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1987-03-24
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2KB
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33 lines
What is the purpose of life?
The purpose of life is not to be happy, the purpose of life is to
matter, to have it make some difference that you ever lived at all.
*
I found that quotation when I was a boy and taped it to the top of
my desk lamp. For many years I read it almost every day.
Who am I to ask for your attention? Time is the most precious
commodity of all and should not be granted freely to all who seek it.
I work as a senior psychologist in a 100 bed residential treatment
facility; I work in an institution. It (the Rockland Multiply Disabled
Unit) is operated under the auspices of Letchworth Village Developmental
Disability Services. I am an employee of N.Y.State's Office of Mental
Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. My unit, we call it "the
MDU", is located on the grounds of a suburban (N.Y.S. Office of Mental
Health-operated) psychiatric center. Some of my clients (I am
personally responsible for 50) are dually diagnosed meaning they have
been diagnosed as both mentally retarded and psychiatrically impaired.
And in my spare time, I am co-sysop of a large computer bulletin board,
PC-Rockland BBS.
.
My basic thesis is that any individual who has demonstrated the
independent ability to drive a car is functioning adequately in
this society and therefore should not be classified as mentally
retarded. Moreover, any individual who cannot drive a car solely
because of their intellectual limitations should be classified
as retarded, assuming that they they have been given the
opportunity to learn the requisite skills, received adequate and
appropriate training (we need better/cheaper simulators) and
otherwise meet the AAMD criteria.
Finally, I offer the glimmer of an idea... half-baked so to speak. Might
I have stumbled over the beginning to a fair test of the right to vote?
w/thanks to mn/MDU/CI/KPG/PC/blondie/VB/Mom/Eve/Jeff and Beth ***rjw***
{portions excerpted from the LISTable file THESIS.321 in PHD_IDEA.ARC}