Playing the Autism Card May Be Harmful to Humanity

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The way we frame our experience affects how everything is for us. If we really love other people, then getting to know them is spontaneous. I think the perspective to approach from their angle rather than from ones own angle, but with a common ground.

So what is a common ground? For one thing, it is in the moment and it is perceptual. One does in some way have to relate ones own context to it, but the more one thinks about oneself, then the more the potential of making a connection is degraded.

*****One of the main topics of this thread is going to be about what is called autistic encapsulation.

The word perception is actually related to the word encapsulation in that cap and cept are from the same Latin word root mean take or catch (so, one generally implied meaning-- to comprehend). "Per" is the Latin word meaning (to go) through.

Think about and you will get a better idea of what is a somewhat difficult but not extremely difficult conCEPT to understand.

Also note that in the word perceive, we find a pun for the word sieve.

Someday you will be very thankful you read the above and had the foresight to spend some quality time pondering the meaning of it and how it applies to yourself and your own brain function.

To any serious readers/deep thinkers on this thread, and I know there are at least a few, please go to this other thread and read the comments made today. See if you can relate these comments to the topic here, which is, for one thing, grading and sorting of various material and how we use it both consciously and unconsciously, so how we fit ourselves into it and how it shapes ourselves, and how the way we do this can affect other people (humanity).

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postxf241175-0-30.html

About an earlier topic of autistic people posting what they have done and saying that other people should be able to do what they have done, I am not bothered by that, and I find that it helps rather than harms me, because sometimes, I get stuck thinking that I am not able to do XYZ, but this type of comment makes me reconsider, so I give something another different try, and I ackshuly find that I can do XYZ, so this type of comment is not necessarily bad, but it depends on how I view it in my mind, but even if I don't get motivated to try something again, I am still not bothered by these comments, as these are opinions of people, and it is just as ok for people to post that others should be able to do what they did as it is for other people to post that autism is horrible soul-sucking black hole of suck that only those who are screwed up in the head would have no problem having and not be cured, since these are just people's personal opinions.

When I talked about that I was referring to people actually condemning and shaming others for having different limitations? I try things all the time that I think I might not be able to do, but someone saying "I could do it and so can you, and otherwise you're just lazy/making excuses/acting entitled" is not going to convince me to try anything.

It's not even that I feel condemned or shamed by these statements, but that because they are framed in terms of shame and condemnation I do not find them valid or useful - and when I see them, I explain why.

As far as opinions go, people are entitled to their opinions. But they are not entitled to:

* No one disagreeing with their opinions (disagreement is an opinion as well)
* Have their opinions automatically accepted as factual

What makes these kinds of comments bad is that they're not about saying "You can do this if you try," they're actually a means of asserting social dominance - establishing themselves as good people and the people they're shaming as bad people. This is a fairly common behavior among humans and most people do it at one time or another.

In contrast, I have participated in threads where people have offered advice on doing things that feel insurmountable. I recall OliveOilMom had a great thread about cooking instructions. This is constructive and helpful, as opposed to haranguing people for not having the skills and abilities necessary to do what someone else thinks they should do.

None of this is in a neutral context. Much of it is loaded. Much of it is prejucide against disabled people - which can just as easily be held by disabled people as by abled people. Also, this is a culture where disability and disabled people are viewed with suspicion, as if we are trying to "get away with something" when explaining our limitations, looking for benefits due to having a low income or being unemployable. People like to snap pictures of people in wheelchairs standing up for a moment as if being in a wheelchair means one can never ever stand up (most people I know who are in wheelchairs can stand up at least for a few seconds - but standing up costs them dearly or is excessively difficult). So when people on this forum make assertions like "You're just making excuses" they're not challenging anyone to push themselves, they're just expressing that cultural belief that disabled people are just making excuses for being lazy.

Just to add context to what I said earlier, since what you're saying does not seem to be about the kind of discussions I was referring to.

I think that I am talking about the same types of posts that you are talking about, but I didn't have the additional interpretations to go with them.

Like as opposite eggsample, the posts about autism is horrible and only messed up people think that autism is not horrible, those seem fine to me too.

There are lots of people in autism community designating certain type of statements as incorrect and certain others as more correct, but I don't like that, because I would have rather people post their different opinions, and if I disagree, then I can always post my own opinion.

Also, I had none of the things about prejudice and disability and dominance in my mind when reading those you're making eggscuses type posts, but instead, I wonder if I am making eggscuses, and I usually try something again, just in case I was ackshuly making eggscuses without knowing that I was, so basically, those type of posts helped me question myself and sometimes gain something. Maybe I am one of few people who finds such statements useful, and most others find them abhorrent, but different people respond differently to same thing, so their presence on forums have helped me in my life. Oh yeah, and sometimes, I really was making eggscuses for not trying something.

Some comments on the subject of the last three messages. Verdandi, basically I agree with everything you have written, and I am not sure of the point btbynnyr is trying to make, but I intuit it does fit in with the topic of this thread as ir pertains to sorting and grading. This is actually a very hard subject for me to talk about and I have been deliberately avoiding addressing it the entire time I have been on WP.

I don't usually have big emotional slants on things, so when people post comments that other people find offensive, I usually have no reaction, and I don't find them offensive, and I also don't have big social model of something or other framework to provide analytical reasons to find them offensive.

