Recent Scenarios

Disabled people have a lot to worry about these days.  And they are things that we should be worried about too – one in four people have some type of disability now.  And people with disabilities are living a LOT longer nowadays than they did just a few decade ago – straining a system that was not designed to support disabled people into their 60s and 70s.

A scenario planning event took place recently where we discussed these issues, and more, with several people from the disabled community.  The participants were:

Kaycee Marshall

Kaycee Marshall is a fashion designer living in NYC.  She blogs on Instragram as @Kayceecoture, and is vocal advocate of improving disability representation to the fashion industry.  (KayceeMarshall.com)

Lindsay Tuman

Lindsay Tuman is currently serving as Miss Wheelchair New Jersey, and is a licensed social worker who has been focused on helping individuals with disabilities gain independent living skills to get back into the workforce.  She is also a ballroom wheelchair dancer.  (Instagram: @mswheelchairNJ2020)

Madison Teagarden

Maddie Teagarden uses YouTube (YouTube Channel: Maddie Teagarden), Instragram (@mad_tea_party97), and other platforms to break the stigma surrounding disability, and create more representation in Media.  She is also an ambassador for the Courageous Faces Foundation (CourageousFacesFoundation.org)

As the discussions unfolded, the following themes emerged.

Access to the fundamental basics of housing and employment are closed to many disabled people

When it comes to how people with disabilities experience daily life – be it by trying to find a place to live, trying to be hired for a job for which they are completely qualified, or simply existing in a public space without being photographed and turned into memes for the inspiration of others – when it comes to people with disabilities, we as a society are letting them down. 

There is a “cliff” that occurs when disabled people move into legal adulthood during which they lose much of their support network

There are laws that make the transition really, really challenging, and despite the intent, this creates a system of forced poverty in which workers who want to work are prevented from doing so.

The medical community really has not caught up to the fact that people with disabilities live much longer than they used to

The current system is not equipped to provide this population with critical medical care.

By combining these factors, the group created the following fictional scenario.

Where have they been?

It all started in Year 3 of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

As the disease dragged on, and wave upon wave of resurgence hit the population, the workforce changed a lot. People who were able to retire retired.  Others were burdened with family responsibilities, or had lost everything they had as a result of financial hardships.  Even the people who dutifully logged in on-time every day (after all, everyone had a keystroke logger installed within the first few weeks of the pandemic in 2020), those people were not the same.  They had watched as round after round of layoffs had decimated the worker population, and those who had survived were doing extra work.  Those who remained naturally felt guilty about remaining. 

And then the studies started coming out.  COVID-19, and the imposed isolation that came along with it, began to have a very real impact on people’s health.  They weren’t active, were eating too much, were locked up in close quarters with family, or were lonely.  The disease had long-term inflammation-related effects on the body, and workers were not the same.

As companies struggled to find willing workers to replace those who were gone (or at reduced capacity) they began to find trained and qualified people who were available to work remotely, and who had come from great schools and who had top credentials.  How had them missed these people before?

It took a while, but eventually they figured out where this “hidden” workforce came from – they were candidates with disabilities who had carefully omitted any clues about their disability from their LinkedIn profiles and resumes.

Over time, these new hires began to outperform their counterparts, mainly for two reasons.  One was that the had been using virtual work technology for ages – long before COVID hit.  The second was the their adaptability – they were used to overcoming obstacles, and brought a new approach to getting work done in a virtual world.

There were hiccups at first.  For example, there were legal barriers related to paying people with disabilities.  Getting someone hired was insanely difficult, but it turned out that the army of private employment attorneys who used to help companies navigate the legal complexities of hiring non-US residents quickly retooled, and prestigious firms were quickly put on retainer with employers to accelerate the process of hiring those with disabilities.  They also began to lobby on behalf of employers for meaningful legislative change.

