Sensory Diversity, Brains, and Judeo-Christian Myth

Does the Autism Spectrum make any sense?

I want to spend some time on sensory sensitivities, because I believe that the myriad confusing symptoms that are considered to be diagnostic of Asperger's are the RESULT of a different sensory reception and processing scheme than is present in so-called normal people. The unusually broad array of behaviors and thought processes used to diagnose Asperger people is internally contradictory and inconsistent. Also, these symptoms are unequally distributed among individuals diagnosed as Asperger. A grab bag of 'suspicious' or unwanted behaviors is being used to diagnose an increasing array of new disorders without looking deeply into the origin of such disparate symptoms. Dozens of characteristics are  grouped as a spectrum more from convenience than evidence. The range of possible drivers of behavior is left unknown, and therefore facts that might untangle the mess and lead to a better understanding of developmental diversity in our species remain hidden.

An analogy: A panel of experts decides that having a pain in the neck is pretty much the same as having a headache, so neck pain is swept into a Headache Disorder spectrum. Regardless of how many, or which symptoms the individual may or may not exhibit along this spectrum, he or she is then told that the problem is a defective brain. There is no cure or treatment, but a person can be trained to act is if no pain exists. The CAUSE of the headache (or neck pain) is ignored. The pain might be traced to a brain tumor, allergies, or whiplash, but no differentiation is made.  

The sweeping conclusion that diverse humans can be categorically removed to a "disordered" space reflects a dominant religious attitude that a male god made man in His likeness, therefore there is only ONE God-given correct set of thoughts and behaviors acceptable in human beings. Note that the "disordered space" by definition includes females, and any person authorities designate.  Too many experts and scientists have this conceptual structure embedded in their work and don't even realize it, but cultural ideas taint their assumptions and therefore their conclusions. The insistence that Homo sapiens is the ultimate human, divinely inspired and separated from the animals by a towering barrier of supernatural origin, is only recently being challenged in anthropology and evolutionary science. The supposedly rock-solid line that was drawn by religious males over two millennia ago, which divides "sub-humans" from a self-designated Supreme Man has wrecked the lives of millions of human beings. 

"I don't want to live that way." - Krishnamurti

 

Nature requires that we support ourselves and our children, but nowhere can it be shown that the social version of 'being human' is correct or wise or healthy for any individual or family. The 'socially normal' have no scientific basis by which to dictate how we express our humanity. In fact, the social hierarchy creates misery by denying food, clean water and shelter for millions of people; by polluting the environment, stealing resources, and bringing plants and wildlife to extinction. The Pharaohs of today care nothing for humanity, the planet or its future. This exploitation and careless destruction of all that is worthwhile on this planet, goes against the Asperger core: life matters.  

Asperger Thinking as a Legacy of Pre-Agricultural Humans

Excerpts from: Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein, Evolver Editions Feb. 2013

Chapter II: The Origins of Separation / Cultivation and Culture For full text go to www.ascentofhumanity.com 

"With agriculture (about 10,000 BCE), the separate human realm expanded into radically new territory to include the various animals, plants, and other parts of nature that we made ours. No longer was domesticity limited to the campfire circle. With agriculture, we began to domesticate the whole world."

"Hunter-gatherers had the means to regulate their population levels and in many places did so successfully for thousands of years; population grew dramatically as a result of agriculture more than as a cause."

"Inevitable or not, agriculture was not a sudden invention but the cumulative consequence of a series of incremental developments that marked a gradual shift in human attitudes toward nature."

"Eventually, (domesticated) plants came also to depend on the assistance of the planters, whether through deliberate breeding or unconscious coevolution. In any event, the domestic corn plant cannot reproduce without human assistance; nor does a domestic chicken (nor a domestic human) stand much chance of survival in the wild."

"Once domestication began, the much larger population density it permitted meant there was no going back. Agriculture, the archetype of human control over nature, induces dependency and the need for ever-increasing control—over land, people, plants and animals—as the population continues to grow."

