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Have been reading a short story collection by John Varley.
An excerpt from one of them.'The Persistence of Vision" A fictional account of one man's visit to a community of people born deaf and blind who evolved their own excuisite way to overcome it.
"The Strength of the organism was communication.There's no way around it.Without the elaborate and impossible- to- falsify mechanisms for communication built into Keller (the community),it would have eaten itself in pettiness,jealousy, and any dozen other "innate" human defects
The nightly Together was the basis of the organism.Here ,from after dinner ,till it was time to fall asleep,everyone talked in a language that was incapable of falsehood.If there was a problem brewing,it presented itself and was solved ,almost automatically. Jealousy? Resentment? Some little festering wrong that you're nursing?You couldn't conceal it at the Together,and soon everyone was clusterd around you and loving the sickness away.It acted like white corpuscles,clustering around a sick cell,not to destroy it,but to heal it.There seemed to be no problem that couldn't be solved if it was attacked early enough,and with Touch,your neighbours knew about it ,before you did and were already labouring to correct the wrong, heal the wound,to make you feel better ,so you could laugh about it.There was a lot of laughter at the Togethers."
Cheers Ya'll
An excerpt from one of them.'The Persistence of Vision" A fictional account of one man's visit to a community of people born deaf and blind who evolved their own excuisite way to overcome it.
"The Strength of the organism was communication.There's no way around it.Without the elaborate and impossible- to- falsify mechanisms for communication built into Keller (the community),it would have eaten itself in pettiness,jealousy, and any dozen other "innate" human defects
The nightly Together was the basis of the organism.Here ,from after dinner ,till it was time to fall asleep,everyone talked in a language that was incapable of falsehood.If there was a problem brewing,it presented itself and was solved ,almost automatically. Jealousy? Resentment? Some little festering wrong that you're nursing?You couldn't conceal it at the Together,and soon everyone was clusterd around you and loving the sickness away.It acted like white corpuscles,clustering around a sick cell,not to destroy it,but to heal it.There seemed to be no problem that couldn't be solved if it was attacked early enough,and with Touch,your neighbours knew about it ,before you did and were already labouring to correct the wrong, heal the wound,to make you feel better ,so you could laugh about it.There was a lot of laughter at the Togethers."
Cheers Ya'll