WHY MANIFESTO?

   

If you want to know about gardening, ask a gardener.
If you want to know about mountain climbing, ask a mountain climber. If you want to know about being Asperger, ask an  Asperger.

The Internet is an ocean of trivia, misinterpretation, hearsay, repeated repeats of out-of-context quotes, pseudoscience, bad interpretations of surveys and studies, and information tailored to sell products and services. The Internet is like the mid-Pacific gyre, a vast floating collection of human products collected by ocean currents into a tangle of debris that must be teased apart and reassembled in order to discover the sources of its content.

The diagnosis known as Asperger Disorder is like the gyre - a collection of sometimes contradictory symptoms and behaviors, both vague and specific, negative and tolerable, treatable, but not treatable. Those individuals who are not diagnosed as children, but as adults, face a dilemma. On one hand the diagnosis is a relief: light bulbs go off and illuminate the mysterious tension in the dialog between the individual and society, but the light is also harsh, falling on failed relationships, on bullying and rejection, and on cherished goals that have receded across the horizon while one was simply trying to survive in an alien world. 

The unshakable feeling remains that the Asperger diagnosis reflects a hidden fact of nature: I am different, fundamentally and irrevocably different, and no diagnosis that claims that the Asperger style of brain processing is defective, simply because we are not socially-obsessed, can change the certainty that we embody an equally valid human type.  

Posted 18 minutes ago by gina rex 

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How to be Socially Normal

It takes years of training and supreme effort on the part of parents and teachers for human infants to be turned into acceptable members of society. The unfinished baby brain requires years of grooming and repetitive instruction to achieve anything like adult behavior. Here is how it's done in schools across America, where life is a one big happy cartoon.  




And here is the result:

 

From "What Do We Mean by 'Normal'?" by Eric Maisel, Ph.D.

"Whole industries grossing billions of dollars are built on the words "normal" and "abnormal" and on the ideas of "well" and "disordered." It is therefore inconceivable that the right thing can be done and that the situation can change. Even right-minded and high-minded mental health professionals can't really conceive of doing away with the current idea of "mental disorder." If they did away with it, what would they have and where would they be? Given that even the best and the brightest in the field are attached to an illegitimate naming game, there is probably no hope for change."

Full article can be read at psychologytoday.com Blog, Nov. 15, 2011

How much talent is wasted because society doesn’t like the package it comes in?

Mental illness and behavioral or cognitive deficiencies are defined, described, and catalogued by self-proclaimed “normal” people and show considerable bias and prejudice against individuals who have an asocial brain. This post begins to explore the hypothesis that the modern social brain developed fairly recently due to the concentration of human populations in village and urban environments. The environmental pressure for humans to "get along" in large groups was new and extreme and drastic behavioral changes were required to accomplish urban culture. A hierarchical social order evolved which was alien to "wild" natural humans who wandered freely in small groups, following water, game and collecting resources along the way.   

The classic pyramid of social power that we are familiar with, and still live by, exemplified by Ancient Egyptian culture, was dominated by the Gods, Pharaoh, and the Priesthood. Selection for individuals (especially females) who became fertile as young as possible, who were childlike and obedient, easily intimidated, dependent, and in a juvenile stage of mental development (magical thinking) produced a population that was easily controlled by coercion and supernatural belief. Magical Thinking remains the default type of brain processing in modern social people; the inability to differentiate between the supernatural fantasy and physical reality is a serious consequence of this arrested juvenile state.  

"Wild" or natural humans, who could not adapt to compressed social environments were driven off, isolated, and systematically exterminated. Very few so-called hunter-gatherer tribes remain, and these are being removed by destruction of habitat, exposure to modern toxic environments and by ‘soul death’ or the destruction of culture that is vital to their psychic and physical well-being. The wild brain type is rare today and continues to be actively stigmatized and aggressively defined as developmentally defective. 

It is possible that the Asberger sensory system, visual memory-information processing is a legacy of early humans, who lived in radically different environments that modern social humans. Although disparaged by social humans, our literal, reality-based, asocial type of human has been allowed to persist in very small numbers because of the extraordinary abilities in science and technology of some Asperger individuals. Literal, real world brain processing has built our technological civilization. Many Asperger types find refuge and socially approved work in academic and research institutions, where their social deficits are outweighed by talents useful to governments and corporations – ever more creative and effective weapons are one sad result. That is a relationship that has dire consequence for our species.  

