The Mentally Handicapped And Inclusion.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of Special Olympics, once famously said mentally deficient people had "the right to play on any playing field... the right to study in any school... the right to hold a job". I used to think about that. People with mental disabilities have a right to go to any grade school or high school. Because they should make accommodations for all students. But places like Harvard and Yale? I think there they would just pull down the academic standards for everyone else. Because universities are places of advanced learning. Of course everyone these days in the US has to have at least a college degree to get a good job. So I suppose a commuter college would be no problem for them. Also I don't think every job is suited for people with developmental needs. I think they'd make a good barista at Starbucks. And a waiter too. But a cashier involves more skills. It's unfair to the customers if they are spending an hour with one person. Plus stores have to make a profit. But in places like a supermarket, I think stocking shelves in the back would be a good job for some of them.

Also, some people have some misconceptions about mental disabilities. They told us when we reached the fifth grade that we were now at the level of functional literacy. The fifth grade in the US is considered the adult level of reading believe it or not. Even most mildly retarded people have reached that level. So many mildly retarded people can be nurses or paralegals. And plumbers. Probably not registered nurses or nurse practitioners though. And as I said above, very few people go onto the universities. And it's always been that way.

Anyways, mentally deficient people should always have the same opportunities as you and I. And they should be assumed mentally competent to do anything. Until the opposite is proven.

 

The only reliable criteria for measuring anyone's career potential, is the amount of working memory they have, while studies have indicated that your IQ can go up and down on a daily basis, and neither rocket scientists nor surgeons are smarter than the average bear. This, is the real controversy, and not whether the mentally handicap belong in school. The Tea Party insists, they're smarter than all the rest, while academia empowers them to censor half of reality.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, But Liquor Is Quicker! And, The Tea Party Are Alcoholics!

Sun Tzu warned, "Know Thy Enemy", and Socrates cautioned, "Know Thyself!" While, I say, if you value your life, "Know Thy Inebriated Mindless Mob!"

 

Love on the Spectrum is a touching documentary and worth watching. Like everyone else , those with difficulties should be able to have a shot at reaching their potential.

 

Reaching their potential is the key. It does not really matter if someone has learning difficulties as long as the systems are in place for that person to be allowed to be treated with dignity and to reach their potential.

 

I work one day a week in a local school with individual children who have problems educationally. Given one to one help makes a tremendous difference. Not only to their learning but also to their self esteem.

 

My own work involves giving them pattern matching, that can even be automated in VR, and can help them make the most out of whatever they can do. You could say, even all bacteria use fundamentally the same pattern matching, which a machine can then adapt to the individual's sense of humor and body language, so they can learn at their own pace, and discover fundamentally new ways of engaging the world around them.

 

Also on the issue of medical diagnosis. A teacher at CC once told me that mental deficiency, low IQ and brain damage after age 18 are three very different things medically. They all have different symptoms and different needs. And they all have to be accommodated differently. Actually low IQ isn't a medical diagnosis at all. Borderline retarded is defined as an IQ between 70–85. Those people just have low intelligence.

I remember in 1992 many people were surprised to learn John Wayne Bobbitt (remember him?) was borderline retarded. He seemed so crafty and clever, the way he manipulated his wife Lorena. But as I said, it affects people differently. Some people aren't as dumb as they seem (to put it bluntly). And in the case of John Wayne Bobbitt, they can even seem much more intelligent than they actually are. A doctor or therapist need to access their needs and abilities. No one else.

 

The AMA supported the Pentagon hiding all the medical evidence for PTSD and brain damage, for at least 30 years. They are the last people on earth to trust with your brain, and their reputation is currently going down the toilet, in every way imaginable, as the US medical system divides into McDonalds, and all the rest. These days, science is mostly classified, and a corporate hazard. The further the ecology goes down the toilet, the more censored even the medical profession has become.

Brain research is vital to quantum mechanics and AI, and the Pentagon thinks we're all experimental test subjects, for the Tea Party!

 

In rural areas, people call them the village idiots.
As a result, people look out for them, often having a rota inviting them for dinner. Also checking their utilities, ensuring that they have heat, hot water and the cooker is working.
These people mostly find and accept their place in the community, going on to lead long and fairly happy lives.

Meanwhile, in cities such as London, they become outcast. Doctors feed them up with wrongly prescribed or unnecessary pills. Then social services give them a holiday, locked up with psychopaths and serial killers.

We often mistake differences, for mental illness.
If we were looking for REAL nut jobs, we need look no further than government. Perhaps we should lock them all up on the funny farm. Trump could look after the accounts.

 

If you're looking for nut jobs, academia is the source in modern civilization. They cannot teach a child how to use a dictionary, and a quarter of their students still claim the sun revolves around the earth, while they help the Tea Party censor half of reality, then claim to be against censorship. Three Stooges slapstick is just chickenshit academic bullshit, that can be automated, to give them an entire ecology of AI, that know their own stupid crap, better than they do.

 

I worked with the developmentally disabled for close to a decade ( I burned out ) it is a sad state of affairs the population I worked with was adults ranging in age from the mid 20's to mid 50's , they were a largely forgotten people no relatives or friends their lives were NOT going to get better they lived in the group home only one was functional enough to hold an outside job and he was perhaps the saddest of all as he knew that he was not going anywhere he was also generally the most congenial and fun to be around. One of the worst cases was a woman in her late 30's she was completely non verbal her IQ was in the 40's she basically had to be led around to do anything including toileting , where is/was her potential ?

