Disability: States of Ability - Featuring David D'Arcangelo

Pity Party Over

David D'Arcangelo is the President of Arc Angel Communications, a Limited Liability Company that is a Disability Owned Business Enterprise.

Legally blind from a young age, David is a passionate leader, advocate, and policy maker for people with disabilities and underserved populations.

During our conversation, David emphasizes the power of positivity, love, and constructive discourse in addressing societal challenges and building bridges between differing perspectives.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: As we are approaching the end of the year, usually for me it's a, it's a moment of self-introspection. I tend to calm down a little bit, and just revisit all that I've done during the year. I also think about, all right, what I want the next year to be. So, I don't know if you gave any thought to 2024, but do you have any special wish for the year to come?

David D’Arcangelo: Peace. I'm a bridge builder and so to me it's just bringing people together. You know, it's kind of ironical. Oftentimes people who advocate for change the most are the most adverse to it. The worst fear of a planner is that the plan actually goes into action.

So I'm all about action. I'm all about getting things done and getting results and improving the human condition. So, and sometimes when you do that, you get to change things and not everybody likes that.

People say they like it, that they like the change, but then when you go ahead and change it, maybe they don't like it as much. So to me it's about building those bridges and just staying positive, you know, that we can't control a lot. One thing we can control is our attitude. So I choose to be positive.

Stephen Matini: What do you think people resent the most about change?

David D’Arcangelo: Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know if they resent it. I think it's, people like to build archetypal metaphors in their head of what something is or isn't or is going to be or could be. And when that doesn't happen accordingly or exactly how they envisioned it, that creates conflict and that conflict is unsettling and everything else.

So I try not to do that. I try not to have those prejudices really, and who knows what the next moment will bring, you know, it's like you gotta live for the moment.

Stephen Matini: So it's about having the right expectations.

David D’Arcangelo: Yeah, well, having no expectations really. Well, that can be challenging. It can, because I mean, you need to be pragmatic and plan for your dinner and plan for the seasons changing and plan for short and medium and long term things.

So to me, it's the blend of being pragmatic, but also really not expecting much because nothing is guaranteed. All that's guaranteed is now this moment further than that. It's just everything's up for grabs.

Stephen Matini: Sometimes it is discrepancy between what we want, our goals, our wishes, and the way things are. And I think it's a fine balance between finding contentment in the present moment while at the same time thriving for something else. How do you personally strike this balance?

David D’Arcangelo: Sometimes better than others! Because You do get caught up in trying to think about the future or reflecting on the past.

Future performance is usually an indication of past performance, but we're here on the now, so it's taking some measure of where we've been and that experience and being able to reflect on it.

Particularly if you've made mistakes, you know, we're all, nobody's perfect and whatever failures we've had, I think it's trying to learn from those so that when you do them again, you're better, right?

So having that past experience, trying to apply it towards future behaviors in the now and having that balance, like you said, is to me that's really one of the keys and one of the, if you can find that secret sauce in life, I think that's close to it.

Stephen Matini: You mentioned already your mission, which is to improve the human condition, and actually it's one of those traits that you share with a lot of guests of this podcast, people that have made service the very center of their life.

How did this mission enter your life? I mean, is it something that's always been there? Is it the result of something that happened in your life?

David D’Arcangelo: It's always been there. I didn't always know it was there. It really comes down to fundamental bedrock convictions. And that is, you know, do you believe in God or not? I'm not very religious, but I'm very faithful.

Anything that I have, yeah, it's from me, but I'm only the vessel for it. Any of the good things that happen, I really can't take credit for any of the bad things that happen, that's from me, that's on me. So I start with myself, what can I do to be better? What can I do to be more positive? What mistakes did I make that I want to change for the future so I don't make them again?

And to me about improving the human condition, you can do a one person at a time, or you can try to be involved with policies that impact many. And I've done both, and I try to do both. And whether it's the one person or whether it's the many, I just try to stay positive and constructive and move things forward from that.

But make no mistake about it, particularly in the realm that I've been in, which is disabilities. The disability itself can be very challenging. Those challenges are manifested in many ways. And it's a scale. We are all in various states of ability. And that ability manifests itself in so many different ways. And for some people there is great suffering on one end of that spectrum.

