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Hi, my name is Zac, and it was hard for me to write that subject line. What I really wanted to do was put the grand unifying theory of the universe there. Fortunately, I've learned some self-restraint.

This is my first post on this board, and I hope it will also be a thought provoking one. If I am asking questions that are routinely answered, please forgive me and feel free to direct me to the appropriate resources.

I believe the human brain/personality/psyche can be measured in a large number of ways. I believe that there are a lot of people with a certain measurement "signature," and you could, if you wanted to, draw a circle around this population and label them with something called "Aspergers Syndrome."

My question is, why do this at all? What comes of it?

Just to give an example to work with, the question "How are you?" is, to this day, incredibly difficult for me to answer. My instincts are to take the question at face value and actually tell my interrogator how I am doing that day. (My apologies to all those people who got a whole lot more than they were asking for.)

One approach to this problem would be to say, "Well, I have aspergers," so I am excused from handling this situation adeptly - as you might with a blind person who was being asked to drive a bus. I am *not* accusing anyone here of taking this route, but it has been my observation that this is often the "point" of diagnosing a condition, to foster "understanding" of a person's shortcomings.

This troubles me, because in this situation, the "understanding" simply isn't going to be there, nor would it be warranted. I should be expected to learn how to handle, "How are you?" I hope most of you feel the same way.

I realize that I am running the risk of writing a "I did it, why can't you?" post, which is not my intention, because, among other things, it assumes that you haven't. I do understand how something that is simple for one person can be difficult or even impossible for another person.

There is a wider philosophical point that I want to make. I believe that just as it would be a mistake to hammer every person into a preconceived notion of "normal," it would be a mistake to try to accomodate every trivial difference.

I don't really know where I am on the Aspergers spectrum, I'm probably more on the "mild" side, which I think was the diagnosis I received from a psychiatrist when I was 17. However, nothing in my personal experience justifies to me the creation of a recognized "disorder."

I don't want to trivialize my own difficulties either. As a child, when social ineptitude is usually overlooked or forgiven (partly because it is conflated with common pre-adolescent social ineptitude), I was incredibly emotionally blind. I still am "emotionally" blind (not to be confused with emotionally numb, which I am most definitely not).

But I have, for the most part, overcome that. Like many of you, I did it intellectually. I don't "know" how you are feeling, but I can calculate it pretty well (sometimes better than the people you call "NT"). And my success, and your success, would seem to me to invalidate the need to consider Aspergers a "disorder."

If anything, its a super-power. I wouldn't give it up for all the money in the world. Well, ok, maybe a billion dollars would be enough.

If your parents gave you a new computer for your birthday, and your dad started apologizing because the computer was missing its graphics accellerator, but because of that it ran four times faster than the average computer, would you be disappointed or elated?

The BIG LIE(TM) is that there is such a thing as "normal." There isn't. As far as I can tell, pretty much everyone feels socially awkward pretty much any time they are in a room full of strangers. You would have to search for a long time to find someone without at least one quirky hang-up. Half the United States (I'm looking at you, Bush voters) seems to lack the ability to perceive irony. If a social encounter isn't going well, our tendency might be to place the blame on ourselves, but we have no idea what is going on inside the head of the other person.

Please don't think I'm trivializing this "condition," god knows there were some years in my childhood where I was convinced I was on the "wrong planet." I think its fantastic that the internet allows like-minded people to come together like this, and I look forward to meeting some of you in the near future.

But if we are waiting around for the world to interface with us, we are going to wait a long time. The world has better things to do (and we shouldn't use the power of litigation and political correctness to force it to). Its up to us to learn how to interface with the world. Once you figure out the rules of the game, you will find that that 10 GHz brain you are carrying around is a truly potent socializing engine.

Hope I didn't come on too strong for a first-time poster (yeah I know I did, but you will have to excuse me, I have Aspergers ),
-Zac

EDIT: Just to clarify, I am particularly worried about the phenomenon of diagnosing children as "having a disorder," with the usual implications that that child should be put on medication and otherwise "adapted to." Sometimes it seems like pretty soon every kid on the planet is going to have some diagnosable disorder.

