[stylist] question

Tue Mar 24 21:14:46 UTC 2009

Precisely!  I can educate and educate until the cows come home.  The honest truth is, however, some people cannot (or will not) be educated, no matter how hard you try, regarding blindness.  I can't let that fact stop me from living my life, however, or else I'd become kind of paralyzed.

In Christ,
Alan

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   O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! 
Psalms 8:9

~~~
awheeler at neb.rr.com
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Skype: redwheel1

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Judith Bron" <jbron at optonline.net>
To: "NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 01:27
Subject: Re: [stylist] question

> John, You lost me.  Most of the blind people I know are working to perfect 
> their skills, develop their interests and be the best person they can 
> possibly be.  As an aside, my dad was left handed.  No one ever made 
> anything of it.  Getting back to blindness.  We aren't going to change 
> society.  We are not a subculture.  We do not have our own beliefs, system 
> of power or any of the things that define a culture.  We are simply people 
> who are trying to make it despite whatever physical limitation we might 
> have.  Just people.  Stop thinking of yourself as someone who has to prove a 
> point.  You are a talented person with the ability to go far.  Stop worrying 
> about the world.  Like for all of us, making John the best he is capable of 
> being is difficult enough.  Judith
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John Lee Clark" <johnlee at clarktouch.com>
> To: "'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 1:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [stylist] question
> 
> 
>> Exactly, Judith!
>>
>> There is absolutely nothing wrong about being left-handed.  I know this
>> intimately because I am left-handed--and I do crochet!  Making an afgan 
>> for
>> my mother right now.
>>
>> However, societies have made, and continue to make, a big deal out of this
>> difference in dexterity.  Our own country, until the mid-1950s, had 
>> problems
>> with left hands.  At schools, they'd force you to write with your right
>> hand.  Churches said that the left hand was the devil's hand.  We shake
>> hands with our right hand, not the left.
>>
>> Yes, in other cultures it is worse, the stigma is greater.
>>
>> But things are pretty good right now for left-handed people now.  It has
>> mostly ceased to be an issue, to the point that most people don't notice 
>> it
>> or if they do, it doesn't change anything.
>>
>> The blackis, they're working on getting our society to take blackiness 
>> just
>> as much in stride.  Feminists are working on getting gender to be as much 
>> a
>> non-issue as possible and still trying to perfect the policies and fair
>> accommodations surrounding maternity.  It's a work in progress.  Deaf 
>> people
>> are working on it, too, though we have a longer way to go.  Blind is the
>> same.
>>
>> But it is entirely possible, because it has happened before, for the
>> greatest stigma, the greatest curse, the greatest burden that was made 
>> such
>> a big deal out of, out of nothing, to fade into something the society
>> absorbs as part of its index of normal diversity.  One day we could be
>> living in a society that thinks nothing of people using wheelchairs or 
>> canes
>> or signing or whatever, for none of these things to stand out at all.
>>
>> We want society to gradually change so that differences are no longer
>> differences in the same ways they were before.  We do not want society to
>> stay the same while we try to repress or manipulate the differences, 
>> because
>> there's always going to be a gap and it's beyond our power to change.
>>
>> This is why I like NFB's philosophy, because it's about changing what can 
>> be
>> changed, and in healthy ways.  One thing we can change is society, however
>> slowly.  Society would benefit greatly from this.  Another thing we can
>> change is our skills, what we know, the extent of our resources, etc.
>>
>> This is why I am dead against organizations like the Foundation Fighting
>> Blindness.  They might have a little control, by medical means, to change
>> blindness itself, but this is a highly questionable premise, and a most
>> expensive venture.  Twenty years of billions of dollars that make ten
>> researchers wealthy may result in restoring a little vision to a few 
>> people
>> who have a specific condition, and the actual life improvements that they
>> would experience thankis to it are going to be nil or nearly so.  And this
>> whole thing is going to be very bad for society itself and make it latch 
>> on
>> false hopes of restoring people to the human ideal.  Tthis would impair
>> society's maturity into one that is able to take blind people in stride.
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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> 
> 
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