And on the other end there's no suffering at all. And there's complete enlightenment and most people are somewhere on that spectrum. And just because you are on one place at one point in time doesn't mean you're not gonna be on another, it's a sliding scale, right? We're all in various states of ability.

Stephen Matini: Has disability ever defined who you are?

David D’Arcangelo: The best way I can answer that is, it's not my full definition, but it's part of my definition, right? You know, but who would I be if I didn't have this disability to encounter?

I Because particularly I find with people with less apparent disabilities, which by the way I think is a very significant amount of persons with disabilities have non apparent disabilities, meaning when you encounter them, you would not necessarily know that they have a disability or not.

And I'm probably one of those people, most people like, well, what do you mean you're legally blind? You can see, yes, I can see. And so can the large majority of people with blindness, most people who are blind have some usable vision.

Now that's toward one end of that spectrum. I'm, you know, I'm probably barely legally blind, if you wanna put it that way. I'm 2200 with my glasses on, but that is still legally blind. And so oftentimes the greatest discrimination I face is from other people with blindness. It's a both a compliment and an insult at the same time.

It's a compliment basically saying, well, you don't present as blind. And so all of the things that I've done to ameliorate my blindness, people don't recognize that or don't see that, and that's kind of the insult of it, right? The good side is, wow, look how high functioning this person is. The bad side is, well, wait a minute, what do you mean you're blind?

So you know, you take the good with the bad and it's about education and giving people an understanding of our human condition that we are all in various states of ability, whether it's any of the prevalence, types of disability, hearing, seeing, cognition, mobility, you know, all of the different types of disability.

Stephen Matini: Would you say that the biggest challenges that you have faced in your life in terms of disability, did they come from within, or was something that came from the outside?

David D’Arcangelo: Yeah, the great stoic philosopher Epictetus said that one of the keys to life is to break things down into one of two categories. Internal things that you can't control and external things that you can control.

I try to not spend resources and effort and time on things that are outside of my control. So I try to focus on things that are within my control. Now, within disability, I was born as a person with a disability. I was born with a rare eye disease. And so that's out of my control. You have to play the hand, you're dealt.

Other challenges have happened, some of which were within my control, some of the mistakes that I made, or choices that I made, and then others that I didn't and I was just involved with, for one reason or the other, life happens to you. It's a mix of both.

And to me it's how do you face that adversity? How do you embrace that adversity? To me, I start with me, what did I need to do better? What should I have done better? It's about my self responsibility. Because if you're gonna get the good things from self-reliance, you need to be prepared to take the more challenging things as well, because nobody's perfect.

Again, when you're presented with something, whether it be good or bad, you then have choices. What are you going to do with it? To me, if you choose to be positive and you choose to use it for a positive, good, well that's the way to go.That's the path to go. And that's the path that I've tried to go down.

Stephen Matini: It’s so easy sometimes to feel like a victim of circumstances and situations. How have you been able to shy away from that? You seem to me you've been really, really accountable for your own life.

David D’Arcangelo: Well, I don't think it's shy away. I think it's embracing. There's no time. There's no time to procrastinate, there's no time. But the present why we have is now. So you've gotta deal with it. Now whether you like to or not.

And just a couple of other maxims that I've developed and and really learned over time is that there's a saying that I've developed and that is the path to prosperity is paved by perseverance. You've gotta hang in there. Nothing good comes as a result of some whim or trying something once. No.

Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player ever, one of the best athletes, one of the most influential people of the 20th century, didn't make his high school basketball team. He got caught, but he knew he had talent and he knew to develop those talents. He had to work, and he had to persevere and have adversity.

And now here's the other thing with adversity and perseverance is what adversity is for. You may be different for somebody else, somebody else might not consider that adversity. Likewise, what somebody considers adversity and it's viewed as adversity may not be considered as adversity as others and vice versa. So you know, we're all in various states of ability.

