wp getting annoying

Post Reply New Topic

It's not remotely comparable, actually. It's not "just as bad" and it can't have the same consequences. The reason is that autistic adults don't have a platform with which to distribute such views in an influential way, whereas the reverse is true. Autism is represented in the media from an NT perspective all the time. This is why we end up with people theorizing that autism causes shooting sprees and cures are the focus of discussion and why Autism Speaks can get away with claiming to represent autism while basically involving no one who is autistic in any way except as tokens.

I think your message is interesting, Vedandi and makes some kind of valid point, but I would like to look at it from a perspective which involves framing the material differently.



Yes, different kinds of wrong thinking can have different kinds of consequences and affects, but wrong thinking about other people one perceives to be thinking wrongly and oneself who one generally does not perceive to be thinking wrongly is often based upon certain kinds of general misunderstandings about the nature of reality that are hard to see when one is focusing primarily on other people.....though. yes, trying to neutralize everything by over-generalizing, as you are pointing out, can also be a way of missing seeing something. For instance, a person may never listen to other people he disagrees with, or even much to anyone at all, but the solution to many problems can be found in deeply listening.



This may not be a popular view, but it is my view. I can see your problem with that organization, but I don't think what is happening there has much to do with autistic or not autistic people, but rather with the wrong thinking of people in general, and I think it is likely that a good percentage of these parents are in some way autistic themselves, but this is maybe a moot point as all kinds of people have wrong thinking about most everything. (This is a side point, but from what I have seen, there is a lot of hands on involvement with helping autistic preople in school and in getting jobs, etc.)

Also, I still do not quite get the gist of exactly why it would be helpful to have an autistic person be on the board of Autism Speaks, though maybe there is something that I am missing that would give me understanding. I even made a thread on this subject but really gained no insight into this one thing, though the comments were kind of interesting. Maybe I should go back to that. The basic assumption here is that this autistic person would have right thinking or better thinking, whereas the probability is that he would have the same general kinds of wrong thinking about life, autism, himself and the world, as many other people, if not even most people do.. Is this comment demeaning to autistic people? I ask this because I have been accused of making demeaning comments and I have literally no idea why, so now I am very wary.

As far as Autism Speaks goes, I think a lot of their ideas about autism are wrong, very wrong, but it seems to me they are still trying to do things to help people, and maybe are helping people in some ways. Unless a person has had an autistic child I do not see how they can understand what these parents are going through. I think there is at least some rationale for a parents' organization that is made by parents to be approaching from the angle of parenting these children and helping them to adjust. Personally I think the general line of their thinking about autism is wrong. I do not believe a genetic cure should be the primary focus and think they should be looking more from a psychological angle such as how certain aspects of their own parenting and family patterns may possibly be playing into it..

Last edited by littlebee on 17 Mar 2014, 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

On this thread it's reigning cats and dogs.

Epic thread. Way too much for me to take in but still yeah

Puppy smell is the most gorgeous in the world! I have to confess I haven't sniffed a kitten, but could imagine they would be nice too.

I vaguely remember my 2 kids smelling quite nice early on - although there were far more times when they smelled really bad!! !

True.


Well, that's always a good aim, but don't take too much on yourself. I understand what you are saying about ignoring something that is pertinent; it allows things to continue in a negative way sometimes.

None of this is to deny that animal pictures can be cute, but to me every topic can be used to interconnect with other topics. It can be the land or a bridge two different lands, and a land can be used to make a bridge, but we know we cannot just make a bridge into nowhere, as there would be nothing to anchor it to....this is why making a totem might not be a good self defense. If it is taken outside of rational structure, such as wanting to feel good at any cost, even at the expense of blocking obvious meaning, then the meaning it is trying to defend against starts to stand out and acquire even greater meaning, but when involved in making a protective totem and building it higher and higher it is easy to miss the obvious that it is about to topple. So in this sense making a totem would be similar to an ostrich putting its head in the sand. People outside the sand can see that the ostrich is doing it, and the ostrich obviously on some level knows he is doing it, but the world outside is alive and vivid in a way the world under the sand is not.

