An Open Letter To Closed Minds

[filkertom]

From a dKos diarist who calls himself The Gimp.

Comments

[caraig.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

You reminded me why single payer, or at least a strong public option, is really the only fair, non-profit way to handle health care. It just won't work properly otherwise.

I've been wrestling with this issue more than usual lately, not for any particular reason. I don't think the package Congress gave us is really all that great. Better than nothing? I... I'm not sure. At the same time, there must be some sort of government program; yes, I know that sticks in the craw of every libertarian, but there are only two ways that guys like The Gimp will get anything resembling proper health care: Charity, and Government-provided. And Charity is unreliable. I'm not certain, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a drop in charitable contributions over the past economic crisis... except, ironically, in tithes, which are a sort of mandatory taxation, aren't they? The point is, Charity is unreliable, and you'll never get enough through it. That leaves the government. Our rather broken, squabbling, thousand-headed government.

I fear that none of this is going to work at all well until government is rebuilt from the ground up, and the political "dialogue" in this country reaches a more mature level. Otherwise not only is nothing going to work right, including much-needed health care, but the rhetoric and childish violence is just going to be turned up, up, up until it's not so childish anymore, and reasonable discourse becomes impossible.

[amgem.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this, Tom. :)

I'm reposting the link up on my Facebook - there are some folks on my list that ought to read it.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Loved the writing. This needs to be spread around.

By the way, if I read the new bill correctly, I'll have an option for Medicare in August when I turn 55. Don't know if I can afford the part B premiums on my meager retirement, which I'll have to supplement with eBay sales anyhow, but at least I'll have the option, and it may be less than or better than the health insurance I'd get otherwise. However, as some are aware, it is still necessary to have health insurance even with Medicare, whch only covers 80% of what it covers, and leaves the patient stuck with 20% of the bill, while at the same time charging sn exorbitant flat rate of $110 a month for outpatient coverage, even if a person is living on just a few hundred dollars a month from Social Security. That needs to get fixed, either with a sliding scale or by waiving the premiums automatically for low-income folks, or both.

[stone-bitch.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. Like Amgem. I'm reposting it to my FB. For very much the same reason.

[fredhuggins.livejournal.com]

He hit the nail precisely on the head. Anyone who opposes equality, and opposes the concept of "live and let live," is by definition not fueled by justice. And if they're not fueled by justice, they're fueled by greed.

This man has inspired me. We should all treat our "imperfections" as strengths, and as living proof that everybody who claims to have all the answers has none of them. The next time somebody tries to argue creationism to me, I will remove my glasses and point out that God obviously screwed up my eyesight, and that before humans invented these babies, people like me were forced to beg on the street.

Of course, that'll only force the creationists to create some silly revisionist history explaining why bad eyesight is the result of Satanic gay sex. Hey, anything that careens them further away from real life...

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, a scientific, Godless State with no regard to human freedoms could save lots of money for all of its living citizens simply by testing all fetuses and eliminating those, like The Gimp, who are not up to arbitrary standards.

Once you allow government into everyones' lives, it's only a few additional steps before such cost-cutting measures can be enacted.

Personally, I like the world that has the different in it.

Tom

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

As someone who tends to fall further to the right than most of the posters here, I'm curious as to why you lump "Godless" in with people who would force abortions to save costs? Speaking as a Godless Heathen(tm) myself, I find that concept entirely repulsive.

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

I think tcgtrf is under the assumption that one needs an external god to define morality and ethics for humans. This is a mistaken assumption.

Raven

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I'm a witch myself, Raven, and if that's the way you feel, we'll have to agree to disagree. There is little conclusive proof that I am wrong and a great deal of evidence that I am right from observing the behavior of human beings over the last six thousand years.

The reason that I included "Godless" in my descriptor is that the history of the 20th Century indicates that socialistic state power coupled with avowed atheism leads to mass murder. If a state has at least some religious constraints, it has less of a tendency to commit such crimes, especially on innocents.

