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Paul Alexander, the polio survivor who spent over 70 years in an Iron Lung, has died at 78 (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 8 months ago by sjmarf@sh.itjust.works to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 109 points 8 months ago

I feel like this guy alone undercuts the whole meritocracy narrative quite a bit. I know the defenders of that worldview would go "okay, but except for all the exceptions...", but in a lot of ways it's just a more extreme version of the stuff that puts people in normal poverty.

Also, vaccinate your damn kids, everyone.

[-] bartolomeo@suppo.fi 6 points 8 months ago

undercuts the whole meritocracy narrative

How do you mean?

[-] Sizzler@slrpnk.net 7 points 8 months ago

A classic case of success against all the odds, to manage to become a lawyer at all is a challenge let alone when you live in an iron lung. It's an argument for people saying that no matter who you are in society you can succeed and that (therefore) society isn't racist/classiest etc.

[-] bartolomeo@suppo.fi 5 points 8 months ago

Oooh, I see. Thanks.

I was missing this part:

and that (therefore) society isn't racist/classiest etc.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yup. Through no fault of his own, the dude spent his entire life lying motionless. Where's the merit in that story?

It's not really helpful on it's own in a debate, because you'll 100% get "okay, but normal people" back, and it takes way too long to unravel how there's not actually a hard distinction between various degrees of disadvantage. You're better off with a mini Gish gallop, since there's no shortage of examples, and your opponent will be too embarrassed to say the African children were lazy directly.

You could also use actual hard numbers if your talking to an audience savvy enough and with enough attention span to get that. That's a rare audience, though.