self-awareness

i was a reader of science fiction from early on. when i finished all the kids' scifi i started in on the adults'.

i had already decided what i was.

i was a mutant.

coordination

when i was growing up, i wasn't very coordinated; i couldn't throw, or run, or fight like a good kid was supposed to.

after sleeping on a futon for 10 years, my posture, breathing & coordination improved markedly.
(i have read that the japanese, by sleeping on the floor, stay limber into old age.)

oh--but i'm still a terrible dancer.

functioning: low, high

i would just like to point out something that seems to me is not often enough examined: by employing the LINEAR concept of "low"--"high" we are obviating the palpable impact of circumstances & surroundings--indeed, i believe these are greater determinants of response than one's place on the "spectrum".

when my wife & i are with people i don't know, i notice she apologizes for me not saying much (or anything) & says, "he does talk"; when i am with people i trust & know well i can be actually quite verbose. likewise for spaces that are comfortable (close, familiar, not intensely loud or bright)--things i know about & can to some degree compensate for, but it takes an effort (occasionally an extreme effort) to overcome--versus, say, WalMart, an amusement park, or airports.

having a clear purpose, like a thread in the labyrinth.

and the whole sequence is important also. if i have had to drive in heavy traffic for an hour, even reaching a comfortable destination doesn't do me much good at first, & for some time thereafter.
i learned to travel early to the site of job interviews, & wait leisurely at a separate location to calm down. or the thought of having to leave on a similar journey, at a preordained time: this also jangles.

so you see that tests performed in a "lab" environment, travelled to from home, in themselves create a distortion-effect that is not considered part of the result.

i believe most people with whatever degree of aut-spectrum impairment could function in a society that granted them the possibility of secure spaces wherever they went, & peaceful transit thereto; even those whose are practically nonverbal.

but this is too utopian. it would be enough, just to take away the BLAME.

toleration, activism

it seems to be that, while a majority of NTs are the sort that wants to be like other people & likes other people to be like them, a smaller but significant proportion prefers to be different from other people & appreciates difference in others. i have almost always found tolerance, & often support, among the latter, who tend to be alienated just as much in their own way (cf the first group i mentioned). conformity in our pseudo-individualistic age is a serious problem, true. but it does not help anyone to look at this in an alarmist way.

the first thing that comes to mind, is the fact that the group of like-minded (i associate these with Myers-Briggs dominant Sensing, mostly Extraverted Sensing types--but this pattern is not limited to those) is susceptible to what they are told; & if they are told there is a new minority among them that needs to be respected, eventually they will raise their kids to respect them & it will not always be prejudicial to grow up as one of that minority.

another point, is that there are what might be termed healthfear-crazes, or hot topics that sweep through society, by the same media, influencing people's insecurities into taking irrational & sometimes drastic action. maybe profit lies behind these, maybe they just happen & charlatans latch onto them. the thing about childhood immunization falls under this head. basically, put the facts out & discredit the fearmongers, is the way to proceed.

finally, i have come to understand that resistance to difference is not all the same even in those who are like-minded; & autism-spectrum affects them more viscereally even than skin color or physical deformity. this may be because they cannot imagine a mind that is otherwise & not inimical. or else maybe it is not even that close to being a thought.

this last may be beyond remedy; hence the need to write protection explicitly into our laws.

on being truthful

It is rather a judgment against society, than the reverse, that a superior truthfulness should prove so unhandy. In almost every given situation it is better to lie; & this gives a distinct advantage to those who are able to lie convincingly, & in fact find it their most graspable tactic.

The only thing that still surprises, then, is how truthfulness (insofar as it has) has received the approbation of the sages & the sanction of several bromides. Perhaps that counsel to be truthful was only another form of misdirection: the truth is, YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH.

opsimath

--or "late bloomer" although this is so at odds with my scholastic prowess as to be an easy secret to keep (mostly). for example, i taught myself to read by looking over my mother's shoulder as she read out loud to my year-older brother (the "average", "normal" one). i always made straight A's & picked things up so readily that my study practice became to simply read the textbook at the beginning of the year cover to cover, & never open it again.

but in fact i was otherwise backwards, & felt it keenly. i had the most intense awkwardness with girls, finally learned to swim myself the summer i was 21, having only gotten my driver's license the year before; lived at home (with one short exception) until i was 28 (the year i got my first full-time job); & married at 41 (younger than Yeats, at any rate, but many of my contemporaries were already divorced or raising families by that time).

i couldn't explain it, even to myself, but i finally did come to accept that there is no universal timetable for humans, & the time for me was the right time for me if i was going to at all.

