Boy, this thread exploded right immediately. It's so long now. It's hard to concisely get at everything. I had thought of making a YouTube on this, but...well...so much to distill now.
I am physically disabled, or at least that was the term for folks like me when I was born and raised in the late 70's and 80's and early 90's. Nowadays, it's apparently "PWD", which is something I had a hard time getting used to when I first heard it. But now, I'm perfectly OK with it. And I'm still OK with "disabled". For reasons I cannot really pinpoint, I am not OK with "cripple/crippled, maimed, invalid, etc.". It's like me calling a black/African American person a "negro" or worse, a "nigger".
PC is a rather hard thing to achieve. The fact is, we are always going to step on eachother's toes at some point, I don't care how socially liberal you are. I accept that. I don't have a right to be free from being offended. Is there a flip side to that? I think maybe so. I feel like we should at least try to be respectful of eachother as human beings. This does not mean to bow down to a wheeler or crutcher or other disabled person, or to a black person or woman or LGBT person or whomever, but at least try to understand where a person is coming from.
As for atheists and the intellectually disabled (formerly mentally retarded), well...I don't ever want kids. But if I did, I'd want the head cheerleader and/or head quarterback as my daughter/son. I, like most of you, would not want to put up with my kid having physical or cognitive problems. As for whether to abort, it's all up to my wife, pending a discussion, because it's my kid, too. At some point, the baby's quality of life needs to be talked about. My quality of life is below average, but I find this phase of eternity pretty fascinating. We can see it, hear it, feel it, smell it, etc. (most of us, anyway). At times, I fear death for that .000001% chance we atheists missed the boat on something regarding the afterlife.
But again, QOL needs to be talked about. And parents' QOL as well. Some folks aren't up to that challenge, but if resources are found, it can be fine, I'm sure. Communities exist in the form of associations representing many disabilities, and therein lies the cultural resource many need.
I should have diagrammed some notes for this. Sorry for the rambling. As you were. Maybe I'll BBL.
I am physically disabled, or at least that was the term for folks like me when I was born and raised in the late 70's and 80's and early 90's. Nowadays, it's apparently "PWD", which is something I had a hard time getting used to when I first heard it. But now, I'm perfectly OK with it. And I'm still OK with "disabled". For reasons I cannot really pinpoint, I am not OK with "cripple/crippled, maimed, invalid, etc.". It's like me calling a black/African American person a "negro" or worse, a "nigger".
PC is a rather hard thing to achieve. The fact is, we are always going to step on eachother's toes at some point, I don't care how socially liberal you are. I accept that. I don't have a right to be free from being offended. Is there a flip side to that? I think maybe so. I feel like we should at least try to be respectful of eachother as human beings. This does not mean to bow down to a wheeler or crutcher or other disabled person, or to a black person or woman or LGBT person or whomever, but at least try to understand where a person is coming from.
As for atheists and the intellectually disabled (formerly mentally retarded), well...I don't ever want kids. But if I did, I'd want the head cheerleader and/or head quarterback as my daughter/son. I, like most of you, would not want to put up with my kid having physical or cognitive problems. As for whether to abort, it's all up to my wife, pending a discussion, because it's my kid, too. At some point, the baby's quality of life needs to be talked about. My quality of life is below average, but I find this phase of eternity pretty fascinating. We can see it, hear it, feel it, smell it, etc. (most of us, anyway). At times, I fear death for that .000001% chance we atheists missed the boat on something regarding the afterlife.
But again, QOL needs to be talked about. And parents' QOL as well. Some folks aren't up to that challenge, but if resources are found, it can be fine, I'm sure. Communities exist in the form of associations representing many disabilities, and therein lies the cultural resource many need.
I should have diagrammed some notes for this. Sorry for the rambling. As you were. Maybe I'll BBL.
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
