2018-02-19 21:32:57

@turtlepower17,
Acceptable to who, or whom, precisely?  Your family?  Your neighbors?  Society?  the whole of the world?  I ask this not to be argumentative, but more to prove a point, which is that, as Albus Dumbledore wisely points out in the Goblet of Fire, that if we're waiting for universal poppularity, we're going to be stuck in our homes for a very, long, long time.  I can't tell you how many people have already told me I'm not fit to be a parent, not fit to give others advice on parenting, not able to raise children given my circumstances, shouldn't even think about having pets, should go live in an assistance living facility, should at least think about atending adult daycare centers...
Instead, I defy the norms!  While the kids in my Pre-k class colored between the lines, I made my own!

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2018-02-19 21:36:38

(I go to sleep and the thread expands to 150%. How can I respond to all that?)
User guides and street crossings: sighted people do have to do those things. The advantage they have is being able to learn from watching others. And also, the fact that they are taught these things from a very early age, and blind people tend to be told they can't and kept in a bubble. Sighted children get edutainment videos about crossing the road. Barney, Disney, flippin' Dragonball all released videos about how to safely cross the street.

Claiming that blindness is not a disability feels a lot like redefining words, IMO. It's a disability in the sense that blindness is the lack of a whole sense that the overwhelming majority has and have built civilization and basic adaptations around. If blindness was the norm, sight would be a superpower whose main weakness would be relying on it at the expense of nonvisual solutions to things.
Having said that, though, I feel like some people in this thread are vastly underselling their abilities, and overestimating the sighted. Driving and easy access to text and nonverbal communication are denied us, true. On a "completely unrelated" note, did you know that cars are little more than 100 years old, and that even in the west, majority literacy is a relatively recent phenomenon? One would think that this would make blindness less disabling in 1800 than 2018, and yet, the oldest depiction of a blind person functioning independently I've read is Treasure Island, with the closest second being the Acts of Andrew (which is commonly considered a late Medieval writing claiming to be a late Roman era writing).

How does blindness interfere in my daily life, other than driving and access to writing? Dropping things, and searching in the dark unused places where spiders gather. The former applies mostly to tiny things like nuts, and the latter is resolved by getting a healthier house.
In a broader sense, I like creating things, and that my only means of doing so is handcrafts and typing chafes very much. By which I mean: video games. I'd love to go outside and see the sky and the grass and the trees, and that inability is a genuine loss, but it's pretty inconsequential, as losses go.

Sticking out like a sore thumb, though? I hate that. I'd leave my house far more often if I could do so without being noticed. The reason this is noteworthy, though, is because it's different and unusual. Avoidance for fear of unsolicited attention is a self-perpetuating death-spiral. Avoid being seen doing things enough, and making a sandwich becomes a subject worth commentary from anyone who should pass by. If it doesn't go away after doing mundane things becomes normal, then people are being jerks, intentionally or otherwise.

But those jerks, though. The self-entitled ones who act as though they are entitled to "help", and if you object in any way, they get to call you the rude one. That's a subject best left to Tumblr and blogs, but gah I am not a vending machine that takes in charity and outputs validation. I don't want sight as a means to escape this; I just want people to stop being entitled asses in sheeps clothing.

So, yeah, like just about every issue ever, there's nuance and knowledge gaps and experiential differences all over the place.

(Re: NFB. I've never encountered the types people talk about here. It's easy to see where the militant identitarian demanding stereotype comes from (just go to a general session at a convention), but the "blind people must x" and "have you heard of our lord and savior Kennith Jernigan?" stuff is well outside my experience. YMMV.)

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-02-19 22:02:12

I do think this issue of entitlement is one sided though. Yes, sighted people can be pushy and entitled but so can blind people. I'd even argue blind people are more entitled and arrogant and pushy than sighed people in some cases too.

Oh the militant groups are out there though, they absolutely are, I'm not going to say they aren't because you haven't run across them yourself but they certainly do exist. As do peaceful advocacy groups, too.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-02-19 22:36:59

I do think this issue of entitlement is one sided though. Yes, sighted people can be pushy and entitled but so can blind people. I'd even argue blind people are more entitled and arrogant and pushy than sighed people in some cases too.

Eh, maybe? I mean, at the extremes, we have the coddled blind people, and the militant activist blind people, and both of these can lead to some pretty self-entitlement-shaped attitudes and behaviors. And there is this culture that showers perceived disadvantage with free stuff. I don't really know how you'd go about measuring entitlement, though, so whether that manifests as a greater percentage in one group or the other, I couldn't say.

