Illuminatus Primus, in reference to (I presume) FOG3's vomitus wrote:What a whiny bitch. I hate people who're completely dependent on the luxury and pity - yes PITY - of modern advanced society in order to survive and persist, and in the same voice the ingrate pronounces their superiority and transcendence over it.
Yes, indeed. I've been ruminating on this for a couple days.
Humans are SOCIAL ANIMALS, and your condition is MALADAPTIVE to functioning successfully in a human community, and requires dedicated investment of time and resources to even partially habilitate (and is still often unsuccessful). You do not perform an unalienable unique role in the advancement of human civilization, very few of you relative to healthy people, transcend your condition and contribute strongly.
There are high functioning AS folks who, in past generations, would have been regarded as odd, but not as having a neurological disorder. There are more severely affected AS folks who would have been seen as
very odd and probably would have lived very uncomfortable lives.
Today, we have high functioning autistic people such as the aforementioned Temple Grandin. She is
not a person with Asperger's, she is a true autistic. I've read some of her books and she is quite clear in her memories of when she was a screaming, non-verbal, poo-flinging horror of a child. She is currently a professor at the University of Colorado, a holder of a PhD, and a successful designer of animal-control systems used in stockyards and slaughterhouses. She also is quite eloquent in speaking about how freakish her behavior was, and how she still struggles with normal day-to-day social interactions despite being well off financially and able to care for herself. A century ago it is unlikely she would have been anything other than locked in an insane asylum. Earlier still, she would have been the village idiot if she was
lucky. As it is, she was damn lucky because most of her generation of autistics were warehoused and forgotten. Dr. Grandin's good fortune (other than a family that did not give up on her, despite some other weirdos in the tree) is that she finally "got" what verbal communication was about and thus is that rare entity, a highly verbal autistic.
People like FOG3 sit in their privileged little caves with
no clue how fortunate they are, or how much they are at the mercy of technology and society. Outside of the West, it is unlikely anyone would bother to deal with him and his issues. "Defectives" - whether mentally ill, AS, autistic, retarded, or what have you - are still routinely locked up, chained to walls, and otherwise kept out of sight in much of the world even today.
I really do think we need better treatment for AS and autism, and not just because we might be missing an Einstein or Dr. Grandin. It's because they're human beings and should be, as much as possible, be given the tools to live as fulfilling and independent lives as possible.
But some of the folks need to come to grips with the fact
they aren't normal. That doesn't make them bad, or less deserving. It should not be seen as a judgment of their worth. It should be seen as a fact.
Now, some folks are so mildly affected by these disorders they can manage even without extensive therapy and services. Bully for them. And really, in those cases, we probably should leave well enough alone and not poke around too much at this point. Certainly, if such people express discomfort or a desire for assistance they should be able to have it, but all too many in the AS/autistic movement seem to have forgotten the dictum "First, do no harm".
Meanwhile, we have non-verbal, screaming, poo-flingers to worry about. I can't imagine that such people are "happy being a cat"
What kind of life is it when your sole means of communication with the rest of the human race is to point and scream? We're talking about kids with
less ability to communicate than our pets. Now, I don't think hammering these kids with a one-size-fits-all "treatment plan" would necessarily work, either. We don't know, at this point, what's really wrong structurally in these kids' brains. It may be the part of the brain that controls verbal speech isn't working right, and maybe that's why some of these kids do better with sign language or computerized communication aids. Others may have problems with interpreting sound, but could be taught to speak with proper therapy. There may, in fact, be something wrong with their sensory input systems in which case altering their environment may help a great deal. We owe it to these kids, as fellow human beings, to at least try to reach them.
You know, I've been thinking about some cases I've heard about with non-verbal autistics and situations like the recent power-outages we had in my area. If you're non-verbal it becomes VERY difficult to call for help in an emergency. If you're dependent on technological aids to communicate and the power goes out you're back to non-verbal. While such aids can allow many AS/autistic people to function in the normal world, to hold down jobs, to speak for themselves, to communicate, when technology breaks down they are at an
enormous disadvantage. That's not fair, but it is reality. We really do need to try to enable these people to have at least enough communication ability to say "I'm hurt" or "I need help"
somehow, as a minimum. Even better if we can do more.
