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It's very strange to me. People can and do bond and form a sense of community by overcoming struggles together, but that shouldn't mean preserving the struggle.
by autoexec 5y ago
It's very strange to me. People can and do bond and form a sense of community by overcoming struggles together, but that shouldn't mean preserving the struggle. Communities can also evolve and grow and tackle new types of struggles. It doesn't matter if you have a disability, a disease, or some other condition that requires you to overcome challenges most people never have to deal with, it's a risky thing to make those challenges into an identity or to define yourself or your limits on those terms.
- xyzzy123 5y agoYet here we are on hacker news...
- watwut 5y agoPeople do that, tho. And the bigger the struggle, the more likely this is to happen.
- nirse 5y agoI think you simplify the problem: cochlear implants are far from perfect and many users suffer from headaches while their hearing doesn't improve to the point that they can function like any other hearing person (eg typically they will have trouble discerning multiple voices speaking at the same time, hear anything in high background noise situations). So the choice for then is between being a disabled person in the hearing world, or a normal person in the smaller signing world. That's a hard choice, I'm glad I haven't had to make it. Sources: My linguist partner cooperates with many sign language researchers, so might be biased. But also, an acquaintance (also linguist) decided to not give their congenial deaf daughter a CI for this reason after considerable deliberation (please don't judge).
- autoexec 5y agoThat's fair, cochlear implants may not be for everyone. I'd think it'd be worth a shot at least, but people should be still be free do decide against it or do whatever works best for them.