Perplexity:
A job application? Okay, well, I think I see part of the difference in degrees. I'll go out on a limb and suggest your memory issues don't regularly include remembering to go to the bathroom, to eat, or why either function is important.
Furthermore, I don't see what it matters whether or not my friend is medically qualified. I mean, I suppose if you're going to split a hair about how soon the man is going to die, but really ....
Thus I come back to points such as treating him as if he was competent, or letting him have his simple pleasures. Here I've made a complicated mess out of a fairly simple issue, in large part because I also question the competency of the caregiving son (long story there).
But, for the record, one of the reasons people will discuss such issues as another's competency is that it alters how we deal with them.
If a woman walks up and proposes a shag in which a guy can do whatever he wants, nine out of ten (or something like that) men will say, "Yes." But if the woman is a Down's syndrome case? More often than not, the same men would hesitate, admittedly for the aesthetics and drool, but there is a fair argument about the competency of such an offer. In high school I had to deal with a theoretical proposition regarding the mandatory sterilization of the mentally retarded. It was a Catholic school, and I came out against, which turned out to be a minority position. To the other, though, I'm not for mounting up on the retards and shagging htem senseless. If I can cajole a little girl into sex with a promise of a puppy, does that mean she's made a competent decision?
Is the menstrual nine year-old daughter of a friend of mine ready to decide she wants to have a baby?
Does competence change any aspect of a human situation? Does it affect the way you deal with people at all?
Which leads toward a larger question: If so much of humanity is stupid as many would claim, then ought not such claimants be a little more forgiving toward people who don't and can't know any better? But that's another topic, I'm sure.