I mean, seriously, one hundred million dead in the USSR, China, and Cambodia are hard to argue with. As a matter of fact, if humanity managed to eliminate religions, it might be necessary to re-invent them in order to prevent the degree of savagery that our planet saw over the last one hundred years.

In any case, the technology to analyze the genome of unborn children is already going a long way to reducing the number of Downs babies born in the United States. I feel that it is very likely that had the Gimp been conceived now, he would have had a very low liklihood of ever having seen the light of day and we would not now be able, a few decades later, to read his paen to tolerance.

Hell, being *female* is, as we speak, grounds for being aborted in China, India, and several other Asian countries. In some rural areas, the male-to-female ration among teenagers are in the neighborhood of 56-44%. Isn't that a human-rights violation of the lives of *future* women?

Tom

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

Religious statement: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

Granted, stated by a religion you do not follow, but it is the dominant religion in the US at the moment. And I will grant that you follow a relatively peaceful religion, but most aren't so inclined.

Consider: The Crusades, The Burning Times, Radical Islam. Religion doesn't exactly have a stellar track record when it's in power, either.

Also consider: For most people, working out a set of ethics is a process of deciding what their ethics should look like, and then looking for evidence to support it, rather than the other way around. So where to they get their underlying assumptions from?

Food for thought...

Raven

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Religious wars amount to about 8% of the total historic wars of humanity. If you exclude ones involving militant Islam, they drop to about 5%.

What is shocking, though, is the difference in the number of deaths involved. The best authorities on the Witch Hunts put the median numbers of dead at between 50,000 and 60,000. Stalin's Soviet Union killed five hundred times that many "internal enemies" during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

All of the Crusades *together* killed about a million and a half people over a period of two centuries--3% of what Mao's Chinese Communists destroyed. Again, no comparison.

If anything, religion, especially Christianity, could be said to put the breaks on mass murder.

Up to the late 18th and early 19th Century, people did not work out a set of ethics and decide what they should look like--they received them from their parents at a young age. It seems to me, from looking at the state of the world, that this experiment in "do-it-yourself ethics" could be considered a dismal failure.

Tom

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

If anything, religion, especially Christianity, could be said to put the breaks on mass murder.

So why aren't you a Christian? You seem to be arguing in its defense. I personally think that the Christian god (Jesus included) is the moral equivalent of a spoiled brat (I just read an excellent, well-argued post on the matter), though I know and respect that I am in a minority there.

Up to the late 18th and early 19th Century, people did not work out a set of ethics and decide what they should look like--they received them from their parents at a young age. It seems to me, from looking at the state of the world, that this experiment in "do-it-yourself ethics" could be considered a dismal failure.

No, the Western world, for the most part, still follows Judeo-Christian ethics. By working out what ethics looks like, I'm including the method of receiving them unquestioned from their parents. The selection of ethics, whether by conscious choice or by receipt from parents, is still being made before any thought of looking at evidence occurs. Note that I have yet to argue what a set of ethics based on objective evidence would look like, just that most people don't do it.

Raven

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I admire Christianity for the good that it has done for Western Civilization. Hell, just ending slavery over most of the world for 150 years (until it began to creep back as Christianity's influence waned) is good enough for me to send some money to the collection plate every now and then.

The trouble with "thought-out" ethics is that I've never seen any that are original. The ones that are not completely selfish and anti-social are just ones that have been borrowed from established religions and had stuff cut out of them that kept the borrower from having one kind of fun or another.

Tom Trumpinski
--Pissing people off so badly they have to re-edit since before the time of Usenet.

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

The trouble with "thought-out" ethics is that I've never seen any that are original.

I take a fair chunk of my methodology from Rand, though she was more than a bit mistaken on a number of points. I would suspect that on the first bounce, you'll classify her work as "selfish and anti-social" - indeed, her primary work on ethics is called The Virtue Of Selfishness - but once you strip away her mistakes, her basic ideas make sense. After all, they are a documented influence on the Wiccan movement (the Wiccan Rede is essentially the crux of her thought in disguise).

