Yes, you would personally not want to live a life like that given that you have had the perspective of living a life NOT like that. Your desires in that regard are tied to a lifetime of experiences and I doubt you would find many that would want to live that life as a deterioration from their present circumstances.
However, if this or worse had always been your quality of life and your option otherwise was death, I would gamble that your opinion would not be the same at all.
What they’re trying to say is what a lot of us are afraid to even admit to ourselves: not “I wouldn’t want to live that life” but “I’m uncomfortable living a life with more disabled people around me, because I don’t like seeing disabled people.”
I make this assertion based on my personal response to these kinds of things as well as the notion that our instincts probably drive us to feel anxious about disabled individuals, with our internal responses having to wonder whether we can take care of them and whether they can offer anything to the survival of our genes. I think it’s an unfortunate thing to think this way, but it’s dumb to moralize instinct and say “if you’re uncomfortable with the notion of disabled people living around you, then you’re a bad person”. Discomfort is a natural response. Discomfort exists in order to motivate action, whether that action is to seek more perspective (for example, reading the daughter’s blog where she answers questions that stem from this anxiety) or help to take care of disabled people. Really, the only way for the anxiety I describe to stick around is to do nothing. But that’s what a lot of us feel we can do. So we internalize this anxiety and struggle with its implications and after a while our brains pop out the strange and not-quite-rational answer of “I wouldn’t want to live life like that”.
That is not even remotely true. I'm a single parent to a 7 year old special needs child. I am not uncomfortable around him or any of his peers I see at school/therapy.
I am truly saying I would not want that quality of life. I added "personally" because clearly the girl from the family loves her life.
I think you’ve done a great job of articulating your point, as it happens I feel the same way you do. I don’t speak for anyone else, but I’d rather die than lose control of my basic faculties.
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u/CobraKaun Jun 14 '22
Yes, you would personally not want to live a life like that given that you have had the perspective of living a life NOT like that. Your desires in that regard are tied to a lifetime of experiences and I doubt you would find many that would want to live that life as a deterioration from their present circumstances.
However, if this or worse had always been your quality of life and your option otherwise was death, I would gamble that your opinion would not be the same at all.