251–260 of 275 posts
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"You can give a short person a step more easily..." Once you get into the territory of cognitive abilities, it is the other way round. Making a dumb person smart is nigh impossible, while you can dull a bright intellect with all sorts of external interventions (various medications or drugs come to mind).
Are people asking for that? I’ve never heard anybody ask for that. What I have heard people with mental disabilities ask for is accommodations. Don’t put someone who gets panic attacks on call. Let people take medications that helps them without stigmatizing it. Don't mock someone with Tourette’s syndrome when they have a vocal tick. Provide plenty of pto to those with chronic migraines. Small boxes like those help m…
"Don't allow mathematically talented kids to take advanced algebra in the name of equity," is an attempt to re-create a classless society in school, and I hate the idea approximately as much as I hated my early years in late stage Czechoslovak Communist regime. Not least because there always is an elite class of ideological mandarins which makes itself exempt from the rules pushed on everyone else. We called it "the Nomenklatura" in the old Soviet Bloc: the list of privileged names. Once you are on it, you belong to modern nobility, the rest are peasants in better clothing.
Also, what do you think about overdiagnosis of ADHD and consequent overprescription of Ritalin in the US? Might there be other ulterior motives than just money?
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Can you point me exactly where I insulted you? I don't see any insult.
(I'm not him.) > So you mean saying "oh poor you!" giving a sad look and moving on with your day? This was insulting.
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(I'm not him.) > So you mean saying "oh poor you!" giving a sad look and moving on with your day? This was insulting.
It's way worse if you're the person on the receiving side of that.
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This is probably a vain attempt by management to put a shine on a cost cutting exercise. There is a poisonous ideology at work in the background but ultimately defunding schools comes from a desire for more inequality, not less.
"A desire for more inequality"? That smacks of "good people support Policy X, even if it achieves the opposite of its goals in the long run. To acknowledge that and oppose Policy X, even on its own merits, makes you evil in intent." Few people actually have desires like "I want more inequality", even if they oppose a policy which intends to decrease it.
It's dressed up differently. They talk about cutting "bloated" public sector budgets or the necessity of austerity.
Nobody calls themselves anti choice or pro death or pro war either but lots of people are.
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It's way worse if you're the person on the receiving side of that.
You put words in his mouth, which is rude. He was on the receiving end of it, not me, but I can still see that what you did was insulting.
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I understand this criticism but I am not sure what you are posting it in response to or what arguments you are assigning to the discussion. My point is simply that the story focuses on an aspect of life of some emotional and philosophical significance and does what it sets out to do fairly well. It's not attempting to critique social norms as they precisely are but just the general concept of celebrating hierarchy vs…
That's what I was getting at. As I see it, the story postulates a hardcore version of the ‘equality of outcome’ approach, particularly in the social aspect. I don't think anyone who's not completely marginalized subscribes to full-blown equality of outcome even just in the economic sense, much less in the social perspective. The US left do advocate for something resembling weak ‘equality of outcome’ in that poor and…
The story itself is pretty light on discussing any specific norm (other than maybe gender, but I think that just wasn't on the author's radar), whether economic or social, but it does tackle the general sense of 'master' vs. 'slave' morality as described by Nietzsche, which is somewhat perpendicular to the left-right spectrum and shows up at both of its ends. Harrison is parodied as the extreme 'master' who justifies seizing power as a natural birthright deriving from his absurd set of qualities, and the government is parodied as the extreme form of 'slave' morality where nothing counts beyond the good intentions of people and any form of competence is seen as dangerous and unfair.
Several years ago I participated in a local writing anthology that was about "Near Myths", i.e. taking existing myths and fairy tales and twisting them in some way. I wasn't feeling inspired by any until I thought of Harrison Bergeron, which was a childhood favorite story of mine and left a lasting impression. I decided to twist the story and make it about a world in which everyone had to constantly be coming up with…
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you got any books to recommend learning about all that?
"The Bolshevik Myth: An Anarchist’s Eyewitness Account of the Betrayal and Failure of the Russian Communist Revolution" I also recommend, "The Struggle Against the State". It is a series of articles written by Nestor Makhno who was a Ukrainian anarchist who led a movement against German occupation, collaborationists and then the first red army before being exiled.