betelgeuse wrote:
Is it just me or does anyone else recognize Julian Assanges obsession for thruth and justice as typical Asperger traits......
As I've argued on the political blogs I visit, Assange is being mythologized before our very eyes, by both his fans and by those who seek to villify him. He's either black or white. He's either a revolutionary or a sociopath. He's either a hero or a criminal. Common sense will tell you, you won't get a truthful picture of Assange through the eyes of people who what him to be one extreme or another.
Assange's "obsession" with truth and justice is part of the myth his fans and supporters have created around him, so any tough-minded person would naturally be skeptical about how true it really is. As much as you may wish to believe in that myth, you
cannot use elements of myth to make an argument that someone has Asperger's. It's just silliness, to be blunt.
For the record, I back what Wikileaks does 100%. As an Aspie, I don't automatically assent to authority. Authority must validate itself, and invalid authority does not have the right to demand either assent or protection. So in that vien, I do not think the governments of the world should get to run their own agendas without accountability to the people they serve. Period. And if it takes something like Wikileaks to break the authoritarian black-out on information to hide morally questionable actions by governemnt and corporations in league with them, then so be it.
But also as an Aspie, I am very,
very cautious of people who gather a band of fans and supporters around them to help them deflect criticism from society. That does not point to an Aspie, but a narcissist. Many a narcissist has passed himself as a someone on the "right" side of history. It is not clear what the full story with Assange is yet, but while he may have this quirk here and that quirk there that an Aspie could relate to, you gotta judge the machine by the product it produces. And the Assange machine sure seems to produce a lot of evidence that points to narcissism far more than Asperger's.
Let me make one thing clear: just because you sympathize with someone doesn't mean he/she is one of you. People on the autism spectrum are very guillable that way. Contrary to the whole "no empathy/cant connect to others" meme about us on the spectrum, we very often feel empathy and sympathy to a deeper extreme than NTs, and that can impede our judgement as we lose our objectivity very quickly that way. Don't kid yourself. Assange isn't the smartest person on the planet, but frankly, he's a hell of lot smarter than most of you here. And he seems very happy to play on the sympathy and/or loathing of people who he knows aren't as smart as him and who he knows he can hoodwink without any effort. When you are as smart and clever as him, the world is just a basket full of suckers ready to be played.
In my very blunt opinion, he has spent his entire life playing people and he's very, very good at it. He fits the classic trickster archetype--someone who lives on the fringe of society, often at odds with society, usually taunting and outwitting society but eventually does have to face the music he helped create. If he follows the whole trickster archetype to its typical end, he'll likely end up paying excessively for what society judges as his "crime," like the mythical trickser Prometheus. But we'll have to wait and see on that. Nonetheless, regardless of whatever judgment society makes of him, it will have to take either some very smart, tough-minded people who are immune to his tricks or the unwavering light of truth and justice to make Assange be accountable for Assange. And only then, I think, will we get to see the "real" Assange, and maybe then, we're find out if he's really on the spectrum or not. But until then, this is his path and I'm happy to leave him to it. He doesn't need a troop of cheerleaders or a chorus of detractors for that, and more improtantly, he doesn't need any outcast group like us Aspies adopting him out of sympathy.
06 Dec 2010, 3:10 pm
