Comments on Existence is Wonderful: A Quick One: Why Must Atypicality Justify Itself?

casdok: That's awful that people ask you to justif...

2008-06-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

casdok: That's awful that people ask you to justify your son's existence. :( I really do hope that someday people (by and large) realize that nobody is in a position to demand that others justify their or their loved ones' very existences...it's difficult to think of a ruder question! Imagine if all the energy people put into devising elaborate arguments as to why some people shouldn't exist were instead put into figuring out how best to help and express respect for those that do exist.

Thanks for stopping by, by the way. I have been reading your blog for a while now and it has affected me (in a good way, I'd say) to the point where whenever I think about what things might make for a better world, I consider families like you and C. I know that most would consider C's challenges and mine to be "worlds apart", but there's certainly common ground in the fact that we would both benefit from a world that frowned more on bullying and abuse, and that did not constantly demand existence-justification.

I found this extreemly interesting, as i am often ...

2008-06-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

I found this extreemly interesting, as i am often asked to justify my sons existance, but i find the people who ask this sort of question do not actually want to hear or understand the answer.

For me you summed it up really well with this single sentance;
'Everything is positively teeming with meaning -- as it is literally all we have, and therefore infinitely precious.'

Catana said: ...since atypicals often take a defau...

2008-06-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

Catana said: ...since atypicals often take a default position of defending who they are rather than just asserting their right to be who they are.

Yeah, I've noticed that, and while I think it's a very understandable initial reaction to having been bullied and/or excluded a lot, I also think it can become problematic if taken too far. It has taken me nearly 30 years to learn this, but one thing it reminds me of is how sometimes people will assume you must have something to apologize for if you constantly enter situations and initiate your interactions with an apology.

You said: I'm tempted to say that anyone who's clueless enough to expect justifcation may not have any justification for *their* existence.

That's part of what I was thinking when I wrote this post, at least if I'm interpreting this statement properly -- basically, I think that questions like, "Why should atypical humans exist in the first place?" are really no different from questions like "Why should any humans exist in the first place?" I don't know this for sure, but I would be willing to hazard a guess that some folks find that second question extremely uncomfortable to ponder, which makes them more likely to question the validity of configurations they don't understand, as by questioning these configurations they emotionally "bolster" their own existence as somehow irrevocably valid.

I remember during my late-teens existential angst phase wondering why anything existed at all -- I frankly obsessed over that question for a while, and for some reason it seemed really important to come up with an answer. But then one day my brain did a bit of a flip and I realized that, well, stuff does exist, so why can't existence be taken as the default condition? There's nothing scientifically invalid about such a position, as "somethingness" (not "nothingness") is all we know to begin with. And over time, I've come to see the concept of "validity" in much the same way -- no, there's no cosmic supernatural source handing down meaning and significance to us from on high, but far from that making the universe empty of meaning, it in fact means that everything is positively teeming with meaning -- as it is literally all we have, and therefore infinitely precious.

Joshua: The ev-psych angle is indeed interesting -...

2008-06-28T17:34:00.000-07:00

Joshua: The ev-psych angle is indeed interesting -- I suspect something along those lines is probably true, at least in a lot of cases. Acknowledging that sort of thing strikes me as potentially important, as I think sometimes people end up building entire systems of ideas that have the structure of "objectivity" when in fact they serve to reinforce preconceptions the people who establish them already had.

E.g., I remember reading a while back about how immigrants to the US (from places like Italy) were assumed "mentally subnormal" from the get-go, and this was considered "confirmed" by intelligence tests administered upon their arrival -- in English. That (hopefully) sounds ridiculous to reasonable people nowadays, but at the time I doubt many people even considered that there might be something wrong with the frame they were using, as such frames tend to be invisible to the people they aren't actually harming.

Ed said: We all assert [validity] in a variety of ...

2008-06-28T17:28:00.000-07:00

Ed said: We all assert [validity] in a variety of ways. When those methods of assertion are less understood, they are often unfairly judged again and the cycle is more likely to continue.

Indeed. I am always looking for ways to try and break the cycle of which you speak. I don't think writing alone can or will accomplish it, but it's definitely a start, and at least some people are likely to respond to it.

In a way, I feel often as if what I (and you and other self-advocates) are doing is akin to demonstrating how a Necker cube can be interpreted more than one way to people who have built their understanding of human society around the idea that certain things cannot be anything other than whatever their first impression was of them.

I never thought about it in terms of a demand for ...

2008-06-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

I never thought about it in terms of a demand for justification. Very good point for everyone to think about, since atypicals often take a default position of defending who they are rather than just asserting their right to be who they are. Still, I'm tempted to say that anyone who's clueless enough to expect justifcation may not have any justification for *their* existence.

I think evolutionary psychology may be able to exp...

2008-06-28T06:39:00.000-07:00

I think evolutionary psychology may be able to explain this. Some sort of preference for normality, as deviations from the norm may imply mutations (and where there is one visible mutation, there may be many more undetected ones). Thus, even those who were disgusted at the atypical may have had more offspring or more healthy offspring.

I know that doesn't (or at least shouldn't) give any moral answers, but it may be an answer to your question of "why?" in the title.

You said this really well.It's unfortunate that an...

2008-06-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

You said this really well.

It's unfortunate that anyone would need to justify how they are valid.

Typical expressions often lack the creativity that all civilizations need.

"Maybe it's my vaguely existential tendencies talking here (if so, it's all Joss Whedon's fault!), but I think it's perfectly valid for people to decide for themselves that their existence -- however they might happen to be configured -- has value for its own sake." I would instead judge the tendencies of others who are likely to think more in the opopsite way to be what causes more problems.

Like I hear you pointing out here, I think that people who are judged unfairly as to the validity of our existence (and all such judgments are unfair)do know that this judgment is unfair and we do in turn assert that our existence IS valid and not the way it has been judged.

We all assert this in a variety of ways. When those methods of assertion are less understood, they are often unfairly judged again and the cycle is more likely to continue.

Breaking that cycle begins with the kind of awareness that I think this expression of yours (what you have written here) promotes.