Either way, it's bad and everyone should learn to stop getting mad at people for the terrible, vile, fiendish, diabolical offense of not giving them everything they want when and how they want it.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-02-19 22:45:38 (edited by pulseman45 2018-02-19 23:00:17)

Well, since some people mention driving here and there, I have to admit it was a big deal for me for quite a long time. I have to say, since my father's job is about reparing cars, since he did collect several old cars from the 30s or 50s, and as such I was so keen on the subject one way or another, the fact I wouldn't be able to drive a car was definitely hard to deal with.
I remember, I used to consider an engine's noise as mainly 2 tones, the engine's buzzing and the explosions it generates. By analysing the pitch difference between the two, I would be able to say how many cylinders there were. At that time my father didn't tell me that much about how a car works, and still I figured out that kind of detail eventually.
But now, as we sometimes do very long trips, I always think it is a good thing I'm not the driver, as I clearly don't imagine being able to concentrate for so long.

2018-02-19 22:50:52

At Nocturnus, I didn't take your question as argumentative. It's a hard one to answer, though. In my heart of hearts, I wish I could say that it's ok to be good enough for my friends and loved ones, and screw the rest of 'em. But the world just doesn't work like that. There are politics no matter where you go, and, as you said, you have to do a lot of proving to others how capable you are. Sighted people don't usually make a point to question other sighted people's parenting skills, at least not directly. We've all heard the horror stories about Facebook groups and subreddits, but, since I'm not a parent myself, it wouldn't be right of me to estimate what, if any, psychological effect those kinds of things have. They may very well do that to parents with other forms of disabilities, too, but this is not a subject on which I'm well versed, so I'm steering clear of that angle. While some people embrace that challenge, and in fact pride themselves on being ambassadors for the blind, I have never had the desire to do that. As I said, if I were an average person, like so many of the people I've grown up around and lived with, and just had simple things like close friendships and a supportive and loving partner, I'd be satisfied with my life. Is it impossible for me to have these things as a blind person? Of course not, and if I implied that, I certainly didn't mean to. The problem is that you have to be bold and brave and forward, all things that I am not, in order to get those things. It seems that way, anyway, because that's how most of the blind people I know are.

As for the NFB thing, thankfully, I've only ever known one extremely militant person who was involved in the organization. He literally quoted The nature of Independence at me as though it was scripture. Thinking about it now, it was so over the top it makes me laugh, but it did disturb me for quite a bit after it happened. Because of that, I went through a long phase where I tried to convince people that the NFB was a cult, or at least displayed many cult-like tendencies. Looking back on it, I'm not exactly proud of how I acted back then. At the same time, it also taught me that I didn't want to get involved with any of the blindness advocacy groups.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-02-19 23:00:35

As far as entitlement goes, I will gladly accept anything that I need that society has decided to provide to me at no cost, but on the other hand, I don't go out of my way to find every little thing that's available to me at no cost.

Some examples:

I do take advantage of the free talking book service provided by the national library service and won't pay for services like audible because of it, though I do pay for Book Share.

On the other hand I don't use the inexpensive or no cost paratransit services that are available in lue of paying for a taxi because I find all of those paratransit services inconvenient. The taxi service I use is usually there within ten minutes of my call for service where the paratransit services require that you make all transport reservations at least 24 hours in advance. Plus the last four times I tried to use the paratransit service to go somewhere and back, they never showed up and I ended up missing the appointment which was really annoying.

