Being able to maintain an intense degree of physical activity for a long-ish period of time, such as a basketball game or a marathon, is useful. That's the nature of the physical reality we inhabit.
But we didn't build our society around assuming that the gross majority of people can sustain that kind of activity. What makes you think that's any different?
Now, actually I'm a full-on transhumanist. And the Culture is a post-scarcity society. Then can just give everyone bionic eyes and laser comms modules and neural lace backups and a module to use gravity as a sense and the ability to hold their breath in space for ten minutes and effector fields while they're at it and whatnot. But--
--Firstly, that's the Culture, they can also build a society where not everyone needs all those to get by, so they made a society where those are all optional. There's a reason for that.
Secondly, we're not a post-scarcity society. We don't have the option of providing that degree of assistive technology and upgrades to everyone. Our only option is working towards a society where we don't assume universal ability like that.
I fear you've wandered away from the origin of the debate. The question was about someone with a deficit blaming society for their issues, rather than the deficit itself. Sure, to the degree that society could help and doesn't, it might be blamed for making the problem worse. But it is not at fault for the issue. That is caused by the existence of the deficit and the way it makes things harder as a result of reality being what it is.
It's a limited point, and I really don't think it's all that controversial. I'm not saying society shouldn't bother helping, I'm just saying society isn't the core problem. To put it another wa, fixing someone's blindness would resolve an issue more completely than any accommodation of society could.
Unless, of course, the issue is something that is only an issue because society is actively choosing to punish it. (Which is why I suggested that blindness is a bad example, but sexual minorities would be a better one.)
The question was about someone with a deficit blaming society for their issues, rather than the deficit itself. Sure, to the degree that society could help and doesn't, it might be blamed for making the problem worse. But it is not at fault for the issue. That is caused by the existence of the deficit and the way it makes things harder as a result of reality being what it is.
This has some really problematic connotations I'm not sure I like at all. Considering that, you know, literally, everyone is defective in some way. Take glasses for example. over a good chunk of the population need glasses to some degree yet it's so normalized that nobody even thinks that they're disabled or defective. About 75% of adults use some sort of vision correction, according to The Vision Council, and that means there are 164 million people worldwide who wear glasses in some fashion.
Yet without those glasses or even eye contact, we wouldn't be able to get by in society at all due to serious nearsightedness, etc. Yet nobody thinks this is a problem.
Now imagine a world where 75% of the population were blind. It'd be treated exactly the same way glasses are... so normalized that entire buildings and other things would be designed around such things in mind, etc. Audiobooks would be far more popular, etc. Even things like stoves would be built differently to accommodate those who couldn't see that well.
This has some really problematic connotations I'm not sure I like at all. Considering that, you know, literally, everyone is defective in some way. Take glasses for example. over a good chunk of the population need glasses to some degree yet it's so normalized that nobody even thinks that they're disabled or defective. About 75% of adults use some sort of vision correction, according to The Vision Council, and that means there are 164 million people worldwide who wear glasses in some fashion.
Yet without those glasses or even eye contact, we wouldn't be able to get by in society at all due to serious nearsightedness, etc. Yet nobody thinks this is a problem.
Now imagine a world where 75% of the population were blind. It'd be treated exactly the same way glasses are... so normalized that entire buildings and other things would be designed around such things in mind, etc. Audiobooks would be far more popular, etc. Even things like stoves would be built differently to accommodate those who couldn't see that well.
The fact that we need glasses is not society's fault though, is it? If society made the problem worse by banning eyeglasses they could be blamed for that. But the original problem was not actually caused by society, it was caused by genetics.
It is a very limited point I'm making, and I don't think it's controversial.
Oh for god's sake, I'm not saying that because bad eyesight is caused by genetics we should shoot everybody with bad eyesight.
Once more, I am making a very limited point that the original cause of this sort of issue isn't society. Nature is to blame, except in so far as whatever degree society actually makes the issue worse by refusing to do what it can.
By all means if we can fix the underlying issue with medicine we should. But society isn't to blame for people being blind or needing eyeglasses or whatever else in the first place. That's a misplacement of blame.
