Sunday, April 21, 2013

μετὰ λόγου

So I was thinking about nothing yesterday and I think I had an insight. Or possibly I just realized something that everyone else already knew.

Who are the three groups of people who are most likely to be killed or institutionalized in modern society? The answer, I think, is the unborn, the very old, and the mentally ill. What is one factor which is common to all of these groups?

A large percentage of their members can't speak, either properly or at all.

My theory is that we subconsciously have a hard time recognizing people with whom we can't communicate as human. On a large-scale level, we see people who cannot speak at all, like the unborn, as not human. On a smaller scale, we see people who have lost the ability to talk, or who never figured it out right, or even who speak a different language, as less human than us.

Even Aristotle might agree with this...sort of. He says that the proper function of man (the thing that man can do that other animals can't) is to act "in conformity with rational principle." (For those who care deeply: Nichomachean Ethics, 1098a, whatever translation is on the Perseus project.) What is the phrase "in conformity with rational principle" in Greek? It's the title of this post, μετὰ λόγου.  Now logos, as everyone has probably been told seventy times at least, is a complicated word. It can mean rational principle, but it can also mean speech or word. For Aristotle and all the ancient Greeks, the very concept of rationality is tied up with language!

Having said that, I don't know what the next thing to say is. I mean, clearly, as a Catholic, I think people who can't speak are people too. People who can't think are also people too. So I don't know that I have a point here, so much as an observation. Nevertheless, I would be interested to hear people's thoughts. First of all, am I missing a category of people who tends to be killed or locked away that can speak? Is not being able to speak is the reason, or is it something else? (The obvious one that comes to my mind is the weak, but I think--and correct me if I'm wrong on this too--that the physically weak are not discriminated against in the same way the mentally weak are.)  Any other thoughts, musings, observations of your own? Does some this suggest some change to public policy? Should it? What about our private behavior? I really have no idea what the answers to any of these questions are. So chime in with your own thoughts!

9 comments:

  1. Interesting theory. I agree that the not actively rational are the targeted; never made the further step that not being verbal was a way that we decide who counts as rational. I'm wondering now about people who aren't verbal but don't have a mental delay or problem (eg people with PTSD, people who just can't talk, etc). I don't think they would be first in line to be killed.
    I wonder if the criteria isn't closer to useless/useful. So people who can't talk, but can still bag the groceries at Giant or stock the shelves at CVS are allowed to exist. Your thoughts?

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  2. Maybe this is a stupid question, but if someone can't talk how do we know whether they have a mental delay? Can they speak sign language? I don't know what Aristotle would say about sign language, but to me it just seems like another language, so they would be like someone who speaks a different language rather than someone who can't talk.

    What holds me back from agreeing on the useful/useless distinction is that toddlers, for example, are also pretty useless, but we don't systematically get them away from us. With that said, this is probably not the kind of question where we will be able to come up with the One Right Factor that determines whether modern society values a person, and I do certainly agree that useful/useless plays a role as well.

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    1. I'm thinking of people like Brian, who could do multiplication and division and knew how the two were related. But he didn't really have much functional verbal communication--he could answer some questions, mostly ones he had learned by heart, but you couldn't really talk to him. He can say "Good" if you say "How are you?", but "What did you do in school today?" is too complicated. I would not put him into a category of "people with language use". But his math skills show that he clearly has higher-level cognitive functions.

      Toddlers are clearly going to be useful.... The disabled and the mentally ill are not. I think the unborn are a problem here. I don't know.

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    2. Wow, I had no idea there were people like Brian out there! He seems to me like he could be useful, though, at a computer firm or as an accountant or something, as long as there was a system set up so that he didn't have to interact with the customers!

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    3. You'd think so, but he's not really verbal enough to do word problems, so probably not. :/

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  3. Maybe you should refer to it as able to "communicate". You can communicate with sign language or in writing, even when you can't speak (communicate = understand and making yourself understood). On the other hand, there are Alzheimer patients who can speak plenty, but it doesn't make sense to anyone else, and so it isn't really communicating. Hence their life is seen as worth "less".

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    1. What about totally non-verbal communication (pushing, pulling, etc)? I know a little boy who can get all his wants and needs across without a single word, sign, or button push on an adaptive device. He's communicating, but I think he'd be in Sophie's categories of people who get put away.

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    2. I guess you could argue that although he is communicating, he's doing so at a very low level. I mean, a dog can bark at his dish or the door, so you know what he wants.

      Alternatively, if he really does seem to be able to communicate "normally" but abnormal means, I don't know that he would be that likely to be put away, would he?

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  4. Yeah, that seems like a good nuance to me. Thanks!

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