Another interesting shift occurred as well.  Employers began to notice that certain of their competitors much better at recruiting this population.  It turned out that those companies better understood the complexities of providing healthcare to the disabled population, especially as it related to the utilization of specialists.  One large hospital system piloted a healthcare plan that allowed easier access to specialists, and also offered to coordinate the specialist visits as long as they were all in network.  It was bumpy at first, but after a few months productivity shot thought he ceiling.  Medical students saw that this was the future of their profession; just as geriatric medicine became an established area study in the early 1980s, so not disability medicine was a popular option for new med students.

Somehow it’s difficult to comprehend that a quarter of the eligible employment pool was hiding in plain sight for decades and decades —no one knew they were there.  But everyone is glad they are here now.

Like every working professional, artists are responding to the pandemic by re-defining they way they do their jobs. 

Many of us have purchased art at some point.  We saw a painting of the seashore at a local art fair, met the artist, and made a purchase.  Or we found a talented graphic artist on-line, and commissioned a drawing of ourselves to use on our social media profiles.  

But only a smaller percentage of us have purchased art from a professional gallery.

Times are indeed changing – “gallery” is a much more loosely defined term now – it doesn’t have to mean a storefront in the Chelsea section of New York City.

A scenario planning event took place recently over a period of two days.  The participants were:

Ray Sumser  (raysumser.com)

Ray Sumser is a multi-media artist who’s chief preoccupations are paint, music and comedic writing. He is best know for his Every Cartoon Ever pictures but also paints landscape, performs stand up and plays mandolin for the Bridge Farers, a bluegrass band. He teaches and manages projects across the Adobe Suite. He is currently at work in his Studio in San Rafael, California.

Brian Leo (brianleo.com)

Brian Leo (b. 1976, New Jersey) is a painter known for his floor-to-ceiling installations of small paintings. Leo’s source material draws broadly on personal identity, current events, pop culture, and social issues, resulting in brightly colored paintings of cartoonish forms and appropriated images. At the age of 16, Leo began painting as an emotional catharsis. He then attended Rutgers University without intentions to study art but it was during these years that his interest in painting took root. His efforts to create poetic imagery were inspired by Joan Miro and Paul Klee, and looking at Amy Sillman’s paintings influenced his use of personal history. Leo also went on trips to visit SoHo art galleries where he saw Barry McGee’s installations, which inspired him to present public and private concepts in a non-linear way.  As a result, Leo intends for his audience to make free associations from his paintings, which range from clever and humorous to poignant, and to approach his installations as an intimate setting.

After graduating from Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of Art in 1999 with a BFA, he traveled around the world to view ancient and contemporary Asian, European and Australian art. He settled in New York and briefly assisted artist Ronnie Cutrone. He has exhibited widely in both galleries and art fairs. His most recent exhibitions include Amy Li Projects, Megumi Ogita Gallery and Art Gwangju. Leo lives and works in New York City.

As the discussions unfolded, the following themes emerged.

Artists will lift each other and support one another

The pandemic is creating a unique change to the model by which art is traditionally discovered and purchased.  With physical galleries closed, slower foot traffic, and fewer people able to even purchase art, artists have discovered the power of consolidating their efforts.

Artists are now sharing leads with one another and cross promoting the work of others in an effort to support the community.

The current version of the Gallery model will go away

Visiting an art gallery can be uncomfortable.  There is a tradition that visitors are often ignored and belittled.  Furthermore, art is often sold as an investment tool rather than a way to have art they genuinely like in their homes.

The pandemic has encouraged many artists to create “galleries” in their own homes or studios, or even galleries that are entirely virtual.

Technology will continue to re-define what “art” is

Apps are now available to ordinary consumers that have capabilities previously found only in professional studios.  Every food blogger now carefully applies lights and filters to create the perfect image.

Is it art?  Sure – and artists are realizing that letting people use technology take their own pictures of their art doesn’t reduce the value of their original creation.

Social Media will change the relationship between the artist and the art buyer

There is a lot of art out in the world now, and mysterious algorithms make decisions for art fans to decide what fraction of that art they ultimately see.  No one asked for this, but it won’t go away. 

