Asperger's & Radical, reactionary, or Syncretic politics

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http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt114521.html

^ This earlier thread questioned whether people with Asperger's tend to be institutionally conservative (i.e. favour the status quo) or socially conservative. Awesomelyglorious comes up - midway through the first section of the thread -with, what I think, is the awesomely glorious idea that Aspergian people tend to be radical in their politics .

Indeed, Baron Cohen noted one such individual:

LINK!! !

My question is do people with Asperger's tend to be Radical, Reactionary, or Syncretic (i.e. "extreme") in their opinions?

Radical: Favours rapid, fundamental change.
Reactionary: Favours rapid backpeddling to former golden eras.
Syncretic: Combines extreme elements from opposite ends of the spectrum (i.e. "National Bolshevism"). Different from centrism (which combines moderate elements of the left and right) in that it combines the most extreme elements of both sides of the spectrum to undermine the status quo.

I admit that reactionary and radical are a bit redudant, since many reactionaries want to return to a past that never really existed (so they're effectively creating something new).

I'd also like to ask whether Aspergian politics tends to be a bit more ideological and systemized than most. I noticed, when debating libertarians on other forums at a much younger age, that while I rejected their ideology my own counter-politics was very much as systematic and rigid are their own (my politics has loosened since). Do people with Asperger's tend to focus on theoretical abstractions and systems more so than "common sense" and "pragmatism" when constructing a political worldivew?

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 16 Jun 2010, 11:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Even though reactionaries fail to restore the past and have bad ideas of the past, I don't think there is a redundancy. Reactionaries still approach political problems very differently than radicals even if they are filled with delusions in their approach.

That being said, is your poll all inclusive? Or am I misunderstanding the option system?

For instance, you don't take libertarianism to all levels, so there is no "radical libertarians", only those who are a little bit radical, however, there is a radical left, and radical right option.

I just ask, because cultural conservatism pisses me off, along with a large military and aggressive foreign policy, and "radical right" really just makes me think "fascist". I mean, left-libertarians really are fine with the term "radical left", but right libertarians don't identify very much with the right necessarily. I mean, I think most people would say that I am "radical" rather than a little bit so.

Everything is fixed!

Everything should be as complicated as necessary, if not more complicated!

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 20 Jun 2010, 12:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Is that your motto??

For this context, sure!

By the way, AG, were the 1979 Iranian Revolutionists radicals or reactionaires under your view?

fiscally radical left
socially conservative

Whatever they felt they were really.

I'm pretty far left on most issues but can't stand the majority of other people who are because they're like sheep. They get upset if I think critically about any of their dogmas. I run into it frequently at the liberal arts college that I'm attending although lately the administration has begun to take my criticisms of the way that identity politics are handled more seriously.

I remember having that issue while I was still a vegan. Other vegans got angry when I openly stated that I have no issue with slaughtering animals for food, that I'm more concerned with how it's done and most concerned with how the animals have lived. I said I probably woudn't hesitate to eat hunted game and that, if I knew of a source for humanely slaughtered meat from animals that had lived in good conditions then I would readily eat it because I feel the financial support of humane practices is more beneficial than abstention.

I think the difference may be that people on the spectrum are less likely to think along party lines.

Okay, did they approach problems the way radicals or reactionaires do?

While I'm still turned off by (when taken literally) incoherent statements by people on the left and right, I think there's something more than just dissidence to the party line. People on the Autistic spectrum probably approach politics in a much different manner than people with a mature mirror neuron system (neurotypicals). My hunch would be that people with Asperger's base politics more on anthropological or sociological abstractions of people and social systems rather than on an intutive concept of the person. This tendency probably lends itself towards political outlooks more intellectually consistent and systematic yet also more isolated from the real world.

I would tend to guess reactionaries given that the response was to empower even more strongly the traditional religious authorities, even though there were questionable elements in such an interpretation.

Honestly though, I am really not that concerned with the question.

What do you think of this thread's thesis - that a disproportionate amount of people on the autistic spectrum tend to subscribe to radical, reactionary, or syncreticist politics?

Syncretic considering that I want certain laws rescinded as well as new ones created that would both have sweeping and immediate effects.

You mean that autistics tend to be more extremist? I already said that I believed this was true. Nobody who has voted has claimed to be mainstream.

But these are also only the people who post here in the political arena of the site. If you got people who were mostly apolitical (as much of the world is), you'd get much more mainstream and moderate responses. It's when one invests heavy time into looking into subjects that extreme responses are formed because of the nature of how ruined many aspects of society are due to poor policy and ill-conceived laws that have both become endemic to society but are still dregs on society (just, most people have learned to ignore it since they're not directly affected by it).