[ExI] are we not just one race, the human race?

[Anne Corwin]

Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Anne is talking about society's attitude towards people with
> autism. For example, see this article:

> http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-03/ff_autism

Bingo.  

And also, if anyone does read that article and the comments attached to it, you should also read the following (from Amanda's blog):

http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?page_id=258
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?page_id=294
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?page_id=462
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=50
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=293
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=90

I'm not up for a big mailing list debate right now about anything and I'm actually sort of sorry I posted the comment I did last night, seeing as if I write something like that, people have every right and reason to ask for specific examples.  

But for starters: I can at least point to the principle identified in common parlance as "procreative beneficence".  This is a view shared by Peter Singer and several others, and it suggests that parents have an obligation to bring into being the child capable of leading the "best possible life".  However, ideas of what configurations allow this "best possible life" are often unthinkingly shaped by social norms that in actuality may have little to do with a person's intrinsic capacity for leading a good and reasonable life.

I sometimes feel like I can't so much as defend the right of a deaf person to refuse a cochlear implant (or to not select *against* a deaf embryo) without being told that I'm advocating letting people run around injecting themselves full of arsenic (something which I would guess even libertarians would try to discourage if it was their brother doing it, even if they wouldn't want a law against it), or purposely giving their kids cancer.  It just boggles the mind how great some people's tendency toward "busybody" monitoring of other people's configuration choices is.

E.g., if I can be allowed the indulgence of picking on James Hughes for a moment (which I'm sure he's used to from me on this subject), he wrote in "Citizen Cyborg" that (see pages 250-251):

"For instance, autism is a brain disorder one of whose symptoms is an inability to understand or interpret other people's feelings.  Although the autistic can have wonderful compensatory savant abilities, just as with blindness and other disabilities, society has an obligation to ensure that as few people as possible suffer from this disability, and that we try to find a cure."

Now, to be totally fair, Hughes has adjusted his views on autism specifically somewhat (though I would really love it if he'd re-write that section of the book if he ever does a 10th Anniversary reprint or something, because it makes my skin crawl even to look at that particular section) over the past few years.  

Another example: from the Google News archive, an article on homosexuality in Time magazine (1965) entitled "Homosexuality Can Be Cured" included the following text:

"One reason why homosexuals are so rarely  cured is that they rarely try treatment. Too many of them actually  believe that they are happy and satisfied the way they are."

Another article on homosexuality from Time (1966) entitled "The Homosexual In America" stated much of the psychological/sociological consensus at the time as follows:

"There is no denying the considerable talent of a great many homosexuals,  and ideally, talent alone is what should count. But the great artists  so often cited as evidence of the homosexual's creativity—the  Leonardos and Michelangelos —are probably the exceptions of genius.  For the most part, thinks Los Angeles Psychiatrist Edward Stainbrook,  homosexuals are failed artists, and their special creative gift a myth.  No less an authority than Somerset Maugham felt that the homosexual,  "however subtly he sees life, cannot see it whole," and lacks "the deep  seriousness over certain things that normal men take seriously ... He  has small power of invention, but a wonderful gift for delightful  embroidery. He has vitality, brilliance, but seldom strength.""

(I am often astounded at the parallels between writings on homosexuality in the 1960s and writings on autism -- "functioning levels" notwithstanding -- in the 1990s-2000s, frankly.)

But changing views in response to new information notwithstanding, I still think that book passage stands out as a good (albeit out of date) example of WHY I think that the sci-fi scenario of "humans meet aliens, hilarity ensues" could potentially lead to attempts at coercive modification or at least "shaming" of people who would dare to bring a "suboptimal" creature into existence.  

And that is to say that even highly educated people are capable of being extremely ignorant without even knowing it.  This is not an insult -- it is just a fact.  It isn't even a value judgment exactly -- it's more of an attempt to point out a "weak area" in how some people approach various subjects.  When someone doesn't know how deep a subject goes, and they don't collide with that subject often in the course of their daily business, they are apt to assume (for the sake of sheer and understandable cognitive parsimony) that the subject simply doesn't *get* any deeper than "pop science" or superficial (and possibly outmoded) description.

Nobody can be highly educated in all areas simultaneously, which means that when people are *generally* well-educated, they still maintain a large portion of their "picture of the world" on the basis of media fictions, distortions, rumors, urban legends, "pop" science, etc.  This can't be helped totally, but it can be remedied in part by pooling more accurate knowledge in more visible places, and drawing attention the difficulties in distinguishing a subject's facts from its collected mythologies in a venue at least passingly as accessible to the casual learner as mass media is.  

So, in other words, there are a lot of smart, well-educated people in the world who presently believe that huge numbers of perfectly happy and capable (albeit not in "typical" ways necessarily) are in fact suffering for the mere fact of existing and being configured as they are.  

Hence, if Earth were visited by a cadre of humanoid-looking aliens whose Shiny Gadget Level was approximately equal to ours, but who were all non-hearing (and who didn't see any reason why they should be hearing, and who had perfectly workable non-audio communication systems, etc.), I could see many humans at the very least feeling as if they had a moral duty to feel sorry for the aliens, seeing as they would never be able to enjoy opera or the sound of a river or what-have-you.  

- Anne


"Like and equal are not the same thing at all!"
- Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time"
       
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