so then Rick, now that you admit this, im not surprised at all that it makes no difference to you even if the person is purely incompetent and didnt know what they were doing…not surprised at all because the underlying reason is ignorance and alot of prejudice which really sucks
if in your brilliant mind, it makes no difference if the person knew what they were doing or not, then if a person with alzheimers doesnt know what theyre doing and they go wandering across town in their underwear and walk into traffic and cause a huge accident and upset people, then you brilliant person do not care what they didnt know what they were doing, you just think they are an asshole…having alzheimers, what an asshole move, huh Rick?
I’ll be happy to answer you question tonight when I am on my computer unread of my phone.
However you have not answered the questions I posed in posts #68 & #108
And I will add one moe here
Isn’t calling a train conductor’s PTSD an occupational hazard at least as callous and uncaring as what you are accusing me of?
Rick, if im home tinight thats fine. I didnt say that about occupatjonal hazard. Someone else made that comment. I dont think its the best choice of words, however Im sure you get the jist of what he meant. He explained that the damage to a comolete stranger who is aware his job includes the posibility of that occuring. So while I do feel badly for the stranger who witnesses it, no, it doesnt compare to the pain and tragedy of the person directly involved. Do you think the pain is greater for a cop who sees a shootng or the person directly involved? Do you think a doctor who seesa stranger die in the ER worse off than the patient?
First:
Set the wayback machine for 30 years ago April of 1982.
I was headed to work on the Hollywood Freeway at about 10 AM in Hollywood. Traffic was the usual 55 MPH with about 2 car links between cars. Way too close to be safe. I was driving a 1974 Honda Civic, one of the first generation Civic, you know the ones that weren’t much bigger than an office desk and had the craahworthiness of a paper airplane.
All of a sudden the full sized pickup truck in front me made an abrupt lane change. About 100 yards ahead in my lane was a mid 1970s Ford full sized car (LTD or whatever they were calling them at that time) It was facing me.
[thought in my head] Guy must have spun the car, I can stop and get him straightened out[/TIH]
(approx .25 seconds later) Holy fucking shit, he is driving toward me!
(car is now 2 car lengths away from me) I glance quickly to my right and jerk the wheel of the Civic. The Ford passes so close to me, if the window was down, I could have wiped the dust off the side of it with my finger. It seemed to take most of the morning for all of that HUGE car to go past me. NO shit I was not clear of the lane as he passed me. If I live to 100 I will never forget that image in my head.
I pulled over at the first call box and reported a wrong way driver to the CHP
I got off the freeway and drove up a road near the freeway a couple of exits and then got back on.
The wrong way driver had pulled over about 1 mile up the road from where he had entered the freeway and a CHP officer was there. I pulled over and walked back to the officer and asked if I could speak with him. He asked what I wanted. My response was “Sir I don’t know what you are planning to cite this asshole for, but he almost killed me a couple minutes ago, and I consider that pretty serious. I hope you will take that into account as you are citing him.”
the officer thanked me and asked for a business card for the his report.
I gave him one.
Now I don’t know if that driver had dementia or Alzheimer’s or was just dumber than a bag of hair, to my mind he was an asshole. People that try to kill me are assholes. I would like to apologize if that upsets you, but if someone tries to kill me, I find that very upsetting. (No shit, every customer I saw that day commented that I was a white as a ghost) Maybe it would not bother you, but it gave me the shakes.
Secondly:
Nice apple to kumquats comparison there Sparky. When was the last time you heard of a train swerving to avoid someone/something on the tracks?
Cars can maneuver and can stop in a distance measured in feet not hundreds of yards.
Ever seen a entire highway come to a stop to avoid a dog that is running in the roadway? I have. Several times. Ever seen a train do that? Didn’t think so.
So your question is not valid. If a person with dementia or Alzheimer’s did get hit on the highway, I would most likely be upset at the driver that wasn’t paying attention.
