tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post9110405124042548269..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Modification, Not Enhancement; Consent, Not Consensus; Prosthetic Self-Determination, Not EugenicsDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-20359654148806450692007-02-24T23:46:00.000-08:002007-02-24T23:46:00.000-08:00Uh, 2007. Where's my head at?Uh, 2007. Where's my head at?Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-2176942044444184312007-02-24T23:26:00.000-08:002007-02-24T23:26:00.000-08:00Living in society as it is presently structured, I...<I>Living in society as it is presently structured, I have literally lost sleep over wondering if I've managed to do enough to "prove" myself (e.g., going to college and maintaining employment) so as to justify my continuing freedom to self-determine. I don't think I should have to feel that way, and that feeling is more "disabling" in many respects than any aspect of autism.</I><BR/><BR/>Believe me, I know. It's 2005, and despite all I've gone through and all I've done I am still to this day, humiliating though it is to admit it, still trying to prove I deserve to exist to the idiot kids who terrorized me in high school for being queer and being intellectual. And, damn right, you're right! You sure as hell shouldn't have to feel that way!<BR/><BR/><I>who gets to decide the nature of another person (actual or potential) truly is. I don't think that states or corporations (or market forces, for that matter) should ever be able to impose some idea of what they think "full potential" is on individuals. Of course there are some boundary conditions here (e.g., I am not arguing that alcoholics shouldn't receive treatment or that people shouldn't try to see about remediating deadly or life-shortening or severely painful genetic conditions)</I><BR/><BR/>Quite right: once the conditions for a legible scene of informed, nonduressed consent are met (actually, as the world is organized these conditions are rarely met for any but quite privileged people -- but one can still say: "to the extent that these conditions are met" and cover quite a lot of diversity), then we should leave matters of "full potential" and "optimality" and other essentially <I>moral</I> and <I>esthetic</I> assessments to the people themselves, engaged in paths of private perfection and prosthetic self-determination to manage for themselves. <BR/><BR/>Likewise, so long as decisions parents and legal guardians make for their children and wards do not reasonably interfere with a preconsensual subject's eventual assumption of the responsibilities of the scene of consent or recklessly endanger, impair the basic health, or do violence to nonconsensual subjects, then -- once again -- matters of "full potential" and "optimality" should be left to the families and intimates directly involved with that scene of decision to determine as they determine from their privileged informational perspective the best interests of the child or ward.<BR/><BR/>As you say, this is not to embrace a relativism that is insensitive to the awful vulnerabilies to abuse and violation and humiliation that the preconsensual and nonconsenual are unique subject to, not to deny the role of states in ensuring that these abuses and violations do not happen. But I find it weird how often a position that stresses consent over the imposition of parochial standards of "optimality" finds itself in the position of responding to such charges. <BR/><BR/>Just because one is not a moralizing busybody doesn't mean one doesn't have the sense to know that it is a good public investment to make alcohol rehabilitation programs available to those who seek them out. <BR/><BR/>What kind of fundamentalist ideology would impel people to mistake as "relativists" those who embrace a harm-reduction policy vocabulary rather than a coercive and stigmatizing authoritarian whomping up of moral panics with respect to risky drug use, less safe sexual conduct, licensing regimes for the ownership and use of cars, guns, complex machinery and so on, or the support of viable if unconventional morphologies and lifeways? This is <I>reasonableness</I>, not relativism.<BR/><BR/>Of course, I concede that there are times when a person who apparently consents to an outcome doesn't really do so at all. A person can try to kill themselves not because they want to die but because they are crying for help. A person may demand to be wounded when they really want to come to terms with a devastating trauma. <BR/><BR/>Admitting this is not to deny the fact that sometimes a person may perfectly reasonably want to die, may perfectly reasonably desire a modification that seems unintelligible to outsiders as anything but a "wound." <BR/><BR/>Also, I always insist that consent must be informed and nonduressed, which means a scene of consent substantiated by access to reliable knowledge and robust social support (universal healthcare, basic income, lifelong educational recourse, and so on). But the obvious fact is that this substantiation does not obtain in the world as it is. Now, this is not an excuse either throw up our hands and "let the market decide" nor to infantilize everybody as incapable of consent. Rather one must carefully respect consent <I>to the extent</I> that it is informed and nonduressed, one must struggle to provide reliable information and support to ease duress and bolster consent, one must see to it that those who bear undue costs and risks from misinformed and duressed consent are retrospectively compensated so massively as to encourage respect for legible consent, and so on.<BR/><BR/>All of this is to admit that consent is enormously complex -- and shows no sign of getting less so any time soon. I can easily see why people would want, in the face of these complexities, to embrace the soothing simplicities of tribal, subcultural, authoritarian, pious, faithful, reductive, moralizing outlooks that shunt the complexities to the side and tell us self-congratulatory fables instead. <BR/><BR/>But I for one think that people as privileged as we are have, at minimum, a real responsibility to do better than that -- even if it introduces a measure of insecurity into our lives (an insecurity which, at worst, is a fraction of the precarity with which planetary majorities must contend at the hands of the bomb builders and statistians our simpleminded stories set upon the world in our names).Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-8621700442879191732007-02-23T23:25:00.000-08:002007-02-23T23:25:00.000-08:00I worry enormously about the promulgation of healt...<I>I worry enormously about the promulgation of healthcare standards that urge "intervention" not only to ensure people are free from suffering but, beyond that, foster "greatest potentials" and eliminate "undue constraints" to those potentials.</I><BR/><BR/>So do I. The part that bothers me about some of the arguments I come across in the writing of persons with whom I actually agree with on many tokens is the implicit question of what, exactly, comprises an "undue constraint", and the other implicit question of who gets to decide the nature of another person (actual or potential) truly is. I don't think that states or corporations (or market forces, for that matter) should ever be able to impose some idea of what they think "full potential" is on individuals. Of course there are some boundary conditions here (e.g., I am not arguing that alcoholics shouldn't receive treatment or that people shouldn't try to see about remediating deadly or life-shortening or severely painful genetic conditions) but the gray, fuzzy area is vast and I think it should stay that way. <BR/><BR/>People who want to democratize modification and the distribution of health resources and services do not serve this want by going along with the growing trend toward pathologizing every aspect of existence. It shouldn't be necessary to pathologize everything in order for someone to be able to seek some sort of modification, or not seek it.<BR/><BR/>Living in society as it is presently structured, I have literally lost sleep over wondering if I've managed to do enough to "prove" myself (e.g., going to college and maintaining employment) so as to justify my continuing freedom to self-determine. I don't think I should have to feel that way, and that feeling is more "disabling" in many respects than any aspect of autism.Anne Corwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04940566603711834053noreply@blogger.com