What responsibility do we owe to individuals and groups of individuals who are unvalued by the mainstream of society? What do we owe personally and what do we owe through the state?
What does our treatment of people with retardation, people with mental illness, people who are poor, people who are homeless, people who break the law, people who dissent (choose your own unvalued group- even racial or gender based) say about our society and about ourselves? These groups are universally ensured poor outcomes in most societies.
Is human respect compatible with an ethos predominantly based on the aspect of blaming individuals for their social position, rather than trying to understand and avoid future problems?
Help me understand what we should do with/for/to unvalued people.
My first question is: Why do you assume that the groups that you mentioned have no value?
My own belief is that if you are human, you should be treated as a human, equally with all other humans. It should make no difference whether you are white, black, retarded, poor, rich, male, female, green, red, purple, or anything else. If you are “people” you should be treated equally with all other “people”. Period.
I note that the outcomes for these groups is univerally poor, and therefore assume that if they are accorded poor treatment by society, then the are unvalued. If people are valued, we tend to treat them well; if people are not valued, we tend to treat them poorly.
I agree with you that people should be treated as equals with other people. My lack of understanding centers around why this is not the case.
Many of the underlying (Judaeo-Christian) beliefs in our society imply that people should be treated equally, yet our society continually fails to do this. My question is, ‘What should we be doing?’
If we accept the injunction to treat people equally, are we willing to bear the financial and social cost? Apparently not.
quote:
“I agree with you that people should be treated as equals with other people. My lack of understanding centers around why this is not the case.” (bolding mine)
Unfortunately, some people * think * they are better than others, and therein lies the problem. Until all human beings look on all other human beings as equals, we will always have the problems you stated. And that, in a word, is sad.
What can we do about it? Other than each individual person examining themselves and changing themselves, not much of anything, I’m afraid. That is equally as sad.
Part of the explanation, is I think, inbuilt into our world view. We tend to unconsciously place ‘value’ positive or negative on all things and people; it is automatic- maybe even a survival instinct. Then we erect higher constructs such a ‘Love thy neighbor’, ‘Do unto others’ etc. and then fail to see the conflict between good intentions and natural prejudice. Then we are left with explaining away this problem, which we do by blaming those who are different.
People who dissent are universally ensured poor outcomes? Don’t think so. Lot’s of people are famous for complaining and whining and throwing a stink. They make good money complaining. Nope.
Y’know, I find it amusing that people can’t make a call for compassion without saying that everyone else is a heartless bastard. Maybe you should have compassion for us heartless bastards. Hey, it’s not my fault I’m a complete jerk, you should respect me anyway.
And I really get annoyed when you lump in “people with metal retardation” with “people who break the law” and “people who dissent”. These groups have nothing in common, except that you feel we don’t have enough respect for them.
Of course we are going to value people differently. I value my wife more than I value Bill Clinton. I value Stephen Hawking more than I value that guy who sat next to me on the bus yesterday. And, various people are going to be more skilled, or more lucky than others. Do you want us to take care of the mentally handicapped? Fine. Next you’re going to be demanding that the mentally handicapped should be elected president, which would be ridicu…uh, never mind…
Excellent ethics question. I am a believer in encouraging the honorable self-termination of those elderly or terminally ill in pain who want to do so, it is unethical otherwise. I also believe that abortion needs to stay legal so that couples can have access to future blood tests to see it their fetus is healthy and abort if they don’t want the resonsibility of raising a severly handicapped child (which handicaps them too). As for severly brain-damaged people, there is much to discuss here. Does the state have the right to terminate such a person? Perhaps not. Do the parents? Perhaps not. Do both? Perhaps.
I didn’t ‘lump’ these categories together because of their similarity, only because of the similarity of outcome. Society ends up treating each of these groups particularly poorly.
I would say that dissenters are often excluded and given poor treatment. I remember espousing communism as a possibly honorable political system whilst at high school (I have since recovered), and learning that dissent had physical consequences.
The interesting thing about treating all of these classes (even including the class of heartless bastards) poorly, is the apparently random way that we assign value to these groups and the differing standards we use for assigning blame versus excuse.
