"Special needs children can bring out the best in people. They draw out compassion, patience, a joy for the simple things in life in people around them," says Wright. "In some ways, we need special needs people more than they need us."
Then why do the aides I see taking care of retarded people at UR every couple days look like the most unhappy people I have ever seen in my life?
Wow. You don't see many serious arguments for abortion (as opposed to arguments for choice) these days. The author's not pro-choice, he's anti-choice, same as Palin but from the other direction. It's one thing to defend a woman's right to abort a fetus she knows to have Down's Syndrome (which I'm totally fine with, by the way), it's a whole nother thing to condemn her for not aborting it.
The author's only argument for aborting all fetuses with down syndrome (which is what he's advocating) is that it invariably falls to the taxpayer to support them. This is bunk, and not just in Palin's case (where clearly, limited funds will not be an issue). There are dozens of charities that help support disabled kids and adults, and who the hell are we to judge how charitable people want to spend their money?
Down Syndrome is a relatively mild form of retardation. Kids are still able to reason, feel, react, and communicate well with others. Some are able to fully support themselves. There's no valid argument for requiring parents to abort them versus any other baby.
Basically, every would-be parent has to draw the line somewhere. Do you abort if you know there will be a profound retardation with complete lack of function? An expected three year life span? What about a mild physical defect - a facial birthmark, a deformed limb, a cleft palate, a physiological defect that will require lifelong medication but otherwise be irrelevant?? When we develop in utero DNA testing, will the author advocate the abortion of fetuses with lesser IQs than their parents? Everyone will draw their own line, and to moralize about where that line should be drawn puts one in the same camp as pro-lifers.
Luke, please. I know the point of the article is a response to those praising her decision, but his first sentence says it all. "Like many, I am troubled by the implications of Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome."
Not "I am troubled by the response to...Palin's decision..." but that he's troubled by her decision. He can be troubled by her pro-life stance all day long, I can understand that. But that's not what he says, and I really don't think it's what he means. His judgment of her for bringing a child with Downs Syndrome into the world is very, very obvious.
Personally I'm a bit hesitant to criticize Palin's decision, but that doesn't mean I don't have views on it. I just don't know enough about her personal situation. My inklings lead me to want to condemn it, but I could not do so with certainty. Actually I don't think the author goes beyond this either. He says that he is "troubled" and he says that it is "hard not to see it" as a manifestation of retard-worship. This is all VERY FAR from advocating REQUIRING abortions. It's the same thing as saying "drug use is immoral, but it should be legal."
Who am I to judge? A man with a mind who knows how to use it, that's who.
One thing I CAN condemn with certainty is all this worshipping of Palin's decision, treating her like a hero because of it. It reeks of duty.
Luke, to your first comment: I'm mildly surprised by your agreemnt with every word.
The aides taking care of the retarded people is proof of what? Are they more or less unhappy than the people who work in food services about whom you've said similar things? For every aide you can show me, I can show you people for whom working with the disabled was their life's blood.
"Luke, to your first comment: I'm mildly surprised by your agreemnt with every word."
I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it.
"The aides taking care of the retarded people is proof of what? Are they more or less unhappy than the people who work in food services about whom you've said similar things? For every aide you can show me, I can show you people for whom working with the disabled was their life's blood."
To your second comment: I find the phrase repulsive. In the following sentence he says "her child's severe disability." He does not know what Down's Syndrome is, obviously, and his choice of that phrase to mock and belittle someone who is nurturing life in a Down's Syndrome child is...regrettable.
To further what Dad just said about the aides at UR, I also want to point out that what the aides "look like" is meaningless. Whether they're truly happy or not is known only to them, and unless they tell they're not, can't really be used in an argument.
The missing element to your drug metaphor, Luke, is that this is a guy who considers himself "pro-choice."
What he's saying is, "drug use is a personal choice and should be legal, and it's wrong NOT to use drugs when I saw it is. Plus, those that don't use drugs when I say they should are 'sober-worshippers.'"
For a pro-choice person to make moral judgments of other peoples' personal choices is to invalidate their pro-choice stance.
Oh. And, "retard-worship" (which, as dad said, is a disgusting term) is actually "child-worship" in parents. They don't give a rat's ass that their kid is handicapped, and they didn't bring them into the world because of their handicap, they brought them in because they're their child. Sure, people like the woman (Wright) quoted in the article are gonna get hyperbolic about it, but from the parents' point of view at least, it's a misguided term.
