Posted by
AnneC on 03/06 at 10:38 PM
> Being an autist myself, though highly functioning, I feel
> from my own experiences that I have to disagree with you.
Disagreement is fine; I don't expect everyone to agree with me.
> Not being able to emphasise how other people are feeling, not
> being able to create the same social connections with others
> as most do, and feeling at ease in social situations aren't
> isn't really that sweet (especially in a world where social
> connections and networking means more and more on the workplace).
It's a matter of priorities, I suppose. I don't place a high premium on being able to create the same kinds of social connections as others, and never have. If I did have a desire to do things the way everyone else did, I might be more upset at how my brain was wired. I think that some of what you are feeling might be due to social pressures -- society doesn't value certain kinds of people as much as it values other kinds of people, and some other people on the spectrum do feel as you do. But many do not, and I've found that people who learn to view themselves in a less pathologized manner actually start functioning better socially, since less energy is being spent on trying to do things the standard way. There's nothing wrong with wanting to do things the standard way, but there's a lot wrong with the situation if the only reason people want to do things the standard way is because they've been taught to hate themselves (or because they've been bullied or excluded on the basis of their atypicality).
Autistic people generally aren't taught how to function autistically; rather, we're taught in most cases to try as hard as possible to simulate and emulate normalcy, which can actually lead to the appearance of being "lower functioning" (though I have a problem with functioning labels to begin with, since I think they're very environment-dependent).
But it doesn't have to be that way, and I've learned a lot (and improved my communication abilities a lot) by reading the writings of others on the spectrum, because such people have experience learning to navigate in the world with an atypical brain.
For example, nobody knew I was experiencing sensory overload as a young child, and tended to think I was just weird and whiny and irritable. Once I learned that I was hypersensitive to certain noises and textures and such, I was able to learn coping strategies for dealing with these things, rather than just trying to suppress my reactions all the time. I also didn't know until my mid-twenties that other people generally saw the world in a drastically different way than I did; once I learned this, interactions became less confusing.
The experience was sort of like learning that I'd actually been speaking a different language throughout my whole life without knowing it, because though the words sounded the same, the meanings were very different. I didn't even know that other people used body language to communicate until I read about it, and once I learned that, it became much clearer as to why I frequently had miscommunications with others.
Even though I still can't read standard body language automatically, I at least know that it exists and that in itself has made a huge difference. (And incidentally, there are some kinds of body language I can read very well, such as that of cats, and other atypical people).
> I understand that no ones life is a walk on roses, but I
> don't think intentionally adding deficiencies is a good way to go.
I agree, but it really depends on the individual...one person's deficiency is another person's desired state. For example, someone might want very sensitive hearing if they like walking in the woods and identifying bird calls.
But the consequence of having this hypersensitive hearing might be that they get easily overwhelmed in loud shopping malls. Of course, there are some things that nobody would ever want -- but generally, those are things that aren't much good in ANY environment. If you have hypersensitive hearing or some other common autistic trait like intense focus, there are environments in which you can do very well.
But if you have, say, pneumonia or cancer, there isn't ANY environment in which either of those is not going to be painful, awful, and dangerous. So there are boundary conditions -- there are traits or states of being that should definitely never be introduced on purpose.
But this doesn't mean that everything that looks like a deficit in one environment is inappropriate everywhere, or that there will ever be universal acceptance by everyone that a given thing represents a problem.
> I agree that there might be some mental boons, in some narrow
> specific areas, but there are also great costs (say reliance
> on stability around them - which a transhuman future does not
> seem include much of), which might exceed the gains, even if
> they are temporary.
Again, it depends on the person. Some people like being autistic, some don't. And I do think people should have the choice as to what traits and configurations they would like to keep or shed.
With regard to managing autistic neurology in an unpredictable environment: here are a lot of creative ways of dealing with things like a need for stability; in my case I've learned to plan ahead a lot (and try to figure out a "plan B" in case the first plan doesn't happen).
I also have certain things I know I can do every day regardless of what else is going on. You can also try carrying a small familiar object around; this is very non-invasive and easy and allows you to maintain what is called "local coherence" even if things around you are changing.
> Some autists are truly mentally handicapped people, who has
> to be taken care of for the rest of their lives, and many
> have greatly reduced life quality (which, I agree, might be
> alleviated if society became more diverse - and added more funds).
Everyone is taken care of throughout their lives; it's just that some people need different kinds of care than others. Most people shop at grocery stores, for instance, rather than growing and harvesting their own food. A lot of people these days type and don't hand-write; in the past, having poor handwriting would probably have been considered a serious disability, but it isn't anymore since keyboards are so readily available. Most people go to mechanics to have their car fixed rather than doing it all themselves; similarly, most people go to dentists rather than drilling their own teeth, and practically all people who aren't blind are dependent on artificial lights.
It costs money to keep everyone in society alive and functioning, and providing services to people so that they CAN function their best isn't a "zero sum game". I am very much in favor of helping to shift society so that it accomodates a far greater range of people -- but this is in no way in conflict with the idea that people should also be able to change themselves if they want to. Sure they should, but society shouldn't systematically devalue people who *don't* want to change to become more standard.
> In this way, I have to disagree with the sentiment, that all
> people who today are labeled as handicapped/disabled are, all
> in all, having the same amount of life-quality (just
> different) than non-handicapped/disabled.
I didn't express that sentiment, but overall, I think you'd have to take a survey of different people in different situations in order to get an idea as to whether that were true or not. If you find that people who are, by your definition, handicapped do rate their quality of life as high as non-handicapped people, then the data will speak for itself.
I get the impression sometimes that people are afraid that if they accept that it's possible to live richly and fully with a disability, then somehow people who *don't* want to have particular disabilities will be prevented from changing their configurations (on the basis that we need disabled people in order to preserve diversity).
This is a totally wrongheaded way of looking at things...it is always improper to turn people into political symbols, and if you told someone that they (for instance) had to keep using a wheelchair rather than get stem cell therapy to mitigate their paralysis, that would be an inappropriate infringement on that person's right to self-determine. Nobody should be forced into being a symbol of diversity. But equally important is that diversity is not squashed by ignorance.
When people assume that autism is universally a bad thing for everyone, that's an example of ignorance, because it's obvious that there are autistic people who don't feel that way, and these people deserve just as much a right to self-determine as anyone else.
If some people choose a "cure", fine, but they don't have the right to foist that "cure" on everyone else, and society doesn't have the right to make it illegal to be autistic.
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