Autistic Culture

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There is no one autistic culture. I guess an autistic culture is the Internet culture WP or AFF have.

No, just no. Autism is not a subculture, it is a disability. We are people, we're not a different race or a different species, we are people with a disability.
That is my feeling towards it, anyway.

To be quite honest I think that culture has little to do with race and place, as much as with commonalities of thought and though autistics within a spectrum are all different we do have a very important thing in common "our neurological disability grants us the abilities to experience the world in ways other individuals do not". Some of these perceptions are good and some are bad.

Therefore what do I think of autistic culture? That there is a large repertoire of individuals out there who are outside the box, logical thinkers, creators, entrepreneurs and innovators. That our deficits are also marked by sometimes useful and sometimes "useless" talents and that we all share the commonality of being little oddballs amid most normal individuals keeping in mind what your personal ideas of normal are.

Autism is a disability, but what I think, in the end gives some of us the feel of autistic culture is the fact that we can understand each other within our diversity and be understanding of that which may fall within or outside of our molds, more so than someone that is not within the spectrum could wish to understand.

It's great to hear everyone's thoughts.

I am not here to convince anyone either way. It is personal and one of personal choice.

I will point to some examples of sub-cultures.

There is Deaf-culture. With is own Language, cultural practices.

There is 'Autistic Art', often by self-taught artists living with Autism, which is considered a sub-division of Outsider Art.

By being here we are active members of the International Autistic Community.

Our community is divided in several ways. I quote Wiki;

"Curing autism is a controversial and politicized issue. The "autistic community" can be divided into several groups. Some seek a cure for autism—sometimes dubbed as pro-cure, others consider a cure unnecessary or unethical,[2][4][11] or feel that autism is not a disease.[2] "

Autistic Culture is an empowerment derived from, and in many ways modeled on other such approaches of empowerment within the Disability Rights Movement.

Further there is evidence for "Autistic Intelligence".

It is important that all of us have a voice.

Grant South.

Well I like the idea of autism not just being a disability because it hasn't just been a disability in my life, it's come with some problems and some of them I just can't seem to get past but it's also come with some handy gifts and some of them have helped me and have helped other people too. It has helped my favorite non-profit organization in numerous ways and that just dawned on me yesterday! I just can't see defining that as a disability 100% of the time.
It is rather an odd culture in that it crosses the globe and so many other cultures, making it more of a subculture.
I'd like to break down "Education" to "Knowledge" and "Skills", if I may? In addition to Attitude. The passing down of skills seems to be the hallmark of any culture, even culture in animals (and no, I don't want to start an arguement/discussion on that here, lol).
However, that said, we might also be particularly poor at social learning...but then again maybe not if we are learning from each other and maybe we have mirror neurons for each other?

So I have a question. I was reading Simon Baren-Cohen's Hyper-Systemizing Theory and went on to read another and ran into a term that interests me as I think I may have be having an issue with it, but I can't seem to find a good definition for it, and it seems to be a cultural term...
What is pattern imposition?
Is that little things being not quite right and getting your attention in an otherwise regular pattern?
Is there a term for a whole bunch of these things being scattered like a distraction? So it makes it hard to concentrate on the pattern that you know is there? Like trying to work a puzzle while somebody decides to play 52 card pickup with you? (yeah, annoying imagery huh? no...it's not fun either)
If we don't have a word for that, we should make one up.

I imagine 'pattern imposition', is the occurrence of a new detail imposing on a regulated or rule bound alignment or collection.

I think your imagery of distraction is it.

If we experience "excellent attention to detail" ,we will also contrawise experience 'excellent attention to distraction'. once the distraction has imposed upon the stream of attention.

'Autistic Superimposition', or 'Attentive Detail/Cognitive Superimposition', are playful terms, which may convey the degree of frustration that arises in response to such distractions from our excellent attention to detail. Superimposition, being two patterns, graphic's, sound, visual media, photo's, video etc. are imposed to create new patterns through the act of interference to the harmony of the original form/pattern/picture.



A few thoughts......

Grant South.

I was trying to pay attention to the pictures but I just cannot seem to be able to look at all of it at once. The first one was not too difficult because it wasn't moving. I first made note of all the lines going at an angle, then all the ones going down straight and then to the effect of the interconnecting lines.

The second one took me longer to look at.

First I noted the color green,
Then Red
Then the green matching the red
then the movement from side to side, this was very eye-catching. then I realized that it moves lines appear in the middle, so I started observing those but lost "sight" of the two parts creating the effect to observe the actual maroon appearing and dissapearring (sp) lines. Then I had to put all of this together to make the entire picture.