To your third comment: It's not a question of logic versus faith, and I have no problem admitting it. I don't care if my logic is bad and his is good, and I freely admit to having faith in certain things. My point was this: If logic and reason lead to the cold-hearted conclusions of this article, then I will hang out with those who have faith, logical or not.
I've got to go back to the barn, but I want to make one more point. Or two or three. There's something wrong with this guy. He lacks something, and I know you don't lack it, Luke, that allows him to look at a handicapped individual of family and see the beauty there. The life nurtured. And there is no person more joyful than a Down's Syndrome person, and I've know many. The begetting of, and birth of, and raising of people with disabilities is, yes, cause for celebration. Thank God some of us do it. It promotes life. It promotes joy.
"And there is no person more joyful than a Down's Syndrome person"
Retard-worship, right there.
I see almost no joy in retarded people. Retarded people make me sad, and I don't like to be around them. It looks like a tortured state of existence and it bothers me, makes me very uncomfortable. I don't think this could ever change for me unless it was my own kid AND I had never been given the possible choice of aborting them.
I see true joy in things like the WTC, the music of Tchaikovsky, movies like Dr. Zhivago, the art www.cordair.com, lots of places, but not in retarded people, not beyond a relatively superficial level.
One more thing. I still maintain that I agree with every word that the guy said, BUT overall I don't think it's a well-written or well-explained article. Actually I think that's because it's not really an "article" at all. It's just a blog post I think and it's clearly directed at a like-minded audience.
He left out a lot of things and the things he included he didn't explain very well. I don't really know why he included the part about how giving birth to a disabled child is a burden on "others." I think that is irrelevant to the whole argument.
Finally, I don't know if this guy called himself pro-choice, did you read that somewhere Caleb? I don't call myself pro-choice, I call my selfish pro-abortion rights. The pro-choice term came from spineless subjectivist leftists.
If the aides you see are as unhappy as they look, they are in the wrong jobs -- that's the beginning and the end of it. I have never found more joy in any paid work I have done in my life than in the work I did with disabled kids at Wagon Road Camp.
The word "retard" is repulsive, whether it's attached to the ridiculous "worship" or not. Nobody who applies a word like that to a person with Downs Syndrome knows one thing about the condition.
As for the charge that people with Downs are more likely to end up charges of the taxpayers, show me some proof. For one thing, sadly, many people with Downs don't outlive their parents, because conditions associated with the syndrome tend to shorten their lives. For another thing, there's no reason to assume their parents are so helpless that they won't or can't make plans during their lives to assure the security of their children once they've passed on. Every parent I've known of a disabled child has found a way to do that. For yet another thing, more and more developmentally disabled people are productive and employed in their adulthood. Who am I to say that the work of the Downs' Syndrome person who bags my groceries has any less importance and worth to society than the work of the high-IQ person who spends his life producing dishonest and unfair campaign commercials for television? Finally, anybody, anywhere, can end up disabled and dependent, without regard to their genetic perfection at the moment of their birth. Does that erase the value of everything else about them? There are no guarantees in parenthood or in life. There is nothing even remotely logical about this particular argument.
Caleb so you've never seen someone who ALWAYS, consistently looks like they are just dragging themselves through their existence and have no happiness at all? I'm not a big smiler either and I look worn out a lot as well. I mean do you completely reject all forms of this kind of observation? What about when you travel? The people in the US, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Paris, Ireland, etc., all these places I've been, have all looked VERY different from each other. I'm talking about mannerisms and the way that people carry themselves, which yes I think says an awful lot about them.
There are particular employees at food services here at UR who I've been seeing day in and day out for 2 years now. This is the biggest example I can think of. Some are very polite, stand up tall, smile a lot, etc.. Others walk about 1/10th of a mile per hour no matter how far they're going, even just 10 feet, never smile, are always rude, etc.. When you ask them to do something they take forever to get up and they have to drag their bodies around. I mean, didn't you at least see these types of people working staff jobs at S-E and draw similar conclusions about them? You really think that all of this is completely meaningless?
Luke, I just saw your comment about seeing no joy in retarded people. Some disabilities do turn life into torture, but that doesn't mean that they all do. In particular, Downs Syndrome really is associated with a greater capacity for joy and celebration than most other people have. It's a personality trait that goes with the syndrome in most, if not all of the people who have it. If you knew some people with Downs you'd see what Dad means.
