No justice for the stupid!

As I felt her open hand crash again into the back of my head, I pondered on what I could do to stop my daughter’s attack on my person. She was lashing out for reasons only known to her, if there is reason in her mind as opposed to an instinctual response to stimuli. I don’t really know sometimes. Those who are supposed to know label her as “autistic” although that word covers such a wide range of totally different people that I don’t know what meaning it really has. I remember communicating with someone on my blog who was given that same label but was still apparently skilled enough to use a computer, find his way to a blog, my blog, and relate his thoughts coherently. He pointed me to another person who has the same label, yet makes youtube videos and is chatty and intelligible. Yet, from experience, I know the same label is used for young teenage boys who cannot write or utter a single phrase, one of which can merely wet the tips of his fingers with his own saliva and push those fingertips together, or another that, again wordless, finds some “pleasure” in defecating and spreading his outgoings on the walls. And yet they all have that same label, “autistic,” as if it describes something meaningful or helpful or descriptive that differentiates them from other people that don’t have that issue.

Imagine a label for supposedly a specific condition so vacuous that it is said that everyone has it. “Oh, everyone’s on the autism spectrum.” Yeah, right!

Imagine a culture so spineless, so scared to say the truth, that the words “brain-damaged” or “[severely] retarded” are forbidden for fear of offense.

The observable fact is that the term “autism” is a label spread so widely and so thinly that it doesn’t actually describe a specific mental condition but is just an easy category to shove a bunch of people in, people with nothing in common. So, for now, I’ll reject that label and describe what I see.

My daughter is a stupid retard. Both of those words are used literally, to describe what I see, with no offense intended. She lacks the intelligence someone at her age should have, the definition of stupid. She is severely delayed in her mental development, the definition of retard. This is not to say she has no sense at all. But she lacks a lot.

Now how do you stop such a creature from attacking you when she has a bee in her bonnet? Or if she simply finds it to be a fun thing to do? What do I do?

It’s well within my power to turn around and give her some strong slaps back. But that may just tell her that it is ok to hit people. Or would it tell her anything that she can understand? I could restrict her from the things she likes, withhold them from her. Great! But then that just makes her angry enough to lash out again or find something to destroy. There is no talking to one who doesn’t understand much of spoken language. For someone who has a limited understanding of action and consequence, what can you do? Should I just treat her like an animal and condition her to respond to stimuli as I wish? I’m sure some ignoramus would take issue with that, to treat a person, a child, who seems to act like an animal as if they were an animal.

What is the just thing to do? If she attacks her siblings or others, what justice really is there? What restoration or rectification can there be when the person doing the act has no understanding of right and wrong?

I believe that in a court case, when a person does a terrible act, yet lacks “mens rea” and mental capacity, and can continue to do terrible acts, then they can be locked away in some mental hospital. It may be the only thing that can be done, but is that rectification and restoration? That’s if justice is defined in such a manner. If it’s understood as “everyone getting what they deserve,” what does the stupid or deluded, those lacking mental capacity deserve?

If it were an inanimate object or even an animal and it hurt me and continued to do so, I could just get rid of it; I could remove the item or destroy it, or I could just have the animal killed. But apparently when dealing with people who have the same mental capacity of an inanimate object or animal, things have be done differently, right? Apparently, you can’t just have that person incinerated or executed, even if it is practical.

So what justice can be provided here?

I think about how stupid humanity is on a whole. How many times has a bunch of humans done horrific things under the belief that they were just doing the right thing? And why? Because they just went with the herd and followed a leader. Because they lacked the moral capacity to search things out, to pursue wisdom and understanding as one would dig and search for gold. Again and again, people repeat the mistakes of old, like my poor stupid daughter. Again and again, we are warned and told not to do these things. Again and again, the consequences of such immorality is effected. And yet, like some dumb animal, the masses gore themselves and others. We allow standards of morality to slip into nothingness. It’s getting so bad that people can’t tell the difference between man and woman, male and female. Homosexuality is accepted as just “an alternative sort of relationship.” The promoted message now is this: if your child tells you that they think they’re attracted to the same sex, then you should tell them it’s all ok, it’s fine to be sexually attracted to a biological dead-end, and they are still loved. The killing of the innocent unborn and the “right” to do so are not only tolerated but craved and yearned for and praised. Government robbery, deceit and murder is accepted, known, supported and prolonged. Criminals and thugs are praised if they wear the right costume.

And like a dumb animal, worse than that, humanity keeps goring.

Can there be justice when the state of man is so impoverished?

Those that have no basis for morality (other than their personal whims) turn to the Bible and condemn the Deity described therein for his wholesale destruction of men, women and children. They bitch about his command to wipe out whole peoples. “God condones genocide!” they chant. “God killed the whole world, save eight people!” “What could the children have done wrong?” “Where’s the justice in that?”

And I already have the rational arguments to undermine their pitiful claims of divine immorality. But putting those arguments aside, I think again that when an inanimate object or an animal keeps causing damage, that isn’t the time for coddling or protecting. Sometimes you just have to wreck the thing or put the animal to death, even to put it out of its own misery.

Now is that the setting aside of justice to do what is practical and meaningful? Or is that just the right thing to do?