I saw this quote on reddit today:

Most people are generally good to other people. The limiting factor is who they consider ‘people’. Doctors who comitted what are now known as barabaric acts – lobotomy, for example – genuinely thought they were doing good, because at the time all the common morals to their social/class group said so. Doctors who experimented on the bodies of minorities saw nothing wrong, because the results of these experiments were for the good of people. ‘Real’ people, that is.

It’s kind of a mind-blown moment for me as it makes so much sense. Ever since becoming ill and disabled and finding out how the disabled and unemployed are treated, I have been baffled as to how so many people who consider themselves good, kind people, passionately advocate for making the lives of the disabled more difficult. Wanting to cut or stop disability benefits, make them harder to get, complaining about how much we cost the health service, pushing us down priority lists - remember during covid when the disabled who became sick were usually left to die while the able bodied were treated? And this was justified and considered appropriate? At least in the UK. So many other things. But this is it. We simply aren’t really considered people any more, we’re now just seen as parasites. Really humanity hasn’t progressed on from being animals, we’re treated the same way many animals treat a sick or injured pack member, trying to push them out of the group and get rid of them so they don’t drag the rest of the pack down by being a burden.