Giving birth to a child with Downs is no more a "pernicious quest" in the essayist's phrase than giving birth to anybody else. And parenting a child with Downs is no more and no less an act of selfishness or self-sacrifice than parenting a child without it. Caleb is exactly right: people choose to give birth to their Downs babies because they are their babies, not because they have some twisted desire for self-abnegation. I would be amazed if this man has ever even met a person with Downs. What they give the world in terms of sheer celebratory zest, alone, is worth the price of admission.
As for his sneering at George Will, perhaps he does not realize that Will's opposition to the legislation in question grew, not out of some knee-jerk opposition to abortion, but instead out of his own deep-seated knowledge of what it means to raise a child with Downs Syndrome. Will is the father of a son with Downs Syndrome who was at the age of 21, according to an essay Will wrote in 1993, employed with the postal service, a taxpayer (Will said "which serves him right") and a voter. (He voted for Bill Clinton, though he had supported Pat Buchanan in the primaries.) More recently, Will said of Jon that he "experiences life's three elemental enjoyments—loving, being loved and ESPN. For Jon, as for most normal American males, the rest of life is details." As for any suggestion that Jon would have been better off aborted than suffering through life as a disabled person, Will has said Jon suffers only when the Orioles are pitching. Here and here are links to two of the many proud and celebratory essays Will has written about his son. Maybe if this guy had read them before he started writing, he'd have thought a little more deeply about what might motivate someone like Sarah Palin.
Finally. Just because another person's retardation makes you uncomfortable and you don't enjoy seeing it obviously doesn't mean that the other person shouldn't have the same chance at life you have. (And I know you didn't mean to say that it does.) The things that make you happy may well make a retarded person happy too (watch somebody with Downs Syndrome dance some day, if you want to see happiness embodied.) But just because the sight of a retarded person who's a stranger to you doesn't inspire joy in you does not mean that he doesn't experience joy himself or inspire it in the family and friends who care about him.
I don't care whether the guy calls himself pro-choice or not, and I don't care if you do either. I also don't care which spineless group came up with the term. It has a meaning. It classifies a set of opinions. A duck can call itself a badger if it wants to, but it's still a duck. Anyone who believes that abortion should be a legal choice in our society is pro-choice, and I don't really care to debate that any further. I know he's pro-choice because he clearly doesn't think that it should be illegal, and there's no other category.
As for watching people and judging their level of happiness, I think it's mostly bunk. There are too many factors in peoples' lives. Nothing is ever as simple as you think it is. Hell, even if you can judge that someone is generally unhappy based on the mannerisms you observe for a few minutes 3 times a week, you can't then say "ah, she's unhappy in her job." or "her job clearly doesn't bring her all the joy she says it does!" Maybe their mom's sick. Maybe they are depressed. Who knows. Hell, maybe they have low self-esteem (which is apparently also wrong). Why do you care?
"Downs Syndrome really is associated with a greater capacity for joy and celebration than most other people have."
This is a terrible understanding of what "joy" actually means. You could make this argument for someone who takes ecstacy as well. Is this happiness authentic and deep? Or is it more just a superficial feeling that happens by default? Sure they FEEL happy, but do they KNOW that they're happy? I'm sure it varies from case to case, but I don't think it could ever approach what is possible for a normal human. Actually, I think it would be worse the less retarded that you are. If you're at the point where you can tell how different you are, what kinds of things you'll never be able to do, etc., but you can't do anything about it, wouldn't this be hell?
Real happiness is MORE than a feeling. It's not just something that you feel, it's something that you KNOW, and this amplifies the magnitude of the happiness by about um, 5.87 bajillion, to be precise. In all seriousness though, the deepest forms of happiness are only possible to a rational being achieving rational goals.
Because I'm paying them to make my sandwich and they suck at it.
Is it a limited source of judging someone else? Of course, but it's not completely worthless. And I can certainly think of quite a few people for whom it really hasn't been that limited at all. Sure you couldn't say "oh that person's pet must have died this morning" but there is still a lot of information that can be gathered. I'm sure there have been times where I've assumed too much whether intentionally or not, but there have differently been other times where my judgments were spot on.
Luke. For crying out loud. You have no way of knowing whether the happiness felt by somebody with Downs is more shallow than what you feel. It's just as likely to be deeper and more complete. Who cares if they know they're happy? Many of the times in my life when I've been happiest, I've realized just how happy I was after those times were over.
