Imagine a tropical archipelago of a view dozen islands in the middle of an enormous ocean, far away from any other land. The islands are close to each other, and the water between them is shallow and clean enough that you can always see the vibrant reef ecosystem at the bottom.
These islands are inhabited by a stone age tribe of a few thousand people, but not quite like us: they have mild biological adaptations for swimming, like increased blood reserves to hold breath for longer, a third eyelid for seeing underwater, and membranes between fingers. Most importantly, they are born with the ability to swim: their toddlers can normally swim before they can walk. That is, all except you.
Somehow — no one in your lifetime will understand why — you were born without that ability. Nothing else was wrong with you. In principle, you could easily learn to swim. But in practice, there were two insurmountable issues.
First, no one had ever taught or learned swimming before. So, as much as the others may have wanted to help, they could not decompose the swimming skill into teachable steps, because for them there were no steps: it was a single action that you “just do”. It would be like teaching someone how to breathe or to sleep. “It can’t be that hard.”
You could conceivably teach yourself through trial and error if not for the second issue. Since it was assumed that all children would be able to swim once released into the water, your family learned about your disability the hard way. Before they finally realized that you couldn’t do it, you already developed a deep-rooted fear of water through repeated drownings. Thus, the crucial step in learning to swim, which is to relax in the water and float on it, was impossible for you.
For the culture in which you were born, swimming meant everything. An average tribe member would spend more time in a day in water than on land. They subsisted primarily by spearfishing in the reefs, swam from one island to another whenever they needed to communicate with the rest of the tribe, and generally led most of their social lives in the sea.
But it gets worse. Because your inability to swim was entirely in your head, many accused you of lying about your condition to gain… Something? In a way, it would be easier if your disability was physical, like paralysis: at least, that way, you would be believed. But with things as they were, you inevitably became an outcast.
This, combined with watching other kids gracefully gliding through the water, playing, and learning to make their living, filled you with a heavy baggage of emotions on top of what you already had to deal with. Resentment. Envy. Self-hatred. Suicidality.
But at least you still had a loving family, even if you could not feel love for anyone in that state of mind. They spent years searching for anything that would help. And while most of their “solutions” came down to useless religious obscurantism, one of them actually worked. They suggested that you become a carpenter.
In your culture, woodwork was the kind of work that no one really wanted to do if they had options. With no metal tools or good wood available, it was tedious and menial labor that you also had to do on land, under the scorching tropical sun, and away from the comforting embrace of the sea. Additionally, learning it inevitably meant painful cuts and splinters, especially in the finger membranes. But for you, it was the best opportunity to earn a living: craft the things others need and trade them for food. So, a carpenter you became, and eventually, a damn good one at that.
Years passed as things settled down into this imperfect equilibrium. The job you thought you’d hate instead turned out to be quite fun and engaging, so eventually, you ended up building your own projects in your spare time.
One type of request you often got was to build a raft. In your culture, a raft was just a few logs tied together to form a flat platform. It was moved by people in the water pushing or pulling on it and was only used to carry light items between islands, such as tools or food. They were satisfied with it, but you wondered if you could improve the design. And so you tried, at first, with scale models that you could test in the small, non-frightening freshwater creek. A big leap in performance happened when you switched from assembling a raft from multiple twigs to hollowing out one log. After a few dozen iterations, you devised a boat that was far more stable in the waves and could carry much more weight than a raft. And eventually, you made the full-scale version, albeit without a clear idea of what to do with it since your fear of water was too strong to test it out yourself.
Not everything went well, of course. Some members of the tribe considered the boat to be an insult to the water gods. They threatened you and eventually burned it. And this might have been the end of the story if fate didn’t strike soon thereafter.
The only freshwater spring on the island dried out. This problem could render the island uninhabitable if it was not solved quickly. Of course, those who destroyed your first boat immediately made the connection that it must have upset the water gods, and they bestowed this catastrophe as punishment. But there was another, much more logical connection. The other islands would gladly share their water, but there was no way of transporting it at the necessary scale — except for a boat.
The voting options at the island assembly were “Let you build another boat” and “Toss you into the ocean to appease the gods”. Luckily for you, cooler heads prevailed. You and the few other carpenters worked day and night to build the vessel, accidentally inventing paddles in the process. And while you could not sail yourself, no one would deny that the promptly arriving water shipment was your achievement. For the first time ever, you felt like you belonged.
Eventually, people would dig a well to provide a more reliable supply of water for the island, but boat communication continued for trading other heavy goods that were uneconomic to ferry before.
One day, a guest from another island stepped off a boat and said he was looking for you. And the news he brought was about to change your life.
First, you were not alone. He was born with the same condition as you. And, in all likelihood, there were others. Swim-capable people just preferred not to bring up this topic when they visited other islands: maybe they felt shame, maybe they feared they did something wrong to cause your condition. And those like you had no opportunity to meet, until now.
“But how,” — you asked — “could you get on the boat? Aren’t you afraid of water as well?” “I was,” — the guest replied — “but I found a way to transcend the fear. It’s not quick or easy, but I will teach you if you want.” How could you say no to that?
And from there, things mostly went uphill. In a year, you could board your own boat for the first time, and in five, you finally taught yourself to swim. Ironically, it was not nearly as important to you by then because you had already built a fleet of boats and a community of people who accepted you the way you were, with or without that ability.
As years turn into decades and decades turn into centuries, your descendants invent the sail, celestial navigation, and other technologies that allow them to venture into the open ocean. There, the capacity to swim that once defined them becomes vestigial, only briefly useful when someone accidentally falls overboard. While non-swimmers are no longer disadvantaged, there is always some other group of people who are.
A fish cannot conceptualize water until it is beached. Likewise, a socially adjusted person cannot understand the limitations of the society to which they are adjusted. It takes a different perspective to imagine a different reality, and then it takes a lot of one-sided fighting to make it happen. But when it does happen, everyone ends up benefiting.