Sorry, to clarify my comment about culture: I meant the problem is the surrounding culture’s atittude towards it, not the culture of the people with the possibly disadvantageous condition.
I am not advocating that the rest of society gives up spoken language (and the complaint about music is just silly), I am advocating a group’s right to do their thing provided it doesn’t harm others. And I am not convinced that trying to arrange for your genes to provide you with a deaf child qualifies as harm, any more than people on the autism spectrum hoping and trying to arrange for an autistic child qualifies as harm. Deaf and severely hearing-impaired people are going to keep being born for quite a while, since the genes come in several different flavours including both dominant and recessive types, so I would expect services for the deaf to continue as a matter of decency for the forseeable future.
I am advocating a group’s right to do their thing provided it doesn’t harm others.
Do the rights include creating new group members? What about creationists screening their children from information about evolution, or any indoctrination of children for that matter, does that qualify as harm, or is it the group’s right to do their thing? (Sorry if I sound combative, if so, it’s not my intention, only inability to formulate the question more appropriately. I am curious where do you place the border.)
I find the fact that raising someone to be creationist involves explicitly teaching them provably false things—and, in most cases, demanding that they express belief in those things to remain on good terms with their family and community—to be relevant. Having a child who’s deaf or autistic doesn’t intrinsically involve that.
(Yes, if I procreate, I intend to make a point of teaching my offspring how being autistic is useful. Even so, they’ll still be completely entitled to disagree with me about the relative goodness of being autistic compared to being neurotypical.)
This may be a bit personal, but are you concerned about having a child on the highly autistic end of the spectrum? (ie. no verbal communication, needs a carer, etc.) To me that seems like a possible cosequence of deliberately stacking the deck, and it would make me wary of doing so.
In the sense of ‘consider it a significant enough possibility that I’d make sure I was prepared for it’, yes. In the sense of ‘would consider it a horrible thing if it happened’, no. I’m not going to aim for that end of the spectrum, but I wouldn’t be upset if it worked out that way.
I’m still working that out for myself. There’s definitely a parallel between deaf people insisting that their way of life is awesome and weird religious cults doing the same. I guess I’m more sympathetic to deaf people though because once you’re deaf you may as well make the most of it, while bringing up your child religiously requires an ongoing commitment to raise them that way.
Ah, ok, I just found my boundary there. Kids brought up in a religious environment can at least make their own choice when they’re old enough, but deaf people can’t. I don’t support the deliberate creation of people with a lifelong condition that will make them a minority unless the minority condition is provably non-bad, but neither do I find the idea of more being born as horrifying as you seem to.
Ah, ok, I just found my boundary there. Kids brought up in a religious environment can at least make their own choice when they’re old enough, but deaf people can’t. I don’t support the deliberate creation of people with a lifelong condition that will make them a minority unless the minority condition is provably non-bad, but neither do I find the idea of more being born as horrifying as you seem to.
Wow, you’re drawing your boundary squarely in other people’s territory there. I would actively support others in their attempts to disempower you and violate said boundary.
Shrug. I actually have a lot of personal problems with children being taught religion (anecdotally, it appears to create a God-shaped hole and train people to look for Deep Truths, and that’s before getting into the deep end of fundamentalism) but as far as I’m concerned a large percentage of the values that parents try to teach their kids are crap. If I took a more prohibitive stance on teaching religion then I would also have to start getting a lot more upset about all the other stupid shit, plus I would be ignoring the (admittedly tangential) benefits that come from growing up in a moderate religious community.
Disclaimer: I was brought up somewhat religious and only very recently made the decision to finish deconverting (was 95% areligious before, now I finally realised that there isn’t any reason to hold on to that identity except a vague sense of guilt and obligation). So I wouldn’t be too surprised if my current opinion is based partly on an incomplete update.
I can empathise with your heritage. It sounds much like mine (where my apostasy is probably a few years older).
I, incidentally, don’t have an enormous problem with teaching religion to one’s own children. Religion per se isn’t the kind of fairy tale that does the damage. The destructive mores work at least as well in an atheistic context.
Sorry, to clarify my comment about culture: I meant the problem is the surrounding culture’s atittude towards it, not the culture of the people with the possibly disadvantageous condition.
I am not advocating that the rest of society gives up spoken language (and the complaint about music is just silly), I am advocating a group’s right to do their thing provided it doesn’t harm others. And I am not convinced that trying to arrange for your genes to provide you with a deaf child qualifies as harm, any more than people on the autism spectrum hoping and trying to arrange for an autistic child qualifies as harm. Deaf and severely hearing-impaired people are going to keep being born for quite a while, since the genes come in several different flavours including both dominant and recessive types, so I would expect services for the deaf to continue as a matter of decency for the forseeable future.
Do the rights include creating new group members? What about creationists screening their children from information about evolution, or any indoctrination of children for that matter, does that qualify as harm, or is it the group’s right to do their thing? (Sorry if I sound combative, if so, it’s not my intention, only inability to formulate the question more appropriately. I am curious where do you place the border.)
I find the fact that raising someone to be creationist involves explicitly teaching them provably false things—and, in most cases, demanding that they express belief in those things to remain on good terms with their family and community—to be relevant. Having a child who’s deaf or autistic doesn’t intrinsically involve that.
(Yes, if I procreate, I intend to make a point of teaching my offspring how being autistic is useful. Even so, they’ll still be completely entitled to disagree with me about the relative goodness of being autistic compared to being neurotypical.)
This may be a bit personal, but are you concerned about having a child on the highly autistic end of the spectrum? (ie. no verbal communication, needs a carer, etc.) To me that seems like a possible cosequence of deliberately stacking the deck, and it would make me wary of doing so.
In the sense of ‘consider it a significant enough possibility that I’d make sure I was prepared for it’, yes. In the sense of ‘would consider it a horrible thing if it happened’, no. I’m not going to aim for that end of the spectrum, but I wouldn’t be upset if it worked out that way.
I’m still working that out for myself. There’s definitely a parallel between deaf people insisting that their way of life is awesome and weird religious cults doing the same. I guess I’m more sympathetic to deaf people though because once you’re deaf you may as well make the most of it, while bringing up your child religiously requires an ongoing commitment to raise them that way.
Ah, ok, I just found my boundary there. Kids brought up in a religious environment can at least make their own choice when they’re old enough, but deaf people can’t. I don’t support the deliberate creation of people with a lifelong condition that will make them a minority unless the minority condition is provably non-bad, but neither do I find the idea of more being born as horrifying as you seem to.
Wow, you’re drawing your boundary squarely in other people’s territory there. I would actively support others in their attempts to disempower you and violate said boundary.
Shrug. I actually have a lot of personal problems with children being taught religion (anecdotally, it appears to create a God-shaped hole and train people to look for Deep Truths, and that’s before getting into the deep end of fundamentalism) but as far as I’m concerned a large percentage of the values that parents try to teach their kids are crap. If I took a more prohibitive stance on teaching religion then I would also have to start getting a lot more upset about all the other stupid shit, plus I would be ignoring the (admittedly tangential) benefits that come from growing up in a moderate religious community.
Disclaimer: I was brought up somewhat religious and only very recently made the decision to finish deconverting (was 95% areligious before, now I finally realised that there isn’t any reason to hold on to that identity except a vague sense of guilt and obligation). So I wouldn’t be too surprised if my current opinion is based partly on an incomplete update.
I can empathise with your heritage. It sounds much like mine (where my apostasy is probably a few years older).
I, incidentally, don’t have an enormous problem with teaching religion to one’s own children. Religion per se isn’t the kind of fairy tale that does the damage. The destructive mores work at least as well in an atheistic context.