IQ has nothing to do with the capacity for joy -- I'd rather be retarded than be as sour and joyless as the jerk who wrote that article. talk about disabled. He has a handicap of the heart.
Just because you find the greatest happiness in rationally achieving rational goals doesn't mean everybody else has to experience life your way or not at all. And who's to say that Jon Will isn't rationally achieving rational goals when he holds down a job long enough to pay for a ticket to the ball game? If you believe that Downs Syndrome prevents people from thinking rationally, you are dead wrong. They may not do it as readily as you do, but they do it. And have fun at the same time.
Did I EVER say anything at all about IQ? IQ is irrelevant to this issue.
"You have no way of knowing whether the happiness felt by somebody with Downs is more shallow than what you feel."
Yes I do. It's called induction and deduction, people have been doing it, and rightfully so, for years.
You really missed my point. What I'm saying is that true happiness is ONLY possible if you KNOW that you're happy. AND it will directly relate to your ability to know it. It's not a sensation, it's a concept.
"There's something wrong with this guy. He lacks something, and I know you don't lack it, Luke"
Pfft, determinism.
Caleb you can call me pro-choice all you want, but I won't call myself that. It's not about WHO invented the term, it's about the ideas underlying the term. In this case, the ideas underlying "pro-choice" are ideas with which I have nothing in common.
Luke, I stopped discussing this with you last night because you said you were trying to study. But sometime when you have the chance I do want to know what makes you think Down's Syndrome people can't feel joy as deeply as you do. YOu said it was induction and deduction, but you must have premises from which you are inducing and deducing. If your conviction that Down's people don't feel real joy isn't based on their lower intelligence, then what is it?
There's nothing resembling determinism in that quote, Luke, you're just grasping at straws.
And stop talking in circles. You either think that abortion should be legal in the United States, or you don't. You can have all the shades of grey and insane rationalizations that you want, but labeling people for or against is pretty damn black and white. I'll call you pro-choice, so will everyone else in the world, and we'll all laugh at you when you whine about how you're not pro-choice, you're an objectivist, damnit, and you're special!
Circles? Show me these damn circles. Words have exact meanings, and the meaning of the word "pro-choice" is one that does not represent me. It's not a rationalization, it's the truth. The reasons behind a position are more important than the position itself.
If it sounds like I'm talking in circles, that's because I keep forgetting that I'm talking to people who don't think anything like me at all. I keep thinking I can sum things up in one-liners, but no, everybody misunderstands them and I have to go back to all the fundamentals and define those terms.
It is deterministic. It's that same ol' stupid argument you hear all the time from people arguing with Objectivists. When they run out of arguments, which they always do, they say, "Well you just don't have what I have inside me that makes me care about people so much!" It's determinism, more specifically, it's moral intuitionism.
The guy who wrote the article doesn't lack something. Those are his ideas that he arrived at through thought and accepted by choice. If you think it's the most evil thing ever, well fine, but it's not because the man lacks "something," it's just his choice. I don't think that islamic terrorists, neo-nazis, etc., except for the few that are actually sociopaths, "lack something." They made choices, choices based on their ideas, and their ideas are extremely f'd up.
So you admit, then, that there is such a thing as a sociopath? Do you believe in milder forms of mental disease as well?
I'm not white, I'm beige. I demand that you refer to me as beige. If you call me white, I'll ignore your arguments and focus on that instead.
I think, Luke, that you misunderstand what's happening when people run out of arguments vs. "Objectivists." They're not out of rational arguments, they're tired of arguing with people who are beyond reason. It's like fighting with PETA.
Well of course you would think that and of course I would think the opposite. As a rule, I tend to agree with the ideas with which I agree, and tend not to agree with the ideas with which I disagree.
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45 comments:
I agree with every word in that article.
"Special needs children can bring out the best in people. They draw out compassion, patience, a joy for the simple things in life in people around them," says Wright. "In some ways, we need special needs people more than they need us."
Then why do the aides I see taking care of retarded people at UR every couple days look like the most unhappy people I have ever seen in my life?
And yes, the "worship of retardation" is exactly what people of low self-esteem do in order to feel better about themselves.
If you think they're not being consistent with reason and logic, then please, make your case. Or admit that you're going on faith.