Sometimes, when people say that other people are mean to them or eberryone, I don't sense the meanness, and the same for niceness, as my least favorite online interactions are those in which people post nice supportive one-line messages to someone having some problem without giving any hint of how to improve situation, and if I were problem poster, this doesn't give me warm fuzzies.

I will comment in the quote box below, but btbnnyr, what people are experiencing is subjective, so people will have different slants on things, and also the way a child learns to buffer against emotional pain depends on his genetic propensity, but I think more on what kind of opportunities are offered to him by his environment to compensate. I will comment more on this soon, as I have to go someplace.

This message today is for parents of an autistic child who "lower" on the spectrum, though of course each child is equally precious:

.In my opinion, inquiring into the subject matter that is being discussed here and so possibly gleaning a bit of insight about how the brain may work, which is not always like we think, will definitely help you better understand and help such a child. I have decided to write on this subject also, at times, both here and on some of my other threads. Love, littlebee

I wish there was a 'thanks' button for this post. I wasn't sure if I was overreacting finding this post so insulting, and being told to only reply in a certain way - what a control freak. Sorry. I think I just broke littlebee's replying to a post rule.

My fear of change (I explain this to NTs as causing panic attacks and outbursts) has always been a problem for me and my parents and siblings didn't go easy on me. I don't even go easy on myself about it, but I have put myself in situations to fight through this fear and I've had breakdowns, so I know what my limits are. I do want to be able to overcome it at times so I can fully experience life without restraint, but that's something that takes a lot of pre-planning and something will happen leading toward that panicking feeling.

And like you said it is because the autistic brain is different than typically developing people, aka. NTs.

I think the OP is high. I'm going to stay on the side of science and continue to ignore people like littlebee. Not because I am limiting myself but because I think they are delusional.

Imo Willard took that one line he quoted out of context and then went on a rant, but I didn't say anything at the time, as it was too confusing to address. Also, I could understand why he did so, as I did not express my own concept that clearly. Below is the entire paragraph from which he took that one sentence.

You wrote, and I have interdispersed some comments in bold:

Last edited by littlebee on 29 Oct 2013, 7:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Okay, to continue. I am going to reply to part of Willard's post. You can read the first part of his at the top of this page, and again, note that he took one comment out of context. You can read the whole paragraph I wrote in the message above and the entire post on page one in my introduction to this thread..

To Willard and others, I admit that paragraph in the way it was worded could possibly be perceived as discounting the disabilities a person is struggling with, and I apologize, but still you have made some pretty slanderous implications about my own view of autism for which you have no evidence at all, and which are blatently untrue. I will adress these in your quote below into which I will interdisperse some comments.

littlebee wrote

I am thanking the readers of this thread for going slow and trying to process this material actively.

I will maybe write later what I personally experienced regarding what I have now named "the autistic amplification effect," though it is quite unpleasant for me to recall, but it is similar to a bell, the silent 'ringing' of which amplifies the content without adding or subtracting anything to or from it.This is it in a nutshell.

Here is a link to an extremely interesting topic, The Placebo Phenomenon
http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/the- ... phenomenon

Here are the relevant selected parts:

Okay, to continue, I think we should also look at confirmation bias. Here is a link: http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~mckenzie/nickerso ... onBias.pdf. I didn't read the material yet but I like the title, "Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomena In Many Guises," (ha ha). Anyway,this is probably related to the placebo effect which physicians are trying to study, and also, I have observed a trend for physicists to be looking to make a universal theory from this kind of angle.

The main point here is that ones world will organize around the way one thinks, and community will also organize from this angle, as people's survival depends upon what how other people think, and it all come down to? movement or action.

Back to autism--various people are going to think all kinds of things about it---whatever suits their individual conscious or unconscious purposes in correlation with whatever the word means to them intellectually and whatever they feel about it. Personally I question the ultimate value of organizing ones world around any particular word, but especially this one. I saw a video online in which an educator was trying to teach moderately severe autistic teenagers not to do this. She was training them to say they have autiism but it is not them, just a part of them. There was good intent behind it, but it was kind of lame and really quite heart breaking to watch, as I don't think that tactic was in any way cutting the grease for these children.

Re the placebo effect---lots of luck to those who are trying to study that: Re the study that discovered if you tell people it is a placebo they are being given, it still works--that is interesting, but kind of nebulous, as there are so many speculations you can come up with as to why it works, and this is all plays into the concept of confirmation bias.

Ain't no Einstein, but there is this other principle---I will call it the littlebee corollary:

If it works it works:-)

You know autism is more than social issues right?

And saying my symptom are because of the placebo affect is incredibly insulting and something that many people have done. No, my symptoms are not because of the placebo affect. They are not psychosomatic. I don't care if you can't imagine why my symptoms might exist, they're not psychosomatic.

Even if they were psychosomatic, that wouldn't change that they are MEANINGFUL SYMPTOMS that MATTER, but in my case they aren't. (We have enough data to be able to say this - I'm not saying this just because I want to, I'm saying this because I not only have been analysing myself, I've also been collecting data about myself.)



Now the thing the placebo effect has larger effects on is mild anxiety and depression - and those comorbids are very common on the autistic spectrum. So, you might be seeing patterns that are related to comorbids more than autism itself. Especially if it was social anxiety. And when you're talking about anxiety, you're talking about 80% of those with the Asperger's diagnosis.