Actually ostriches do not even really bury their heads in the sand---it is people who do, though not literally. Sand is a classic metaphor for being wrapped uo and lost in sensation, for not being aware, so for being asleep. This is not to deny your previous comment that a lot goes on under the sand. Yes, there is meaning even under the sand, and again some cat and dog pictures can be cute or even I suppose awesome, but the material would need to be put into context, and the context it is put into would increase or diminish its potential value for whoever is viewing the material, depending upon his own individual context. To me warm and fuzzies are good, but they are also connected with war, Obviously the people who are engaged in war are feeling warm and fuzzy---but generally only with their own kind of people, and they will fight other people for land. There are all kinds of inner meanings and implications to this kind of activity, some of it quite rational, but there is another potential dimension which, though it may be inclusive of the previous dimension, is outside. How do people make a bridge into this dimension? Imo though the use of logic. This does not mean thinking that is disconnected from huggable shapes. Shapes are people. The bridge is where logic and feeling consciously interconnect into a mind of great clarity. Then there is action, and people have important things to do.

A totem is not huggable. It is a carving out of wood (would"-), so a representation. Nor is a picture of a cat or dog huggable. It represents a certain desirable quality of human experience, but, in short, take logic away from it all and you end up with an animal. Dogs and cats have their patterns of behavior and are beautiful feeling precious creatures, but they are not people, though people can act like animals and animals can sometimes act like people. Primitive people used to and still do sacrifice animals---and people.

When people start trying to cut out the idea content of other people with only an extremely vague rationale behind what they are doing, that is something to look at very carefully. The problem is that to sort out some of this kind of stuff takes a lot of Work and a lot of people do not have the energy, interest or inclination. Personally I think the way to be happy is to do what is interesting to oneself, but if a person is looking at ideas with a group of people and yet not interested in catching a glimpse of his own bias and how it may be playing into it, then the transformational possibilities of that kind of situation are limited.

One thing that is interesting to me is that I can look deeply at ideas anyplace. I am doing it a lot of the time, but if you are interested in doing it with other people who are supposedly interested in doing it, then how do you make such a place? What creates the best possibility for doing that. I have started a thread to specifically enquire into this kind of question.

I have always struggled with context. My mind jumps around wildly from topic to topic. That's not to say that I won't revisit topics, in fact I almost always do. But my thinking and, sadly, communication are not linear.

I'll check out the other thread.

I agree that the consequences are not remotely the same and autistic have more negative experiences with NT's then the other way around but it is just as wrong to stereotype in a negative way NT's as it is autistics.

It depends on the context. For example, if an autistic person has just dealt with a really frustrating experience with some NT people and is using a bit of hyperbole, jumping on the autistic person for the use of that hyperbole is no-go, will not work, will do nothing for the person, will do nothing for autistic-NT relations, and can only invalidate that autistic person's feelings.

No, it's not. Another reason such things happen is because NTs are basically ignorant about autistic people and do not need to learn anything about us in order to function. Their ignorance tends to cause more difficulties for us in terms of lack of accommodations, belief that we don't really need such accommodations, and outright ableist prejudice and stigma. One of the consequences of this sort of thing is parents and caregivers who murder their autistic children and many receive milder consequences in terms of lower bail, less jail time, and even less likelihood of going to jail in the first place. Another consequence is difficulty in terms of being able to find a suitable job, receiving accommodations on that job, and not losing that job due to "autistic behavior."

In contrast, autistic people who are angry and/or upset about these things who make stereotypical comments are extremely unlikely to murder any NTs, deprive any NTs of employment, try to force NTs to work in environments that are not conducive to their function. Autistic people are not in a position to pass laws or have hearings to decide how neurotypicality shall be approached as a manner of national policy, and none of us is likely to convince anyone that the existence of neurotypicals is an epidemic, and that the seriousness of their existence is as negative and terrible and horrifying as cancer.

My point is that what you have posted here is a false dichotomy. You're taking two very different actions outside of their respective contexts and then using superficial similarities to claim that they're equally bad. Certainly, you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. In this case, the facts are not in agreement with your opinion.

I am obsessed with my catatar. Sometimes, I look in threads where I posted just to look at her purrrfurrrt face. Other times, I view my profile to do the same.

same here,she is gorgeous.
whats her name?
shes just got that look on her,that diva-ish look,that they put on when they [rightly] think theyre better than their human minions.

Her name is Smuggy. She is bester than her hoooman minions.

Nothing wrong with that. Your catar is epic.

smuggy,bewtiful name.
why not set up a facebook page for her? seriously am sure theres loads of us crazy cat wimin/men who woud love to see the daily tails of smuggys life, the fb feed of mine is completely filled with kitteh pages.


agreed! though its a lot of kit-ego stroking for smuggy, mine are real divas around a camera.