[294/365] awareness disparity

I saw someone link to this paper on replacing the scientific term "plant blindness" and I found it very interesting.

The argument for replacing it rests on what I've come to realize myself: the metaphorical use of blindness is always about ignorance or apathy.

The problem that has been called plant blindness is a real problem; it seems complicated and significant.

The term “plant blindness” was introduced in 1999 and is defined as “the inability to see or notice the plants in one's own environment—leading to: (a) the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere, and in human affairs; (b) the inability to appreciate the aesthetic and unique biological features of the life forms belonging to the Plant Kingdom; and (c) the misguided, anthropocentric ranking of plants as inferior to animals, leading to the erroneous conclusion that they are unworthy of human consideration.”

But I know next to nothing about biology/botany, and I'm not really here to talk about that (though the article is short and accessibly-written and interesting), I'm here to talk about the metaphorical use of blindness.

I was extremely interested to see the article go on to say of the term "plant blindness"

Unfortunately, the term is difficult to replace, as it encompasses several phenomena that can be grouped into four categories: attention, attitude, knowledge, and relative interest.

To see the lack of all those things "encompassed" in the term blindness left me a little dispirited honestly. This is what I'm expected not to have, as a blind person: attention, attitude, knowledge or interest. (I was also intrigued that the author says they're visually impaired, too. I think that's a good thing.)

But what I really love about this, what made me want to share this, is the author's suggested replacement term: plant awareness disparity. I was particularly interested in the inclusion of disparity, even though I misunderstood it at first! The author explains

the word “disparity” in the term is especially important. I am often asked why plant awareness or plant unawareness are not sufficient to describe what was previously known as “plant blindness.” The reason I opted to include “disparity” is because the root of the issue is that people do not notice plants in their environment as often as they do other organisms (namely animals). I wanted to highlight that there is, in fact, a disparity between how we notice and treat plants and animals in our visual cognition processes. This disparity is then what causes the other components of PAD: when we do not notice plants as often as animals, we tend to be less interested in them, less knowledgeable about them, and we have a less positive attitude toward them.

The disparity is between noticing plants and noticing other organisms/animals. Whereas my first thought was that it could be considered a disparity between some people's awareness (of plants) and other people's. And I thought this might make awareness disparity a good general term to replace some of these metaphorical uses of blindness. Disparity is a good frame for this, because it says two things are not the same (like maybe how much I see and how much you see) without making such heavy value judgments. I feel like this kind of awareness disparity can be what's important, it's maybe currently underappreciated in our use of language.