 

My own work involves pattern matching, using the same language every cell in your body uses, and using body language that emerges from the pattern matching. This same stupid universal cellular pattern matching, is how all cells talk, and they sometimes produce translators, using the same math or geometry. The simple truth is, we are all flaming geniuses and drooling idiots, and the trick is helping people to become whoever they want to become. Life is most certainly not a box of chocolates, and we all carry our burdens, yet only the truth can set anyone free, and can reconcile all of our suffering. They need the truth, not society's ideas of success and failure.

Nobody even knows how to use a stupid dictionary, and IQ has turned out to be academia's excuse for lying, that isn't as important as personal integrity. Once Karma is declared a law of nature, it will destroy a lot of sad ideas about reality, what life is all about. Far too many have been marginalized by the mainstream, treated as heathens and pariahs they insist on creating, but modern science and technology, are now academia's worst nightmare. They can no longer deny their own lies worth a crap, and their own AI are just the beginning.

Think of AI as the same translators our cells use, the more efficient they become, the more the operator themselves must adapt to reality, or become extinct. Once, I read a sticker on a car, that said, "I Believe In Evolution, People Can Change!" Speeding up the process is all that matters to me.

 

Do you agree with my comment, that these people do better in a rural environment, where they can find their place in society, rather than seeing themselves as inadequate.

Many years ago, the local authority attempted to rehabilitate a number of people in care, by finding them jobs in theatres, where they could show people to their seats and sell a few ice creams. Unfortunately, one guy applied for a job in engineering. He introduced himself at the Interview, "My name is ***** and I am a disabled nutcase". We gave him a junior position, at a local cinema, but after a month, he became a complete liability. One afternoon while trying to focus the image, he turned the wrong knob and altered the shutter phasing. This resulted in the frame being projected either before it locked in the gate, or as it started leaving. Due to streaking up or down the screen, the condition is referred to as ghosting. I attempted to explain his mistake, when suddenly he rushed out of the building as if the devil was chasing him with an axe.
The following day, he turned up back at the rehabilitation centre, ranting at them to get everyone out of our theatres, because their was a button in the control room to fill the auditorium up with ghosts. After 4 hours, the police were called, when they could not calm him down, possibly thinking that he was high, an ambulance was called.

This left me wondering, whether it is possible or right to keep people in a world of placid tranquillity, then dump them into todays world.
This all happened in 1967, so being 19 at the time and with no experience of mental health, it certainly shook me up.

 

I dont think the idyllic small town where that would be possible exists anymore. The majority of the cases I worked with did not see themselves as inadequate for the most part they had very little self awareness.

 

I work at the local lunch club that offers free food, coffee, cakes etc to the community once a week.
A group comes quite regularly that consists of adults with learning difficulties and their carers.
The difference in capabilities is really quite striking and I hate to repeat myself, but it is so important not to class the mentally challenged as a homogeneous group.

 

Modern science demands everyone be shoved into categories, and the mainstream demands a way to distinguish themselves from everyone else, and censors half of reality. So, far, the idiots have come close to killing two of our senators, and put the husband of one in the hospital with a ballpeen hammer. Talking to them as if they were adults is pointless.

If you value your life: Know Thy Mindless Mob! None of them can even use a common dictionary, and they've made analog logic and humor meaningless, censoring it heavily.

 

I was also going to ask a question about mental issues and disabilities. I might as well put it here. Some people object to the phrase mentally retarded. I know it is kind of outdated word. Some words are like that. I know African Americans, for example, object to certain words. Some words that refer to them are very offensive. But some are inaccurate. And some are just dated. But mentally retarded. Is that word inaccurate in some way? It means delayed, doesn't it? Is that why were are discouraged from using it? And BTW, what is the accepted term now for developmentally delayed people? People who are not just low IQ, and who were this way before age 18 in other words.

 

Intellectual disability is the preferred option in some circles.

 

I'm also still trying figure out what intelligence exactly is, and how it is defined. I know on intelligence tests the ask you questions related to your education. Really, just what do you know. I guess they want to know how well you've been educated. Or maybe how well you learn. But they say those sometimes have a cultural bias.

I took a psychology class in CC in 1995. And this doesn't even make sense to me. But they say asking a kid who grew up on farm who the president of the United States is, is an unfair question. Because they never seem to know. For a kid who grew up in more urban area, that would be an easy question. But, the book went on, farming children can always easily answer a question like which vegetables grow above ground. City kids never seem to know the answer to that one.

 

Another note too about mental deficiency and brain damage. As I said, they are not the same. Simply being low in IQ doesn't mean you're mentally deficient anymore than being Asian means you're a dwarf. Asians on average are lower in height than the average person. Doctors notice this immediately. And if they don't know the person has Asian ancestry might be at first alarmed. But you know, true Dwarfism can cause things like curvature of the spine and limited limb movement, and is usually caused by things like achondroplasia.


I took a class in CC in 1995. And they said some people are just naturally lower in intelligence. It seems to run in some families according to the book. I was thinking recently, it also might be due to a mutation in one of the recent relatives, like with hemophilia and the Hanovers.