explaining AS to the average person
Ok, I really need to explain this to my sister. An intelligent person who has genuine good intentions, but is likely to not "get it" and come away with a let-them-eat cake attitude.
She has a 20-year old kid who, I suspect, is an Aspie, compounded by other problems. She has looked into it and has some superficial knowledge on the subject. Anyway, here goes:
Autism and Asperger’s are two ends of a spectrum that, as I see it, share two distinct and separate collections of issues. The first set of issues is related to a genuine disability. I am happy to see honest attempts to address those issues in modern society. Unfortunately, most of the people involved in the discussion today, particularly healthcare professionals with delusions of god-hood, do not appear to have good intentions and I fear that they will do more harm than good.
For me, that first set of issues is not relevant at all. I do not have a disease that needs to be cured. I have a few mild secondary issues, such as depression and anxiety. Focusing on these secondary issues is not helpful (doesn’t work) and distracts from the real issues.
The second set of issues is a tangled collection of misunderstandings and deliberate lies.
They say that, “If you’ve been at the table for half an hour and you haven’t figured out who’s the patsy, you’re the patsy.”
One analogy is: “I am sitting down at a poker game with three card sharks. They are communicating with each other, touching their nose or ear, but I have no idea what messages are flying between them. Pretty soon I am out of cash. They have cheated, but I never caught them doing anything I could point out.” (Prof_Pretorius)
This analogy is multi-layered. Some people, with good intentions, do not realize that they are “cheating,” do not know that I am clueless, and believe that they are openly communicating in plain language. Some people are half-awake and are too lazy to explain or are purposely taking advantage, but if you call them on it they will deny it. (Momma will take the time to spell it out, a stranger will not.) Some people are sociopaths (such as corporate bullies) and are fully conscious of everything they do. I believe that most people unconsciously drift between all three positions, not only within the same game but within a single sentence. And then there’s me, the utterly clueless. Throw them all together in the same poker game and you have a mass hallucination involving people who believe that they understand each other, but do not. Everyone is in his own little world and has no idea of what is really going on, but let’s all nod and smile and pretend that we understand each other.
Some accusations are based on circular reasoning. A wise man (Krishnamurti) once said, “Being well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society is no measure of mental health.”
Some accusations are simply based on hate, but pretend to be based on imagined disabilities or crimes, and around the fruit-loop we go.
Between people with good intentions, what it comes down to is a basic philosophical difference, which I could start with the simple question: Was Malcolm X crazy or brilliant? If you can not find your way to the correct answer to that, then any further conversation is pointless.
MALCOLM X: Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRSgUTWffMQ&NR=1
One popular delusion is that, if I just play along and pretend that I don’t know that they are consciously abusing me, my situation will improve. I am not going to play the house slave any more. It has never paid off and it will never pay. I can not appeal to the better nature of the kind of person who wants to keep me in my place because he does not have a better nature.
Another popular delusion is that I have a choice, and that teaching me a few childish “social skills,” or that giving me a few pills, will enable me to see something that does not exist, and will thus allow me to join the party. The truth is that the pigs will never let me join the party, no matter what I do. Asking me to jump through imaginary hoops for imaginary rewards is just a game they play for sport.
Most people chose the blue pill. I was never given that choice at all.
The red pill is bitter (original Matrix) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arcJksDgCOU
The blue pill is "awesome" (spoof) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbytzVW3GfU
There is no spoon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXKFTzlBziI
The truth is that it is all a mass hallucination, and I am not plugged into it. I cannot “bend the spoon” because I cannot see the spoon. I cannot see the spoon because it is simply not there. All the spoon-training in the world will not help me if you move the fantasy spoon an inch to the left.
Most popular social fictions go right over my head, and I usually don’t even know what I’m missing. When I do catch on, they are transparent, whispy puffs of nothing, and I have trouble believing that people take them seriously. Some of them are insignificant and harmless bits of foolishness that I can evade and ignore. Most of them are harmful to both perpetrator and victim and I refuse to play.
Straight-up, unfiltered, objective reality is the only option available to me. I am both unable and unwilling to share the hallucination.
Am I arrogant and feeling morally superior? What’s the difference? I am who I am, and the basic, inborn differences will not change, no matter how much I apologize or grovel.
How am I doing? Is this close? Does it make any sense at all?
Last edited by Tahitiii on 16 Oct 2008, 8:57 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Keep 'em comin.
found it! vv
It's like that, sort of...