2018-02-19 23:08:11

Wow.
Yeah to cae, I know right?
27 posts yesterday now look at it.
A lot to respond to.
I personally think we were better before when we were warehoused in institutions maybe not all of it but we knew where we were going.
In the 80s about the time I was born a move was underway for change, just like the cloud of today the word was mainstreaming.
Mainstreaming just like the net of today promised, equal opertunity coupled with specialised training skills the blind would become part of the sighted world and be better intergrated into the worlds new opperating system.
The world had been running for so long on unix and dos and now it was time for windows, massive disk storage, and all round freedom.
And in the beginning the utopia held itself pritty much together.
True I had bad teachers and aids, tutors for braille and some service issues, sadly this meant my math and some of my education was not up to snuff but I never had to many issues at least up to highschool.
In highschool, there were still special units and seprate arieas which in the beginning we all thought was good.
Sadly just like in win3x where programs often grabbed ocupied memmory addresses causing a crash, the school grabbed money meant for me and used it for itself, we didn't have protections like our educational union in place like we do now.
Things went south quickly and I was happy to get out of there having achieved well something but not really much.
At the end of this I put it down to it being a new system.
I hit university and the new utopia seemed to be in place, on sight information and transcription, monitering and service requests, if you or your teachers had a problem they simply reported it to it and some guru would come and fix it.
Sadly it wasn't all that good for me.
Up till now service from my organisation had been good, instructors were good, I even had some life skills training.
However thats where it fell over.
I have already mentioned this in more firy detail but will go into it here.
It was necessary for me at the time to apply to a disability government agency for my equipment and some other things.
The mistake I made almost immediately was to insist I got the equipment I wanted.
I got some cheap and nasty laptop from a cheap and nasty company which had no wish to support me at all.
The agency said it had worked with others for the last 2 years.
And they would be right since 2 years was what I got out of it.
Though in practice it would be 9 months of actual use and the rest of the time of babysitting.
Basically everuy time I turned it on, it would either not start, or start but menus wouldn't work right.
This was the first month of work, start it up, it would run, a couple weeks later it would be full of something, menus stopped working, I reformatted.
After a month of this I was really cheesed.
I managed to get tweakui 1.33 which cleared histories out and that seemed to at least temperarily fix the issue.
2 months later I updated and xp wanted to remove updates again, what?
Why?
I decided to stop it doing that.
And it started but no keyboard, another reformat and reinstall and it worked.
Next try to connect my serial dectalk synth and see if it worked, no dice, 5 reformats later and I gave up.
I had an old pcmcia card synth and it failed had hal 2, got upgrade, it worked again.
Then bliss for 6 months the unit lived, it rumbled forward and I was happy.
But it kept locking up and the fan it was loud.
I took it in, they basically told me, fuck off, we are not interested blind retarded helpless fucker, fuck off and go home.
Not exactly this but there was no interest at all.
Finally I decided to update bios, it started beeping and beeping and beeping and I turned it off then I turned it on, and it didn't work.
We took it in and they tried it, turn it on and it got vary hot.
We took it back to the company that made it.
They were shocked with service we had recieved.
The unit we had got had defective chips in it, how it was sold to that store which doesn't exist anymore is still a mistory.
We had ensurance for it, it was the cheapest unit at the time they said and we got 1400 bucks from them which was what it would cost to repair it.
I went back to another toshiba I brought myself and it actually worked properly.
Later on I tried again to get jaws for a complex class, and it came at the end of the course and was completely useless.
With university over well to as far as it would go, it was time to get a job.
They tried, and failed, then sent me to their job agency.
They came round and assessed me.
They got me to do a cv which I did.
The agents burned out like an old lightbulb.
Sometimes my data was preserved, at which case I was given another agent.
But mostly it wasn't so they assessed me again.
Eventually I had had enough.
5 years after being promised through school then uni and with all my advisers telling me I would get a job, and not getting one I was about to commit suicide.
I just couldn't see a way out at all.
So I simply decided that everyone of these guys wasn't giving me service and so I said I don't need you your fired!
I did need them but they are not much help to me if they continued as they were.
To exit was hard enough though quit sure, your gone.
But a few months their parent companies, charities etc rang me up and said, please give us cash.
At which point I said, I quit, please remove me, or else.
Luckily I didn't need the police but I would have done so to get rid of them.
That was when things changed.
Up till now the general rule was see an adviser who is helpfull, and they will help you with ideas, most of them are blind to so they know what to do about it all.
Sadly they are suddenly promoted.
THe new one, subscribe to these lists, go on these sites for jobs, and ask about.
Nice idea to chuck the book at me.
Subscribe to this list and that, and get nothing back much nothing I want.
I got out of that.
Subscribe to job sites.
Bar spam, malware and about100 reformats I got nothing from that.
No one told me to join linked in, it seems that that is where I should have gone, to late to get a job now probably.
The world has changed, funding is controled, but mainstreaming has also changed I think if I went again it would be different.
My condition that made me blind has also been to a large part been prevented.