"I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties."

--Charles Olson

aspie in the house of love

Long-suffering Aspies of the present day might reflect that in a large scale mercantile society such as ours, the proportion of discrete, impersonal &/or mediated transactions can be a hefty one; whilst in a venue such as the Court of Versailles of Louis Quatorze & the like, without explicit rules but burdened by innumerable nuances of mores, mass media being entirely replaced by gossip & innuendo--their disadvantages might have proven insurmountable. But in one respect, at least, we are still at that redoubtable Court--& on trial, it often feels, for our very lives.

In other words, the Court of Love. Our Super Powers fail us. Each clinker leaves its scar. Interviews, they say, are decided in the first 15 seconds (or whatever)--like science fiction nuclear wars--surely romantic interviews fare little better. If it were up to natural procreation to reproduce our kind, alas, i think we would not ever have managed to become known.

The services offered by modern communications, particularly online dating, but defer the issue. (My idea of speed-dating is growing up with the Girl Next Door.) Fortunately, by whatever mechanism, both males & females are found in this as in every scarce moiety & the unique channels by which heart is revealed to heart are capable of being discovered by those whose patience is not limited to bus stop vigils.

The one thing we might try to remember is that, even for those of the likelier persuasions, lasting love has never been common, cheap or easily available--only its counterfeits.

on being uncommon

Over the years, people i have known of various acknowledged minorities i have made common cause with, would sooner or later reach a point where they had to acknowledge (or rather, avow) how THEY had experienced a quality of majority-oppressiveness that i, as a straight white anglo male, could only know vicariously at best. I was on their side, plainly: but i could have chosen otherwise.

Deep down i disagreed. I knew it would only be worse, seem more arrogant, to protest. Later i was able to explain to myself: not every minority is visible or has a name. What minority was i? A minority given to finding patterns not always obvious or accepted--such as seeing how there is not THIS prejudice against skin color, THAT prejudice against sexual orientation, ANOTHER prejudice against gender, & STILL MORE prejudices wherever fences are erected & walls made strong.

There is only one injustice, born of the failure of reciprocity, & not a single human on earth has missed being made the recipient of it, sometime in their lives.

Hatred of the Other.

on becoming a dodo

Historiography, needless to say, belongs to the triumphant; although there was a Cato to declare, "The victor pleased the Gods, but the loser pleased me," it was not until very recently that underdogs as a class could be said to have had actual advocates, & their claims granted merit. We are only now feeling the loss of the Dodo, the Great Auk, & the Passenger Pigeon, which worried nobody earlier (when it was preventable). With that in mind i can start to contemplate sundry human & human-caused extinctions. Perhaps some of them even include my own--such as the case of left-handed children forced to indite with their other hand ("parasinistral" i say): when my generation of benighted helpfulness passes, there will come no more.

Prenatal testing, & its consequent effect on what would otherwise be a natural incidence of numerous SOCIALLY-DISFAVORED genetic anomalies, proceeds apace. It is not hard to foresee the absolute eclipse of, say, non-telegenic looks, in the fullness of time. Why not autism-spectrum? How is that not like having crooked teeth?

Seeds of all the earth's varieties are being saved, stored in a sort of library of genotypes, against ultimate oblivion (otherwise known as agribusiness monoculture): & we whose brains function, only not in the way our peers expect, might envy that scientific solicitude. Are there rare viewpoints, ways of life, preferences & even exceptional talents going to fall by the wayside; & will the regrets (there are always regrets) arrive just a tad too late? Oh, the Aspies & the Auties, they did not darken the sky like the Passenger Pigeon, but they left us with a few good licks, Special Relativity maybe; collections of bottlecaps for sure.

on patterns

Aspies are often described as pattern-seeking, but i have a different take on this. I think i have a taste for textures, & to me a pattern is first & foremost a texture. (The absence of texture i sometimes--but not always--find repugnant.) The more intricately textured something is, the more i delight in it.

Now, to me there is not an unbridgeable gulf between more-orderly textures (called patterns, e.g. everything from basic checks to repeating "wallpaper" surfaces) & less-orderly, such as nature produces in great abundance. (This includes prime numbers, BTW.) What matters to me is the density of information. I like grotesques, the baroque in art, crunchy food, rough or ornate clothing. I even enjoy uneven ground--looking at it, & walking (or climbing) across it. Which does not feel different from reading a richly-varied narrative. For, textures are full of incidents.

