I met a guy named Jason and he has some mild retardation. He can live his life normally, but you can tell he’s not all there. Anyway, he’s a punch press operator and loves his mundane job. The machine fascinates him and he’d love to be working at the same job in 20 years. The highlight of his week is to badly sing kareoke on Friday night at a local nightclub. His life is simple and from every impression I got, a good one. What a great thing, is this better then what we get?
I say yes: I have never met a retarded person who was afflicted with that worst of the seven deadly sins, pride. If I could be guaranteed work and guidance and some measure of dignity if I forsook the attribute of guilefulness, I don’t know that I would not accept.
This is not a pretentious platitude. I admire the harmless ones because I have been one of nature’s harmful creatures, and can any of you not say the same of yourselves? You may scoff and prod me to self-inflict head injury so as to call my bluff. Well, I may just as well destroy the mellon entirely - I have too many resposibilities to abrogate, resposibilities greater than the mean rewards they’ve granted, and to turn my mind off to them now would be…guileful.
First, let’s discuss your terminology. Saying “retarded” in this context is akin to answering “what have you done with your life?” with “stuff.”
Would you want to be someone with an IQ of ten? At that intelligence, even if you have the ability to speak, you simply do not know how to. Extremely low-level mentally retarded kids are put in classrooms with flourescent paper all over the walls, with hopes that it will stimulate them. Not knowing what you’re missing isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Would you want to have a disability that means that people will descriminate against you, treat you differently, mock you, or fear you irrationally?
Would you want to be only mildly retarded and, like some of my mildly retarded friends, crave “a normal life” that you simply cannot have because of your disability? One of my mother’s students has a dream to be in the Army. He is physically able to, has wanted to since a very young age… and simply cannot, because he doesn’t make the intelligence cutoff.
Simplicity isn’t necessarily good. And for that matter, how do you know that Jason is happy? Mentally retarded people are just as prone (if not more prone) to depression than others. It comes from being misunderstood and subjugated.
Thinking that the mentally retarded live their lives in a happy stupor is a gross inaccuracy. I would suggest that you really don’t understand Jason or his life in a broader context.
thank you andygirl. I was all ready to let fly at the gross simplifications and generalisations in this thread.
Having an IQ below 70 is not an automatic qualification for a peaceful, happy life. They still have emotions, frustrations and griefs - it is insulting to say that they have easy lives because they are intellectually handicapped.
“The only way to be happy is to know nothing or to know everything. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know nothing for very long.”
My dear brother Michael was born with trisomy 21, also known as Mongloidism. It’s a concern for the older mother, but as unlikely as a lottery win for a 21-year old woman as my mother was at the time. I do not speak from simplification nor generalization. Neither did I realize that I had to offer personal credentials in order to post to SDMB forum GD. In this regard I see that I was in error.
My brother was a real person, not some Rousseauan “noble savage” rhapsodised about over distance and mind. I stand by my previous comment. Thank you.
I guess it would be better to be deaf too. You wouldn’t be bothered by traffic noises, dogs barking at night or ringing telephones.
Slithy Tove
no of course, you don’t have to provide personal credentials in GD - quite the opposite in fact. However I stand by my opinion that you sound like someone who is romanticising intellectual disability. Obviously I cannot say that your brother was not what you say he was but equally I have not seen sainthood in the intellectually handicapped people in my extended family. My BIL who has an IQ of about 50 experiences pride and he experiences frustration. I think it is belittling to say that if one has an IQ which qualifies as retarded, then one is excluded from the gamut of human emotion. I do not believe this to be so.
Most commonly called Down’s Syndrome. (Just thought I’d interject that.)
My concern with people’s broad understanding of “the handicapped” is that the population at large seems to see them as limited in all areas- emotionally, sexually, what have you. This is not at all the case.
Slithy, my reading of your first reply was that you were, as Primaflora says, romanticising disability. Could you elaborate further on your thoughts?
Andy: I probably am romanticizing on the condition of the hadicapped. But then, all outlooks are based on irrational constructions. We are not rational creatures. You guys got me thinking about my brother Michael, and in between post I dug out a photo of a young woman holding up a doomed, retarded baby to show him a Christmas tree whose symbolsim he could never understand (or maybe he could, since the Christ’s love is open to all IQ levels - this thread will make an un-lapsed Catholic of me yet!). Anyway, I’ll tell you that that was a sad photo to look at indeed, and my (emotional) reaction only reinforces my (logical-construct) belief that we are not entierly rational beings. If I read my Shakespeare right, even if Horatio stops dreaming, there’s still more to Heaven and Earth anyway: he can only hope to dream on a less deluded level. A truly rational assesment of the human condition must allow for irrationality, and should strive instead for justice.
Andy, am I being unjust to the retarded?
Prima, I agree, a low IQ is no exclusion from the emotional gamut. But meet me halfway: The nastier shit that you can DO is made possible expodentially by one’s intelligence. And let me clarify this point, though it be a hijack from the OP; I’m talking about the quality of life as regards the nasty things we do, not in terms of the nasty things done to us. That is the lynchpin of my argument, not necessarily the OP debate: That it’s better to be sinned against than to have sinned, and in this respect the retarded are in a natural state of grace. I take this stance because I look back on my life and regret the mean things I’ve done much, much more than I lament the mean things done to me. And I look back on history and I don’t find a lot of retarded Hitlers and Stalins.
