Reply #156: People can be handicapped in many ways, [View All]

[Joe Chi Minh]

very often in ways that are not normally designated as "handicaps".
However, people who suffer from any afflictions involuntarily should realise that when bad individuals behave VOLUNTARILY in a way that can be assimilated to such an involuntary affliction, it does not reflect badly on themselves, or indeed the person who compares their defective behaviour with the shortcomings of people afflicted in that way through their own choice.

There are indeed many, many people with severe afflications who make light of their afflictions, to the point of joking about them. That is the mature way of dealing with an affliction.

There was a top-class Dutch soccer player who played for Celtic. He wanted the going rate for his exceptinal talents, but his club chairman was a rapacious parasite, who renegued on an oral promise he had made concerning a pay rise based on performance.

The newspapers, who - surprise, surprise - were on the side of the chairman, reported that, in response to the Chairman's pathetic, new pay offer, the striker asked, "What does he think I am, a "down and out" (can't remember the exact expression, but it meant a homeless person)! Of course, they played it up noo end, but the point was that only the perverse worldling could take that as an insult, but since he was addressing the actions of just such an individual, it was a very apposite way to brand him for his mean-spiritedness.

If Christ or his Apostles, or any Christian, in principle, were to be called an indigent, or compared to a homeless person, they should take it as a compliment. Such people are more than the salt of the earth. Most of them are super-spiritual people.

However, in the context of the market place, and more specifically the market place for labour, it is strange but true, and perhaps even a healthy phenomenon, that, if we do our jobs well, we gauge how we are valued by our employer by the price placed on our service to him.

Consequently, the soccer player's words should be viewed in that context. Not as an insult, in principle, but solely to the person it is addressed to, within a particular context. If a person behaves in a stupid way - as highly intelligent (in worldly terms) people do, as well as the rest of us, then it is perfectly reasonable and not at all insulting to a person who is mentally deficient through no fault of his own, for his involuntary condition to be used as a "weapon" with which to beat someone who has no such excuse for his lack of good sense. Do people who are crippled never call people idiots? I would be surprised if that were the case.