So I am the last of a breed of blind people at least of a strain of the blind.
With the tech we have now there hopefully will not be anyone else like me.
In fact I have a friend who has a son exactly like me and he didn't become like me so I guess thats a comfort to know that there will not be anymore.
However it seems in this modern tech world there is no more room for creativity the machines know best, at least facts and figgures.
But machines are not creative, yet, as a result things have changed a lot since I started.
I do think chucking out all the institutions was a bad idea.
For me, mainstreaming and education maybe with a support centre and assistance when I need it would have been good, either over the phone, in person or via computer link.
Then units where we were taught stuff we needed.
As well as this, maybe places we could go if it wasn't working for a few weeks, get instruction, have fun and a few other things.
And while there were a few of these courses about not many existed.
For example if I had an issue, say what I had above I'd like to simply show up to one of these places or contact them and say I really have issue with  well a few things, mention them, get support I needed and get them addressed.
Never happened.
A weeker person would have just ended themselves, I was even thinking about ways I could kill myself.
It took guts to say you are useless to the institutions that said they were helping, go away and leave me alone.
I am not against welfare but yeah there are some people, some that can't help it but definately some cultures that just shouldn't get special treatment, we are all equal even though from time to time we have done bad things to eachother like stealing others land and such.
Sadly its degenerated into one side saying give everything to me because I am me and I am entitled to what I want because you abused and mistreated me and therefore I will cause a scene and maybe kill people and robb them and stab them and protest because I am not getting a fare deal.
Some of them have just grievence but most don't.
I live in a city devided, to the south are the others.
They are not us, and while they may be good people poor as they are, we have no need to mix with them.
They are trouble and cause a lot of it.
We handle it like we handle everything else.
Which I don't necessarily agree with either but oh well.
I do think though that with our attempt to intergrate the disabled into normalcy that part of the good things and services have dropped out because we think that we don't need them.
For example external speech synths.
A lot of sound cards have effects now.
And a lot of control panels are visual.
I have one such external soundcard and I agree.
Run sound effects through it, audio dramas, books, and music yeah they really work amazing.
Run games through it and they work amazingly but run speech through it.
Firstly speech is just a bit short for any effects to be put on it by just a bulk standard card.
Sure if speech engines were designed for effects maybe we wouldn't have this issue to much but they are not and so we do.
Speech is chopped off, sounds really bad and well not everyone gets it right.
I used card drivers from the manufacturer which were so bad that even with effects off they just didn't sound.
if I used generics windows would try to install updated drivers which were just as bad.
I have older but broken drivers which work with effects but of which I can handle it.
I think either bring back external speech, or exclude speech from sound effects or well add effects back to your speech and you can do things with it.
I mean have your email read to you by the borg hmmm.
I suspect in our attempting to make things better we will probably loose more than what we gain before we gain it back.
As for work I don't work because there isn't a job.
But says the government we can't have poor helpless disabled retarded people blind or otherwise sitting about.
So if you are a poor blind helpless retarded disabled we won't give you any money and if you don't have a job we will put you somewhere were you can put bottle caps on bottles or something utterly demeaning.
So I say to the government, I am looking for work and sometimes even I have a job.
I lie basically so I get support and I hate doing that.
But what do I do.
I read from coolblindtech of all places articles stating the blind are working nitting military uniforms, making bottled water and paper towels and serving their country.
And they say how wanderfull it is, I find it disgracefull and fucking demeaning the blind shouldn't have to be reduced to such work.
We are not that retarded that we would want work like this, maybe those that think its fine are retarded.
It work and they get a wage, but maybe its how they get their benifit who knows.
With laws being passed its certain that the sighted world wants more control on what it does and what it doesn't.
The big monster corps don't want the blind telling them things are screwed up they need time to make an excuse.
Then again, I live with family now and not as yet in an institution for retarded disabled, and at least till my family dies, thats not going to happen, after that, oh well.
Maybe thats all I will be good for but at least I have had freedom for most of my life.
I know friends that grew up inside, and are the retarded helpless that all of those people are, I don't blame them they know no better, but they have no future, none at all.
If you grow up in there the only place you are used to is another institution.
I have an old friend sadly with dementure who had an dieing husband.
She lived an ok ish life and did a lot for those around her.
With the death of her husband she was transfered to a place she could get some help.
This was some sort of institution.
At the start she planned to leave, but by the end of the year she was happy to be locked away, and wouldn't want to leave.
They tell her its the best place for her and that its where she must be.
I do think though we are losing to much, taking it all down isn't the way, maybe having somewhere you can go if times get bad, get resources you need, have help on the side when needed.
Unless you are able to have somewhere to be you are basically on your own at least it feels that way to me.