I am not even sure that we ahould ‘have respect’ for any of these groups. I am mainly interested in how these groups are chosen by society and what treatment is offered to such people.
Reply to Brian Bunnyhurt
Your discussion about termination of potentially handicapped fetuses raises questions about the status of disabled people. If you believe that abortion is acceptable for any reason, no such problem arises, but if you believe that abortion is wrong, but allow it for handicap, then this goes to the value of handicapped people.
Don’t not confuse “equal rights” with “being equal”. Wea re not all equal. For examample:
Everyone has the right to try out for their high school football team. Only the best players deserve to play.
People are not equal. We each have different skills and attributes that provide us diferent advantages or disadvantages under diferent situations. Treating everyone as if they all had the same intelligence, strength, etc. just leads to resentment and frustration.
I was thinking of exactly that. There is no other group that I would assign less value to specifically.
But brain damage is tricky. People have been diagnosed as irretrievable, and then made remarkable comebacks. I’ll never forget a show on the brain that I watched in which a young girl was born with a huge area in the center of her brain filled with fluid. I forget all the specifics but these: Over the course of time, her briain tissue on scan was shown to be pushed all the way out to the edges of her skull, forming a thin lining of her skull, rather than filling her skull. The vast majority of her skull was filled with fluid. Just looking at the scan of her head, anyone would assume that she was a vegetable, as they say. Nope. She was almost completely normal, with only slight difficulties in speech and coordination and a few other things. But you would never, ever guess at what her brain looked like if you met her.
On the other hand…you have those children who are born without a proper human brain, only a brain stem. If I’m not mistaken, such children don’t live anyway, but what if they did? Would you consider such a child to be a “person” in any meaningful sense of the word? A human animal that does not have the physical structures in place which would enable them to think, or feel, or process any information of any kind. All they are is a beating heart and breathing lungs. Are they human?
I don’t believe abortion is wrong, per se, since humans define what is right and wrong, and it falls into the category of personal rights, related to the responsiblity of raising an unwanted child. Abortion can be termed a failure of prevention, but to justify a failure by forcing someone to have a kid is a greater injustice. If people think abortion is wrong and should be illegal, that is their right, unless they oppose state assistance for raising a child, then that is proof of their lack of their ethical reasoning. Two wrongs don’t make a right, as the chiche goes.
Stoidela:
There will always be exceptions to the rule of measuring brain-damage, but I am concerned about what will always be exceptions to the rule of absolute definitions that protect those exceptions. There will always be people who are comatose, brain-dead, incoherent, and will remain that way. We need to look at the resources used to maintain life for these people and weigh them against the options. If a person is merely retarded but can walk, and talk, there is no excuse to play God and execute them since their upkeep is minimal. But, if they require life support, well, that is not an execution, but a resource decision made by sober experts who can directly use the money saved to maintain or help those with a chance of recovering. We can’t let our idealism prevent us being practical. We can’t let our fear of abuse lead to total neglect. Thanks.
Yes, they are human. Just because they had the misfortune to be born without part of their brain doesn’t make them any less a human. I suppose, though, that it would depend entirely on ones definition of “human”. I have a friend that has a son, now 12, that was born without the vast majority of his brain. He wasn’t supposed to live past the age of 3 months. Yet he is now 12 years old. He is confined to a wheelchair and he can’t talk. Is he human? Try telling his loving parents that he is not.
If I had been born without my arms and/or legs, would I not be a human? Yes I would be.
quote by msmith537:
“Don’t not confuse “equal rights” with “being equal”. We are not all equal.”
I don’t believe that I am confusing anything. I said that some people think they are better than others and that is the problem. The reality is that no one is any better than anyone else. In your example you used trying out for football. Just because you may be better at football than me does not make you any more of a human than me. To me, being equal and equal rights go hand in hand with each other. You, as a human, are equal to me, also a human. You have every one of the same rights, as a human, that I, also a human, have. We all look different but we are the same. We all know different things, but we are the same. I make just about enough money to get from payday to payday. Bill Gates has enough money to get past each payday and then some. Am I less than him? No. Do I have the equal right to make myself financially equal to him? Sure I do. So do you. Therefore, we are all equal.