Even established galleries realize that they have to have “likes” and “followers” to stay competitive . . . but the artist with the most likes and followers isn’t necessarily the best artist.

Art as a criminal act; art as a product to be regulated

Chalk signs as vandalism.  Graffiti artists paining over the work of a rival.  Community art destroyed in a fit of misplaced rage.

Art has always been a powerful indicator or society’s general temperament.  In a world where everyone has a voice (and can easily find others who share their view), silencing others is always the next logical step.

By combining these factors, the group created the following fictional scenario.

Broken Windows

People were hesitant to download the app at first.  Many still remembered those clunky first attempts to do contact tracing via mobile devices when the first strain of COVID had hit the city.  No one wanted to download them, and adoption proved to be the major hurdle.  Different start-ups had created apps, but the chaos of getting platforms to provide and support them proved too much.  Poor apps were fast-tracked by politicians with hidden financial ties to the companies that developed them, and secure, well-performing apps were undermined through media campaigns.  The few that ended up being adopted (mainly city by city) were plagued with data breaches, and none of them connected with the others, making the whole exercise a useless and frustrating experience.  Every year at flu season, for a decade, people would plead for a solution, and finally a non-profit commission was formed to collect data from any state or municipality that chose to provide their data.  It wasn’t perfect, but is managed to make a difference,

This opened a window to city-specific apps to address city-specific problems.  Apps to remind people when to put their garbage out, and then their business taxes were due became more reliable.  Cities realized that large, organized, and powerful infrastructures like schools and zoning boards would always be able to successfully resist attempts to make their processes transparent.  But little city services were open to the idea.

That’s how the Anti-Graffiti app came about.  Small business owners in large cities became frustrated with graffiti appearing on their shops overnight.  Police forces in larger cities tried having teams focus on this problem, but artists are fast, and by the time the business owner discovered the graffiti in the morning, it was hours old.

One company began mining data from social media websites, and found that they could identify the particular artist who had left graffiti with surprising accuracy.  Arguing that that being able to stop small crimes in turn reduced serious crime (the so-called “broken windows” approach generally debunked among academics, but still a popular notion), the city was able to obtain a broad warrant that was used to successfully request personal data about the artists from the large technology firms.  People downloaded the app, and when they pointed their phone at a piece of graffiti, the phone identified the artist, alerted the police, and transmitted their location as well (as their next likely target).

In addition to facilitating quick and highly publicized prosecutions, the data were then used to identify the artist for life (they called it “TAG”ing them – “Technology Against Graffiti), thus making them ineligible for grants, scholarships, stipends, or support of any kind.  And the problem disappeared . . . for a while.

About six months after the major anti-graffiti campaign, large cities began to awaken to large and elaborate murals that, at first glance, seemed to make no sense.  They looked something like high-tech camouflage, but otherwise were kind of indecipherable.  Sharp observers spotted young people viewing the paintings through their phones.  It seems that there were apps that “decoded” the jumbled image, and converted it into the version originally intended by the artist.  

Further investigation revealed the process:  an artist would create a piece of graffiti art in a studio.  A scanner was used to digitize the image, and convert it into a code that provided numerous individual sets of simple instructions that were texted to a pool of artists.  At a given time, the team would descend upon the target, and each participant would apply their small contribution to the wall or train or building,  No one had all the instructions, and no one knew what the final drawing would look like.  The “translator” app (the one the young people were using) would convert the image back to the original using the camera feature on a mobile device.  The code expired within a few hours, and it only worked on phones that received it directly.  These images were the new “pop-up” experience, and the image encryption was so reliable that no one was ever prosecuted.  

Municipalities responded by promoting “approved” artists, and making public space available to them.  But they weren’t very good.

The artists who created the graffiti began a sort of friendly competition with one another, and recruited specialists away from rival groups who worked with the team to improve the quality of the encrypted image.  Others acted as virtual gallerists, selecting places near one another so that an observer could experience images in a particular order.  The original artwork for a piece that was particularly popular could command a remarkable price, and galleries pushed hard to acquire them.  They weren’t often successful, though, since no one really needed help selling their work. 

