Posted by alexandra_k on January 3, 2020, at 15:02:47
So when we aren't finding new places for fungus to grow (since we insist on keeping our pets in housing without climate control) we are finding new ways to inflict brain damage.
It starts with birthing. New ways to make sure that infants survive with brain damage when they never would have survived before.
I remember reading somewhere that William's Syndrome was discovered in New Zealand. This idea of intellectual disability and hyper-social-gregariousness.
There is a guy in NZ. I can't remember his name. He was knighted. He gave a talk at the NZ disability rights conference. I remember seeing him in conversation with people. He has an intellectual / learning disability. He needed help in giving his talk / presentation. But in seeing him you could see that it was *his talk to give*. People helped him *give his talk* people did not help themselves to him.
He reminds me that it isn't about intellectual handicap. Or, if he is intellectually handicapped then my problem isn't with people who are intellectually handicapped.
The *kind of* problem that I am dealing with is something else entirely...
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I went to a talk by a teacher. He seemed pleasant enough, but perhaps not all that bright (in some sense). It was about including people with intellectual disabilities in the classroom.I spoke with him afterwards. I said that some people really loved calculus. Really loved mathematics. Really had great ability in the subject. Realy just wanted the calculus classroom to be about calculus rather than the calculus classroom being about... Social stuff. Inclusion. And so on. Some people just wanted to do calculus in the calculus classroom and it would be really rather a shame if nobody got to do calculus because the people without the capacity wouldn't let them do calculus.
He was all about 'we want to be in the calculus classroom doing calculus too!'. And I was like... I can't do calculus either. But some people can. Let them go do their thing.
And he was like... Oh.
So we have people who are afraid of being left behind. Who want to stay with a herd because of... Social reasons.
Yeah.
People want to do philosophy because of ... The people.
But the people they wanted to stay with fled...
Because you can't get work done otherwise. Sigh.
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There is this whole 'normal range' thing and 'it's culturally normal' thing.
But oxygen deprivation on birth. Then binge drinking alcohol consumption socially normalised from early teens. Marajuana normalised from early teens. We seem to be doing everything we can to create Brave New World style gamma people.
Low road to growth. Large volume of low value garbage output.
Of course it isn't sustainable. But nobody cares. They are out to ride the boom and take their money someplace else.
Someplace far away.
Nobody seems to want to live, here.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1107654
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20191019/msgs/1107654.html