2018-02-19 23:38:13

Woooooo this one's going along at a nice clip!  I'm glad it's still civil, and I sincerely hope it stays that way!  Now, onto the meat and potatos!
@turtlepower17,
I'm not bold and brave and forward, by default.  You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you that there are days I just want to crawl under the covers and wait for the world to right itself, that there are days when I wonder about the choices I've made, second guessed every single one of them and wished I could know the outcome before I get to it, days when I question my judgment more compulsively (Is that how you spell that word?  yes it is, but must spellcheck it, just to make sure... I'm so not cut out for this; what if I'm using that word wrong?  No, google says I'm not.  Ok, back to posting...  Hmm, perhaps this is overkill?  I should delete everything between the parentheses?  But then, I'd deprive others of what I'm honestly thinking.  I'm not sure I can do that... Oh, but the shame!  Of showcasing one's self in this manner!  and if I'm laughed at?  Well, there's nothing short of erasing all of this efort now or submiting it as is to prove my point...) than I should.  Yes, real internal struggles, no joke, things that happen to me while posting a post like this one, conversing with myself about myself and myself is almost, almost replying!
If you think being brave is a matter of how you're feeling, then I'm always scared!  I'm scared of freaking water!  I hate cold water!  Should I stay out of the shower?  No, because um, not good for the overall hygiene, and plus, swimming!  People like swimming!  My kids like swimming!  I need to go swimming!  Then I get hungry, but I'm scared of fire!  Hell, I'm scared of heat!  And steam!  And ovens are horrible things!  Whatever shall I do!  Food won't make itself, so I guess I have to... I don't wana touch this thing!  Dont' make me!  I feel that freaking heatwave; it's stifling!  Bugger it all!
I gotta call my mom and tell her to have a highchair for my baby girl before I get there in a couple of weeks.  But what if she gets mad at me and starts telling me she's spending too much freaking money already!  I don't feel like having that confrontation!  What if she thinks I'm ungreatful because I keep asking for more!  I'll just buy it myself, except that I'm overdraft by like, $300!  Three hundred in the whole and no way to get out at present!  What am I thinking!  How am I supposed to even think about buying such a thing!  What kind of dad am I!  I can't even get my kid a highchair!
On the other hand, if being brave means you post this kind of thing and watch as the rest of the world either doubles over in bouts of laughter at it or calls you an absolute idiot...

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2018-02-20 00:12:53

This topic has gone way off topic. I think that Turtlepower has a point though. It is hard to be average when other people don’t see you that way. Even talking about disabilities makes people uncomfortable. Let's take my graduate level diversity class for example. The topic we were supposed to be talking about during 1 class was people with disabilities and we did talk about a bit however at 1 point a student changed the subject to the LGBQ community. I agree that that community deserves an equal discussion as well and it had infect had its own discussion but for whatever reason when it was time to focus on those with disability’s the topic quickly changed. I think that this uncomfortableness does need to be addressed with people that do not have disabilities as a whole. I understand what that awkwardness/guilt feels like as I feel that way every time white privilege is brought up but for whatever reason that can be talked about for hours and hours whereas the discussion of people with disabilities is just to taboo to talk about. At least these are the observations that I have made and if other people have noticed something differently please share! Back to Turtle power’s point that it is hard to appear as average when others don’t view you that way. They often do not even view people with disabilities as on the same level as other people. This is a reason that I tend to be shy until I meet someone and they get to know me. You may feel that you are average but with the cane or a dog you are always going to be looked down on by some people and that amount whatever it is does have a negative effect.

Kingdom of Loathing name JB77

2018-02-20 00:36:10

I think it's sevral things Jeff.
One: The obvious argument, you stick out with, say a wheelchair or a cane or something....however that leads to a related if tangential point....why certain disabilities are more 'accepted' than others

Secondly: The idea that, or perception that disabled people in general are weaker or not able to do certain things.

It ties into the general perception of what is disabled, I mean the symbol is a wheelchair, right? So....naturally, people associate disability with not being able to do stuf and thus have a mindset in certain cultures that it's a weaker group of people.

Third: Cultures

I touched on this briefly in point 2 but.....