I don't think this is the proper place to write up a full treatise on ethics, but I'd like to think that what system I've got is reasonably complete and doesn't require that I fear or worship any deity to be able to function in a society.

Raven

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I have quite a bit of trouble with Rand, but it's more personal than not.

Back when we were inventing "big-L" Libertarianism, there were still quite a few of her personal disciples still hanging around the movement. They were, without exception, consummate pricks, so I always associated her philosophy with prickiness. They talked constantly about their disappointment with her romantic life--which split the Objectivist Movement down the middle.

My head tells me that someone being unpleasant doesn't necessarily mean that their philosophical views are in error, but I'll admit, I just couldn't get beyond it. I was young then and more judgmental.

Tom

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

I have quite a bit of trouble with Rand, but it's more personal than not.

At least you recognize it for what it is.

Yes, Rand's followers tend toward the obnoxious - I remember when I had just read her, and was similarly young, naive, and obnoxious. One of the problems with the Movement was that according to Randian Gospel, since her system was derived from reason, hers was the Only True Way (tm), which should sound awfully familiar. And she really did insist on philosophical purity. The catch is that not all of her viewpoints derive so much from reason as from her own prejudices. For example, Nathaniel Brandon has noted that her understanding of psychology was virtually nil. And by extension, her beliefs concerning relationships was also well below sub-par, which probably explains her relationship foibles (read: really bad polyamory).

As I have noted, while I take something of a cue from Rand, I am neither an Objectivist nor a Libertarian. I spent a good deal of time with both camps and found logical flaws with both schools of thought.

One thing worth noting is that, contrary to a lot of movements (including Objectivism and Libertarianism), I'm not really interested in system-building in the large scale. I'm interested in developing a system of thought and action that is sound for my own reference. And I've found that positing a deity for moral guidance just doesn't work for me. Trust me - I've tried a number of versions of it (including Christianity and neo-paganism).

Raven

Link

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

You might be interested in this, which was a reply to Tom's comment further down the page.

http://tcgtrf.livejournal.com/11742.html

Re: Link

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I posted this before reading Tom's latest comment further down. Please hold off on commentary until Thursday in the "Pimpyerstuff" thread, so I don't have to work with two sets of link-cascades.

Tom

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

The trouble with "thought-out" ethics is that I've never seen any that are original. The ones that are not completely selfish and anti-social are just ones that have been borrowed from established religions and had stuff cut out of them that kept the borrower from having one kind of fun or another.

And the problem with this is what exactly? Taking the Judeo-Christian 10 Commandments as an example, that works pretty well. Toss out the first few that deal with "I'm a better imaginary friend than all the other imaginary friends and you'd better damn well remember it!", you're left with some pretty decent behavioral rules.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I *don't* have any problem with someone doing this, personally. You and everyone else has the freedom to do whatever you want as long as you stay off my lawn and don't screw my dog.

If Reason, however, is so much powerful than faith, you'd think that someone, somewhere, would come up with valid replacement rules that weren't 90% copied from religious teachings and didn't result in mass genocide. It seems like those two sets are mutually exclusive.

Tom

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. We're all working with the same world; the differences you mention are based on the philosophical underpinnings, two competing worldviews as to why it's kinda hard work to be alive.

In one, we've been created by a greater force, and he wants to see if his creations are good enough to join him on his plane, and so the world itself is a test of and for his creations, and therefore all notions of right and wrong, good and evil, must spring in some way from him. Some people ignore other peoples' efforts in this; others accept the efforts of their fellows as they try to help each other pass the test; still others feel some don't deserve to even be tested, let alone pass.

In the other, we're at the mercy of random forces, and since we're all subject to the same random forces, it makes sense to work together to blunt their negative effects and maintain some sort of Common Good. Some are more competitive than others; some ignore those rules together, figuring Every Man For Themselves, although that becomes problematic when those people find themselves in need of help that individuals cannot provide. The stronger groups of humanity work out, or at least put aside, differences for their own mutual benefit.

