Brin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brin_bellway) wrote2021-10-10 05:42 pm
brin_bellway) wrote2021-10-10 05:42 pm
Where the air is free and breathing is easy
[cw: illness, (past) injury]
[Ex Urbe; Wayback] (by Ada Palmer)
I have a sore throat at time of writing because of someone simply *leaving the house* while I didn't have a mask on (the builders of this house made the understandable mistake of thinking it didn't need an airlock because it was located on Earth), so perhaps I am more inclined than usual to chew on these ideas.
I don't think I'm particularly reluctant to obtain assistive tech on the grounds of "what if it's temporary". So what if it *is* temporary? Just because it's temporary doesn't mean it will only happen once, or will never happen to anyone else you know.
My dad broke his ankle a couple years ago. We own a pair of crutches now, and a walking-cast boot: they were purchased for a temporary condition, but they have been permanently added to our toolkit. If ever we need them again, there they will be.
(Mom's gout has been pretty well controlled the past few years, but there were a couple attacks before she figured out what was going on where we had to go and rent crutches for her. If she has another attack now, we won't need to do that.)
I guess this ties back into the privilege-of-property thing: I have the space and stability that I can afford to store such things. I dislike *clutter*, stuff that is disorganised and/or unwanted, but I am not opposed to simply *having* lots of stuff so long as it has a place and a purpose ("insurance" counts).
---
A few days ago, I had/overheard a disturbing conversation at work with a father and his ~13-year-old son: the kid wanted a respirator, and the dad wouldn't let him have one.
My *first* thought was that the dad's claims that they were too expensive and the filters expire too soon were just excuses: that his *real* concern was social acceptability, which he was willing to endanger his child for even when the kid himself would gladly have worn better-but-weirder respiratory protection.
My second thought was that maybe the dad (and very possibly also the kid) didn't *know* that respirators were better. A lot of stuff about that conversation falls into place if you view it under an assumption that the difference between elastomerics and cloth is purely aesthetic. (Other customers I've talked with about this seem to start out at least *suspecting* that respirators are better (if perhaps not how much), but perhaps he's an exception. I suppose if you're faced with a son who wants one for aesthetic reasons, it would be easier to assume that my desire was aesthetic too. (Normally I'd have mentioned effectiveness at some point in these conversations, but I was trying to keep gushing to a minimum in the face of a hostile authority figure.))
Now I'm wondering if there's also an aspect of "this 'once-in-a-century' pandemic is 'almost over', and you want to spend fifty bucks on anti-plague gear *now*?". That would make the complaint about filter expiration, which initially parsed as latching on to any downsides he could think of in an attempt to get the kid to stop wanting one, make sense: he doesn't think those respirator filters would see much use in the three years before they expire.
---
As for the empathy-sphere thing, I once saw someone point out that our culture's sphere of empathy is *not* strictly larger than it once was, but that we tend to ignore areas of shrinkage because--more or less by definition--we no longer consider the entities in those areas to be people. Most notably, *gods* (indeed, supernatural entities in general) are increasingly outside the sphere of empathy, when once "what will the gods think of being treated like this" was one of the *most* important questions about a potential course of action.
I have not formed a strong opinion on whether this is a *bad* thing (it seems like it would be very hard to tell, given that I am seeing the process from the inside), but I think they had a point about it being a thing.
(Relatedly, I found this "summary of history (empowerment and well-being lens)" uncomfortably parochial. It essentially considers space-times to be better or worse according to the extent to which their societies' values resemble the values of the author's own culture. (well, that plus their capacity to *act* on those values) He might not even be wrong! For that matter, it might be axiomatic enough to not be the sort of thing one can *be* wrong about! And yet, I could feel the outside view niggling at me.)
[Ex Urbe; Wayback] (by Ada Palmer)
I have a sore throat at time of writing because of someone simply *leaving the house* while I didn't have a mask on (the builders of this house made the understandable mistake of thinking it didn't need an airlock because it was located on Earth), so perhaps I am more inclined than usual to chew on these ideas.
I don't think I'm particularly reluctant to obtain assistive tech on the grounds of "what if it's temporary". So what if it *is* temporary? Just because it's temporary doesn't mean it will only happen once, or will never happen to anyone else you know.
My dad broke his ankle a couple years ago. We own a pair of crutches now, and a walking-cast boot: they were purchased for a temporary condition, but they have been permanently added to our toolkit. If ever we need them again, there they will be.
(Mom's gout has been pretty well controlled the past few years, but there were a couple attacks before she figured out what was going on where we had to go and rent crutches for her. If she has another attack now, we won't need to do that.)
I guess this ties back into the privilege-of-property thing: I have the space and stability that I can afford to store such things. I dislike *clutter*, stuff that is disorganised and/or unwanted, but I am not opposed to simply *having* lots of stuff so long as it has a place and a purpose ("insurance" counts).
---
A few days ago, I had/overheard a disturbing conversation at work with a father and his ~13-year-old son: the kid wanted a respirator, and the dad wouldn't let him have one.
My *first* thought was that the dad's claims that they were too expensive and the filters expire too soon were just excuses: that his *real* concern was social acceptability, which he was willing to endanger his child for even when the kid himself would gladly have worn better-but-weirder respiratory protection.
My second thought was that maybe the dad (and very possibly also the kid) didn't *know* that respirators were better. A lot of stuff about that conversation falls into place if you view it under an assumption that the difference between elastomerics and cloth is purely aesthetic. (Other customers I've talked with about this seem to start out at least *suspecting* that respirators are better (if perhaps not how much), but perhaps he's an exception. I suppose if you're faced with a son who wants one for aesthetic reasons, it would be easier to assume that my desire was aesthetic too. (Normally I'd have mentioned effectiveness at some point in these conversations, but I was trying to keep gushing to a minimum in the face of a hostile authority figure.))
Now I'm wondering if there's also an aspect of "this 'once-in-a-century' pandemic is 'almost over', and you want to spend fifty bucks on anti-plague gear *now*?". That would make the complaint about filter expiration, which initially parsed as latching on to any downsides he could think of in an attempt to get the kid to stop wanting one, make sense: he doesn't think those respirator filters would see much use in the three years before they expire.
---
As for the empathy-sphere thing, I once saw someone point out that our culture's sphere of empathy is *not* strictly larger than it once was, but that we tend to ignore areas of shrinkage because--more or less by definition--we no longer consider the entities in those areas to be people. Most notably, *gods* (indeed, supernatural entities in general) are increasingly outside the sphere of empathy, when once "what will the gods think of being treated like this" was one of the *most* important questions about a potential course of action.
I have not formed a strong opinion on whether this is a *bad* thing (it seems like it would be very hard to tell, given that I am seeing the process from the inside), but I think they had a point about it being a thing.
(Relatedly, I found this "summary of history (empowerment and well-being lens)" uncomfortably parochial. It essentially considers space-times to be better or worse according to the extent to which their societies' values resemble the values of the author's own culture. (well, that plus their capacity to *act* on those values) He might not even be wrong! For that matter, it might be axiomatic enough to not be the sort of thing one can *be* wrong about! And yet, I could feel the outside view niggling at me.)