Wow . . . this was an involved process.

Do people actually see this simultaneously as a whole? I don't have that much attention.

I used to tell my friend I got great attention to detail and not of whole pictures. She would say attention to detail entails being able to pay attentions to all the details without loosing sight of the bigger picture. I did not . .. understand that it seemed contradictory.

Yes I built it up in the same way....step-by-step, each detail at a time.

I then realised that to see the horizontal lines pulsing I needed to slightly un-focus my eye's, the green and red then disappear.

Slight unfocused seeing may be a beneficial practice. It may tone down the details so a whole is seen as details merge into each other.

I know I do this when I look at paintings. When I paint I draw and then paint each piece of the object until all the pieces are included, items of a jig-saw puzzle.

If you have a look at my Frog painting below- I think you may be able to see how I have placed each component together to form a whole. Each item, arm, leg, leaf, etc has it's own shading and colour range.
I built the image up and changed its lines until I was happy with it's pattern or harmony.

'Autistic Superimposition' may be the point where new information is introduced and then at a later time may or may not be included within a new pattern. Superimposition may explain the experience for an Autistic as interruption may be limited and not explain that new information is being introduced as a competing overlay upon a stream of pattern/hyper-systemized thought practice. Autistic Superimposition may be the point of interruption or change from established patterns. This may be experienced as a stress or anxiety as we seek for patterns of sameness within patterns as a rule of logic until such times as the new item can be included within an established system or new rule. The simple logic rule may be very important as we filter all the experienced details through our "hyper-sensory" and "excellent attention to detail".

Stimming suggests we seek satisfaction, via our reward system [dopamine,...etc] in repetitive movements. This practice is an anchoring within our present experience. High-level stimming may be experienced as a rule is met and a pattern is seen at work, such as a rhythm, math or computer equation, visual picture, art or even conversation around such idea's.

A few thoughts.......

All of that makes a great deal of sense. For example I was feeling rather upset yesterday evening. My friends wanted to go to the store and I really really really felt against it that day. At the same time, I hate being in the house completely alone. But I chose to stay home, because I was dreading the lighting and the empty employee greetings (I hate being talked to by strangers, really and my replies feel flat and nervous. I never really know how to handle it, but I have this list of things you say when this or that is said so that works for me. But I digress I see I started to get tangential, I can't seem to answer or discuss things in short.

Ok so I was trying to sort things out and ended up making a new painting, for which I was very, very still the whole time making sure it came out straight. Afterwards I did a great deal of rocking while I was sitting on the bed examining the result, making sure I covered the whole canvas and that the different shades of blue worked well together.



As for your frog I can divide it into specific parts. Each leg then the little thumb things . . etc. My favorite parts are the eyes. I can divide the eye you have a whole view off into at least 6 different components.

Why do I suck at math? o,0

Edit: I also noticed today (we went out to eat and the paper mat had a word search puzzle) that I have a systematic way of finding words in them and that I do them by list order I get really frustrated when people tell me "if you do not find it go to the next one and come back to it later". Its just one of those "but its out of order!" things for me.

Thank you. Those are thoughts worth having! I am really very glad Alex made this place now!
Super-imposition is a very descriptive word. Today I was trying to think of terms that might describe what I was seeing, and everything I was coming up with was applying to the wrong aspect. It needed to be descriptive of an overlay.
Oh.

When it finally hit me what I had on my hands I sat here and giggled until I had tears running down my face.
I have a definite super-imposition of an established social pattern, overlaying another established pattern of a totally different nature (with a possible imposition that I'd like to try to check out before I meet a request to share that info).
I normally think of data/info as pieces, not lines, but on my notes today I drew it as lines due to the layering (vertically and horizontally because the subject matters are so different)...and it looks like a weave...a double weave...and I'm an artist that does a lot of weaving!
For days I've kept saying they were tangled patterns, but not seeing the weave.
Sigh. And due to the circumstances of the super-imposition, and a request for the established pattern information, as a weaver I find this extremely amusing.
Could this be the best practical joke ever played on me?? (Very heavy on the practical part.)

I think I like art a lot more than I do writing (though that is how I started, writing because I did not feel good enough at drawing what was on my mind) because it is something concrete that I can manipulate a great deal easier than concepts in text. Long-term story writing gets . . . weird to me. I end up using copied styles of cheap paperback novels most of the time. Poetry is nicer, its like a pattern-like picture, but with words.

Something else that I find pleasurable in patterns is the idea of them being a sort of map. Patterns keep you from getting lost or overwhelmed.