Nothing has pleased me more in the march of cybernetics than the invention of fractals. At last the banality of simplistic human design has succumbed to its absolute origins in an order beyond our finite understanding; & from that time, our artificial worlds have become increasingly habitable for those like me who cannot abide plainness & empty space.

some Wittgenstein quotes

from Philosophical Investigations (Anscombe transl.):

I.
207. Let us imagine that the people in that country carried on the usual human activities and in the course of them employed, apparently, an articulate language. If we watch their behaviour we find it intelligible, it seems 'logical'. But when we try to learn their language we find it impossible to do so. For there is no regular connexion between what they say, the sounds they make, and their actions...

293. If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means--must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the [i]one[/i] case so irresponsibly? ...Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box. and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at [i]his[/i] beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language?...

II.
xi. ...Could there be human beings lacking in the capacity to see something [i]as something[/i]--and what would that be like? What sort of consequences would it have? --Would this defect be comparable to colour-blindness or to not having absolute pitch? --We will call it "aspect-blindness"...The 'aspect-blind' will have an altogether different relationship to pictures from ours.

...We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language....

"I cannot understand what is going on in him" is above all a [i]picture[/i]. It is the convincing expression of a conviction. It does not give the reasons for the conviction. [i]They[/i] are not readily accessible.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Is there such a thing as 'expert judgment' about the genuineness of expressions of feeling? --Even here, there are those whose judgment is 'better' and those whose judgment is 'worse'. ...Can one learn this knowledge? Yes; some can. Not, however, by taking a course in it...

uncharismatic

the majority of people, who like to be like others & to have others be like them, are often repelled; a lesser proportion, that likes to be different & appreciates difference in others, will sometimes welcome me as another misfit. but i really don't fit in with them either.

it's useful to be reminded, however, by stepping outside the outsiders' ghetto, just how easy it is to become hated.

empathy

i think true empathy is a talent, & a rather uncommon one. (i learned this from becoming close friends with a highly empathic person: her life was filled with people telling her their troubles, from friends to total strangers; in another society she might have become a counselor, or a witch doctor.)

what passes for empathy is often simply a social demand that we react in a certain way. it is fundamentally no different from the demands that people look & dress within a certain range.

what i have always had is an instinct for justice; & anger when i see justice denied. (i think this is related to truthfulness, which i plan to cover as a separate topic on my aspie blog.)

there is something related which i have experienced, invariably when i spend a lot of time around a person. i start to involuntarily absorb an impression of their personality. it is not a fast process, & i don't even know how accurate an impression it is that i receive, but it feels like i am becoming that person to a small degree. i don't know how they are going to react in any situation, but i somehow imagine i understand a little bit what it is to be them.

i also experience this sometimes when i have read a good biography, or watched a movie which i identify with strongly. (in this case i am more willing to call it an illusion, since both of those artifacts contain only personality-simulations, created for a single purpose.)

i think this is a deep subject, & needs to be considered in several dimensions, rather than assuming that by giving it a name & then treating the name like a feature with binary dimensions, it has been comprehended.

i will end by admitting in casual encounters, i only intellectually understand other people have feelings; & i can be shockingly callous, if i'm not careful. (in 52 years, i have learned a thing or two, i guess.)

the name

even though it is in some ways useful to have a pedigreed scientific designation like "Asperger's Syndrome"--i just don't like the sound of it.

the sounds of words are important to me. i would prefer to substitute the words opsablepsia & opsablepsian (or opsablepsiast). (By synecdoche.)

it's a lot of syllables, i know, but they are beautiful syllables.

El Desdichado

The Desperado

I am the bereaved, the widower, the shadowy,
the Cathar prince of the devastated citadel:
my guiding star is snuffed, my galactic lute
carries Melancholy's sable pentacle.

You who consoled me in the ark of the sepulcher,
give me back Posilipo & the Mediterranean,
the fragrance that enchanted my sere despair,
& that arbor where the rose & grape are intimate!

Am I Cupid or Apollo? ...Poe or Byron?
The kiss of some dread queen still stains my brow;
I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren plashes...
& twice have I crossed Acheron victorious:

practicing in turn on the lyre of Orpheus
moans of a mystic, sobs of a dying elf.

--Gérard de Nerval (my tr.)

by way of a preface

these songs of freedom
are all I ever had...
redemption songs

Bob Marley