To me, one of the keys is you've gotta persevere because everybody loves sunny days. Can you stand the rain when it starts raining and storming? And what are you gonna do during those times? So that's what I really think is just staying positive, because that's what you can control. Ultimately, we become what we think about, right?

So if the things you focus on all day long, if those are positive things and you have goals and plans and, and you take actions to accomplish those, you will accomplish them. It's not maybe you will accomplish them. It's a law of nature that that will happen. So to me, if you stay positive and you have righteous goals, then you will achieve them.

Stephen Matini: If you have a somewhat bad day or a day in which that perseverance, that faith seems not to shine as strong as others. Is there anything that you do that brings you back into alignment?

David D’Arcangelo: Again, it's coming to terms ahead of time that, not if, Stephen, but when, because we all will encounter those days. It is part of life. Life is challenging.

Being a human is challenging. Like think about where we are right now. And if you were to be able to have a baby and not instruct that baby what to do and just leave that baby with no, how long would that baby last?

All reliant upon each other. We are at this place in time, because everybody has decided to share knowledge, share information, and you know, that's how that then spurs technology and and so on and so on and so on. So we are all in this together.

And every human that has ever been born is unique and there will never be another person like that person. There never has been. There never will be. Now there's qualities of it and we're all within, you know, a certain variation of it. But we are all completely unique individuals. And so each human condition, each state of consciousness that everybody's experienced is completely unique and different.

So again, it's not, if it's when you encounter challenges, how are you going to choose to handle them? You know? And what is your guidestone, what is your north star? To me it's God. And it starts with that positivity, that love.

You know, I have a belief that love, not the kind you see on a Hallmark card, or you see in some romance movie, yeah, it's that, but it's so much more than that. I really believe it's, you know, if you were to put it on the periodic table, it's more prevalent than hydrogen. It literally is the force that binds everything in the universe together.

And I think science is finding that out. I think, you know, with superposition and quantum entanglement and things like that, to me that proves God. They called the Higgs boson on the God particle. You know, to me it proves God proves love, because love is more powerful than anything else. And that's where it all starts.

Now you can choose to embrace that and be positive and endeavor to be all of the things that in the hierarchy of love come off that beauty and truth and all of the things that are subordinate to love.

Stephen Matini: You know, that binding force that brings us all together these days, it seems to be quite challenged by the fact that everything is so extreme. You and I talked about this last time, everything is so polarized, black and white. So how do you bring these two dimensions so opposite, you know, together so that we can all be more loving? Where would you start?

David D’Arcangelo: You have the choice. You control your thoughts, your mind. Never let love, never let positivity get more than one or two steps away. Anybody who's listening to this right now, I want you to, if you are experiencing challenges of any kind, and that is a scale, okay?

That is a scale of despair all the way from one very intense suffering side, all the way up to complete joy in the highest right? That is, all of those emotions are a scale. Well, anytime you find yourself falling on the, the low part of that scale in any way, whether it's mild, whether it's severe, you need to purposely think of positive things and good things and love.

Now, whatever that is for you, whether it's being on a beach, whether that's hearing your mother's voice or your child's voice, or petting your dog or whatever the case may be, that's where you need to bring yourself. And you should never really get more than a couple of steps away from that.

Stephen Matini: How do you bring this attitude into your own negotiations? You've been part of policy making and I mean, I cannot think of a setting more divisive, and divided as it is right now. How have you been able to bring this wonderful energy that you have, so that the conversation keeps going?

David D’Arcangelo: Yeah, it's difficult to explain, but ironically, the more I get attacked or the more negativity I get, the more positive I get. To tell you the truth. It makes me want to redouble my efforts towards bringing that.

Again, when negative things happen, and I'll take the blame. I don't want anybody else to take the blame, but when positive things happen, it's less about me and it's more about, even though I might've been the impetus for it or whatever else, it's more about the team. It's more about, you know, all of the people that took part in all of those good things.

Because public policy, and particularly the implementation of public policy can be very complex because what you're trying to do is you're trying to take the wishes of either a legislative body or you know, some other regulatory or executive function, and you're trying to translate that into policies for many.

And these programs aren't put together to serve one or two people. They're put together to serve thousands or, or you know, tens of thousands or millions of people. And with so many different use case scenarios that can be very challenging and complex to solve for.