Of course, such detailed, analytical, one-on-one approaches, or multi-therapist-for-one-child approaches, are enormously time consuming and expensive. That's a problem, because at lest in the US (and I suspect a lot of the rest of the world) people want an instant, easy fix. Even for AS/autistic children who are functional but still odd, I think many parents want to force that child that extra few steps into "completely normal" rather than trying to maximize what the child actually
has. For some folks, being able to live in a small apartment, work just enough to pay the bills, and have time for an obsessive interest would be a pretty good outcome. Would be nice if they could have better, but really, if the person in question is content that's a decent outcome.
But this bullshit of "we're different so we're superior" is just that, bullshit.
Here's how I relate it to my own experience: I'm colorblind. I literally do not experience the visual world as the majority of the human race does. Granted, it's not a HUGE difference, but it's there. Most of the time it doesn't negatively impact me. On one occasion it
did make me "superior" - a local restaurant chain was having a promotion were you got a card with a pattern printed on it, then put it under a special light that enabled you to see the prize printed there. They did this by overlaying one color of printing over another, so to a normal person it was a smear of color. Purely by chance, however, they chose colors that, to someone with my color vision defect, allowed me to see the printing clearly in normal light. Uh, yeah, I rummaged through the cards to find the prize I wanted - cute parlor trick. Very nice. When management discovered my trick they ended the promotion for me and started handing them out instead of letting people choose. Oh, yeah, big superior talent. Anyhow... meanwhile, because my color vision is not normal there are circumstances (such as use of colored warning lights) where it could be not just an inconvenience but a safety issue. There are certain jobs I will
never be able to do because I don't see normally. I'm not always happy about that, but I accept it as a fact and arrange my life so it's a minimal issue. If you offered me a magic pill at this point to cure me... you know, I kind of doubt I'd take it. I've gotten used to my off-color world, it's minimal annoyance, and I wouldn't bother. Maybe, if I was younger and had a burning desire for one of those off-limits jobs I would do it.
Now, granted, that's
very different from AS/autism, but I use it to relate to a high-functioning AS/autistic who has adapted to life as it is, is satisfied with life as it is, and doesn't see a need to "fix" problems that bother other people more than him or her. Such a person's life may not be entirely normal, but it's not bad, either.
Now, a lower-functioning AS/autistic person would be more analogous to someone with monochromatic vision who sees no color at all, just shades of light and dark. That condition does exist, and it is definitely disabling. Such a person can't see well enough to drive a car, normal daylight can cause temporary blindness, they frequently have trouble learning to read and write, they don't receive information that's color coded... fortunately, with adaptive aids ranging from something as basic as sunglasses to as high tech as computers these people can be helped to lead good lives, but there is no getting around the fact they have a problem. The fact that one such person has devised knitting patterns that are intelligible to others with her condition but senseless mushes of color to people with normal sight - a neat parlor trick - doesn't make their vision "superior".
Then there's the whole steaming pile of bullshit about Deaf culture and deaf people who maintain they aren't handicapped. Yes, they are. They may be fortunate enough to live in a society where their deafness is more an annoyance than a threat to life and limb, but they still have a handicap. The world is built for normal people, not deaf people, not vision-impaired people, not those in wheelchairs, and not folks with wonky brain workings.
Bravo if an AS/autistic person has an unusual talent or skill, or is exceedingly skilled in a normal area of endeavor, but it doesn't make them superior. It might enable them to make a good living, but in many other areas they will still be at a disadvantage. And that's what pisses me off about people like FOG3 - the "oh, I'm special and therefor superior" attitude. A dog that can act like a cat is an interesting parlor trick, but if he can't act like a dog when he's off stage there is something wrong, even if he's happy thinking he's a cat. The situation may not require drastic action, he may be able to live a healthy and happy life thinking he's a cat, but
he isn't a cat. He's a weird dog. Sure, we shouldn't devalue someone who is different, but we shouldn't pretend all is right with someone who is deaf, who is colorblind, or who has AS or autism. Some of these problems are more serious than others, but all are deviations from the norm.