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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Divide and Profit: Extinction of the Individual

We must look to the wisdom of the past when so little can be found in our contemporary world. I'm old now; I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, supposedly a less free, more conservative time in the United States. But, I have never felt so confined, defined, categorized, unhinged from history, from common humanity, from belonging, from kindness, from the "values" of a democratic society than I do now. The individual has been erased and replaced by stock characters in a game of ‘diversity-demographics’: Divide and profit. This ongoing process of extinction of the individual is critical to those FKAA(Formerly Known As Asperger) for whom individuality and its correlates, Honesty, Justice, and Equality are essential.

The very act of 'doing away with' the Asperger's diagnosis demonstrates the willful 'doing away with' our personalities, preference and voices - we are subsumed into a 'spectrum' of socially undesirable persons, classed with psychopaths, but grudgingly said to have some usefulness to society, which is a very narrow and easily removed permission to exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia.”

_Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983

“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.” _George Carlin, Last Words  

 

For those who would have Asperger children 'ape' so-called normal behavior: "Imitation cannot go above its model.”

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.” _Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address
 

And from old school psychology and psychiatry: “Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations...” _C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, 1875-1961 

“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.” Sigmund Freud, 1846-1949

 

Possible Asperger Sensitivity to Infrasound

Infrasound is sound waves below the normal range of human hearing. Infrasound is common in nature, but additionally the environment is flooded with manmade low and high frequency sound. You know those industrial strength subwoofers that cause some of us severe pain, anger, irritation, and the urge to run away? Those effects are real.

 

Natural sources of infrasound - many animals can detect these low frequency sounds; a few, such as elephants, can also generate infrasound. Humans can't HEAR these long wavelengths, but they do have effects on the human nervous system and organs.

"Oobleck" is the now famous non-Newtonian fluid composed of cornstarch and water. Shown here is the Oobleck "dance" produced by infrasound from a subwoofer. I'm not claiming that infrasound has the same effect on any part of the human body. I'm using the photo to show that infrasound, even though humans can't "hear" it, has a physical existence and is part of our environment, from both natural and manmade sources. 

For a look at non-Newtonian liquids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN2D5y-AxIY

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.
 

Neurotypicals are the true Black and White thinkers

The non-scientific term ‘black and white thinking’ pops up like a rash all over on the internet, in popular pseudoscience websites about autism and Asperger people. It also appears in articles written by psychologists, and has many synonyms: concrete, literal, all-or-nothing, dichotomous, polarized, and primitive thinking.  

I was shocked when I first encountered the claim that Asberger individuals are limited to black and white thinking; I personally use several thinking processes, including visualization, in order to navigate and understand the world. Each type of processing has its function; one or more processes may be appropriate or useful in any particular situation. More about that later.

Let’s start with some uses of 'black and white thinking' in articles, since writers rarely include a definition. Psychologists conveniently leave out 99.99% of what life and the universe are about: FACTS, a prejudice that effectively erases what an Asperger is. 

From the book – Asperger for Dummies

Concrete “black-and-white” thinking. Many people with Asperger Syndrome don’t understand unspoken rules, due to difficulties with interpreting figures of speech and nonverbal communication. They tend to rely solely on the words themselves. Difficulty with perceiving nonverbal communication causes significant challenges during social interaction. The same characteristic holds true for people with more classic autism. However, this trait tends to be more startling in those with Asperger Syndrome, due to their often superior verbal skills. Despite the fact that many persons suffering with Asperger Syndrome have high IQs, due to challenges in understanding the unspoken rules of employment, they’re greatly challenged in being successful at a typical job.

From this description we must conclude that having “superior verbal skills” leads to black and white thinking and that rules of employment ought to remain undefined and hidden – which is ridiculous; this common practice furthers discrimination, unequal pay and anxiety in employees. Overall the paragraph leaves the impression that neurotypicals are too lazy to acquire verbal competence and that reading body language is the most important qualification for employment, not talent, skills and hard work. As an Asperger individual who has worked in the business sector, “rules of employment” is code for kissing the boss’s ass and spending many hours of each day pretending to agree with those who have power in the hierarchy.

     If “mind / body reading” is so important, why do businesses and individuals rely on contracts? If one must be in the physical presence of another human in order to "read" facial expressions and body language, how did the telephone ever get off the ground? Books? Email? Written letters? Faxes?      

 

Asperger’s Syndrome and Nonverbal Learning Disorder from Orion Academy: California, a school for children with Neurocognitive disabilities. “…are very concrete thinkers, viewing everything dualistically—black and white, all or nothing, good or bad; keep in mind that everything you say to them will be taken literally.”

This statement is breathtaking in its black and white characterization of Asperger people. The use of “everything” and “everything you say” is indicative of black and white thinking. The writer sounds angry; the real point of the mini-tirade is that children are expected to be obedient, but that Asperger children are egalitarian, operate on facts, and have a terrific instinct for lies. 

Black-and-White Thinking
Another associated trait (with Asperger’s) is 'black-and-white thinking.' There are several definitions of this term: The fallacy that anything must be true of either all or none of any group (an instance of the Fallacy of False Dilemma).

1. 1.A tendency to evaluate anything as all good or all bad.
2. 2. A mode of thought concerned with definite, observable facts (e.g., "The sky is blue," "The Eiffel Tower is in Paris") as opposed to vague judgments ("Chewing with your mouth open is inappropriate")

3. A mode of thought that utilizes a scientific theory of the Universe. 

4. Mathematical thinking.

This list contains a huge clue as to why social people mistakenly claim that Asperger individuals exhibit black and white thinking. We operate on FACT, whereas social individuals abhor facts. Many people who are considered to be normal, such as religious fundamentalists, deny that facts exist. Facts are inconvenient because they get in the way of social coercion, manipulation of individuals and groups, and the incessant negotiation of status with the social hierarchy. Lies, not facts are the basis of social interaction.

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.