Temple grandin , is she right?

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Oh, of course autistics should do SOME work, but they still also need SOME fun--and if it's both (like for me writing is) then that's all well and good. What ticked me off was that what she said assumed that all autistics are good programmers. What about the creative ones, who aren't too good at math/science but are into more artistic things?

I've never liked Temple Grandin much. My general feeling about her is blah. When she says anything now, I've gotten so used to it I just say so what?

isn't she from my generation?(Boomer)? She may not really understand how younger people
can enjoy these-I know to me they just seem like an emotional empty trap for obsessing about.

Temple Grandin also believes that life is not worth living without a job (also appears to believe the job market is more or less as it should be), and probably shares the idea with one of the above posters that unemployment means feeling crappy about yourself. (The idea that my unemployment is the result of playing video games as a child is ridiculous. Most people with the means to play them, in my generation, played them, and most people in my generation are employed. I'm unemployed because being autistic and a number of other things really doesn't mesh with any known job opportunity as things stand now, not because of video games, which really didn't even play that much of a role in my life even though I played them.)

Well, one thing is that life without a job is not considered a good thing by society. In order to be accepted by society by any means we have to be a group that is average or that gives back as society does not look very favorably upon welfare groups because they take the taxes of those who do work and give nothing. Temple Grandlin is saying that distractions from things that allow aspie's to develope employable skills are the bad things and video games fall into that category of distraction.

Frankly, as a minority group it is in our best interests to get respect. It is hard to get respect if we are a group of unemployed people who only subsist off of government handouts. People will think we are genetically inferior and defective if we continue to be unemployable for any reason and Temple Grandlin was simply trying to address the issue as best she knew how based off of the idea that many aspies are gifted programmers and that programming required little social skills compared to many other jobs. Personally, I would not like programming, programming has these little errors that show up that I often have difficulty fixing because it is hard determining where the problem came from(strange requests from the computer for semicolons are annoying). I personally prefer math and science, however, I still have my mind on getting employment as opposed to unemployment.

I see nothing wrong with employment, but I see everything wrong with accepting at face value and not bothering to try to change the notion that:

1. Employment is what makes you a contributor to society, paying taxes is the only real contribution a person can make, and not paying taxes makes you not giving anything back if you use government programs.

2. The employment system as it stands now is unbiased and fair and the viewpoints most people have about it are also unbiased and fair.

3. Those who will never fit into conventional employment are non-contributors (or less-contributors) by definition and inferior and attitudes about this will not and cannot change so we might as well not try, we might as well all try to run as far as we can away from this group to prove our superiority to them and therefore our worth to society.

4. Those who are employed necessarily are more productive than those who are not, regardless of what each contributes to society.

Etc.

I have nothing against people getting jobs, but I have to admit I find these particular sorts of rationales pretty bigoted.

Whats programming? I like video games.

Well, other contributions to society may come in the form of doing charity work, however, not paying taxes is generally a bad thing. If you don't have employment then you don't help our economy very much and our economy is responsible for almost everything. Having talented people that serve the economy makes it stronger. Also, paying taxes supports every government service and really, it is preferable that everyone be a net contributor to the government because doing otherwise is sort of like taking from the government and taking from every working person's wallet. I am not saying that social programs are bad but long term dependence is not a favorable thing.

The employment system is somewhat definitely biased and all systems have some bias anyway. Employment is biased towards people who seem to have merit and of course there is definitely bias based upon personal preferences of employers however unconscious they may be. However, despite biases we need to find ways to allow our people to prevail in society. As aspies we need to find ways to be strong people who contribute to society rather than end up being carried by it.

Those who never fit into conventional employment do not really serve society as much as those that do to some extent. Attitudes towards this will not change because people who do not fit into employment end up relying on others to pay their way. Welfare and charity do not come from the sky, they come from other people who realize that they would have more money if this weren't taken from them. People respect wealth and power. People respect those that do an honest days work. Success is the way to gain respect, which is an idea seen in sports, seen in politics, seen in business, seen in most of humanity. We will not get respect without success.