I am interested in those ‘other’ Asperger people, who are not seen by society to have useful talents and are effectively discarded in childhood like damaged toys, that at best can sit on a shelf and provide some appearance of being normal, but which will never be included in a wider world. These children have talents and potential which are thrown away for the sake of behavioral conformity, for the sake of obedience, for the sake of the adult need to control children. There is a mean-spirited theme in all this blaming and labeling; other minorities have been subjected to the same social excuses for marginalization, but there does not seem to be an awareness of how badly Asperger and "different" children are treated.   

Are children being sorted and graded as if they are agricultural products?

From Understanding Color Image Processing by Machine Vision for Biological Materials By Ayman H. Amer Eissa and Ayman A. Abdel Khalik. 

"Machine vision and image processing techniques have been found increasingly useful in the fruit industry, especially for applications in quality inspection and defect sorting applications."

 

The purpose of agricultural sorting and grading is primarily for rejection of blemished fruit and vegetables and not for quality of nutrition. Western society increasingly demands superficially "perfect" specimens to feed consumer markets. Uniformity is a prime driver of a market economy that also sorts and grades human beings.  

 

According to 2013 statistics from the United Nations, 1.3 billion tons of food is thrown away globally every year, which is equal to one-third of the world's food. How many children are thrown away?

 

Society Sucks

I spend several hours each morning seeking information on the individual experience of what was formerly known as Asperger's Syndrome, but which has been "lumped" together with other socially unacceptable thought and behavior on the Autism Spectrum. The only justification I can see for this squishing together of very different human states is convenience for those making a diagnosis. 

My morning travel through Asperger information includes both popular amateur ideas and a stock of "studies" by "professional" researchers. It's a depressing journey - so one-sided. The source of the "problem" is the disobedient and / or too intelligent Asperger child. Much effort is made at not using the words obedient or disobedient, but the blame is there; despite the self-congratulatory claim of neurotypical empathy and social harmony that Asperger people are intent on ruining, little empathy exists, either for the different world view inherent in our very being or for the human condition in general.

There would seem to be no recognition on the part of the social majority that society is not what it is cracked up to be. Society sucks, to be honest, but honesty is condemned by those who police thought and language. That is the true source of antipathy toward not only Asperger individuals, but against any human who can't or won't conform:  

This morning I was doing my usual search when I became disturbed over the dismal state of human affairs: cruelty, poverty, violence, unequal distribution of resources, the trashed environment, the decimation of species, in short, the devastating and unconscionable behavior of social man. Along with this feeling of monumental horror, I remembered that my view of humanity had not begun this way: as a child I believed in artists, writers, and scientists and the general sanity and goodness of the average person. I believed in knowledge, education and political notions of equality, justice and fair play. The ideals of our nation and culture were in essence, instinctive for an Asperger child.

A half-century has passed, during which the society I had thought I knew turned out to be not so nice, especially to human beings, both at home and around the world. War has become a social institution, a paramount social activity in fact, which obliterates all concern for human value in the ecstatic quest for power and control, for wealth and greed. We have become a pornographic society, in which individuals no longer exist, only objects and categories of objects to be exploited by an uncaring social hierarchy: social hierarchies are not inherently bad, but ours is, and I never again want to hear that as an Asperger I can feel no empathy, no compassion, no caring for this world. But I know that I will hear this again and again.
 

Black & White Thinking is Necessary

The Algorithm is essential to modern technology. The Algorithm is a powerful tool in everyday life, despite being labeled “black and white” thinking and a “cognitive distortion.”  

Algorithm

Definition: an algorithm is a finite sequence of instructions, a logical and explicit step-by-step

procedure for solving a problem starting from a known beginning.

– the number of instructions must be finite

– to write the algorithm you first must know how to solve the problem!

– the solution must follow a logical path: the order of the instructions IS important

A flowchart is a graphic presentation of an Algorithm:

 

 

Egalitarian Equality vs. Social Inequality - The Pyramid

In the day to day experience of an Asperger child, moments of peace are rare. Whatever you are thinking or doing, someone, either a parent or teacher or maybe another child, will interrupt you to ask that you participate in some activity, such as playing a game with a group of children. If you don’t respond, or you resist their prodding, or you state clear and repeated rejections of the idea, initial friendly overtures will turn into harsh words and disapproval. The adult will express personal disappointment in your reluctance and increase the pressure.

