I wish I had more to add. I don't. No one in my family is quadriplegic, but we all three have special needs.
Special is the new retard. As the author so eloquently describes, so many people see that and only that and erase everything else about you.
And so shall it ever be. While you hold disdain for the thing itself, no word that you use for it will ever be acceptable for long.
See 'euphemism treadmill' at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Evolution
I never heard of there being a card. I am taking you literally here, but maybe that is the wrong thing to do.
People lack the imagination to really put themselves in others shoes. They are shitty and cruel when they cant empathize. And they have little incentive to try.
I wonder if the opioid addiction & overdose epidemic is finally kicking people in the ass a bit and waking them up to the fact that their lack of empathy for addicts (not to mention people with chronic pain) is a major factor in the tens of thousands of deaths each year. When your attitude is “the only good addict is a dead addict” and you feel like addiction can never happen to you, it’s not as if you’re going to vote for spending on harm-reduction strategies—rehab, naloxone, keeping kratom legal, decriminalisation, whatever—even if they would actually work.
Texas has this for abortions. The law requires that a woman get a sonogram from the doctor who will be performing the procedure at least 24 hours beforehand, during which the doctor must display sonogram images and make the heartbeat audible to the mother.
It's controversial.
> I think we need mechanisms that make people understand experiences of disadvantaged groups.
Where the disadvantaged group you mention is the baby. I only say that it might help, because the part you quoted about VR seems almost completely unrelated to sonograms and abortions, but had you quoted the line before it then it would in my opinion be more closely related.
They are shitty and cruel and don't want to empathize. And there is no incentive to try.
I could make this a Wall of Text just with observations alone. People; still a good time.
I'm not of the belief that religion is necessarily what made murder taboo, but self-reflective consciousness and sophisticated ethical systems (especially development of an understanding of the mutual self-interest of the "golden rule"[3]) would seem to be key factors.
[1] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100621-scie...
[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2119677-chimps-beat-up-...
Also read this https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e...
I think if you take a charitable interpretation of what I'm saying as a basis for discussion and try to find things that SUPPORT the statements truth rather than counterexamples, you would see them and understand my argument. I really don't believe taking a purely adversarial stance and poking holes instead of attempting to first understand contributes the discussion usefully.