Wow. You don't see many serious arguments for abortion (as opposed to arguments for choice) these days. The author's not pro-choice, he's anti-choice, same as Palin but from the other direction. It's one thing to defend a woman's right to abort a fetus she knows to have Down's Syndrome (which I'm totally fine with, by the way), it's a whole nother thing to condemn her for not aborting it.
The author's only argument for aborting all fetuses with down syndrome (which is what he's advocating) is that it invariably falls to the taxpayer to support them. This is bunk, and not just in Palin's case (where clearly, limited funds will not be an issue). There are dozens of charities that help support disabled kids and adults, and who the hell are we to judge how charitable people want to spend their money?
Down Syndrome is a relatively mild form of retardation. Kids are still able to reason, feel, react, and communicate well with others. Some are able to fully support themselves. There's no valid argument for requiring parents to abort them versus any other baby.
Basically, every would-be parent has to draw the line somewhere. Do you abort if you know there will be a profound retardation with complete lack of function? An expected three year life span? What about a mild physical defect - a facial birthmark, a deformed limb, a cleft palate, a physiological defect that will require lifelong medication but otherwise be irrelevant?? When we develop in utero DNA testing, will the author advocate the abortion of fetuses with lesser IQs than their parents? Everyone will draw their own line, and to moralize about where that line should be drawn puts one in the same camp as pro-lifers.
Luke, please. I know the point of the article is a response to those praising her decision, but his first sentence says it all.
"Like many, I am troubled by the implications of Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down syndrome."
Not "I am troubled by the response to...Palin's decision..." but that he's troubled by her decision. He can be troubled by her pro-life stance all day long, I can understand that. But that's not what he says, and I really don't think it's what he means. His judgment of her for bringing a child with Downs Syndrome into the world is very, very obvious.
Personally I'm a bit hesitant to criticize Palin's decision, but that doesn't mean I don't have views on it. I just don't know enough about her personal situation. My inklings lead me to want to condemn it, but I could not do so with certainty. Actually I don't think the author goes beyond this either. He says that he is "troubled" and he says that it is "hard not to see it" as a manifestation of retard-worship. This is all VERY FAR from advocating REQUIRING abortions. It's the same thing as saying "drug use is immoral, but it should be legal."
Who am I to judge? A man with a mind who knows how to use it, that's who.
One thing I CAN condemn with certainty is all this worshipping of Palin's decision, treating her like a hero because of it. It reeks of duty.
Luke, to your first comment: I'm mildly surprised by your agreemnt with every word.
The aides taking care of the retarded people is proof of what? Are they more or less unhappy than the people who work in food services about whom you've said similar things? For every aide you can show me, I can show you people for whom working with the disabled was their life's blood.
"Luke, to your first comment: I'm mildly surprised by your agreemnt with every word."
I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it.
"The aides taking care of the retarded people is proof of what? Are they more or less unhappy than the people who work in food services about whom you've said similar things? For every aide you can show me, I can show you people for whom working with the disabled was their life's blood."
Okay, you're right about that.
To your second comment: I find the phrase repulsive. In the following sentence he says "her child's severe disability." He does not know what Down's Syndrome is, obviously, and his choice of that phrase to mock and belittle someone who is nurturing life in a Down's Syndrome child is...regrettable.
To further what Dad just said about the aides at UR, I also want to point out that what the aides "look like" is meaningless. Whether they're truly happy or not is known only to them, and unless they tell they're not, can't really be used in an argument.
The missing element to your drug metaphor, Luke, is that this is a guy who considers himself "pro-choice."
What he's saying is, "drug use is a personal choice and should be legal, and it's wrong NOT to use drugs when I saw it is. Plus, those that don't use drugs when I say they should are 'sober-worshippers.'"
For a pro-choice person to make moral judgments of other peoples' personal choices is to invalidate their pro-choice stance.
Oh. And, "retard-worship" (which, as dad said, is a disgusting term) is actually "child-worship" in parents. They don't give a rat's ass that their kid is handicapped, and they didn't bring them into the world because of their handicap, they brought them in because they're their child. Sure, people like the woman (Wright) quoted in the article are gonna get hyperbolic about it, but from the parents' point of view at least, it's a misguided term.
To your third comment: It's not a question of logic versus faith, and I have no problem admitting it. I don't care if my logic is bad and his is good, and I freely admit to having faith in certain things. My point was this: If logic and reason lead to the cold-hearted conclusions of this article, then I will hang out with those who have faith, logical or not.