I have a podcast of my own “Save as ABILITY.” And on that, we've been talking about things like these programs and the, you know, the disability laws that have been put in place over time. Those are all well intentioned. That is your government trying to put programs together to help people, to help improve the human condition, to reduce suffering.

But invariably what happens is bureaucracy gets involved or time goes by and these programs get outdated and, and what was relevant at one time may not be relevant now. And so you've gotta change that as you're changing that people who've relied on that are like, wait a minute, what are you doing? You're changing that and that's gonna, you know, so that is the complexity.

Albert Einstein said, politics is more difficult than physics. And sometimes I agree with it, although I did get, I, I'm proud to say I passed with a D plus in physics and it's a bachelor of science at Suffolk University. Well, it's very difficult learning math when you can't see the board and you can't see. So that's in my own defense, Stephen.

Stephen Matini: Would you say that it's harder, easier, the same, being part of policy making today that it used to be?

David D’Arcangelo: I first got involved with policymaking as an aide in the state senate and working in the governor's office 20, 25 years ago, somewhere around there on how you wanna look at it.

So I do recognize that back then there seemed to be much more COMETY, and not comedy, but comeTy, you know, agreeance among discourse, that the discourse was a little bit at a higher level and people could agree to disagree. And there's less of that now. Now part of that is a good thing, but much of that is also a negative thing. And I'll explain that.

So the part that's a good thing is now everybody has the devices, right? Everybody has the phone and access to computer and everything else. So what used to be kind of behind closed doors or mystified or confusing, now everybody has at the touch of a couple of fingers and in a couple of minutes people could talk like experts on these subjects. That's a good thing, getting the information out there and, and people taking part.

However, the challenge is the system over hundreds of years has evolved into one of sausage making. And I think people understand the analogy to there. Everybody loves the taste of a sausage, but you don't want to see how it's made a lot of the time. And so all of that sausage making gets put on display for everybody on social media through the mainstream media.

I mean, to me, we have three major problems right now in society. The first one being the media, number one major problem we face. The second one being the decentralization of responsibility. There's a much less self-reliance now, and that to me is a major problem. And then the third is this two big to fail attitude.

Now if you go out there, that's, those three that I just mentioned are probably not on anybody's list. So I'm maybe, you know, a few years ahead of the curve here, but I'm telling you, those are the three biggest problems right now.

Government and all of that other stuff is way down on the list. But the manner with which we get information right now is the number one challenge facing the world and individuals in the world today.

Because the information, much of the information being put out by the mainstream media is, there's really no other way to say it, but it's not fully honest. And the way the system has evolved is the, the mainstream media provides what I call infotainment, where it's information passed off as legitimate news, and it's really not.

It's really entertainment. It's information that becomes entertainment. And to me that is a much different thing of what it was and what it should be. I really believe that all, and I'm using air quotes journalists right now, they should shut, have to pass a test. They should have to meet much more rigorous standards, particularly for being objective and unbiased.

And then there's gotta be a way that that government can intervene to incentivize it so that it's not driven fully by ... bias, you know, because right now information is bought and paid for, and news on a drug, or news on a story comes through the lens of some big corporation trying to, you know, influence the narrative.

That's a major, major problem because what it does is it prevents the full truth from coming out and it prevents people from being able to form an objective opinion on their own. Or it inhibits, I shouldn't say prevents, it inhibits significantly. And so, you know, that to me is the major problem encountering society today.

Stephen Matini: There's a lot of confusion around the notion of freedom of speech, and I think people use that very lightly sometimes. I can say whatever I want, whenever I want, it doesn't matter, there are not consequences, but there are always consequences based on what we say. Our words have an impact on people, ideas have an impact on people. How would you explain to someone in a way that is super simple, what freedom of speech really is?

David D’Arcangelo: People have a choice, they can believe in God or not. Now, I don't pass judgment on people who don't, but you need to come to that conclusion on your own. And if you believe in God and you believe in love and love is the highest thing, if that is the case, then you cannot believe in secrets.