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not a bug - a feature.
you know its funny i had a weird dream the other night was out to eat with some random person who had aspergers and was explaining it to the waitor because he didnt believe her that she had autism, and she said "I'm highly verbal, high functioning autistic". I thought that is the best way to describe soembody with aspergers, because i notice when people think of autism, they think of nonverbal. Funny that i had that dream and saw this post lol.
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Being Normal Is Vastly Overrated
You could always tell them to look at the Encyclopedia Dramatica article.
It's like that, sort of...
This analogy is multi-layered. Some people, with good intentions, do not realize that they are “cheating,” do not know that I am clueless, and believe that they are openly communicating in plain language. Some people are half-awake and are too lazy to explain or are purposely taking advantage, but if you call them on it they will deny it. (Momma will take the time to spell it out, a stranger will not.) Some people are sociopaths (such as corporate bullies) and are fully conscious of everything they do. I believe that most people unconsciously drift between all three positions, not only within the same game but within a single sentence. And then there’s me, the utterly clueless. Throw them all together in the same poker game and you have a mass hallucination involving people who believe that they understand each other, but do not. Everyone is in his own little world and has no idea of what is really going on, but let’s all nod and smile and pretend that we understand each other.
PhR33kY
Deinonychus
Joined: 13 Oct 2008
Age: 184
Gender: Male
Posts: 389
Location: Philidelphia, PA, USA
PhR33kY
Deinonychus
Joined: 13 Oct 2008
Age: 184
Gender: Male
Posts: 389
Location: Philidelphia, PA, USA
It's like...
- ... Standing outside of a glass house wherein everyone you know is having a great time, and you can't even find the door.
... Reading a book wherein ll th vwls hv bn rmvd, nt knwng whch vwls g whr, nd hvng t gss t th mnng bhnd th wrds.
... Listening to the radio when the program is a lesson in sign language.
... Watching a Fellini movie with the sound turned off.
... Knowing how the movie ends before you even buy the ticket, but being forced to sit through the whole show.
... Hearing in English, but speaking only in Greek (or vice-versa).
... Carefully crafting a seven-course meal, and being told that everyone else has already ordered pizza.
... Having a digital mind in an analogue world (or vice-versa).
... Having a PBS mind in an Anime world (or vice-versa).
... Teaching science to a room full of artists (or vice-versa).
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We are people who have been thrust into a game which we don't want to play, and where we don't know the rules. If we try to withdraw from the game, or have trouble figuring out the rules, we are patronized, treated as outcasts, humiliated and even abused. If we dare to point out that the game itself and most of the rules are totally ridiculous and unethical, we are told we are arrogant, obnoxious, sub-human and mentally ill.
Quite interesting!
I'll also contribute something as I'm in the middle of reading a book called The Soul of Autism and there was a metaphor about issues with motor behaviors that some of us have that I'll share:
"...a similar dysfunction in brain-body communicatoin [is] if you've ever awakened in the middle of the night to the unsettling realization that circulation to your arm has ceased, and your limb is now deadened or 'asleep'; it is, for all intents and purposes, 'cement'. And as much as your brain wills your recalcitrant member to move , it simply will not stir of its own accord. Now, imagine if you felt this same nighttime paralysis in more than one limb--or even your voice box--and someone was firmly imposing their expectation that you follow instructions and stay on task using the affected body parts."
Kind of long-winded but I thought interesting.
The year is 2002, and I'm a Linux machine running kernel 2.2.21, in a Microsoft Windows world. While Wine 0.7 can run some windows applications, Linux cannot do so natively, and Wine, (being an alpha product), is prone to crashing, and the applications running are often unstable. Linux is very good at maintaining overall system stability, crunching numbers, and mostly everything else a Windows machine is, except for gaming. While MS Office 2002 will not be able to run due to the lack of a Win32 compatibility layer, OpenOffice.org 1.1 will run perfectly fine.
I always say "when I am listening to you It's like trying to travel to the moon and getting lost in the vacuum for a while, thinking that nothing can reach you and there's no spacetime and then in all of a sudden the string gets you" in other words: "Can you explain me better?"
When I am talking you "It's like travelling to the moon and never wanting to come back" untill you say: "what the heck?"
That's a very good way of putting it! That's probably a really easy way for others to comprehend it.
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I don't have Aspergers, I'm just socially inept
Dodgy circuitry! Diagnosed: Tourette syndrome. Suspected: auditory processing disorder, synaesthesia. Also: social and organisation problems. Heteroromantic asexual (though still exploring)
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