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

[Mike Freeman]

Are these two views really mutually exclusive?

Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Briley Pollard
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2011 7:14 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] If the World Went Sighted..

Hello all,

This is an interesting discussion, so I thought I'd pop in for a minute.

This question goes, at the root of it, to how you view disability. If you
view it as an aspect that creates diversity, then erasing it would be like
erasing races or different languages. If you view disability as a disease,
then logically the first response would be to want to cure it.

What do you guys think?

Briley 
On Apr 27, 2011, at 7:55 AM, Jorge Paez wrote:

> Arielle:
> I think blindness does play a roll--in that it is just one of many things
that make up an individual,
> and in a world where genetics would be preprogramed,
> it just be too perfect.
> It'd just bee too flawless--too artificial.
> I'm sure some people would want it--but a world in which blindness and
other disabilities are completely eradicated would just be too artificial,
> almost like we literally managed to create our own world in a way.
> 
> Worse, it would make it a whole lot worse for any blind who were born
cause then everyone would consider them a scientific failure so to speak.
> Of course,
> I'm hypothetically talking about a very cold  world in which science would
create people which I hope would never happen but its a good talking  point
anyway.
> 
> Jorge
> 
> 
> On Apr 27, 2011, at 12:08 AM, Arielle Silverman wrote:
> 
>> 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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> 
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