There's a very significant part of our society that believes secrets are okay. I don't believe that. I am not one of those people. Because of that, I am a free speech absolutist. Now, are there very parsed out specific scenarios that you can draw to be able to say, okay, not all information should be available to everyone all the time. Yes. I'm not saying give the nuclear codes to everybody, okay?

However, when it comes to information that is not life threatening or you know, is not like to that extent, then it should be shared and it should be free. That's what our society is based on. More freedom is better, less freedom is worse. It's that simple.

So I, I just don't believe that there should be secrets. I believe that, you know, there was an axiom that had developed, but maybe was true at one point in time where a person is smart people are not. I don't think that's true anymore for the developed world, particularly for, for anybody that has these devices, that is not a true statement because access to information now is higher than it's ever been.

And so it's up to the individual to have that responsibility. I'm a big self-responsibility, self-reliance person. So that's what I think it's the responsibility of each person to make up their own mind on what they choose to believe.

Stephen Matini: At the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned the word peace. What would you say could be the most accountable thing that all of us could do on a personal level to contribute to move towards peace?

David D’Arcangelo: Today is a day of reflection for me. December 7th Pearl Harbor Day. Think of all the lives that were lost, and really why did we fight that war? Why did America, why did the allies fight that war? It was to bring peace. It was to bring freedom. It was to make sure that people weren't oppressed.

Peace is one word, one concept, but it is really so dynamic and comprised of so many other things under peace, there is truth, there is honesty, there is justice.

In order to have peace, you need truth, you need honesty, you need justice. So if you want peace, when you need to be honest, you need to seek the truth, pursue justice, that's when we will have peace.

By the way, here's the other thing. In terms of human existence, we are at a very peaceful time. Yes, there's terrible conflicts going on and I don't want to dismiss what, what's happening in Israel and Africa and other conflicts around the world. Those are, those are terrible and devastating, and I wanna work to fix those.

However, in the grand scheme of world existence, we've never been more prosperous. There's never been more people, there's never been more access to clean water, to quality food and housing and shelter and the level of living and the poverty levels and everything else, all of that has increased and increased significantly from just the past 50 years, a hundred years, keep going back.

So we've gotta keep that in context to, you know, like if you go back to the middle ages or you go back even further, the devastation and the, the complete, you know, horror that used to occur.

You know, so we are in these prosperous times and unfortunately sometimes all of that prosperity, all of the goodness that goes on, all of the wonderful things that to me, I only, that's what I see the most of on a day-to-day basis. But that tries to get out weighted by this corrupt media that is pushing these narratives.

If it bleeds, it leads as a, as a, you know, axiom on the news, right? And there's just so many good things going on that far outweigh the bad things in the grand scheme of planet earth.

Stephen Matini: So it seems to me, based on everything you said, that love, honesty, and positivity are key ingredients.

David D’Arcangelo: 100%, yes. Let's start with love, because all good things are derived from love. Love is the highest thing. It's being proved by science. Love is a real thing. It is a tangible power.

Everything else that is good. Justice, truth, honesty, beauty, all of those things come from love. In a hierarchy, love is the highest thing. That to me is where you start. And don't let yourself get more than one or two steps away from that.

Stephen Matini: David, I'm so grateful for the love that you shared with me in this conversation. Thank you so much.

David D’Arcangelo: Oh, thank you. Well, those differences can bring us together. Diversity is a good thing, including different viewpoints is tremendous. Think how boring life would be if everything was the same for everybody.

I believe in discourse for solving problems, but way you make things better is by disagreement. And then guess what though, the other side of that, just disagreement alone doesn't get you there. You disagree and then you compromise. And right now the disagreement is weighing down the scale more than the compromise.

When I try to add compromise, when I try to build those bridges every day, and so, you know, a lot of what I'm saying here might be controversial or cutting edge or whatever, but I'm sorry, I'm sticking with God. I'm sticking with positivity.

And you know, even when I get attacked, that makes me want to be even more positive. So I would encourage everybody, if you need that, contact me so I can help you find it. It's there for you though. It's your choice to be positive. That's what I'm doing.

Thank you, Stephen. I wish you well.