What big contributions do most umemployed people bring to society? Employed people tend to be the group that make everyday life work and that bring us products and services. In fact, I would say that society is based off of the contributions of the employed, if a job was truly very important and if there was really a great need for people to do a job then somebody would offer a wage to do it. Besides, I have seen the contributions of the employed daily and I hear of their contributions all of the time, however, I have not heard of very many contributions of the unemployed.

I suppose this all goes back to our views on things and of society itself. Perhaps it is bigoted, but really, some amount of bigotry is a part of existence. I don't think anybody here isn't partial to their own beliefs opposed to the Islamic fundamentalists or some other extreme group. I also tend to think that we are all bigoted against psychopaths. Now, I know that this is stretching the term of bigotry but I also feel that calling the beliefs that anbuend was opposed to is also stretching the term. Society exists on the backs of the employed, this is a very simple assumption to make based upon the importance that is shown towards the economy in political affairs. Chronic unemployment of an individual is a bad thing and the problem must lie somewhere, considering that most people are not chronically unemployed it is easy to assume that there is some flaw in the individual, either in the character or in the background of the individual, especially if such characters tend to have unemployable characteristics. But anyway I digress quite a bit.... err... ramble really, I still assert the importance of employment to society and making sure that our people are employable. I think that we should agree to disagree because I doubt that either one will satisfactorily establish our ideology in the mind of the other.



Programming is using a program like Java, C++, or Basic or something to create a program that does something, this includes the creation of video games. Programming is a useful skill and it is the basis of a Computer Science degree, degree holders of this degree make around $50,820 as a median starting salary which is pretty good money but I don't think a degree in Computer Science is necessary to becoming a programmer, it is just the easiest route if possible. Programming, takes persistence and a desire to create things. If you are interested in it I would recommend that you give some attempt to explore this option if at all possible. Some people like programming and it pays well, thus it might give you a very good place to start in society.

ick... this was a long post that had a lot of rambling and probably confusing language.

I wouldnt like it.

To each their own. I wouldn't like it either. I prefer math and science really because I don't like dealing with the errors that pop up when programming. Whenever I try to program something complicated these complicated errors show up. In math and science if you do everything correctly you get the answer and if you don't do everything correctly you can at least see your mistake, however, with programming sometimes it is hard to see where the mistake is.

A note on Awesomeglorious's notions of society and respect:
They don't work, and they don't hold water.
First of all, the notion that if you work hard and are productive, people will naturally respect you goes back to
Booker T. Washington. It didn't work for African Americans either.You gain respect by insisting on it, personally and politically.

Second the notion that what determines value is "productivity'.-essentially what the market demands-is pretty banal.
Its lead us to all sorts of silly ideas to keep productivity going-like the "value added" Sports Utility Vehicle.
There are all sorts of worthwhile things you can do with your life, and to feel focused and worthwhile you have to find one-
but not neccesarily what corporations or the neighbors think.

Beware of reifying the notion of society. Society is actually a very complex set of sperate institutions and stuctures,
not an aggregate of individuals.When you say society beleaves something, you are often refering to some mechanism of
ideology that pretends to speak with a unified voice.Is it society speaking? or corporate media?

My point being that people should do their best, but their own best,as they see it, not as they've been told "Society " sees it.

Respect is not gained by demanding respect where people do not consider it due. Asian American have been historically discriminated against although to a lesser extent than the African Americans and yet they have never agitated at all and instead tried to get ahead through hard work and now they outperform the white majority of the United States and are generally respected and rather than pitied are envied. Now lets compare Asians to African Americans, African Americans currently are viewed as still somewhat inferior on average in America despite all of the government aid and all of the attention they receive, in fact, to some extent all of the favoritism that the African Americans receive is sort of counter-productive because it encourages people to see differences and it institutionalizes favoritism. African Americans have government favor but they don't have respect. Respect is the preferable thing to have as respect is required for honest understanding as opposed to pity.

