The world without aspies

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I'm going to stray from the whole "this person was/wasn't aspie" debate (purely anecdotal unless a person has actually been diagnosed).

What I am going to say is this: If aspergers (the mindset, not necessarily the genetic code) were to be removed from the world, our society would degenerate into something where honesty would be a commodity, and everyone by default is backstabbing and treacherous. Eventually, such a society would cause the destruction of humanity itself (an event made more probable by the addition of nuclear weapons to the equation.) For example, I only gained the ability to lie after many years of conditioning by my parents to make me act "more like us". I hate this constant lying that I inadvertantly do, and I hate myself all the more for it.

However, removing NT from the world would have the same effect. Many AS people have individual obsessions, sensitivities, and other things that would preclude them from performing other tasks vital to the survival to the species (namely, mating). Within a few generations, a purely AS society would cease to exist due to depopulation.

I see each person in this world as having a combination of AS and NT "mindsets" present, much in the way of the classical "yin-yang" concept (although in most cases there is an "imbalance" where one or the other is much more prevalent). The two diametrically opposed traits (the honesty and forthrightness of AS, and the more base instinct and treachery of the NT) are, admittedly, required for a complete individual. I've noticed over the years, in both myself and other aspies, that our inability to take action in stressful situations is one major obstacle to overcome for aspies, while overly NT people have no trouble with that whatsoever. As in the person, society also needs a balance of the two to function correctly, although most of society is currently inclined towards NT (as evidenced in the political systems of most of the developed countries).

You're right there!



That is wrong. Actually, NTs are threatening population through mating TOO much. If there wasn't protection, and new drugs to limit the progression of things like AIDS, the world population would probably be 1/6 of what it is or LESS! HECK, cervical cancer is But AS people aren't unable or unwilling to mate. Heck, if there weren't so many seemingly nice women that already had a history, I would probably have already met some. If not for the fact that so many others are so forward, or even hostile, I would feel more comfortable being more forward.

In an evolutionary sense, I think autism is a natural trend of human cortical (brain) development, only we're at the far end. Therefore, if all auties were to suddenly disappear, I suspect it wouldn't be long till we began popping up again.

Same thing with nonautistics: I suspect were they to suddenly disappear, there would be a natural regression towards the mean and nonautistics would begin popping up again.

Having too many severe autistic traits certainly puts a cramp on sexual selection, which is why we will always be a minority, albeit a constant.

However, the very fact that nonautistics breed more ensures we will continue to pop up. It's not a far jump from nonautistic to an autistic cousin and then to autistic.

I know that wasn't the point of this thread, but it made me think about this.

This reads like a 6th grade term paper.

This has a disturbing ring to it.

It implies that deceit and treachery are qualities inherent to all non-autistic people, and that every single one of them is like this. This is NOT true. All my closest friends are not autistic, and neither are the other very good people I have known. To accuse them of innate dishonesty is nothing short of an insult.

Neither is it true that autistic people absolutely do not and cannot lie; they themselves apparently admit that. In “Emergence…”, for example, Temple Grandin describes how one day she and another girl she went to school with broke some bottles in their teacher’s yard. The next day, the teacher told the students that some unknown vandals had wreaked havoc there. Nobody suspected Temple, so she had no real need to try and justify herself or divert people’s attention from her person; but she figured that, if she blamed some boys who used to tease her, it would be a fine way of punishing them. So she approached the teacher during the break, expressed some sympathy about what happened in the teacher’s yard, and said she had no idea who could have done such a thing. Then she added something like, “oh, but I was visiting my friend and saw so-and-so and another so-and-so, they were loitering around your house”. This had some predictable consequences for these boys. Temple says that at that moment, she felt no remorse because she thought those boys would have done the same anyway, if only they had been inventive enough, and she also believed it was a just punishment for them. (I can’t give the exact pages and quotes because I read the book in Russian in electronic format – but it wouldn’t be so hard to locate, the book is small enough)

This is not just lying. This is a very subtle, elaborate sort of deception, which involved not only blaming someone for doing something they did not do, but also using conversational implicature to hint at what she wanted to say indirectly, rather than putting it outright. Note that she did not say it was those boys who did it; she only mentioned that they were seen near the teacher’s house, from which the teacher drew her own conclusion – which was exactly the conclusion Temple wanted her to make. So much for the inability of autistic people to beat about the bush.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no intention to dwell on Temple Grandin’s misdeed which happened ages ago, and I actually admire her for being able to admit her faults and write so openly about things like these. My point is only this: this, too, can happen. Autistic people are not a race of beings who are morally superior by their very nature; they are simply HUMAN. Just like non-autistic people.

Anybody can be decent, autistic or not, and anybody can be indecent as well.

I just had to say this. This sort of black and white thinking that paints autistic people as angels in the flesh, and non-autistic ones as one step short of evil is ultimately disturbing.

Right on, Ixo!

No Mozart music, that's for sure. Which might make life more bland, considering he composed the Einenachtmusik, or whatever it was called, the Rondo Alla Turca, the Marriage of Figaro, and my personal favorite, the piano concerto 10 for two keyboards.

It said MINDSET, NOT the genetic component! BTW, I WISH all autistic people were angels, etc... Yet it is interesting that SO MANY here have done what the world at large has said was impossible. So it may not be true of all autistics, or even ANY all of the time, it IS true of a statistically high number early on.

It's too difficult to say how the world would be affected. Any discoveries/inventions made by someone with AS could have been done by someone with NT using an alternate path. Most problems have more than one solution, with several people at a time trying different angles of attack. There would have been relativity without Einstein, radium without Curie, AC power without Tesla, etc. Would they be the same? As good? As complete? No one can say for sure.

Aspies are neither helpless incompetents nor the saviours of the modern world. We're neither indispensable nor a burden on society. We are who we are, as we were created. We don't need someone else's past accomplishments to feel good about ourselves. Einstein does not justify my worth or existence. I don't need him to do so. If I never accomplish anything else in my life I still will not think of myself as less than someone else.

You are you, and that's damned well good enough.