h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

getting more and more and more patronising towards people who are *labelled* *different* ?

I think it is.

And horribly so.

Christ, I pray I don't end up mostly helpless, old and at the mercy of such people.

They really ought to be issuing suicide pills to some of us.

I see it happening, and it's not nice. I'm not sure if it's new though - I've been reading some post WWI literature and their seems to be a similar attitude towards injured servicemen. I think that people with disabilities are more visible now, perhaps in the past it was ok to lock them away and ignore them.

My Grandmother (now 95) was a teacher for all her working life, and her and her attitude to disabled children is of that era : she believes that they should be all be 'in institutions' as it would be 'better for everyone'.

What shocks me is the ignorance of intelligence.

I was involved for some years with an organisation that was to do with people mostly having a fairly mild mental illness. Admittedly mostly mood disorders...but some mild 'so called schizophrenics'.

The amount of brilliant and challenging creative stuff put out was amazing. So many people had a very an intelligence that ran in different directions and patterns. And the thing I was involved in gave a real expression to it.

For several years we put on shows in the local park. So called 'normal artists' also took part. Most of them being musicians. We got funding even. Yeah New Labour wasn't *all bad* as some like to paint it here on h2g2.

The locals loved it. They flocked to our events.

It's all absolutely finished now. I've left for 2 or 3 years in any case though.

But the thing is....I worry *personally*. Well it is a journal. I grew up under the 11plus system...and that whole atmosphere for excellence (actually its still going in Kent where I grew up).

I won't be able to cope when I'm really old though...because so many ordinary people at present have such a shallow and mundane view of ideas and stuff. Those people will be in charge for some time. I see it here. I'm viewed as a weird eccentric generally...and despised.

Creative intelligence and thinking died with the rise of Murdoch IMO.

I stupidly do have hope we will throw it over now though, after this year.

But I'd rather have a short sharp end...than a long drawn out horrible one...

(Just a few honest musings...about my particular situation).

Thought more about this.

How on earth I'll ever cope living in an old people's home or whatever thing there is when the time comes, I cannot possibly imagine.

Imagine being somewhere where no-one has read Dickens or Shakespeare or any of our great poets in England? No-one has studied any art history in any sort of creative way? Just by rote and facts only, if at all?

I just pray that we have become civilised enough here to give people the choice to end it.

But I'm hoping even my constitution of an ox will have sucumbed to the drinking and smoking before it comes to that. At least you get morphine for that.

But of course I live somewhere where nearly everyone hasn't had that kind of education; but somehow they *live* it through their warmth and humanity. I would say that is the general atmosphere still where I live.

Warm and loving and jokey. I think that's one of the reasons so many artists still live in south east London. Yes it's still generally poor and cheap...that's of course reason to make it possible.

But imagine being trapped in an institution where you are just viewed as being 'old' and a 'disability'

I've had that in mental hospitals from quite a few staff, not all though, but some of them are that thick as a way to make assumptions about you. They are thick, thick, thick...some of them; and they have POWER over you.

I'm cheered up.

Just watched the Abolutely Fabulous Christmas Special...which was too good. Saffie came out of prison...and then Sarah Lund turned up in her jumper...

That woman is referenced everywhere now.

And I'm still cheered up.

They really ought to be playing stuff like endless re-runs of Ab Fab, the Danish Killing, and Dad's Army, to people, to get us through this period in the West, (in that LoTR sequence on my PS...Jennifer Saunders, (Galadriel) says she's going to the West. Dodo (Dawn French) looks quizzical....Galad, says, "oh I don't know...it's in the book

God I love our humour here...

> she believes that they should be all be 'in institutions' as it would be 'better for everyone'.

And for some, that actually is the better choice. Deaf kids are usually better off in Deaf schools, where a sign language is the full medium of education, and they can interact with other Deaf kids and get a grasp of Deaf culture. In a mainstream school, they are isolated, and can interact with the other kids only through an interpreter.

In general, though, it's better to encourage integration.

On a related note, see http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2012/01/two-sides-to-every-story-and-twelve-versions-of-every-song.html?cid=6a00d8341c582a53ef016760218462970b#comment-6a00d8341c582a53ef016760218462970b.

Quote 1, Certainly Sylvia:
>>>
I remember not so long ago, watching this show with a mother speaking about her child and how hard she works to give him a 'normal life.' He had a condition that meant he was, apparently, not normal.

Whatever that is.

What shocked me most was ... this mother, she spoke of how hurt she was when he was born. How she had to surrender all her hopes for him and come to terms with everything - all of this to the camera ... with her child sitting right next to her.

He flinched a few times. Looked away. It was heartbreaking.

The mother's desperate efforts to give her child a 'normal life' - is giving him quite the opposite.

The identity she wove for her child was not his identity. It was just one of many reflections of him from her eye.

I don't think there are many things worse than to hand someone an identity they did not ask for. Moreso, if they cannot ask ... or you will not listen.
<<<

Quote 2, Mmy:
>>>
She went on to explain that being as "not normal" as her son was a fate worse than death. I keep thinking of what it was be like to know that your mother thinks that you are the worse thing that ever happened in her life and that she would rather have watched you die than watch you live.

...

No story by Stephen King rivals that horror of that interview.
<<<

*shudder*

TRiG.

On a personal note . . .


by the time my daughter was about to be born, I'd already (secretly) resigned myself to the fact that -- like most fathers in history -- I was going to lose both the child and the mother.

Things turned out wildly differently from that particular expectation in unimaginable ways, believe me!


In my opinion, making rosy plans for unborn children is itself a horror, never mind telling the poor sodding kids how they haven't lived up to those plans.

If you aren't prepared for the worst, you aren't prepared for parenthood. And if you plan for something great, you'll be disappointed.

> In my opinion, making rosy plans for unborn children is itself a horror, never mind telling the poor sodding kids how they haven't lived up to those plans.

One reason why I probably shouldn't be a parent. I'd be unable to stop myself making those plans. (At least I'd know better than to share them with the kid, though. And I'd certainly know better than to share them with the world on television.)

TRiG.

Indeed!


For myself, for many, many years my life philosophy has been "always expect the worst and your only surprises will be pleasant ones.


I find my life to be a remarkably happy one.

I go for always expect the unexpected
which helped when Gruesome #2 turned up last wek with bright blue hair...