[nabs-l] If the World Went Sighted..

[Jedi]

Arielle,

I think blindness does serve a purpose. First of all, we learn more 
about our species when there are differences among us. So for example, 
blind people have been used as controls or experimental groups for all 
kinds of neural research having nothing to do with sight as a means by 
which to understand the human experience. Then, there's the fact that 
we, because of our technological needs, push innovation. For example a 
lot of people are thinking that the blind driver challenge will create 
a lot of technologies that will help others. Similarly, the scanning 
and reading technology the sighted take for granted came as a result of 
Ray Kurzweil's desire to provide a reading medium for the blind. 
Text-to-speech is another   example; we now use TTS for a variety of 
applications having nothihng to do with blindness.

In general, I think disability is a good thing because it makes us 
realize that there are multiple ways to live in the  universe and there 
really is no such thing as total perfection and that we are perfect in 
our imperfection. I know that may seem a little high-minded and crazy 
to some, but it makes sense to me. As blind people, we are in the 
unique position of getting people to think. When they see us, the 
sighted go crazy. but that craziness has nothing to do with us, but has 
everything to do with themselves in a fundamental way. To the sighted 
(and I'm basing this on philosophical and art history research), we 
represent everything from death to the unknown, everything from fear of 
the dark to a feeling of being out of control. The sighted see us and 
think, how in the hell can they live like that? I think we remind them 
on some level that control is a mental illusion and that feeling out of 
control is also a mental illusion. Again, another of Jedi's weird 
ideas, but it makes sense to me. Basically, no human is ever really in 
control, but at the same time, we have more control of our lives than 
we think. So when a sighted person sees us (especially those of us who 
remind them of themselves as normal people), we cause them to question 
everything they thought they knew, and that's a good thing. That's the 
value of having diversity in general. if we were all the same, we would 
not learn nearly as much as we have.

Respectfully,
Jedi
Original message:
> Hi all,

> We recently had a discussion about how we would react if some of our
> blind friends could become sighted, and we asked whether it would be
> reasonable for a sighted person to want to go blind. This made me
> think of an interesting, although a bit painful, question:
> Would the world be better off, worse off, or about the same if
> blindness were completely eradicated, through genetic engineering
> and/or mandatory treatment of all causes of blindness?
> The question may sound silly, but for many vision researchers,
> eradication of blindness is a real goal. But does the presence of
> blind people in our society have any benefit to the society or the
> world as a whole?

> Certainly there are costs of having a small group of people in society
> who read and travel using different techniques than the rest. These
> specialized techniques have to be taught, technology has to be adapted
> to their use and negative public attitudes prevent this minority of
> people who do things differently from having full access to societal
> goods and opportunities. So would it be cheaper and less
> resource-demanding if everybody could use the same visual techniques
> to accomplish life tasks?
> On the other hand, you could perhaps argue that having people who use
> different senses to do things in society is advantageous. Technology
> is forced to innovate to become usable by those who don't have vision
> as well as those who do. And conceivably, if a darkness plague struck
> the planet, it would be better for the species if some of its members
> could fully function without light.

> What do you think? Should we as a society make an effort to get rid of
> blindness? Or does blindness serve any kind of social function?
> There obviously isn't a right answer here, but it's something that,
> for better or for worse, could become relevant to us someday.

> Arielle

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