This really is a simple, empirical question of causation that should be obviously, trivially true. Society passed no law making people blind or nearsighted. That was just bad luck.
The fact that we need glasses is not society's fault though, is it? If society made the problem worse by banning eyeglasses they could be blamed for that. But the original problem was not actually caused by society, it was caused by genetics.
It is a very limited point I'm making, and I don't think it's controversial.
I think you seem to be missing the point here... We're discussing WHY people seem to not want to accommodate things like blindness, etc.
Take life during covid and before that, for instance. Before covid, nobody seemed willing to see working from home as a viable way of life and pretty much treated the disabled like shit for wanting to work from home, etc. Nobody was willing to hire disabled people for various reasons similar to that. But then now that millions of non-disabled people were forced to work from home, all of a sudden it was far more socially acceptable to work from home. all disabled people were suddenly being hired, etc.
So this tells me that nobody wants to accommodate minorities at all unless it also benefits THEM in some way too. Do you see a problem with this or not? pretty sure part of this is definitely society's fault.
That was a bit hyperbolic of me, yeah. but honestly, it's not like you need to go nearly that far for it to be troubling. Gene-editing technologies in the near-future aren't going to be cheap, right? In something like the Culture, you could at least make the case that the society could simply eliminate disabilities for everyone, going forward if not retroactively, but in Current Year it'd be unevenly distributed, exacerbating existing inequalities. And people would absolutely use that as further evidence of poor people being unworthy of support and compassion. It's not even a hypothetical. Blaming poor people for being poor is basically standard rhetoric these days.
I think you seem to be missing the point here... We're discussing WHY people seem to not want to accommodate things like blindness, etc.
Take life during covid and before that, for instance. Before covid, nobody seemed willing to see working from home as a viable way of life and pretty much treated the disabled like shit for wanting to work from home, etc. Nobody was willing to hire disabled people for various reasons similar to that. But then now that millions of non-disabled people were forced to work from home, all of a sudden it was far more socially acceptable to work from home. all disabled people were suddenly being hired, etc.
So this tells me that nobody wants to accommodate minorities at all unless it also benefits THEM in some way too. Do you see a problem with this or not? pretty sure part of this is definitely society's fault.
I have no issue with any of that. I've repeatedly emphasized that society should be blamed for any way in which it makes a situation worse by responding poorly.
My only objection was to a comment about people with a deficit blaming society for the problem of the deficit itself. Taking the argument that far makes no causal sense, unless the issue isn't inherent to the condition and only in society's reaction to it, which isn't true of something like blindness, which is a disabling issue in itself, but would be true of something like a sexual minority, which is only a problem if society actively discriminates against it.
Well, clearly you've never had to deal with ableist attitudes from people if you don't seem to think that discrimination against those with disabilities such as blindness and deafness isn't even a serious thing to contend with?
Because as a deaf person, I can tell you that ableist attitudes are definitely very pervasive in society as a whole. you've even got people being ableist towards others without even realizing that they're actively discriminating against others because such ableist attitudes are so freakin' normalized.
Well, clearly you've never had to deal with ableist attitudes from people if you don't seem to think that discrimination against those with disabilities such as blindness and deafness isn't even a serious thing to contend with?
Because as a deaf person, I can tell you that ableist attitudes are definitely very pervasive in society as a whole. you've even got people being ableist towards others without even realizing that they're actively discriminating against others because such ableist attitudes are so freakin' normalized.
For the billionth time, I am perfectly okay with blaming society for whatever they do that makes the problem worse. I am not disagreeing with you in any way. The only, only, only thing I am saying is that society did not literally create the disabilities in the first place. So it can't be blamed for that portion of the whole issue.
For the billionth time, I am perfectly okay with blaming society for whatever they do that makes the problem worse. The only, only, only thing I am saying is that society did not literally create the disabilities in the first place. So it can't be blamed for that portion of the whole issue.
Nobody said that society created the disabilities in the first place?? where the hell did you even get that from.