Thirdly:
My father had Alzheimer’s and for the last 10 years of his life he had pretty much no clue as to who I was, or who my children were. To say that my father not knowing me broke my heart would be an understatement. It tore me in half. I love my dad, and I would gladly give up the rest of my life for some additional time with him in his prime.
We had to take his car away from him long before he was totally out of it. (he still had the motor skills to drive a car, but the judgement was lacking.) To do that required the assistance of the Police dept and the city attorney. It was what had to be done, not fun, not easy but it had to be done.
So if the person was truly out of it, the asshole in my mind might be the family/ caregiver that didn’t take steps to prevent injury to innocent people at their father’s hand.
Now it is my turn to ask a question. A person texting while driving, probably has no more awareness of their surrounding than an Alzheimer’s sufferer. So if a teenager is texting and hit and kills a 10 year old riding his bicycle is the texter an asshole?
Why is that teenager any different than the Alzheimer’s sufferer?
In fact, the first thing that crossed my mind when I read that he smiled and waved was that he was trying to convey an “it’s all right” message to the engineer, precisely so that he wouldn’t feel too much guilt/trauma. So, I assumed that he had been a bit thoughtful, at least.
Basically, for me it amounts to “innocent until proven guilty”. Having known four different people who commited suicide, plus one who fortunately didn’t but who was suicidal too and with whom I discussed enough to realize that he was completely “out of reach” for me at the time (I mean there was no common basis to discuss his predicament rationally), my default assumption is that people who kill themselves aren’t assholes but indeed seriously ill.
And that negative consequences for others are only an unfortunate side-effect, at least most of the time (for instance, the pain inflicted on loved ones is completely irrelevant for the father of a 7 yo who is fully convinced that his daughter will be better off and much happier with him dead, even though you know he’s a perfectly fit father and the daughter will obviously be devastated)
By the way, the issue of suicide is about the only one I’m in strong disagreement with you, and I noticed that it’s a topic you’re often discussing and feel very strongly about. It’s going to look like bazaar psychology, but I wonder if your sister’s suicide didn’t leave suh a mark that you’re unable to detach your view of suicide in general from that suicide in particular and what you felt at the time.
The texter is presumably of sound mind and choose to text while driving. The Alzheimer’s sufferer is presumably seriously confused through no fault of his own. He’s certainly a danger, but certainly not an asshole.
That is a perfectly valid question to ask, and one reason I usually mention her death in discussions of suicide. It is a relevant fact because I do have a bias based upon experience.
As I have said, I do understand that there are suicides who really are completely detached from all reality and can be said to no longer be responsible for their actions, I just don’t think it’s the default condition.
That may have been the suicider’s intention but that is not the effect. If he’s being that “thoughtful” and thinking of his effect on others then I can’t accept he’s so far gone as to have no control over his actions and no responsibility for traumatizing others.
Since we’re comparing all this to dementia: there’s more than one sort of dementia, and in any case, you don’t go to bed normal one night and wake unable to recognized your loved ones the next morning. “Being an asshole” is not a signature symptom of dementia, some people with it are assholes some are not. For quite awhile after symptoms first start the person is still capable of interacting with others and choosing how they respond to frustrations and difficulties. Likewise, jumping in front of a train is not a universal symptom of depression, most of those who use trains to kill themselves choose to use a train and aren’t just wandering around in a daze. While a man might think his young child would somehow be better off without him, he can choose to kill himself in private or choose to blow his head off in front of the kid, and one of those choices makes him an asshole.
While I have sympathy for the mentally ill and want to see them get help, I don’t think all forms of mental illness are an automatic pass for any sort of behavior. I don’t assume mental illness automatically equals incompetence even as I acknowledge that in some cases it does.
Here is another example of a sentence written in English with nouns and.verbs and stuff…The dog checkered past a taxi while a tall yellow hat jumped and a ladybug crawled peacefully on a leaf