Plus I think the whole human race is too smart for its own good, so maybe that shows the fatal flaw of my outlook. But I’ve lived with the retarded, and I’ve worked with the retarded, and from my experience there is a personality trait lacking in them: guile. Sure, they’ll steal your lunch from the refrigerator at work. But the Harvard MBA upstairs will take away a lot more with a much less anxiety.
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I beg to differ. Our ability to use reason (rational thought) is our basic means of survival. The African Bushman lived in conditions we’d consider to be horrible. Because of his rational thinking he figure out how to get water, how to find food, how to track animals, and how to build tools and poison to bring down prey. Those don’t sound like the actions of an irrational animal to me.
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And I’d argue that the nicest things in my life are possible because of one’s intelligence.
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You can control your actions. For the most part you cannot control the actions of others. If you’re still suffering from guilt to the point where it affects your life then it sounds like something might be wrong.
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You don’t find many retarded Michelangelos or Hammarabis either.
Marc
Theortically,your best bet for happiness is to be right in the middle of the intelligence bell curve. There are several advantages to this. For one thing, you are in the majortity. There are always lots of people around who are at or close to your mental level. You have a high chance of fitting in.
Also, a lot of things are designed exactly right for you, or are aimed at exactly your mental level. In America’s public schools, the pace will be just right for you; neither too fast nor too slow. You will not have any trouble finding tv programs, movies, books, magazines, etc. that are just right: neither too simple nor too demanding.
OTOH, maybe it’s better to be enough above average to feel superior, but not so far above as to make it hard to find people with whom one can fit in.
Re retardation, I think the advantages to being mildly retarded would be offset by the disadvantages; principle among which would be the awareness that one WAS “a retard”.
Occam, how am I going to explain this to you? You are not retarded so cannot really have any real idea of what it would be like to be in that situation.
I work with many handicapped individuals, there are those that can get the greatest joy out of what we might consider the simplest of things but to me the “mildly retarded” may have it the worst of all because they often know what they are missing and can see how they are “different”.
How long does it take you to learn something new?
How do you process things on an emotional level? Do things usually make sense?
The guys I work with fall into the mildly retarded category and many of them have expressed that they would like to be like me. By that I assume that they would like to have a real job, drive a car, have a girlfriend or maybe a wife and family. They would like to get through their day without having to rely on people like myself to assist them with a great number of things. My job is to teach then the skills so that they can lead as normal a life as is possible.
They have stress just like you and I. All of them possess the full range of human emotions although expressing them appropriately can sometimes be a problem.
They have all been discriminated against because of their disabilities and have often been treated in a less than a fair manner. They have all been called “retard”.
Their lives are profoundly different than the lives we lead and I like to think that the guys I work with live very rich and satisfying lives. You think that they are getting something you are not yet they wish they could have what you and I have.
I find that I can learn from the guys I work with because their perspective and priorities are different from mine. Quite often I am amazed by their kindness and patience towards each other and people in general. Like other people they all have qualities that I admire and can aspire to yet I would not want to trade places with them or you for that matter.
I understand why you ask this question, I too have days when I wish that I just didn’t get it and that simpler might be better. They do say that ignorance is bliss.
Anyone remember “Flowers for Algernon?” From what I remember the story involved a young retarded man who was given some sort of pill that made him a genius. Then the treatment began to wear off and we witnessed his mental degradation back to his normal self. Not a bad book for those of you interested in the OP.
Marc
Having worked a bit with the mentally retarded in the distant past, I much prefer my own situation.
As another treatment of the concept expressed in the OP, may I suggest Lars von Triers film The Idiots (Idioterne, 1998)? The film deals with a commune of intellectuals who feign being mentally retarded, in part as a means of freeing themselves from the conventions of polite society.
It’s not for everyone (filmed according to the tenets of Dogma '95, some will undoubtedly find it both crude and pretentious) it nevertheless has some interesting things to say about the idea of releasing oneself from the ‘prison’ of intellect.
MGibson, yeah I read it…the movie version is called “Charley”. It wasn’t a bad movie and worth watching again…I might rent it.
To clarify just what level of intellect we’re talking about I think Jason was between Billy Bob Thorton in “Of Mice and Men” and you’re average joe. I don’t doubt he was teased as a kid, but who the hell wasn’t? Now his life seems simple to me and content to him…is it worth the tradeoff?
What a coincedence, ‘Charly’ was on TV yesterday. I had never seen the movie, but read the story in high school.
Occam,
I have a friend who’s not mentally retarted, who loves his mundane job as an accountant. Accounting fascinates him, and he’s probably going to spend the next 20 years doing it. The highlight of HIS week is singing bad karaoke (and bowling…he loves bowling), and he’s generally pretty happy. I don’t know if mental capacity is related to state of mind at all.
Being content is good, the fact he is retarded is besides the point.
You just want to be content.
Unfortunately its part of human nature to sometimes want more in life, otherwise we would still be living in caves.
OR as the dolphins say ‘ha ha, we muck about having fun and you lot go to work, ha ha !’
There is a lot of support for the idea that a simple life is more enjoyable.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ~Confucius