[pmoriarty]

Are you saying the people who don't believe in putting cochlear implants in to their kids must be liberals? If so, why?

The cochlear implant issue itself is a rather complex and interesting one. Most hearing people are immediately outraged when they learn that some deaf people want to prevent their children from hearing, but I think this is a knee-jerk reaction that stems mostly from ignorance of Deaf culture[1] and its value in the Deaf community.

There's a great documentary called Sound and Fury[2] that explores this issue by interviewing deaf and hearing families as they struggled to decide whether to have implant surgery performed on their children. I strongly encourage everyone to watch this documentary before making up their minds on this issue.

Also, talking to some Deaf people, getting some exposure to and knowledge of Deaf culture, learning about the long and ugly history of discrimination and paternalistic interventions by hearing people against deaf people, and the struggle of deaf people for self-determination would probably be a good idea too.

With this knowledge I think it becomes difficult to dismiss the issue as ridiculous or say that there's any easy, obvious answer.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_and_Fury_%28film%29

[Eridrus]

The idea that people can perpetuate their own disability and then force society to provide special adaptions for them is definitely a liberal idea.

The libertarian response would be that you have the right to be how you are, but the ADA should be torn down.

How children should be treated is a tricky subject since it is a balance between parent's rights to raise their children and society's interests and I think there is a lot of conflict that falls into this bucket.

As technology develops to the point that being deaf is a choice, I am much more sympathetic to the libertarian view that if you choose to remain deaf you should not be entitled to special support.

[victorhooi]

See, I don't get this.

I have a congenital hearing defect in both ears, and have hearing aids since I was a child. (I am not deaf - only hearing impaired).

If I could undo all that, and fix my hearing, would I? Heck yeah. Without a doubt.

I also have a daughter - and I most certainly would not wish a hearing impairment on her. She doesn't need to go through the c*ap I went through.

If I was profoundly deaf and used sign language - well, I still don't think I'd wish deafness on my enemy - let alone my own child.

You don't see people with blindness or bad eyesight going - gee, I'm glad I'm blind or have bad eyesight.

[pmoriarty]

There is no "blind culture" as there is Deaf culture. Also, many deaf people don't consider themselves disabled, and some even view hearing people as the ones who are disabled because they don't know sign language and don't understand or appreciate Deaf culture, and can't appreciate the world as a deaf person can. Another reason is they want their children to be like them, to share their culture, to share their language, to see the world as they do, to understand what they went through and be able to relate to their children as well. There are many other reasons too.

I'd say some of the issues involved are somewhat analogous to the Europeans and Western people coming to "civilize" indigenous populations, which were viewed as primitive and inferior, and towards whom the Europeans held the attitude that they know best what's good for the "primitives" -- but without actually knowing much of the indigenous peoples at all, surely not understanding them or their culture, often misunderstanding them, not appreciating them, and at the same time in many ways it was the Europeans who were inferior. But they were blind to it.

Still, these Europeans managed to virtually wipe out the cultures and languages of the native civilizations and languages they encountered and dominated.

Today sign language and Deaf culture both face a very real possibility of extinction in the near future. Those are yet more reasons that many in the Deaf community are concerned.

At the risk of making this issue even more political, but with the aim of clarifying what's at stake for some in the Deaf community: imagine if what was at stake was the extinction of the Hebrew language and the Jewish identity.

Once again, I'd recommend watching the documentary I linked to for a clearer understanding of some of the issues, and to hear some of the reasons for the anti-implant position from the mouths of the affected people themselves, parents and children.

On the other hand, some deaf people and hearing people with deaf children, especially those who are not part of the Deaf community and who don't know sign language, feel like you do. The choices even in these cases are still not easy, as the film makes clear. Check it out.

[victorhooi]

My question to you is - what if deafness was eradicated?

Sign-language as a living language might suffer.

But would you consider this a net positive?

An analogy might be if blindness and sight problems became eradicated - and braille suffered a decline.

I would consider this a net positive for human quality of life.

I don't see the analogy between Hebrew/Jewish identity, and braille/sign language and blindness/deafness.

To me, the first is a cultural/religious identity - whilst the latter is an adaption to communicate as best as one can, with a more limited toolset. Of course, I see that it's not that black and white - there is a thriving deaf community, and they do have their own "language" (as in, more than just sign language itself), cultural norms etc.

However, I do really hope for one day where we might eradicate all of disabilities - deafness, blindness, mobility impairments etc.

[fiter]

Thanks for the Sound and Fury recommendation. I watched it today and had an interesting discussion with my housemates.

I highly recommend watching the short followup, "Sound and Fury: 6 years later": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb-zKebd5us