People were saying that those disabilities would be considered minor inconveniences, on par with needing glasses or hearing aids, if it wasn't for society making it a bigger problem than it needed to be. Or did you just honestly misunderstand that completely?
Nobody said that society created the disabilities in the first place?? where the hell did you even get that from.
People were saying that those disabilities would be considered minor inconveniences, on par with needing glasses or hearing aids, if it wasn't for society making it a bigger problem than it needed to be. Or did you just honestly misunderstand that completely?
It was something Evil Plan said way back about people blaming society for all the difficulty and not the disability. The disability is obviously partly to blame because society did not create it.
Well, I definitely think you misunderstood Evil Plan because I'm pretty sure how you interpreted that was not what he said, or meant to say. But yeah, dropping the subject now.
Because as a deaf person, I can tell you that ableist attitudes are definitely very pervasive in society as a whole. you've even got people being ableist towards others without even realizing that they're actively discriminating against others because such ableist attitudes are so freakin' normalized.
I have a hereditary eye disease that knocked out the entire right side of my FOV from birth, plus right-side tinnitus from a few too many metal concerts. If I could press a button to erase blindness (20/25 vision or better in both eyes) and deafness across the entire population, I'd press it immediately without a second thought. The Culture has that capability and I'd consider it immoral to not use.
The Culture is post-scarcity transhumanist society. People can be sentient clouds. There is no reason The Culture should impose physical standards on everyone because in The Culture, none of those different physical capabilities particularly matter. So it's a bit moot.
I have a hereditary eye disease that knocked out the entire right side of my FOV from birth, plus right-side tinnitus from a few too many metal concerts. If I could press a button to erase blindness (20/25 vision or better in both eyes) and deafness across the entire population, I'd press it immediately without a second thought. The Culture has that capability and I'd consider it immoral to not use.
See, the bolded red line is where you lost me completely.
I'm all for people making that choice for THEMSELVES. Do you want to cure yourself? That's cool! that's fine with me.
But, I'm not cool with random strangers making that choice for me without even taking into consideration my situation. I was deaf from birth, so as an adult I'd have to have tons of very expensive hearing and speech therapy and it would take decades before I would be able to seem "normal" in comparison to other hearing people out there. Not to mention, one of the benefits of being deaf is that I can live in super-cheap places that nobody else wants because it's a noisy area. I live in a high-traffic place where cars go by all the time and airplanes fly overhead on a regular basis. For most hearing people such a place would be unbearable to live in. Me? I can sleep like a baby in a place like that. I love the home I'm in.
So, if you were to suddenly give me my hearing back just because? well, I'd be forced to have to move to a more expensive place, go broke doing therapy to even fit into society, etc. But of course, you wouldn't even care about the difficulties people would have adjusting, do you? To me, that kind's a real dick move.
You just can't wave a magic wand around and then suddenly expect the ex-deaf and ex-blind people to know how to be "normal" right away and have them instantly know what anything sounds or looks like.
...Yeah, at this point, get your own dang thread if you want to continue that discussion, please.
It's honestly painful to read, especially when I have some pretty strong opinions on all of this! But this is not the place to air them, and this discussion is going in circles at this point anyway.
Yay, it's that time of the year when I no longer feel like shit constantly. Now to just… present more original ordinary people and procedural details of a fictional world in a manner I find sufficiently credible. Aw fuck.
Sufficiently Advanced Technology - Temporary Storage
[personal narrative][flagged for deletion - invasive supposition][extrapolation level n6][unContacted local]
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
It took a weird mix to intentionally join the PRT - not to be shuffled in from the remains of the Army, or join up because the local police weren't hiring, but to actively seek out the Parahuman Response Teams as your career - you had to have enough confidence, arrogance, or anger to think you could tangle with parahumans, but also enough humility, obedience, or brutal acceptance of reality to know you wouldn't be doing that 99% of the time, that usually you were going to be a glorified jail guard, CSI clerk, and babysitter. At most you might shoot back against some idiot who thought being a cape's flunky was a good idea (and try to bury the doubt that night that asked if you weren't just the same thing with a badge).