I've got to go back to the barn, but I want to make one more point. Or two or three. There's something wrong with this guy. He lacks something, and I know you don't lack it, Luke, that allows him to look at a handicapped individual of family and see the beauty there. The life nurtured. And there is no person more joyful than a Down's Syndrome person, and I've know many. The begetting of, and birth of, and raising of people with disabilities is, yes, cause for celebration. Thank God some of us do it. It promotes life. It promotes joy.
Caleb, do you think you can judge happiness in someone else when you see them a lot? Because I see these people 3 times a week usually.
And I agree about the parents, you're right it's not "retard-worship" (which I don't consider to be a disgusting term at all) in that case.
"And there is no person more joyful than a Down's Syndrome person"
Retard-worship, right there.
I see almost no joy in retarded people. Retarded people make me sad, and I don't like to be around them. It looks like a tortured state of existence and it bothers me, makes me very uncomfortable. I don't think this could ever change for me unless it was my own kid AND I had never been given the possible choice of aborting them.
I see true joy in things like the WTC, the music of Tchaikovsky, movies like Dr. Zhivago, the art www.cordair.com, lots of places, but not in retarded people, not beyond a relatively superficial level.
One more thing. I still maintain that I agree with every word that the guy said, BUT overall I don't think it's a well-written or well-explained article. Actually I think that's because it's not really an "article" at all. It's just a blog post I think and it's clearly directed at a like-minded audience.
He left out a lot of things and the things he included he didn't explain very well. I don't really know why he included the part about how giving birth to a disabled child is a burden on "others." I think that is irrelevant to the whole argument.
Finally, I don't know if this guy called himself pro-choice, did you read that somewhere Caleb? I don't call myself pro-choice, I call my selfish pro-abortion rights. The pro-choice term came from spineless subjectivist leftists.
Pro-abortion rights IS pro-life.
If the aides you see are as unhappy as they look, they are in the wrong jobs -- that's the beginning and the end of it. I have never found more joy in any paid work I have done in my life than in the work I did with disabled kids at Wagon Road Camp.
The word "retard" is repulsive, whether it's attached to the ridiculous "worship" or not. Nobody who applies a word like that to a person with Downs Syndrome knows one thing about the condition.
As for the charge that people with Downs are more likely to end up charges of the taxpayers, show me some proof. For one thing, sadly, many people with Downs don't outlive their parents, because conditions associated with the syndrome tend to shorten their lives. For another thing, there's no reason to assume their parents are so helpless that they won't or can't make plans during their lives to assure the security of their children once they've passed on. Every parent I've known of a disabled child has found a way to do that. For yet another thing, more and more developmentally disabled people are productive and employed in their adulthood. Who am I to say that the work of the Downs' Syndrome person who bags my groceries has any less importance and worth to society than the work of the high-IQ person who spends his life producing dishonest and unfair campaign commercials for television? Finally, anybody, anywhere, can end up disabled and dependent, without regard to their genetic perfection at the moment of their birth. Does that erase the value of everything else about them? There are no guarantees in parenthood or in life. There is nothing even remotely logical about this particular argument.
Caleb so you've never seen someone who ALWAYS, consistently looks like they are just dragging themselves through their existence and have no happiness at all? I'm not a big smiler either and I look worn out a lot as well. I mean do you completely reject all forms of this kind of observation? What about when you travel? The people in the US, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Paris, Ireland, etc., all these places I've been, have all looked VERY different from each other. I'm talking about mannerisms and the way that people carry themselves, which yes I think says an awful lot about them.
There are particular employees at food services here at UR who I've been seeing day in and day out for 2 years now. This is the biggest example I can think of. Some are very polite, stand up tall, smile a lot, etc.. Others walk about 1/10th of a mile per hour no matter how far they're going, even just 10 feet, never smile, are always rude, etc.. When you ask them to do something they take forever to get up and they have to drag their bodies around. I mean, didn't you at least see these types of people working staff jobs at S-E and draw similar conclusions about them? You really think that all of this is completely meaningless?
Luke, I just saw your comment about seeing no joy in retarded people. Some disabilities do turn life into torture, but that doesn't mean that they all do. In particular, Downs Syndrome really is associated with a greater capacity for joy and celebration than most other people have. It's a personality trait that goes with the syndrome in most, if not all of the people who have it. If you knew some people with Downs you'd see what Dad means.