Had a friend who was of Thai descent in college and she spoke more Thai than English , but her culture had a totally different way of viewing disability than say a Western nation. I'll take it a step futher and throw religious and cultural views into the mix, some sects of various religions believe disability o any kind to be punishment for sins, for years the oft told tale was masturbating would make you go blind. Each culture has its own way how it views disability however based on a whole range of factors

Four: How various disabled groups present themselves:

I'l refer back to the militant blind activist groups and autism activist groups here, they present to the world at large their views and those views quickly get taken up as the views of an entire set of people, at least if you believe everything you read, which a lot of people do. Even if there's several moderate people in either group the perception (which isn't helped by the extremists) is that all blind people or all autistic activists are militant flag waving anarhists hell bent on toppling a world that they don't like and basically, fuck the rest of the world, it's all about them...rightly or wrongly that's the perception of such groups.

Also on the subject of entitlement....@Orco:

I'd argue you could come off as partly entitled for taking free stuff but at the same time society is enabling you to be entitled by showering you with free stuff, it's arguable if you absolutely need every single thing they're throwing at you

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-02-20 00:59:48

so?  so let them look!  They're wasting their time!  I'm not an object in a museum!  I'm not an anomaly traversing the universe!  I'm not a puppet with someone else pulling the strings!  I'm human, capable and living, and I can say that by the simple fact that, I still haven't died!  I've lived nearly 30 years, 10 being schooled by people I didn't agree with under most circumstances, 5 trying to put myself together, 3 telling myself it didnt' matter, 1 in which I gave up on caring, 7 in denial, almost 1 in solitude, and nearly 3 at what I honestly feel has been the height of the game, the noon of the day, the apex of everything I'm going to look back at and say, that was awesome!

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2018-02-20 01:09:27

Oh, and as a sidenote, am I allowed to look at you as disabled if you can't speak English and I can?  Should you be allowed to look at me and call me disabled because you can speak Chinese or some other language I can't?  If one or the other becomes the majority, are you disabled if you can't speak it?  does the disability persist provided you don't learn the language?  Can I call you something worse in the book if you decide not to learn it?  What does it say about the word being so negatively used that we sit here and mope because of something we ourselves were unable to affect?  People who otherwise feel the need to look down our noses at us because we're blind or VI seriously have nothing better to do with their lives than to look down their noses at us; if they did they'd be doing it!  If instead of being an advocate of change you feel the need to purch upon your pedestal and tell me that you're sighted and I'm not, because that obviously isn't obvious enough to me, the need to show off and prove yourself greater than I am through your deeds and your abilities, you're more insecure than I am, because I don't feel the need to do any of these things just to please you or your club!  those who love me accept me unconditionally, just as I am, just as I'll be, as everything I've ever been.  That doesn't mean they always like me; it doesn't mean they don't want to help me, but it does mean they understand our differences and our similarities and never try to change one or the other to make me a better person!

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2018-02-20 01:48:03

Good point JaceK. @Nocturnus I don't think the point is that we shouldn't let people's views effect us. They don't always get to me but you know sometimes they do and this ties into some of the reasons people would get their sight back if they could and I don't think that is a bad thing. I think they are still valid thoughts and feelings that people are having and more power to you if it doesn't bother you. That's not something a lot of people can do and I think that is a strength that you have. Other people in this topic may have that ability too but it is still a thing that happens and not everyone thinks it should be ignored so easily.

Kingdom of Loathing name JB77

2018-02-20 02:30:18

Well, we could go into why blindness has historically been the most feared disability, and why certain subsets of the population, like the Amish for example, still treat their disabled offspring like garbage, but that's not what this topic was created to discuss.

Such history does leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth, even if they're not fully aware of it. Anyone who read about Helen Keller would know. I was in seventh grade, and I did a report on her. The book I happened to find was certainly age appropriate in terms of the reading level and what not, but went into a detailed and gruesome history of what happened to most disabled children in her day, even going so far as to break it down by each individual disability. I'll never forget that.

What kind of message is that trying to send? Sure, it's best not to sugarcoat things, and I'm glad I did learn the truth rather than some watered down version of hero worship, as so often happens when it comes to the way we learn about historical events in school.

A lot of things made sense to me after reading that book, though. Just because we express our animalistic urges differently now doesn't mean they're not still there. I understood why I was bullied, I understood why teachers who had never dealt with a blind person before treated me either as though I were invisible, or as an inconvenience, at least while I was in public school. It was a shield which protected me from some of the bullshit during the remainder of my time there.