The simple enjoyable act of reading or thinking has now become a problem. The adult considers that whatever you are doing is not only unimportant, but it makes them unhappy and you are responsible for their unhappiness. You are told that choosing to be alone means that you are depressed or unhappy and that joining the group will cheer you up, which isn’t true. If you protest that what you are reading, or drawing or building is more interesting than what the other children are doing, you are apt to be yelled at and physically relocated like a disobedient dog. Waves of anger that were hidden beneath the adult’s formerly soft persuasive words hit like a shock wave. The other children see all this and learn one of life’s big lessons. Obey and conform. The effect of being used to demonstrate this social principal is visceral and devastating.

It is said that Aspergers people can’t infer what is going on in another person’s mind, but the big messages are clear to us. People will only like you if you obey their instructions, tell them what they want to hear, and not when you get around to it, but right now! Obedience demonstrates that a person will subordinate his or her happiness and well-being to the group. Rules are often designed to insult and confuse people, to challenge their morality or sense of fair play, for the purpose of testing their willingness to shed their individual identity and follow the herd. The Aspergers brain simply doesn’t understand this social compulsion, not because we are dumb, defective, dangerous or disabled, but because inequality of status is alien to our egalitarian need for fair play, justice and reason.

Modern society is ruthlessly hierarchical and undemocratic. People are sorted by class and caste and culture, by wealth, by age, by gender, by the illegitimate concept of race. This state of human affairs is archaic and destructive of human potential when compared to the “flat earth” picture of reality in the Asperger mind.

C/ ushistory.org

This structure is alien to the Asperger perception of 'how it ought to be.'

The building of massive pyramids was the dominant activity of ancient agrarian cultures because the pyramid was a physical model of the social hierarchy by which those on top controlled the status of the population. The same archaic social pyramid is strictly enforced today; only the titles have changed. Most astonishing is the belief on the part of the social majority that this manmade pyramid of social inequality, and the suffering it causes to millions of human beings, is as valid as the Laws of Physics, and essential to the structure of the universe.

It Was as if I Didn't Exist

Parents, teachers, pediatricians, psychiatrists, behaviorists, and other helper individuals see the problem of Asperger's children backwards to how the child experiences life. To the child, his or her differences, some of which are praised, such as intelligence, success in school, the ability to focus on a task, persistence of attention and novel manipulation of ideas, are then used to isolate or even exile him or her from society. How does one explain this ‘intelligence is good, but you are bad’ contradiction to a smart child?

The social person’s view is that this child does not conform to the scheduled physical, emotional, and mental behaviors that experts have decided are normal and necessary to being human, and therefore this child is abnormal - an unhappy and unnacceptable situation for the socially- obsessed majority. Variation from expectations (very narrow expectations at that) becomes the problem, and the child’s intelligence is judged to be strange, aberrant and a big part of the problem. The child’s intelligence, not as a thing-in-itself, but as a minority condition in society, is not seen as distinct from the emotional difficulties that an Asperger’s child does experience.   

In my case, teachers, the school principal, and our pediatrician briefly discussed what to do with me. Should I be bumped up a grade, be sent to a special school, or remain where I was? Their conclusion? Because I was socially backward I ought to stay with my age group in public school. Confinement among normal children would advance my behavior to some acceptable level and this would make me capable of functioning as a wife and mother. As for my intellectual abilities, these might be useful if I needed a job someday, that is, if my husband were to die.

This astonishing train of thought confirmed my observation that adults can be extraordinarily stupid and that their thinking cannot be trusted solely on their status as The Adult. The idea that contact with normal children would by some property of contagious magic make me normal, was ludicrous. The assumption that a female was fit only for marriage and motherhood, with a teaching job as a fall back to misfortune, sent a shockwave through my mind. The expectation of parents and teachers that I ought to be content, or even thrilled with such a future, demonstrated that none of these people knew anything about me. I was nothing but a source of irritation. Once a decision was made about ‘my problem’ I could be ignored.  

My internal experience of myself and my particular connection to the world around me were nonexistent for them, and I was ‘dealt with’ as if these personal experiences didn’t exist – as if I didn’t exist. This is profound isolation, and in my view, is more devastating than the Asperger preference for spending time alone.

Too often the story is presented as one-sided, with the ‘problem’ located within the Asperger child or adult, who must be trained to perform social skills that satisfy society, with little recognition that the unhappy situation is the result of a failed dialog between the individual and society. This dialog, which is social, seems an odd concept for the social majority to fail to recognize and understand.