Re: a few complaints about the blind comunity
My point steve, is that Tom is correct, some people will always try to get stuff for free, that is a given.
The question under discussion is whether firstly this attitude is (as Briant suggested in his first post), more prevailent in the blind community, and secondly, whether there is or is not any justification to that attitude.
Look at this another way. Imagine that you own a shop and someone like the eldily person in Tom's example asks you for a discount.
Now, firstly, do you believe that eldily people are entitled to discountts? and secondly, if an eldily person asks you for a discount, how do you perceive them and old people in general? are they seen as worthy of respect, or do you view them as constantly winjing and wanting stuff for free?
This is the issue at hand. Is it true that blind people more than other groups in society have a prevailent attitude of wanting free stuff, and secondly, is there any justification to this attitu de.
It doesn't matter particularly what other people do or do not do sinse manifestly a sighted person is not blind, and thus would not be claiming something for free on the same grounds that a blind person would be doing so, and it is those grounds that are under discussion.
I could not walk into my local shop and say "please give me an over 65 discount because I am over 65" sinse I am manifestly not. In the same light, none of the sighted people from Tom's example could say "we're entitled to free stuff because we're blind" sinse they aren't blind.
I must admit I do suspect there is something of a bias in the entitlement attitude among blind people, because of the specialist schools you mention and also the plane and simple fact that yeah, life is a lot harder without eyeballs, and it is a natural human response that if you have less than everyone else you want the same, or at least some sort of compensation.
To me, the interesting exercise here is analysing the different possible responses and attitudes, teasing out the differences between "the bad attitude", the desire for preferential treatment and weaseling as much as possible because you lack working eyeballs, and the "good attitude" the desire for equal access and how best to achieve it in a compitant manner. Deciding where these attitudes come from, what the principle differences between them are, and what our responses should be in terms of buying technology and life generally is exactly the sort of thing that blind people should be doing, throughout life as well as theoreticaly, indeed it is just these sorts of questions that I've spent most of my creative work in ethics thinking about.
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