So, I'm glad that these things don't bother most people. But keep in mind that on some level, we're all conditioned to fear what we don't understand. Often, this is manifested as pure hatred, or socially acceptable versions of the same. None of us are immune from discrimination. It's what we do with it that counts.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-02-20 04:35:23 (edited by CAE_Jones 2018-02-20 04:36:25)

OT:  Rereading, I have to ask... what kind of mobility instructor is so incompetent that their students' canes wind up between said students' legs? I suppose that could have been on you, but it sounds so difficult to even do by mistake that I'm imagining the teacher told you to hold it vertically one foot from your body at all times, or something equally antihelpful. FTR, I can't imagine a situation where you'd want it close enough for you to trip on other than extremely tight spaces, while waiting stationarily, or while going sighted guide and just carrying it in your free hand. (My first instructor neglected to tell me that last part, so I managed to trip a guide with it, once, causing her to spill hot coffee on the school secretary. This was not the only practically relevant detail that instructor neglected, just the most scalding.)
(Considering the tone of that first sentence, I'm now expecting a response that will make me feel like an awful person for having made it and failing to imagine the perfectly respectable explanation. ... Bah, Dr. Fate is a jerk, so let's tempt him anyway.)

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-02-20 07:05:55

ok, so I would like to touch on another topic. Said militant  blind people also state that disabled people should feel morally questioned or guilty for benefiting for the free stuff etc provided to the blind. I also strongly disagree with this. Take any sighted person, and ask them if they would consider being blind if given a million dollars and more. I bet you wouldn't find a single person that is willing to. So, why should we feel guilty  taking something given to us with a disability that a sighted person wouldn't swap for a million?

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2018-02-20 07:17:21

I think there's a distinction between compensatory free stuff, like discounts on public transit, accessibility tech, etc, and things like people paying for your meals, preferential seating, a cashier not charging you for something, etc. Where exactly one draws the line seems to come down to personal opinion.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-02-20 07:19:30

hi,
As for your second group, I wouldn't ask for those, but I would accept if offered.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2018-02-20 07:38:00

@93 try asking them if they prefer to be blind or if they prefer to be withouth an hand or withouth legs...
smile and see what do you get from their replies

Paul

2018-02-20 08:00:35 (edited by Ghost 2018-02-20 08:01:13)

Well, some might accept. However, blindness is one of the worst viewed among the disabilities. In that way, disabilities are not equal.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2018-02-20 08:01:23

@96: That has been done. The results are consistently that blindness is rated as the absolutely worst thing that could happen, worse than death, cancer, dismemberment, etc. To the point where some doctors consider it malpractice to remove the eyes to save people from cancer that otherwise responds only to brain-damaging radiation treatments. When this fact really sank in for me, it was horrifying.
To be honest, I was slipping more toward the "it would be irrational not to take an offered cure, because an extra high-speed, high-bandwidth sense is clearly useful", but the fact that sighted people have gone that far into one sense, to the point that it might be literally impossible for a sighted brain to comprehend how to function without... that's scary and I dread to approach it.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-02-20 10:00:12

@92: For me at least, sweeping the ane around tripped people, the long ass canes that is sweeping them across an entire corridor for instance, it's easy if you're walking a certain way to get that cane caught up in your legs or btween your arms.

Also I partially agree with scaling back the free stuff...but only because the media makes such a big deal out of what disabled people get for welfare money that it auses resentment, actually most people on welfare get treated like this by the media, the 'look at X he gets Y and Z without working' mentality.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-02-20 12:23:26

I heard that the military considered using lasers or something to blind enemy troops, but decided it was unethical, but blowing their heads off or collapsing buildings crushing and suffocating them to death is fine. So it seems society does consider blindness a pretty horrific prospect. With that in mind, as far as benefits goes, I think the idea is that in a relatively wealthy society, things like blindness shouldn't be a financial burden, the disability is burden enough. We all know how expensive technology aimed exclusively at the blind can be. And as far as the media's response goes, I don't know if it's a political agenda, or just that they love to aggravate people because stimulants are addictive. I often refer to the newsmedia as the daily troll.

2018-02-20 13:26:40

I wonder if the fear of blindness and the reason we tend to be shunned has anything to do with the age old myth that doing certain things to ourselves causes blindness. So people fear our blindness and stay away from us because it might be catching.

@turtlepower32

Do you recall any of the details about that book about Hellen Keller that you read? Such as who the author was? It sounds like it might be a worthwhile read, even if it is a bit below my current reading level.