Tag: Thomas R. Malthus

Life in Deaf community can be challenging, but it can be particularly harder for Deaf returnees whose bodies and minds are being pushed away by ignorance, bullying, and hatred. Deaf returnees serve the principal purposes of punishment: retribution, and rehabilitation. Whose old bones suffer from exile in Deaf community, who are forgetful, suffering human compassion, mocked, and ignored.

Ignorance does not make society safer. Ignorance hurts Deaf returnees, not dangerous people. Ignorance locks up Deaf returnees who have been convicted of a crime. Ignorance hurts vulnerable community that is known as Deaf returnee community, the world’s smallest human population.

I lived 30 minutes from Mt. St. Helens, the famous eruption in 1980. I am also a Deaf returnee. I found myself in trouble with the law; I had to face my past. As a teenager in the small town in state of Washington during my junior high days, I suffered and experienced a horrible tragedy.

Now I am 43 years old. The horrible tragedy was 32 years ago. Stories from a time when as a child myself did not learn or taught lessons what was right and wrong who were responsible for my early learning.

A Greek philosopher, Aristotle once wrote, “Memory is the scribe of the soul.”—In this case, writing is the mirror to my soul and the doorway into my existence where I was told that in Deaf community, I do not exist.

I had thought when I traded my life as a dedicated suburbanite for a life in Deaf community I had experienced about as radical a transition as I would ever face. As you read this it is good to realize that empowering Deaf returnees is the highest human compassion. By all reports life behind the fence as Deaf returnee is very different, and is often a much more degrading and dangerous experience.

Malthus who was born in 1766 and died in 1834, he studied at Cambridge and was selected to be a fellow at Jesus College in 1793. Five years later, he published Essay on the Principle of Population in which he argued that population would outrun food supply and would increase population. My point is that Deaf returnees are hungry for circle of support, empowerment, compassion, and higher education in the eyes of human population.

Do they deserve a second chance in Deaf community? Do they deserve being shunned? Rehabilitation should be number one priority over retribution in Deaf community.

 

-JT

Copyright © 2018 Jason Tozier

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