All The Cool Kids Are Doing YouTube Posts

This post is in honor of the fact that I just discovered that my favorite band has posted a video of my favorite song of theirs:


Värttinä: Synti

Then there's my favorite-of-the-last-few-weeks band:


Rodrigo y Gabriela: Diablo Rojo

I don't usually pay much attention to lyrics, as evidenced by all the non-English and instrumental songs I listen to (though Synti does gain points for being about lizard foetuses). But here's one I actually can understand the words to:


Stuart Davis: Jonah

And what the heck, while I'm posting music, here's my interpretation of what Rickrolling was like in 1908.

Kiosk Update

Now in the Kiosk (my sidebar place for pet peeves): maps that have lower elevations colored green and higher ones colored yellow or brown. This color scheme is especially absurd for maps of Arizona, where the higher elevations have far more actual greenery than the lower ones (Mogollon Rim and Sky Islands vs Sonoran Desert).

The Social Construction Of Disabilities

Here's two posts I've encountered recently that touch on the idea of social construction of disabilities. First, Michele smacks down the move by some philosophers to argue that if a disability would hurt Robinson Crusoe, then it can't be regarded as socially constructed:

The example wrongly suggests that we can use a "Robinson Crusoe" test as the litmus test for distinguishing authentic disabilities from cases of purely socially constructed disadvantage. Take the example of deafness. According to the "Robinson Crusoe-test" deafness is an authentic disability: "Robinson Crusoe, alone on his island and unable to hear properly after a stroke, would still be disabled." Sound enough, but so what? The reason why a deaf Robinson Crusoe is disabled is that he lives in a very special social environment, an environment in which he cannot cooperate with other human beings. It would just be wrong to infer that, since deafness is an impairment to human flourishing in the Robinson Crusoe environment, then the disadvantages to which it leads in other environments are purely socially constructed.

I find the term "socially constructed" to be a problematic one, since it's so often mis-understood (and here I lay the blame on both over-enthusiastic proponents and lazy critics) to mean that something isn't really real. Perhaps a better way of thinking would be to think of advantages and disadvantages (in general, not just those typically treated under the heading of "disability") as being matches or mismatches between a person's capacities and qualities on the one hand, and the requirements imposed by their social and natural environment on the other. As Michele points out, everyone is always in a specific social and natural environment -- it's a fallacy to think there's some neutral environment or non-environment state in which we can judge a person's capacities and qualities.

Second, there's Shiva's post (via Ryan) about when suicide (assisted or otherwise) is justifiable:

If most depression is (and I do think most depression is) caused primarily by social conditions, then the obvious, non-medical solution to the problem is to change those social conditions (which, obviously, is easier said than done). However, if someone has truly endogenous depression (that is, in social model terms, their depression is not a result of disability, but is in fact their impairment), to the extent of unrelentingly feeling suicidal, and no drug treatment is successful in having a positive effect on it (as does happen in many cases), then is forcible suicide prevention - that is, denying death to someone who truly cannot find anything positive in life - really justifiable?

I basically agree with Shiva's position -- people have a right to choose to die, in implementing that right we need clear safeguards against pressuring people into exercising that right, when in doubt we should err on the side of life, and many of the things that lead people to feel suicidal are largely caused by their social environment. Where I would differ is in whether the question of endogenous versus social origins of a given person's suicidal desire is relevant to the justifiability of that person choosing suicide.

Things that are socially constructed are still real. A person who is suicidal for social reasons is still actually suicidal, and keeping them alive against their will is just as much a violation of their desires and a source of suffering as it would be if their suicidal wishes were caused by genetics. It may be possible to help such a person by changing the social conditions that cause their suicidal-ness -- but the fact is that such major social change is going to take a lot of time. Since the socially-suicidal person is suffering now, in our imperfect world, they have a right to give up and decide they don't want to wait around hoping for the revolution (I would say this is a general rule -- people have the right to cope with their problems in the here and now rather than martyring themselves waiting for major social changes to eliminate the source of their problems). Further, just because a person's suicidal desires have a social origin doesn't mean they can be fixed by social changes -- the effects of events in a person's life can have permanent impacts on their psyche (and body) that continue long after the cause is gone.

We should work to fix the social conditions that lead some people to become suicidal. But until we've completed that task, there will be socially-suicidal people popping up, who deserve the same choices as the endogenously-suicidal people who may always be with us.

Deporting Valedictorians And Hurricane Evacuees

I suppose part of the reason this blog has hardly any readers is that I don't comment on stories or issues until a few weeks after everyone else has. Nevertheless, here's a couple immigration-related stories that got a lot of attention a little while ago.

First is the case of Arthur Mkoyan, a high school valedictorian who may soon be deported because his parents brought him to the US from Armenia when he was 2 years old. I was a bit annoyed at the tone of the article and of most of the people blogging about it. Specifically, I was bothered by the implication that Mkoyan should get to stay in the US because he's a valedictorian. While this reasoning would help him personally (and it's likely to be what gets him status if he manages it), it doesn't address the larger issue, and indeed tends to reinforce the idea that immigrants have to prove themselves to be exceptionally deserving. (And in connection with this, I can sympathize with his Representative, who is made out to be a bad guy because he has a blanket policy against introducing "private bills" that pick and choose individuals to get legal status.) As far as I'm concerned, the reason Mkoyan should get to stay in the US is that the US is the only country he's ever known, because he was brought to it at a very young age through no choice of his own. And that rationale applies regardless of his GPA.

Second is Border Patrol's declaration and half-hearted not-quite-retraction of a policy of checking immigration status during natural disaster evacuations. The result is to make many Latin@s -- including those with legal status up to natural-born citizen -- reluctant to evacuate, either because they fear consequences for themselves (if I flee my house without my passport, I still have my skin and my accent, but others don't have those advantages), or because of the consequences for their family and community members. So not only are people being unnecessarily exposed to natural disasters, they're also being set up so they can be blamed for "choosing" to stay behind a la the poor black non-evacuees during Katrina. This links in to the sanctuary cities and Sheriff Joe issue in terms of making every occasion an occasion for checking people's status, regardless of whether such singleminded focus on immigration enforcement undermines the government's other duties. It also reveals an important aspect of disaster management -- disasters intensify people's interactions with the State. Complying with disaster management plans puts you in direct contact with police, the national guard, and other direct agents of state coercion, whereas failure to comply puts you wholly outside their protection (or even in direct opposition to them, as a possible looter). This would be fine, even beneficial, if you are on good terms with the state -- if you trust it to be acting in your best interests. For people who have a longstanding antagonistic relationships with the state, however -- such as people of color and immigrants -- natural disasters are a prime occasion for the state to increase its pernicious interference. And all of this applies not just to the immediate disaster management (evacuation, etc.) but also to the longer-term recovery process.

A Different Way To Lose My Job Because Of Immigrants

Here's a creatively, hilariously bizarre anti-immigration argument, made by superdestroyer in the comments to a Matt Yglesias post: Newspapers in the U.S. are in a death spiral and laying off staff left and right because the print media supports open borders, and so now our country is full of people who can't read English and don't care about their communities, and thus don't read the newspaper.

There was an article on Editor and Publisher a little while ago that mentioned that the newspaper business is actually doing better in Latin America, so perhaps I should be burnishing my Spanish just in case the worst happens at my current place of employment (I should note that I actually have no clue about the financial outlook of my employer). My wife went to Mexico recently and brought back some gifts wrapped in a Mexican newspaper that had some very different ideas about page design than I'm used to.