Interesting ideas, and I too have thought about these things before and have made similar observations. Nevertheless, welcome to Wrong Planet.

I know this one. And much of the rest of your pattern of thinking is strangely familiar. (or should that be familiarly familiar?)

I've developed and sometimes employ the response "Bits of me are excellent."
This avoids the lie of the socially conventional "Fine", and often passes for disarming humour.

You and I sound very like-minded individuals welcome to WP my associate will be posting soon with details on how to join the 1337 religion of Garlic-PH|249915|\/|.

I had garlic for lunch... perhaps I am already a member?

I'm sorry that first post was so long.

I think the whole point of the "How are you?" dilemma is that you are supposed to lie and say "fine." I know, I know its hard for me to come to terms with as well, but the other person isn't really asking you a question, they are just "not-ignoring" you.

EDIT: I could have summarized my original post in one sentence:

I think Aspergers is a good reason for self-forgiveness, but not an excuse.

I think the whole point of defining and understanding the autistic condition is to avoid spiralling in a recursive series of lies in order to please others and end up in losing completely oneself. Like the narrator of a story of David F. Wallace, who says, before deciding to take his own life, "all my life I have been an impostor". This is true for me, and I perceive my life as the perpetuation and the lingering in the morass of that fraud. I must caution that even what I say now may be nothing less than the continuation of that fraud. Here lies the recursivity problem that haunts me. How the problem of recursivity, which touches logic, mathematics, and biology (the DNA contains recursivity) can be treated is something that eludes me. Being ignorant in these matters I only sniff something very hazily. As hazy is probably this post.

Thats a very interesting post paolo. I happen to believe that at some point, "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck."

To use specific examples; I might mistakenly fall into the trap of believing that if I don't have at least 10 friends, I am a failure - despite the fact that making friends does not come easily to me.

But I might also spend the rest of my life believing that I need more friends. As long as I believe this to be true, isn't it in fact true?

Hey.
Just like to point out that believing that something is true does not necessarily make it so. In order for something to be true you must be able to prove it, and i beleive it would be hard for anyone to prove that they need more friends as the question is too subjective. Think about it.

Hope you like posting here and don't forget to join the Church of Garlic. If you want the pain to go away and be a part of something greater than yourself bite into a raw clove of Garlic tonight. And for a donation of just $19.95 we will send you a leather bound copy of the Holy Book of Garlic.

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Welcome Zac:) .

I feel that certainly, where a HFA/AS person is functioning very well in the world of people and succeeding quite nicely, there is no real need for a diagnosis/label. However, there are some who are high functioning in terms of intelligence, but their social behaviour is unacceptable and they would be in a high risk category of falling into major troubles both with the law and with clinical depression. It's interesting to note that some who may be considered "low" functioning(in terms of their IQs) actually function very well, yet some very intelligent autistics do not succeed. I'm sure that many of us are very aware that the autistic population has been greatly underestimated. A recent news item: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/adu ... 72689.html

Hope you're doing well and I look forward to reading more from you.

I am not sure I get the whole point. Certainly a DX should not be worn as a badge and be the end of it. It should help to focus the sense of your strivings, redirect them, avoid false communication (communication that has goals different from those explicit), put a little more authenthicity in your life and in another people's life (this is more difficult, perhaps impossible, but then it's better to quit this people rather than contribute further to falsity).
In conversation what we often do is to search a median line, a compromise, an accomodation to keep it going. No soul searching, no frankness, no truth. It's mostly despairing, it's the way public opinion grows and public opinion is thrash. If i see black and the other sees white, to accomodate on gray is surely the way for a gray hell.

