Mon, Oct 20 · 7:00 PM CDT
The reasoning theists, atheists, liberals, libertarians, & conservatives of Secular Bible Study, First Minneapolis Circle of Reason, Circle of Ijtihad, & Winnipeg Circle of Reason join Interbelief Conversation Café for our 304th Plurationalist (Interbelief Reasoning) Dialogue by Zoom, “How Should Society Handle 'Exceptions'?”
Exception | ekˈsepSHən | nounMy tour of Poland was delightful, with the notable exception of Auschwitz.
Exceptional | ekˈsepSH(ə)nəl | adjectivecrimes of exceptional cruelty. a poem of exceptional beauty. helping parents of exceptional children.
This century, both public school students who exhibit unusual brilliance, creativity, athleticism, or leadership, and students who’ve exhibited physical or intellectual disabilities, are called “exceptional” by their schools – even “twice-exceptional” (or “2e”), for those exhibiting both exceptional gifts and disabilities. Each exceptional student is then optimally-routed to school programs that encourage their gifts and/or minimize their disabilities. Unexceptional students, as always, comprise the “hump of the elephant” (or the “peak of the bell curve”). Their average IQ? Exactly 100 -- by pre-definition. Their educational program? Whatever’s standard.
But in earlier centuries (and perhaps in future decades, if federal funding of public schools is replaced by government subsidies to private schools uncommitted to educate every student), public oversight of such exceptions among the otherwise “unexceptional” student body was (and may again become) largely non-existent. Instead, all students were (and may again be) expected to “sink or swim” by their own initiative and skill – either to “rise to the top” of society, or conversely to “bottom out,” rejected from society as “uneducable.”
And what of those whose adult IQs of 130 & 70 equally contribute to our human population average IQ of 100? Should the exceptionally-gifted leading the elephant forward by his trunk be picked up and placed back on the elephant’s back? (Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai attest to that harm.) Should the exceptionally-disabled following by holding the elephant’s tail be kicked away? (Hitler did that, through mass-murdering institutionalized adults and children with Down syndrome; and America’s early-1900s eugenics movement conflated individual ability or disability with the average bell-curve of one’s entire racial population…Hitler was a big fan of that, too, once he’d first rid Germany of its citizens with intellectual disabilities.)
And what of those hurled from the elephant’s back not by their own actions, but by the elephant’s? What of those abandoned by the exceptionally rapid mass movement of their own society? The disabled well-cared for in one political administration are left to die in another. Left-wing or right-wing activists become “patriots” in one administration, but “traitors” in another. Coal miners and computer hackers, once highly-trained and well-paid specialists, will soon be obsolete dependents as society adopts new technology (soon to include A.I.) that replaces their jobs. They’ll become the most recent exceptions to our expectations that all skilled workers can be employed commensurate to their skills. Should those human exceptions be accorded exceptional consideration (a leg back up, a safety net, retraining?) by a society otherwise unwilling to bend its rules?
Should exceptions to all our rules, not just to some of them, be accorded unique consideration by society? Should society handle its most “malevolent” exceptions – violent criminals – by cruel forms of incarceration that allow their violence to continue even imprisoned? Should it handle its most “benevolent” exceptions – charity workers & peaceful protesters – by bombing, shooting, or arresting them too? Should it handle its “non-exceptions” – regular working folks – by making them remain unexceptional, poorly informed, and passively uninvolved, while exceptionally-rapidly “fracking” the world around them until they, too, fall through its cracks?
At 7-9 pm CDT Mo 10/20/25 by Zoom we'll reasoningly share our diverse or even disparate views on how gently, or how violently, we should be leading around the “elephants in the room” by their trunks & tails. Our reasoning dialogue agreements of open-mindedness, acceptance, curiosity, discovery, sincerity, brevity, & confidentiality should help us see each others’ views more fully, both from front and back!