I'm sure that, if I'm full of it, the lovely catalana will tell me gently. :)

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Very thoughtful, very concise, and well-deserving of a thought-out and thorough answer. I've got one, but I'm afraid that it'll take some time to finalize and will entail more characters than are available on the reply box here.

It'll also be a long read.

There is a third worldview that combines the best of both of the above and explains a lot, including the strong anthropic principle, the reason for evil, and what happens to us when we die.

How about this--let me mull over exactly how I want to put this, write it on my LJ and publish a link to it...probably tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest?

Tom T.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Seriously, wait till Thursday and link to it in the Pimp Your Stuff thread. Very natural to go there, and it won't get lost in whatever else we talk about between now and then.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Excellent idea, especially since I will be very interested in ways to both prove and disprove the hypothesis in question. I did finish the latest draft just a bit ago, though, so I will have it. :)


Tom

[ldyerzsie.livejournal.com]

In China it has far more to do with the "one child" policy and the tradition of the daughter going to live with and take care of the inlaws, while the son and his wife take care of the parents. If the traditions were such that the daughters took care of their elderly parents rather than the sons, it would have been the boy children who lost out. Frankly the abortion choice is better--and more humane--than leaving the babies somewhere to die of exposure and starvation, which HAS happened both in China and in past societies.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a handicapped person, I'd be seriously happy if all handicaps went away tomorrow. This is a disgusting ablist society and, although I am pretty damn able-bodied by handicapped standards, and I do work, if I had a dollar for every time I encountered something that caused me to remark, "That's not very handicap-friendly," I'd never need to work again.

Thing is, it'd have to be voluntary.

I'm actually perfectly okay with the idea of prospective parents terminating a pregnancy on the grounds of congenital disability; first of all, I'm a bodily-autonomy absolutist, and I don't think anyone should be compelled to continue a pregnancy under any circumstances whatsoever, and secondly, raising a handicapped kid in a disgusting ablist society is hard work and I don't want anyone doing it if they don't think they're up to the job. If you're not willing to give 100% to raising a handicapped kid because you feel that you got cheated out of a perfect child, please, by all means, don't take the job in the first place.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Can you say that even if *you* might have been one of the people *voluntarily* terminated? Would the world actually have been a better place without you?

Tom

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

Um, if he'd never been born, how would he know?

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

raising a handicapped kid in a disgusting ablist society is hard work and I don't want anyone doing it if they don't think they're up to the job. If you're not willing to give 100% to raising a handicapped kid because you feel that you got cheated out of a perfect child, please, by all means, don't take the job in the first place.

This is the crux of it for me, and it's true about able-bodied children also. My own children are thankfully healthy at the moment, and they were wanted and are much loved, but I've learned how hard a job childraising is if you want to do it right, and the kids really need you to do it right. Anyone who isn't willing and able to handle the job shouldn't be taking it on in the first place; if that means abortion when the birth control fails, so be it. It's better for everyone than trying to raise a child you don't want and will not do a decent job with.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

A moot point. His parents chose to have him.

That's why it's called "pro-choice".

How could a guy who claims to be such a good writer be such a failure when it comes to reading comprehension?

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I don't recall ever claiming to be a good writer. *Critics* claim that I am a good writer. Some stuff's good, some stuff's great, some stuff really, really sucks and I wish I could take it back--just like any other writer.

What I claim is that I was right during the mid- and late-oughts in predicting both the economic and political atmosphere here at the dawn of the teens.

The point is *not* moot, Lumpy. If the technology had been present to inform the parents of *exactly* what the level of health problems were, can you assure me that they would still have done the moral thing? Many, many parents haven't.

Anyone who says that s/he doesn't care whether or not s/he was born is at best ingenuous and at worst a liar. If there are a few cases where they *really* don't care, I worry about the future of the human race if survival-traits are that lacking.

