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- 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}