The demand of the market represents the demand of the people to some extent. People demand items and therefore they are created to satisfy this demand. Working to satisfy the desires of the people is a perfectly admirable goal and one that fosters acceptance. As a group it is in our best interest to get acceptance, if we don't do that then people will continue to do the hurtful things that we all hated when we were younger and any gains that we make as a people will be artificial and superficial. To some extent we need to find our niche in society to solve many of our problems and we need to find a way to show people that we are different, not disturbed. There are many things we can do with our lives, we just have to be sure to depend mainly upon ourselves and our friends, not to be burdensome drains of resources.

Society is a complex web of institutions and structures, however, the most important aspect of society are the individuals that compose society. If the structures change this does not mean that the individuals change at all, and really could be a sign of almost nothing. However, if the individuals in a society change then society itself changes to reflect this. When I say society believes something I mean that many of the individuals in the society believe something. I could say that America believes in capitalism, no corporation told me that, it is just that capitalism is part of our culture and individuals commonly express this belief in capitalism.

People should do their best and they should try to come to peace with society. We cannot isolate ourselves off on some little island off of the coast of Antarctica so we must find a way to both exist and thrive in the environment we are given. Ultimately, I think that we must find ways to be productive members of society if only to disprove the "Weyouns" off this world.

That's a known difficulty, but there are techniques for preventing untraceable errors (e.g. test pieces of code separately before combining them) and of course, practice helps

back to topic .....we are talking about autistic kids here and not about adults ... and remember that childhood comes just once in life.

Hehe, that sounds just like the US government. And given their incompetence, I'd consider them mentally disabled, too. I don't think there's any bigger leech on society right now than government.

Oki doke. Sorry. Back to the nonpolitical discussion...

The American economy depends on unemployment.



People who think they are not dependent are fooling themselves, too.



No, the very notion of competitive employment, and the definition of who seems to have merit, are themselves biased.



I'm not an aspie by any definition of the word. And I'm not employed and I know I contribute more to society than some employed people do. (Not hard, actually, when some jobs people do take away from society overall. But it's apparently better for society to make money screwing large amounts of people over than to make other contributions.)



That's not true, though. It's just an opinion based on a very narrow definition of "serve society".



Attitudes towards this have not always been the same, so who are you to say they won't change?



Uh... I grew up around a lot of wealthy people (while not being one myself). "Honest" and "work" don't necessarily go into their wealth at all, yet they command more respect than some people who work very hard (and very honestly) to get through a day yet aren't employed. And trust me, a lot of people who aren't wealthy don't respect the wealthy (at least not for their wealth) one bit.



Depends, I suppose, on what you mean by "success" and "respect", which you have again defined very narrowly.



That's not true at all. There are many important services to society that go totally unpaid. Ever hear of childrearing? Good grief.



Maybe because you don't spend enough time around us to have any clue what we do and don't contribute, and maybe because you've narrowed your definition of "contribution" so much to "things that look like 'work'" that you can't judge what is and isn't a contribution if it hits you in the face.



That's no reason not to fight it.



It also exists on the backs of the unemployed and believe me we know when you're stepping all over us (as you are in what you say now) to gain your coveted "respect".



And you came up with that one where?

I live in a building that is entirely retirees and disabled people. I'm sure these retirees are just flawed because they're unemployed. I'm sure there's something really wrong with my character because I don't have the cognitive or physical stamina to get through anything resembling a workday (I have to work really hard to get the basics of survival done, and you of course don't view that as work or important at all). I'm sure there's something really wrong with the character or background of my disabled neighbors, many of whom are or are very close to bedridden or housebound. I suppose old people and disabled people don't deserve respect and will never get it (no matter that some of us are far more respected in societies that aren't as screwed up in this particular regard), because we aren't employed.

I suppose it's not really a contribution, by the way, since this isn't really "society" that I live in in this building, since we're mostly just a bunch of unemployed people, but a few of us contributed greatly to saving the lives of many residents of this building last year, without being employable. (But then they weren't employable either, so maybe they aren't very respectable lives to save.)