Today, the same business owners who fought to have graffiti stomped out now work hard to attract the bands of artists –publicity means customers.  In a touch of irony, they way they let it be known that they want their storefront painted is to apply the words “Paint Me” . . .with spray-paint.

These are links to people and ideas that came up in our conversation

#CancelArtGalleries  

#OnLineViewingRoom

#MeToo

@MayukoF

@JoshuaStarkman  

#AmyLiProjects

#WizardSkull 

#HueyCrowley  

@Nora.Iris 

#MitsuruTakeya 

#ShepardFirey 

@OliveAllen 

None of us probably realized quite how fragile we all are.

When COVID-19 began tearing its way across the United States in early spring, the strategies for addressing the outbreak were quite logical.  New York City will need 40,000 ventilators.  The Army Corps of Engineers will need to set up temporary hospitals as soon as possible.  A solution needs to be found to the problems caused by people hoarding all of the toilet paper.  

But once those problems were addressed (or not), something peculiar began to happen.  People felt lonesome.  And they felt pressured to learn a new skill.  And they missed seeing their friends and families.  And people who were typically quite resilient (psychologically speaking) began to post desperate pleas for help on social media in the middle of the night.  And their friends didn’t know quite what to do.

We still don’t.

This pandemic has changed a great many things about how we work and shop and go to school, and is sure to change many more things before all is said and done.  But before we talk about those things, we need to first talk about mental wellness.

A scenario planning discussion took place recently over a period of two days.  The participants were:

The Rev. Courtney Mys, M.Div., BCC, Board Certified Chaplain with the Association of Professional Chaplains and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.  (See detailed bio at the end of this report)

Dr. Alise Cortez is the chief purpose officer at Alise Cortez and Associates (management consulting) and chief ignition officer at Gusto, Now! (a multi-lingual e-learning platform offering leadership and professional development courses).

(See detailed bio at the end of this report)

As the discussions unfolded, the following themes emerged.

People crave human contact

When most people picture the experience of dying, they imagine a death that involves another person sitting next to them.  They do not picture themselves lying on a cot in a hospital or nursing home that is filled to capacity, and that allows no visitors (not even immediate family).  A more ghastly death would be difficult to picture, and healthcare workers report emotional burnout from having to tend to terrified people who realize that they’ll probably spend their final moments on earth alone in an empty room.

Even socially distanced get togethers are cautious propositions.  People are overly conscious about touching.  Proper mask usage is the focus of any interaction.  For those who elect to go outside for a walk, new personalized protocols are forming regarding masked people walking near the unmasked. 

The population is aging and more diverse

When the shelter in place guidelines began, it was exciting for people.  In the corporate world, the more advanced collaboration platform users would entertain their colleagues each day with a new background screen.  Workers would set up “virtual happy hour” on Friday afternoon.  It was exciting and different.  Many companies reported an increased in employee engagement.  

Months later, the challenges are amplified.  Many people (workers and pupils alike) are now sharing both a physical space and that precious link to the outside world: the wireless signal.  

Cultures are mixed now – the monochromatic immigrant family huddled in a tenement has been replaced with mixed-race partners with widely varying attitudes about sex and privacy.  On-line messaging makes it impossible to “opt out” of conversations about Black Lives Matter and other social issues.  

People don’t know what to do

COVID seems to be prompting uncomfortable self-reflection.  There is pressure to learn a new skill and bake cupcakes.  Is the pandemic an opportunity to evolve, or a terrible spotlight shining on the inadequacies of our careers, our relationships, and our priorities?

No one seems to sleep.  People are lonely.  Screen-time leaves us amplifying misunderstandings and perceived slights.  The physical world we left behind is rich, multi-factorial, information-dense, and encourages gratitude among the participants; the virtual world is 1-dimensional, incomplete, possibly wrong, and transactional.