Something about functioning and not. The whole fabric of society is run by "functioning" people in senseless enterprises, destructive operations They are nearly the same thing). A soldier shooting on the theatres of war, should not be blamed for what he is ordered to do. But his "functioning" means for him aiming well (i.e. killing) and obeying orders. The same could be said of the CEOs of Airbus o Boeing whose efficacy is measured on the capacity to put in the air these monsters to transport hollow people to some tourists' "paradise". And what about spin-doctors, manipulators, Karl Rove and Alastair Campbell. Do they function?

Last edited by paolo on 10 Oct 2006, 4:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

I loved the introductory letter, welcome to WP!

For me reading about aspergers helped me to feel I wasn't the only one like this, and that in turn led me to be able to be ME in a group, since then, only a few weeks ago I've noticed I'm enjoying talking in small groups, I've noticed what I've learnt for years about people and how they work gives me more than enough tools to enjoy it without the stress overload I used to have.

You have to remember though, for some of us, even if we can achieve social skills, or styles, and even if we can use it easily, some of us get nothing out of it, personally I love it if music, dancing, or some sort of greater goal is involved, but generally being social for the purpose of being social bores and therefore angers me.

Whatever way we connect can work, surely some people are meant to work predominantly alone, and some others are not, but you are right, this is not a disability that is for sure, simply another colour in the spectrum

Just knowing where and how we shine means we can push ourselves further than many.

Hi, Zac!

Welcome to Wrongplanet!

I hope you enjoy posting here!

Paolo wrote:
"I am not sure I get the whole point. Certainly a diagnosis should not be worn as a badge and be the end of it."

You made some excellent points. I agree and a diagnosis should never be viewed as an excuse for inappropriate behaviour. My point is that in some cases, a clear diagnosis can and has certainly benefited our peers, their families and communities. For example, the case of a 31 year old woman who, still living with her parents, was totally in control of the family home to the point that when she woke in the morning, ordered her 60+ year old parents out of the home, only allowing them to return when she needed them to perform certain tasks for her. When they resisted, she attacked and hit them as well as verbally abusing them.

With a diagnosis, all concerned were granted appropriate support and services which led to greater understanding of this woman’s behaviour, from an autistic perspective, and a far more stable and happier existence for all. Her very loving parents were able to come to some understanding of the extreme anxiety their emotional demands had been placing upon their daughter and make arrangements for her to live more independently of them. Diagnosis for some, can lead to better opportunities, increased likelihood of leading a more productive, rewarding and self-sufficient life rather than continuance along a self-destructive path.

Those you mentioned in your post certainly function but it's how they choose to function in society that is the problem imho.

Perhaps you are familiar with William Glasser’s “The Ten Axioms of Choice Theory”. Many parts are applicable to both NT and autistic populations and commences with “The only person whose behaviour we can control is our own.”

We certainly could do with more people willing to run against public opinion and make a genuine difference in this world. Eg. Michelle Dawson, Rosa Parks, Joseph Darby, Samuel Province, Christoph Meili etc.

I agree that a Dx may be helpful in many practical situations. The number of people who know the existence of functioning autistic persons in my country is near nil, and here to get an official Dx from the psychiatric officialdom is practically impossible. To have very weird behaviours is irrelevant if these behaviours are not aggressive (to smash windows in a shop, or damage other people’s possession). In these cases a Dx would be relevant only in a trial as a partially exonerating circumstance. There is no form of assistance to the families in these cases.
I have a great admiration for whistleblowers but I think that their courage and their conscience is more a fruit of their richness in character than other; this in turn is due to their life history, their culture, and their innate instincts. This seems to be the case for Sophie Sholl, so movably portrayed by Julia Jentsch in the recent film on “the white rose” group in Munich. On the other side the portrait of Stangl made by Gytta Sereny on the commandant at Birgenau does not present us with a sadistic monster, but rather with man who “functioned” as a “normal” policeman, and ended up in being unable to refuse his assignment as an exterminator, even if he seems somehow less terrifying than Eichmann.

Last edited by paolo on 10 Oct 2006, 12:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi!