Never have I thought that deaf people could be happy about their disability. In fact, they would not even call it a disability; just a different human experience. I suppose when a group of people are a minority, their method of survival is to band together and rely on each other. This creates a unique society of tight-knit members who live life just like the hearing people. When people in general have a baby, they would want the baby to be just like themselves. Hearing people would want a baby who can hear as well. Rarely do we consider how the door can swing both ways. Some deaf people want a baby who is deaf as well so the parents can raise them in a deaf society.
Mr. Chung brought us through a scenario where people with hearing were to go deaf one day by some freak event of nature. Those born and raised deaf would still be able to communicate while the rest of the hearing folks would struggle to understand each other. As a result, the deaf people are more fit to survive through the process of natural selection; a term very familiar to us from grade 11 biology.
Alas, such a scenario is unlikely and the majority of the people in the world can hear properly. We, as in the hearing people, like to think of ourselves as "normal" for having all of our senses. But how can we define being normal? Deaf people can do almost everything that hearing people do; just in a different way. In our current society, most people would go for a cochlear hearing implant if they had a baby who was deaf. Now I realize why some deaf people would reject the operation in favor of deafness. To favor a deaf baby over one that can hear seems a little too extreme as humans were meant to have ears for the purpose of hearing.
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