Giving birth to a child with Downs is no more a "pernicious quest" in the essayist's phrase than giving birth to anybody else. And parenting a child with Downs is no more and no less an act of selfishness or self-sacrifice than parenting a child without it. Caleb is exactly right: people choose to give birth to their Downs babies because they are their babies, not because they have some twisted desire for self-abnegation. I would be amazed if this man has ever even met a person with Downs. What they give the world in terms of sheer celebratory zest, alone, is worth the price of admission.
As for his sneering at George Will, perhaps he does not realize that Will's opposition to the legislation in question grew, not out of some knee-jerk opposition to abortion, but instead out of his own deep-seated knowledge of what it means to raise a child with Downs Syndrome. Will is the father of a son with Downs Syndrome who was at the age of 21, according to an essay Will wrote in 1993, employed with the postal service, a taxpayer (Will said "which serves him right") and a voter. (He voted for Bill Clinton, though he had supported Pat Buchanan in the primaries.) More recently, Will said of Jon that he "experiences life's three elemental enjoyments—loving, being loved and ESPN. For Jon, as for most normal American males, the rest of life is details." As for any suggestion that Jon would have been better off aborted than suffering through life as a disabled person, Will has said Jon suffers only when the Orioles are pitching. Here and here are links to two of the many proud and celebratory essays Will has written about his son. Maybe if this guy had read them before he started writing, he'd have thought a little more deeply about what might motivate someone like Sarah Palin.
Finally. Just because another person's retardation makes you uncomfortable and you don't enjoy seeing it obviously doesn't mean that the other person shouldn't have the same chance at life you have. (And I know you didn't mean to say that it does.) The things that make you happy may well make a retarded person happy too (watch somebody with Downs Syndrome dance some day, if you want to see happiness embodied.) But just because the sight of a retarded person who's a stranger to you doesn't inspire joy in you does not mean that he doesn't experience joy himself or inspire it in the family and friends who care about him.
I don't care whether the guy calls himself pro-choice or not, and I don't care if you do either. I also don't care which spineless group came up with the term. It has a meaning. It classifies a set of opinions. A duck can call itself a badger if it wants to, but it's still a duck. Anyone who believes that abortion should be a legal choice in our society is pro-choice, and I don't really care to debate that any further. I know he's pro-choice because he clearly doesn't think that it should be illegal, and there's no other category.
As for watching people and judging their level of happiness, I think it's mostly bunk. There are too many factors in peoples' lives. Nothing is ever as simple as you think it is. Hell, even if you can judge that someone is generally unhappy based on the mannerisms you observe for a few minutes 3 times a week, you can't then say "ah, she's unhappy in her job." or "her job clearly doesn't bring her all the joy she says it does!" Maybe their mom's sick. Maybe they are depressed. Who knows. Hell, maybe they have low self-esteem (which is apparently also wrong). Why do you care?
Clearly, Luke didn't watch enough Life Goes On as a kid.
"Downs Syndrome really is associated with a greater capacity for joy and celebration than most other people have."
This is a terrible understanding of what "joy" actually means. You could make this argument for someone who takes ecstacy as well. Is this happiness authentic and deep? Or is it more just a superficial feeling that happens by default? Sure they FEEL happy, but do they KNOW that they're happy? I'm sure it varies from case to case, but I don't think it could ever approach what is possible for a normal human. Actually, I think it would be worse the less retarded that you are. If you're at the point where you can tell how different you are, what kinds of things you'll never be able to do, etc., but you can't do anything about it, wouldn't this be hell?
Real happiness is MORE than a feeling. It's not just something that you feel, it's something that you KNOW, and this amplifies the magnitude of the happiness by about um, 5.87 bajillion, to be precise. In all seriousness though, the deepest forms of happiness are only possible to a rational being achieving rational goals.
If I want to see happiness embodied I'll watch a professional tap or ballet dancer.
"Why do you care?"
Because I'm paying them to make my sandwich and they suck at it.
Is it a limited source of judging someone else? Of course, but it's not completely worthless. And I can certainly think of quite a few people for whom it really hasn't been that limited at all. Sure you couldn't say "oh that person's pet must have died this morning" but there is still a lot of information that can be gathered. I'm sure there have been times where I've assumed too much whether intentionally or not, but there have differently been other times where my judgments were spot on.
Luke. For crying out loud. You have no way of knowing whether the happiness felt by somebody with Downs is more shallow than what you feel. It's just as likely to be deeper and more complete. Who cares if they know they're happy? Many of the times in my life when I've been happiest, I've realized just how happy I was after those times were over.