Wealth disparity is acute

Living with COVID is unpleasant for everyone, but having a lot of money makes it less unpleasant.  Wealth ensures a quiet place to work, a secure and reliable Internet connection, and space to walk around in the fresh air.  Wealth gives one access to paper products, healthcare, and peace of mind.  Wealth literally gives one the ability to purchase a sterile space in which to live.  Rich people in a large bubble, and poor people all crammed into small bubbles.

Sustained economic pressure isn’t just an inconvenience for the middle class.  Many are genuinely facing the possibility of bankruptcy.  When people die before they plan to die, a great many unanticipated administrative and financial duties are left to survivors.  Healthcare workers report families wondering how they will pay for the funeral of loved ones. 

There is more emphasis on the mind/body connection  

People who experience sustained emotional strain over long periods of time frequently report the eventual appearance of a physical malady.  Lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and living in a perpetual stage of stress response compromises the body’s ability to maintain wellness.  Lockdown can perpetuate bad practices such as staying sedentary, overeating, and alcohol abuse. 

With limited access to healthcare, some people have begun to seek a more holistic approach to wellness.  People are seeing more chiropractors, acupuncturists, and energy workers.  More people are considering their physical health as a wellness continuum, rather than an absolute of “healthy” or “sick.”  In an effort to alleviate stress, some people are exploring the use of on-line yoga and meditation classes as a way of coping with stress and pain.

By combining these factors, the group created two fictional scenarios.

Scenario 1.  Buying a Bubble

Pressure continues to build on the majority population as a result of isolation and financial stresses.  They see no end in sight; they begin to lose loved ones, and months of “lockdown” results in no measurable improvement.

The problem remains one of transmission.  People can take great care to wear a mask and wash their hands, but all it takes is one infected person in a closed space to render all their caution useless.  And that infected person may not even realize they are infected.  A few stolen moments at a gathering or in public transportation can mean the virus is brought into a home that is now , due to new economic realities, frequently shared with multiple families and multiple generations.  

Meanwhile, wealthy people use their resources to isolate themselves to an even greater degree.  They purchase new cars, move to the suburbs, or (in the case of the ultra-rich) take dedicated staffs of servants out to sea with them.  The new form of class distinction and show of conspicuous consumption is the ability to buy “cleanliness.”  

Consortia of wealthy people begin to purchase buildings at a fraction of their book value, and outfit them with the latest in environmental controls. These buildings have self-contained air handling systems that sterilize “fresh” air from outside before it is distributed to the interior.  Once the air is safe, you can’t exactly come and go as you please.  There is an elaborate quarantine process before they let you in again.

They have apartments on most of the floors, as well as upscale shops.  The nicer ones have rooftop bars that are completely encased in glass.  Chefs who were driven out of business when restaurants were closed down are offered lucrative positions within these self-contained communities.  It is rumored that high-profile tenants are wooed with offers to stay for free since that attracts other paying tenants.  For the wealthy, it’s business as usual.

At one point in this scenario, there is a moment when the ultra-wealthy become enlightened.  Possibly it’s when we reach the point where consumers no longer have any more money, or even a desire to purchase things.  You can’t maintain your own mega wealth if no one buys your products and services.  

It starts small.  Perhaps the Internet goes out one day, and no one comes to fix it.  Or one of your relatives can’t get back in because they don’t pass quarantine. 

But for whatever reason, the wealthy begin to use their wealth to help society.  They create on-line schools to train and certify healthcare workers and caregivers.  They invest in medicine and care.  They create solutions – which they like doing.  It becomes a bragging right to take better care of employees than your competitors.  Companies begin reporting Employee Wellness Index as part of their annual report. 

The pandemic eventfully ends, and people realize how closely their fortunes are connected.

Scenario 2.  The COVID Dance

This scenario starts with the tenuous financial position in which many middle-class people currently find themselves.  At the months go by, many people watch helplessly as they are pushed closer to the edge of financial ruin as they wait for the “cure” – in this case, a vaccine that is at once safe, efficacious, affordable, and readily available.