People who take this down to one family, one choice are ignoring the "Bailey Cascade"--every person born is tied to an ever-widening web of cause-and-effect as they grow older. Some of what they do impacts others as evil, much, however, will impact as good.

Lives saved, innovations accomplished, philosophies created--all flushed down the toilet. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night fearing that the physicist who would have been responsible for humanity reaching the stars was killed in the womb along with a third of his generation between 1972 and 1984.

Genetic diversity is essential in nature and in our species no less than others. Children are *not* an expensive luxury--they're a necessity. Within a generation, we'll be reminded of this, once again, as families in America *need* them just to get by.

Tom

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

The point is *not* moot, Lumpy. If the technology had been present to inform the parents of *exactly* what the level of health problems were, can you assure me that they would still have done the moral thing? Many, many parents haven't.

Moral by whose standards? Yours, Mister "I demand people be born into this world but don't ask me to do jack shit to make this a world worth being born into for anybody but myself?"

Anyone who says that s/he doesn't care whether or not s/he was born is at best ingenuous and at worst a liar. If there are a few cases where they *really* don't care, I worry about the future of the human race if survival-traits are that lacking.

And anyone who would have the gall to actually ask someone if they feel the world would be better off if they weren't born is rude at best at and a sociopath at worst.

every person born is tied to an ever-widening web of cause-and-effect as they grow older. Some of what they do impacts others as evil, much, however, will impact as good.

Then how do you explain yourself? You claim in one breath that people are destined to be born in order to fulfill their destiny of positively impacting the lives of others, and in the next breath you bitch, whine and moan about a body constructed and appointed BY ITS OWN CITIZENRY for the purpose of establishing mandates which ensure that said citizenry interacts with each other in a civil, magnanimous, constructive and socially progressive manner, thereby indicating a strong dislike of said motivations.

Congratulations, by your own stated standards, you fail the test of life.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

If the body *had* been created by its citizenry, rather than a few wealthy corporations and individuals, I'd still be whining and bitching about it because it simply has too much damn power.

The only time government ensures that citizens interact with each other in a civil, magnanimous, constructive, and socially progressive manner (and exactly *what the frack does THAT mean*), rather than to serve the needs of the elites, it's because there's been a mistake made.

Tom Trumpinski
--Possibly not very good author, who knows?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The mythology may be that if we allow a public option and if we turn into a dictatorship instead of a democratic republic, The Gummit will force abortions for the unfit and unwanted.

The reality has been for years that the privatized insurance companies will let disabled children be born and then starve to death for lack of benefits.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Personally, I like the world that has the different in it.

And yet you hate the idea of having to do jack shit for them. Go fig.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

No, I hate the idea of the money I could use to help the needy ones that I *know* being taken away from me, used to pay the salaries of several layers of bureaucrats, and then *possibly* returned down the line to "help" the same damn people.

I also hold that, by assuming that they can't get along without some kind of outside help beyond their families, you are demeaning both them and their parents as some kind of helpless incompetent morons.

Much of what is great in human nature comes from overcoming difficulties. When middle- and -upper class intellectuals say, "No child should be born without loving parents and a secure home" they often mean "if you don't make enough money or are as smart as me, it'd be a good idea if you *chose* to abort that baby."

Man, talk about racist and classist--just a couple of generations ago, *everyone's* home and future wasn't as secure as those they're condemning (except for a few of the wealthy.) Are you saying that we've somehow lost the abilty as human beings to deal with hardship?

I don't think we've slid that far down into slavery yet.

Tom Trumpinski
Past President, Albino Oompa-Loompa from Hell Association

[jblaque.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer. Brilliant essay.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Excellent post, thank you. have crossposted elsewhere.

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

I'll trade you a link for a link: here's an article about the health insurance industry's response to reform:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/31/insurance-industry-alread_n_519503.html

Discuss...

Raven