There’s a sentence in George Will’s column about his son, Jon, that bears some contemplation:
Two things that have enhanced Jon’s life are the Washington subway system, which opened in 1976, and the Washington Nationals baseball team, which arrived in 2005. He navigates the subway expertly, riding it to the Nationals ballpark, where he enters the clubhouse a few hours before game time and does a chore or two. The players, who have climbed to the pinnacle of a steep athletic pyramid, know that although hard work got them there, they have extraordinary aptitudes because they are winners of life’s lottery. Major leaguers, all of whom understand what it is to be gifted, have been uniformly and extraordinarily welcoming to Jon, who is not.
Read the whole things. There are different kinds of winners.
I thought this was a very nice article by Will. I didn’t know this about his son; he’s always seemed pretty remote personally, except he has this continuingly odd idea that Cardinal fans are happy and thus liberal and Cub fans are not happy and thus steely-eyed realists.
The Cubs suck.
😉
And that’s what their fans say . . .
Just noticed the link has some kewl pix that weren’t in my dead tree version. Almost makes newsprint obsolete, but then there is the annoying advertisment to wait through…
That column raises hard questions. Let’s stipulate that Mr. Will creates a solid home with a better than average income and gold-plated insurance.
During our crawfish boil the other day, two women were speaking of relations where the status of the fetus was problematic. One is sure to be born with Aperts Syndrome and the other will have a problem of crammed internal organs at birth, and no one knows what the expenses will be to bring the child to some sort of “normal” status after birth.
Particularly on the second, these parents have moderate incomes based on their employment at local banks.
G. said “In Louisiana the state will provide, won’t it?”
Janis: I think the article hinted at a slightly different hard question. Will refers at least obliquely on more than occasion that Jon would normally be dead by now. Its not entirely clear how independent Jon is, but I doubt he’s entirely independent. His parents are reaching their own life expectancies. They have money to help, maybe they can even set up a trust, but I believe George Will like other parents, regardless of money, are quite worried about their child when their gone.
My wife had a client recently who described the problem as raising a child to leave, while raising another child to stay.
PD, I think you’re too subtle.
Nevertheless, I’d suppose one of the other children would have the keys to the trust. We aren’t all varmints.
Maybe, but I know that parents don’t necessarily feel better by thinking that one of their other children will take their burden.
Circling back to your point though. I think here in Illinois the cuts to programs helping the developmentally disabled are mostly starting with adults; I think the children will get the axe last. I also seem to be aware of more children-oriented programs than for adults. That might make sense, but right now, I’m more thinking about people like Jon, with parents unlike George.
I actually think there’s a valid and interesting argument to be had about the use of abortion for elimination of birth defects. I doubt it would affect anyone’s actions, and I’m certainly not for dictating to mothers, but it’s an interesting debate nevertheless.
It’s also just a part of a much larger debate we’ll need to have over the next decade or two as our ability to understand and manipulate genetics improves. Interesting times ahead. Can’t wait til we get to such fraught issues as race selection, minimum acceptable IQ, definitions of what constitutes therapeutic vs. cosmetic, the limits on parental “design.”
The first baby with a decorative tail and orange skin isn’t that far off. Dave will be blogging it.
It’s not a “valid and interesting argument.” The woman who is up to bearing the child with crunched organs had a perfectly healthy first. The question is whether the child will be given medical support or not.
While we talk about the contortions to keep our elderlies alive, there is another argument that we not spend a couple hundred thousand to keep a premature child alive, or a defective one.
These are hard questions.
No, it’s interesting because we are at a very strange time in human history. The torch of evolution has been passed to us.
We’ve been breeding animals for centuries if not millennia. Now we’re in a position to not only breed h. sapiens but to move beyond simply reinforcing a blood line to real, down and dirty manipulation of the species. We’re not far away from gaining the ability to alter human beings: eliminate birth defects, choose characteristics, conceivably push evolution in a direction of our choosing.
This is epic stuff. This is the part of the story where the monster becomes Dr. Frankenstein and creates himself. Man as God. There are going to be just a few ethical and moral issues along the way.
Once Watson and Crick (after dropping acid) figured out DNA, it was like giving self-awareness and an alphabet to the characters in a book. It’s as if we said, “Here you go Lady Macbeth, here’s what you’re going to say, and here’s why you said it, and here’s how you can rewrite the scene.”
We’re going to write fan fiction of nature’s original work. It’s going to get weird. If fanfic of my stuff is any guide, we’re somehow going to end up having an affair with Harry Potter.
With children, as with many life events, there are no guarantees. Although most parents plant dreams and hopes on their off spring, much like John Glenn planted a flag on the moon, that is all we can do is hope for the best and let our children’s futures blossom or fade away as they so desire. That is what I received from the George Will article about his less-than-perfect prodigy — that Jon was born with a handicap, lived longer than was scientifically determined he would, and that, importantly, Will had accepted his son for what he was, living a life that seemed to suit Jon quite well.
A friend gave me a saying which I have on my stove hood. It says:
Ask nothing
Expect nothing
Accept everything.
That’s good advice!