After months of outbreaks and setbacks, more people are actually pushed over the edge and literally find themselves with no place to live.  These are educated, upper middle class people who have no history whatsoever in their family or social circles of being in a financial emergency of the most serious order.  The added stress in turn forces them into mental health crises.  The emotional toll of this sustained mental health emergency in turn manifests itself in multitudes of physical illnesses.  With no resources for treatment, the situation grows even more acute.  Even people who are not directly impacted know of friends and relatives who are living in the street, and who have no place to go.  After a few weeks, they quite literally begin to go mad.  One curious new phenomenon is the sight of groups of well-dressed, middle-aged men and woman gathered under highway overpasses.  They spend much of the day prostrate on the concrete – writhing and twisting in apparent agony for hours on end.  The medical community identifies the behavior as a form of mass hysteria.  But people call it the COVID dance.  

Obviously these recently displaced people have no ability to seek traditional western medicine.  As a direct result, a new type of “folk medicine” begins to circulate by word of mouth.  Cultures mixing in the context of new and disorienting poverty compare notes, and begin sharing strategies for managing pain and anxiety.  Non-western influences begin to creep into the mainstream, and the duality of western medicine (I am sick vs. I am well) is gradually replaced by the concept of a health “continuum.”  People learn to recognize early signs of disease states, and take action. 

Eventually, this iteration of the virus is brought under control, and people slowly retune to permanent housing and go back to work.  And they carry these new traditions back into their lives. 

More about the participants

The Rev. Courtney Mys, M.Div., BCC, Board Certified Chaplain with the Association of Professional Chaplains and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.  

A graduate of Hope College in Holland, MI with Bachelor Degrees in Geology and Religion she went on to study at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA.  She completed two Clinical Pastoral Education residencies through the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and University of Virginia (UVa) Medical Centers, specializing in oncology and pediatrics respectively.  Courtney holds certifications in Palliative Care from the Institute for Palliative Care from California State University, Critical Incident Stress Management through the ICISF, and the Interim Ministry Network.  She has worked with psychiatric children at Hoffman Homes for Youth in Gettysburg, PA, served as an interim/supply pastor for St. John’s UCC in Chambersburg, PA, and as a Staff Chaplain for Delaware Hospice.  With 25 years of experience in spiritual care and program development, Courtney serves currently as a Staff Chaplain for Sharp Grossmont Hospital (working on-call for emergencies several nights a week in the busiest Emergency Department in Southern California) as well as a Visitation Pastor for Mission Hills United Church of Christ in San Diego.   

Dr. Alise Cortez is the chief purpose officer at Alise Cortez and Associates (management consulting) and chief ignition officer at Gusto, Now! (a multi-lingual e-learning platform offering leadership and professional development courses).  

Alise is an inspirational speaker, social scientist, author, and host of the Working on Purpose radio show. Having developed her expertise within the human capital / organizational excellence industry over the last 20 years, today she is focused on helping companies, leaders, and individuals across the globe to live with “gusto” and more meaningfully and purposely experience their work to achieve greater fulfillment and well-being, more impactful results, and work-life harmony. Alise earned a PhD in Human Development, focusing her dissertation research on thehttps://websites.godaddy.com/podcasts

relationship between meaning in work and identity, and later greatly expanded the inquiry to yield 15 “modes of engagement.” She has served as a leader in several non- profit organizations in Dallas and knows the value of being a servant leader. She draws her language acumen from her previous residence in Spain and Brazil, which enables her to deliver programs and consulting in English (native) and Spanish and Portuguese.  Today Dr. Cortez is focused on enabling organizations to lead from purpose and create cultures of meaning that inspire impassioned performance, meaningful engagement and fulfillment, while encouraging a devoted stay within the organization. She has helped develop and transform thousands of managers and executives in their leadership along the way. She also helps companies visioneer for a purposeful future by facilitating meaningful exchange among all stakeholders for an integrated and dynamic strategic future. For individuals, Dr. Cortez facilitates

an online global community and various retreats