRC policy: life that is sort of humiliating.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and yet so thinking through what it means to live in bodies that we're so used to. I'm experiencing shame about.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and the virtue of humility is significant, because it's about the understanding that i'm little, and that i'm small, and that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: you know I don't need to be ashamed. We've
Shane Clifton DRC policy: with the smallness of my body, but also then thinking about
Shane Clifton DRC policy: what it means when i'm a powerful person, and what humility means, and I think often powerful people are not often humble enough.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and so that confronts the medical. Sorry this noise in the background, John, is that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: coming through hopefully, my microphone. someone's just decided to drill.
John Anthony Dunne: I can. I can hear it just lightly. But I think it's all right. You it feel free. I mean, we're we're gonna land the plane here. So it's not a problem.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Okay. Apologies for that.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah. The the the need for not only people with disability to exercise humility which would just sort of be automatic. We will be confronted with it. But what the powerful people do
Shane Clifton DRC policy: with humility at the medical profession, which is so sure it's right, needs to listen to the expertise of people with disability. The church which is used to helping. We talked about this before. You know. People on the margins needs to exercise the humility of realizing that actually there's a lot of insight that comes from
Shane Clifton DRC policy: people with disability or from people who have experienced homelessness or people in poverty
Shane Clifton DRC policy: so reframing humility. But pride, for example, is often something that
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Christianity sees as a negative, you know. In fact, often people will link pride t0 0riginal sin.
which is sort of horrifying, because
Shane Clifton DRC policy: often, then. that that notion of pride generates shame.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So how do I learn to be proud? And I think disability is taught me that
we can be proud
Shane Clifton DRC policy: of this this thing that often has so much a shame attached to it. And, by the way, I think this is one of the ways in which disability
Shane Clifton DRC policy: needs to align itself with Feminism and Lgbtq
Shane Clifton DRC policy: pride. So you think about the Pride movement at the moment we're recording this interview in Australia, where world pride
Shane Clifton DRC policy: month is on, and you know again
Shane Clifton DRC policy: the queer people and I have a trans a daughter. Now, queer people have experienced so much shame for their action, because society says that what they do
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and who they are. it's shameful. And so we
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Qu. And the result of that is social exclusion in so many ways. Whether that is queer People excluded from the Church, from leadership, in concert, in church, or involvement in church, whether that's disabled people excluded from life in the Church. But to have pride in who we are.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and then pride is a collective movement, isn't it. It's something that we have together.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: We have pride in the way people have stood up and said, You know our 4 business stood up and said.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: No, it's okay to be gay. It's okay to
be Trans. And we can leave
Shane Clifton DRC policy: our true authentic audit identity. It's: okay to be disabled.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I'm proud of being a quadriplegic
Shane Clifton DRC policy: and the way in which we which that's a collective action.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So yeah, humility, pride, forgiveness, is so many other ways in which. over the last 12 years or 30 years. Whatever it is. disability has given me the opportunity to think about how
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I thought about what
Shane Clifton DRC policy: a virtuous life was, and to think differently about that in the present side.
Yeah.
John Anthony Dunne: Well, Shane, thank you so much for your time and for joining us, and just really appreciate this conversation on what is the good life and and happiness and pleasure, and thinking about the the virtuous of
John Anthony Dunne: the role of virtues, and in all of that, and and the perspective that that disability in particular can provide in in this way. I just, I just find to be astounding and just really appreciate what you share.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Thank you, John. It's been a real pleasure, I
Shane Clifton DRC policy: I think you might have hindered I we had to haven't got any. I've had a few bad experiences with Chris Jenny, it's made me a little suspicious of Christianity to be honest.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: So these conversations been very good for me as well.
Shane Clifton DRC policy: Yeah. In in faith and in conversation
with people off face. So thank you for the conversation.