I think that's unfair. I don't disagree that the behavior _is_ 'abusive', but I find it easy to sympathize with their own plight anyways. They really do seem to be a community and I write that as someone that is constantly irked by casual use of that term. I think it's just an inevitably sad fact that they _should_ lose the community they built to support each other, so that their kids can finally escape the very real and debilitating condition under which they've all suffered for so long.
It seems very similar (in kind if not degree) to groups of people united around the solution to some big difficult problem – to the degree that they're effective, and the problem can be solved, it's inevitable that the group should, eventually, die or break-up. The loss of that cohesion really is just sad, even if the reason for it is a much greater joy.
Yes, I don't doubt the sincerity of their motives but the outcome is horrific.
Years ago I saw grainy footage on public television of testing of one of the early implant prototypes. The test subject was a young woman, and as she wondered at the sound of her own voice that she was able to hear for the first time she grew progressively more emotional until she finally burst into tears. Apparently the experience is not uncommon because when I tried to find the clip via Google just now I came across dozens of videos. Any one of those videos could serve as the final, decisive rebuttal to the argument that some communal good is served by diminishing the lives of children.
I've become less and less convinced over my life that anything could ever be a "final, decisive rebuttal" to any argument; if only because most people don't possess sufficient introspective reflection, impulse to honesty, or courage, to 'really express what they mean or feel'.
It seems pretty obvious that, in this case, the arguments against the implants are attempts to prevent, or just delay, the inevitable loss or dissolution of social environments that really are immensely valuable and significant to the people terrified of losing them.
I think sympathy is also important in achieving any kind of reasonable outcome for everyone involved tho. I suspect some of this behavior might be so extreme _because_ it's also somewhat-obviously unreasonable even to the people involved.
I'm just going to say it: I think deaf parents who refuse to get their children cochlear implants are insane and borderline child abusers.
I think that's unfair. I don't disagree that the behavior _is_ 'abusive', but I find it easy to sympathize with their own plight anyways. They really do seem to be a community and I write that as someone that is constantly irked by casual use of that term. I think it's just an inevitably sad fact that they _should_ lose the community they built to support each other, so that their kids can finally escape the very real and debilitating condition under which they've all suffered for so long.
It seems very similar (in kind if not degree) to groups of people united around the solution to some big difficult problem – to the degree that they're effective, and the problem can be solved, it's inevitable that the group should, eventually, die or break-up. The loss of that cohesion really is just sad, even if the reason for it is a much greater joy.
Yes, I don't doubt the sincerity of their motives but the outcome is horrific.
Years ago I saw grainy footage on public television of testing of one of the early implant prototypes. The test subject was a young woman, and as she wondered at the sound of her own voice that she was able to hear for the first time she grew progressively more emotional until she finally burst into tears. Apparently the experience is not uncommon because when I tried to find the clip via Google just now I came across dozens of videos. Any one of those videos could serve as the final, decisive rebuttal to the argument that some communal good is served by diminishing the lives of children.
I've become less and less convinced over my life that anything could ever be a "final, decisive rebuttal" to any argument; if only because most people don't possess sufficient introspective reflection, impulse to honesty, or courage, to 'really express what they mean or feel'.
It seems pretty obvious that, in this case, the arguments against the implants are attempts to prevent, or just delay, the inevitable loss or dissolution of social environments that really are immensely valuable and significant to the people terrified of losing them.
Sympathy in this case is an absolutely understandable reaction but the road to Hell and all that.
I think sympathy is also important in achieving any kind of reasonable outcome for everyone involved tho. I suspect some of this behavior might be so extreme _because_ it's also somewhat-obviously unreasonable even to the people involved.