Or you could grow up with your foster parents' stories of service having captured your attention entirely, and not let the actual process wear off every bit of shine from the job's ideals, like Rachel Kurtz had.
It had been a long five years. Seven years including her AA, not that she'd used any 'theories of justice' or even most of the investigation procedures she still had textbooks detailing. Half the other troopers her age had come in straight from high school, and were no worse off when it came to bagging whoever's blood, protoplasm, or still-wriggling body parts were left after a cape fight. Education didn't do a lot for that. Except make her parents happy. Which had probably been worth two years.
But it didn't change the work. Follow the capes, support the capes, clean up after the capes, block the brick-shaped anger hurled at the capes. You had to convince yourself that the PRT did vital work that kept everything moving smoothly, because what else did you have? You knew you were never going to do something amazing. Maybe confoam an unconscious villain, at best.
Until Contact grew out of the pavement (or the clouds, or the classified files, depending on who you asked) and suddenly the dream had gotten a new paint job, shiny chrome that you didn't need to polish up.
"What are you waiting for, Kurtz, an invitation from Kaiser?"
"He left that on my synagogue," she snapped at her partner, then reached out with both hands to grab the bulky new overplate, set it onto her armored vest, and turned around. "Just get the damn back on, Wolanski."
She knew how heavy that part was from having put Jan's on him. She wasn't sure if the big boxy structure on the back plate was the shield or the battery or some other component - but the briefing from Kassabian had stressed that the whole damn thing was the real shield, no leaving bits off because they were uncomfortable, and ditch the whole thing and run if part of it broke. Especially a glowing part. The backplate thumped onto her. "Ey! You know the Director won't let you sit this one out just because you break your partner's ribs, right?"
"You wouldn't let a little thing like that stop you." Jan Wolanski's confidence was proportional to his size, and the blonde was an absolute wall of beef. And after two years as patrol partners, he could read her better than anyone not related to her.
Kurtz returned an absent-minded hum ("It's called a phatic response. Shows you're listening," her father's voice added from somewhere in memory) while she surveyed her weapon - the whole kit had been set out by the armorers for each trooper, which was way off from SOP, but this operation was authorized from the top and bigger than anything she'd seen the ENE launch in her entire service. The right thing to do was accept the unexpected, not assume there was somebody with powers yanking at brains just because protocol was off.
It was a toy. About the only part she could recognize was the stock, the same as - hell, maybe grabbed from - the Remington 870 that was normally in the trunk safe of her and Wolanski's patrol car. It technically had a barrel, but it was squared, way too short, and not connected to any ammunition. During yesterday's all-day practice with the Frankenstein gun, it had a bunch of cables and wires attaching the barrel to the whirring block taking the place of the magazine and chamber; today there were curved aluminum shells bolted over those, making it look a little less Tinker movie prop and a little more like metal fungus.
It had about the same heft, at least. "Space guns," she said, grumbling kept suitably quiet.
Jan still caught it, of course. "If it works," he shrugged. Rachel could never decide if his casual acceptance towards life in general was infuriating or soothing. At least he listened to her kvetch. "Definitely hurts."
"You didn't have to volunteer," she said, or her mother said through her. It was one thing to be subjected to tested Tinker shit that they knew would work ("Claim to know! And they can't explain any of it!" her mental image of her father interjected), it was another for Wolanski to be willing to take a hit from the magic science guns Kassabian and the Boston armorer had whipped up. Four hits, although at least two of those had been with the shield turned on and it had protected his ass.
Jan just shrugged, and hefted his own 'stunner,' sliding the strap on and pulling it up into an elbow carry. "If I'm going to shoot people with it, I should know how it feels." Wolanski was a giant teddy bear, especially for a trooper. "Kurtz. You're still staring at it."
He was right. "It's a gun." She rolled it over in her head, but neither of her parents had lodged witty comments this time. "Why does that feel different?" Rachel tilted the gun, set the stock to her shoulder, lowered it.
"When was the last time you shot your gun?"