IQ has nothing to do with the capacity for joy -- I'd rather be retarded than be as sour and joyless as the jerk who wrote that article. talk about disabled. He has a handicap of the heart.
Just because you find the greatest happiness in rationally achieving rational goals doesn't mean everybody else has to experience life your way or not at all. And who's to say that Jon Will isn't rationally achieving rational goals when he holds down a job long enough to pay for a ticket to the ball game? If you believe that Downs Syndrome prevents people from thinking rationally, you are dead wrong. They may not do it as readily as you do, but they do it. And have fun at the same time.
Did I EVER say anything at all about IQ? IQ is irrelevant to this issue.
"You have no way of knowing whether the happiness felt by somebody with Downs is more shallow than what you feel."
Yes I do. It's called induction and deduction, people have been doing it, and rightfully so, for years.
You really missed my point. What I'm saying is that true happiness is ONLY possible if you KNOW that you're happy. AND it will directly relate to your ability to know it. It's not a sensation, it's a concept.
I didn't miss your point. I disagree with it. Pretty much completely.
I read what you had to say about my point, and, from that, yes, you missed it.
True happiness is only possible if you KNOW you're happy? Pfft. Semantics.
"Hey, Down's Syndrome kid! Do you know you're happy or are you just acting that way?"
"I KNOW it!"
"No way! You're just saying that."
The perfect is the enemy of the good enough.
Semantics? What?! It's not semantics, it's the difference between drunkness and the happiness that you get when you actually achieve something.
If you don't know what I mean when I say KNOWING that you're happy, well, then I pity you.
I pity me, too.
"There's something wrong with this guy. He lacks something, and I know you don't lack it, Luke"
Pfft, determinism.
Caleb you can call me pro-choice all you want, but I won't call myself that. It's not about WHO invented the term, it's about the ideas underlying the term. In this case, the ideas underlying "pro-choice" are ideas with which I have nothing in common.
Luke, I stopped discussing this with you last night because you said you were trying to study. But sometime when you have the chance I do want to know what makes you think Down's Syndrome people can't feel joy as deeply as you do. YOu said it was induction and deduction, but you must have premises from which you are inducing and deducing. If your conviction that Down's people don't feel real joy isn't based on their lower intelligence, then what is it?
There's nothing resembling determinism in that quote, Luke, you're just grasping at straws.
And stop talking in circles. You either think that abortion should be legal in the United States, or you don't. You can have all the shades of grey and insane rationalizations that you want, but labeling people for or against is pretty damn black and white. I'll call you pro-choice, so will everyone else in the world, and we'll all laugh at you when you whine about how you're not pro-choice, you're an objectivist, damnit, and you're special!
Circles? Show me these damn circles. Words have exact meanings, and the meaning of the word "pro-choice" is one that does not represent me. It's not a rationalization, it's the truth. The reasons behind a position are more important than the position itself.
If it sounds like I'm talking in circles, that's because I keep forgetting that I'm talking to people who don't think anything like me at all. I keep thinking I can sum things up in one-liners, but no, everybody misunderstands them and I have to go back to all the fundamentals and define those terms.
It is deterministic. It's that same ol' stupid argument you hear all the time from people arguing with Objectivists. When they run out of arguments, which they always do, they say, "Well you just don't have what I have inside me that makes me care about people so much!" It's determinism, more specifically, it's moral intuitionism.
The guy who wrote the article doesn't lack something. Those are his ideas that he arrived at through thought and accepted by choice. If you think it's the most evil thing ever, well fine, but it's not because the man lacks "something," it's just his choice. I don't think that islamic terrorists, neo-nazis, etc., except for the few that are actually sociopaths, "lack something." They made choices, choices based on their ideas, and their ideas are extremely f'd up.
So you admit, then, that there is such a thing as a sociopath? Do you believe in milder forms of mental disease as well?
I'm not white, I'm beige. I demand that you refer to me as beige. If you call me white, I'll ignore your arguments and focus on that instead.
I think, Luke, that you misunderstand what's happening when people run out of arguments vs. "Objectivists." They're not out of rational arguments, they're tired of arguing with people who are beyond reason. It's like fighting with PETA.
Well of course you would think that and of course I would think the opposite. As a rule, I tend to agree with the ideas with which I agree, and tend not to agree with the ideas with which I disagree.
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