This is wonderful! Thank you so much. In spite of his personal chaos, Jean Vanier was one of the first authors I read on what it means to be human, in his book Becoming Human, and I carried it with me like a sacred text, which it very well feels like when you read it. He made such a beautiful case for what “normal” really is, and how abnormal most “normal” people are in comparison to the love and compassion that flows from human beings who have birth defects and/or suffer terribly at the hands of “normal” people. Some things just never change. True is always true, love wins.
I published a short story some years ago called 'The Origin of Freaks,' a fictionalized account of Tod Browning's early life. For research, I read 'Dark Carnival', a biography of Browning. Yes, he was a carnival barker, but he also performed as a 'freak' himself in various capacities, such as a 'living corpse' and a 'geek' ('geeks' would bite the heads off chickens!). A fascinating life. One could argue even that the figure of the vampire, from his film, Dracula, is another sort of freak, of the myth/legend sort.
Your observations about the various ways our culture does not value life ring very true, and the situation is getting worse. Yes, it's 'soft' eugenics taking place on various fronts, in particular, the way we've taken so-called 'rights' such as abortion and 'death with dignity' (euthanasia) and expanded their social functions to kill more and more people, one of the most egregious being the spread of "medical assistance in dying" or MAID as it's called in Canada, which now has expansion to include mental illness held in suspension by the current government that wants it to happen. Gender ideology, too, has an aspect of the eugenics death cult to it, with the hormonal and surgical treatments that result in sterilization. All of these movements are covered under the term 'health care'.
This is wonderful! Thank you so much. In spite of his personal chaos, Jean Vanier was one of the first authors I read on what it means to be human, in his book Becoming Human, and I carried it with me like a sacred text, which it very well feels like when you read it. He made such a beautiful case for what “normal” really is, and how abnormal most “normal” people are in comparison to the love and compassion that flows from human beings who have birth defects and/or suffer terribly at the hands of “normal” people. Some things just never change. True is always true, love wins.
I published a short story some years ago called 'The Origin of Freaks,' a fictionalized account of Tod Browning's early life. For research, I read 'Dark Carnival', a biography of Browning. Yes, he was a carnival barker, but he also performed as a 'freak' himself in various capacities, such as a 'living corpse' and a 'geek' ('geeks' would bite the heads off chickens!). A fascinating life. One could argue even that the figure of the vampire, from his film, Dracula, is another sort of freak, of the myth/legend sort.
Your observations about the various ways our culture does not value life ring very true, and the situation is getting worse. Yes, it's 'soft' eugenics taking place on various fronts, in particular, the way we've taken so-called 'rights' such as abortion and 'death with dignity' (euthanasia) and expanded their social functions to kill more and more people, one of the most egregious being the spread of "medical assistance in dying" or MAID as it's called in Canada, which now has expansion to include mental illness held in suspension by the current government that wants it to happen. Gender ideology, too, has an aspect of the eugenics death cult to it, with the hormonal and surgical treatments that result in sterilization. All of these movements are covered under the term 'health care'.
Excellent!! Thank you for mentioning Iceland.