That took a little more thought, but of course she'd had to fill out an incident report. "October, that fascist 'initiation.'" The one Wellerman had been late providing backup on. No casualties, thank God.
"Four, five shots?"
"Five."
"And you weren't trying to hit. Don't say otherwise, I know you." He slid his stunner down across his belt, leaning one arm on it, carefully. Jan hadn't broken much standard issue before figuring out how to be careful with it. "Sergeant said this has five hundred shots, Director said use every one. That's why it's different."
He'd hit it. "Yeah. We don't shoot because that escalates. Because we don't want them to escalate."
"Because we're not cops," Jan said, starting up the old argument. Rachel waved it off with a scowl. "Because," he continued, finger raised for attention, "The fascists are an enemy army occupying our city."
She grunted. It wasn't a phatic response this time, just non-commitment. He was right, dammit. It just wasn't something either of them liked to admit. "We can't take them down without hurting civilians."
"Couldn't, maybe," Jan admitted. He'd never been in favor of that reasoning anyway, but that was part of his whole argument on why the Parahuman Response Teams weren't cops. He disappointed his father every day he was off being a grunt instead of a grad student, but the younger Wolanksi wasn't a meathead, even when he claimed to be. "Now the civilians have shields. We have shields. The dragon is glass. If we aren't here to remove the threat, why are we here?"
Sometimes it amazed Kurtz that Jan was even in the PRT, given how sure he was that they served order, not justice. But he was a stubborn ox, for sure. "If - if! - I agree, you're saying the Director herself is willing to finally go to real war with the gangs. Gang."
"The fascists and their backers," Jan nodded. "But why stop there?"
"It's not a miracle gun. Kassabian just said it should work on Brutes like those giant bitches, go right through Kaiser's armor, that kind of stuff. They have a guy in Hartford that turns into a shadow, does that work on him? There's other gangs, and war means war." Rachel knew she was just nervous, but curtailing rambling wasn't one of her strong points.
"War means admitting we didn't control the city before. That the government didn't have a monopoly of force." Wolanski listened to books on tape in his time off. Not for a degree, just to help him argue with his father in Polish over the phone. Meathead, ha! "But if we are doing it now? It's a change in the weather."
"Weather is more reliable than politics," she decided, finally, finally managing to turn for the door.
Barton and Kessler were a bit impatient by the time they got to the motor pool. "About time you ladies showed up," Angela Barton said, pinching off her cigarette and discarding it.
"She's still saying that?" Rachel asked Wolanski, without looking at the other half of their detached team.
"He's an honorary lady," Maria Kessler said, already heading for the driver's side door of the Hummer. Wolanski just smiled, his big earnest smile. The sap.
"Rear guard on a prison transfer," Barton muttered. "Who'd we piss off?"
As usual, her mouth threatened to get Rachel in trouble. "Gee, why are the lesbians, the Jew, and the communist doing rear guard when fascists are planning to bust out Hookwolf, Barton?"
"The Director wants to make sure they only get the door open from the outside," Wolanski interjected, betraying his big goofy grin with the furrowing of his thick blonde brows.
"Fuck me," Barton said, and stubbed out her butt with more force than it needed. "Fine, let's go shoot some Nazis. Non-lethally."
You had to be familiar with Angela, who was easily Rachel's superior at the art of griping, to catch the excitement under her cynicism. But Kurtz felt it too.
This was a big change. Monumental, maybe, nationwide, worldwide. But that part wasn't really her concern.
I hope it won't disappoint people too much if the fight itself isn't all "on camera" - I'd actually trimmed back from an initial intention to show the fighting, intending to focus on the collateral, repercussions, and the like. (The next two perspectives are in Contact HQ and the PRT Director Conference Call, for example).
I hope it won't disappoint people too much if the fight itself isn't all "on camera" - I'd actually trimmed back from an initial intention to show the fighting, intending to focus on the collateral, repercussions, and the like. (The next two perspectives are in Contact HQ and the PRT Director Conference Call, for example).
That honestly seems better, at least from my perspective. A little bit of fighting can be good, but too much and I just get bored of it and start skimming.