"Along with the gradual shift to agriculture came a transformation in human attitudes toward nature. Hunting accords with a view of other animals as equals. After all, nature works that way—some eat and some are eaten—and the human hunter is doing nothing different from animal hunters. Domestication imposes a hierarchy onto the interspecies relationship, as man becomes lord and master of the animals. Understandably, this relationship is then projected onto the whole of nature, which becomes in its entirety the object of domestication and control."

"The farmer's new relationship with nature engendered a new conception of the divine. As agriculture and other technology removed humans from nature, so also did the gods become supernatural rather than natural beings. The process was a gradual one, starting with ancient pantheons closely identified with natural forces. Gradually, identity evolved into rulership as the gods were abstracted out of nature, eventually resulting in the Newtonian watchmaker God completely separate from the earthly (the natural) realm. At the same time, as we lost touch with nature's harmonies and cycles, the gods took on the capricious character exemplified by the Greek pantheon and the Old Testament. Accordingly, the gods must be propitiated, kept happy through the offering of sacrifices, a practice found in most ancient farming and herding cultures but not among hunters."

"The angry God that arose in early civilizations is also linked to the concept of good and evil and the concept of sin. The corn is good, the weeds are bad. The bees are good, the locusts bad. The sheep are good, the wolves bad. Technology overcomes nature by promoting the good and controlling the bad. As for nature, so also for human nature. The self is divided into two parts, a good part and a bad part, the latter of which we overcome with the controlling technologies of culture."

"Whereas hunter-gatherers could easily adapt to all the vicissitudes of the local climate, farmers were at the mercy of drought, hail, locusts, and other threats to a successful harvest. While the resources of hunter-gatherers were virtually unlimited and their population fairly stable, agricultural civilizations experienced famines, epidemics, and wars that decimated whole populations and defied any attempt at prevention. Here was a source of constant, inescapable anxiety woven into the fabric of life itself—no matter how successful this year's harvest, what of next year?—as well as a motivation for the increased understanding and control represented, respectively, in science and technology. Scarcity and the threat of scarcity is implicit in the attempted mastery of nature. Jockeying for position in the face of scarcity, we endure an endlessly intensifying competitiveness that is built into our system of money, our understanding of biology, and our assumptions about human nature."

The primary changes related to domestication, that is, the subordination of the individual to a social hierarchy that is intent on maintaining inequality and injustice, and which is cruelly enforced by a supernatural and psychopathic God, is utterly alien to my way of perceiving and relating to the earth and all life.

 

Man at the top of a garbage heap, but closer to God.

When I watch popular programs on brain science or read academic papers, I often become irritated. It is of course interesting and useful to understand our most important organ, the generator of all things we subjectively experience. But this fascinating excursion has taken on the dull drama of dismantling a Swiss watch. The need to perfect what is a natural organic object becomes a desire to tinker with and improve upon an organ that is not broken. Some human brains need repair, or medical support, or special understanding, but in the extreme focus on imperfect brains, all brains have become defective; the human brain is viewed as a malfunctioning electrical device and not the core of a unique living being. The result is an explosion of pathologic diagnosis and partitions of humans into normal, abnormal, treatable, sort of treatable and intolerable - a pile of rejects created in the search for a perfect supernatural Man.

Researchers have become Lords of the Brain, the prescribers and manipulators of human destiny. Who are these individuals who have taken it upon themselves to decide which human beings are normal and which ought to be “tweeked, changed or fixed,” whether with drugs or biomedical engineering? Some scientists have abandoned life in order to create perfect obedient robots to replace an imperfect creature of evolution. 

What a dangerous idea. Humans have been ‘perfecting’ the environment for thousands of years; perfecting domestic animals and plants, overriding natural processes and polluting the earth. Know-it-alls have brought us to the brink of self destruction and created a mess of social disharmony and physical suffering justified by an archaic idea: God gave the earth to man to disrupt, loot and rape. Man at the top of a garbage heap, but closer to God.