Aspie Elitism

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Seems like you've taken a simple statistic and read a world of imagined meaning into it, so much that you say genius is a "compensation" for losing a parent and that you wouldn't wish it on anyone.

"books by scientists" -- anyone who thinks analytically and/or uses an empirical method is a "scientist". Are they psychologists, historians, statisticians, epistemologists? The word "scientist" is not some mystical icon that has real credibility. Sounds like a shallow bunch of bean-counters, if their examination of genius was about how many were from single-parent homes. There's a lot of babble-junk-science out there, and it usually is full of empty, meaningless statistics.

According to your strange theory of what makes someone a genius, we should have a huge explosion of geniuses in America today, given the divorce rate and the number of single-parent kids in the last few decades.

I can only answer for myself:

garyww wrote:

I feel superior not to people who are Autistic or high functioning Autistic but to people who are self contradicting which are generally NTs and NOT Aspies. The tendency for some people to contradict themselves has very little to do with IQ.

Well, apparently psychological studies indicate that once human beings are divided into groups, they get a 'them and us' type of attitude and want to prove themselves better than the other group. So there is no reason why Aspies wouldn't do this. It all depends on what sort of categories you use to define yourself and others.

Except for the possibility that one part has no inclination to compete? It needn't be a fundamental requirement.

That's what makes this fixation on elitism and anti-AS chauvinism so hard to understand.

I'm starting to develop a garyww-style theory:

Maybe a lot of people on this site actually don't have AS (autism spectrum or Asperger Syndrome). Maybe a lot of them are NTs who are trying to believe that they are AS because of some social dysfunction and inability to thrive in their lives. They want to be AS because that would explain their problem. So these AS-wanna-bes would be failures or social losers, but lack the talents some AS have.

To those NT losers who pretend to be AS to explain their problems, hearing AS people talk about how they love having special interests or how they have special gifts or how AS can succeed if they try this or that, must make them really angry. Because that would mean that even among AS, they are losers because they can't be in the set of the "special" ones.

I'm starting to go with garyww and question where all this anti-special-AS and high-functioning-AS ("elites") bashing is coming from. I wonder how many people on this site really have some form of AS. 50 percent?

i think we are all putting a bit too much importance on a "diagnosis" and forgetting that we are doing exactly the same thing as the people we say are making our lives a misery.

a "difficulty with XYZ" exists whether you have a label or not. For the group labelled "NTs who are trying to be AS" - they obviously have SOME sort of difficulty regardless whether it is AS, autism, schizophrenia, laziness, or depression. Maybe they are histrionic and need attention in a way that others don't.

Whatever it is that they have, ASD or otherwise!

If we are waving the "tolerance!" banner, it should not matter what label any particular person has; we should be trying to accept others' difficulties REGARDLESS what label they have.

If we only accept people "with a diagnosis," why should the NT world have any reason to be tolerant of us?

I realise this is a forum for "aspergers and autism." I can go with that. But if we're really going to wave the neurodiversity flag, we're gonna have to apply it to other people besides just ourselves.

Either say "We want to be accepted but don't want to be tolerant of others," which is what we seem to be doing, or really put the principle of neurodiversity into practice.

For the record, I'm not a fan of neurodiversity: but it seems a lot of people here are.

Maybe 50%, maybe less. Autism is 0.66%, Asperger found a half dozen to base his work on, which were one in a thousand of the autists.

So in the big picture, one small group, autists, a much larger group, everyone else, and the finest line possible between, Asperger's Syndrome. I think Hans suffered from black and white thinking, the truth is one grades into the other.

As for tolerance, Neurodiversity, the criteria for autism is ignoring others, which comes below tolerance, and a Dx of Autism is not possible if Schizophrenia, Psychosis, are observed. Autism has nothing in common with mental illness. Autism is a differance in thought and perception, but it is the same thought and perception as the majority, the mentally ill have private thought clubs. We have nothing in common.
To qualify as mentally ret*d takes a very low IQ, again we fail, not members of that group.

As for us being tolerated by NT's, not yet, and not ever, from my view. One cannot lose what one does not have.

There is "The Big A", each a culture of one, singular as a snowflake, yet with much in common.

As an autist I hardly notice what goes on outside of myself, posts that reflect the outer world I ignore, but the inner world stuff I read, for I have that inner world, and I am very glad to have found an autist culture.

Some who fail in the larger world do come thinking at least here they can be superior, then find that even here they fail. It may be trendy to fake Asperger's, but they cannot fake Autism.

It comes down to, "A difference in thought and perception." Those without that differance stand out.

it is like we are the Herpes group, a lifetime condition that does not kill, and people come with a common cold, claiming it is Herpes, but they are going to cure it with a pill, or just waiting a week, and we should too.

We get the quack, medical cure of our disease, people, The Faith Healers, and those to have it with all the advantages and none of the Autism. Then we get bullies, trolls, and the just plain lost. While tolerance is not my strong suit, see Autism, Intolerance does have a time and place.

We also get old people who spent a life thinking it was them, like me, who discovered at 59 that there was a group like me. Everyone over thirty fits that group, this site is a wonder.

We get the younger who know, have come to terms, and think, Now What? How does life unfold from here? We try to be helpful sometimes.

We also get a lot of parents who are at wits end, trying their best to deal with something they do not understand, that there is little good information on. Yes there are books, but how do I get through today?

Maybe we confuse as much as we help, but we do try. Due to all the propaganda that some Speak and make money from, we are labeled, and for parents to come here it is like they are going to the Schizophrenic for advice on their child's schizophrenia. That is a fairly desperate situation, and a bold and loving parent who would walk through hell for their child.

Some of this is very real, and some is just teens who put on their facebook that they post on Wrong Planet. They are also organizing an Aspie dance with a really loud band and flashing lights.

This is not about Acceptance, Tolerance, Diversity, Equality, It is about less than 1% and The Big A.

Yes, I want to second that but in regards to other disabilities.

There has been ignorance shown towards those with other mental disorders or completely different disabilities.

It is hard to imagine what someone with Down's Syndrome might be thinking if you do not have Down's and know nobody who has Down's Syndrome. But I don't see how that justifies insulting and showing ignorance towards them.

Nevertheless, many articles and organisations already fight but I already heard and read crude remarks from autistic people about them as the 'ret*ds' and the 'really disabled' which is totally ignorant and hypocritical if the same autistic people are fighting to be recognised as persons who only have a difference or who want to be recognised as valuable as everyone without autism.

I'm with you on the Big A, Inventor.

You see, i am a narcissist. and i am autistic. It is all about me. i cannot be cured of that. i do not want to be cured of that.
that is the nature of my life and how i operate.
my life is about me and my relationship to the selective world I find of interest and little more.

Now a while back somewhere i posted something about being a narcissist - maybe it was somewhere else - and all hell broke loose.

But those who live in their own minds, and who find the face to face chatter of others something that is possible to feign (maybe depending on how one presents) but annoying and a waste of time (unless it relates to one's passions and special interests) will understand.

It is all about me. it always has been and it always will be.
it is all about me, from my relationship with my child, through to my art practice through to my relationships and sex life, through to my perception of the world.
I am the centre of my own universe, and the world has told me for 46 years i am abrupt, foul mouthed, verbose, deranged, vicious, opinionated, selfish and completley driven by my OWN pursuits at the expense of all others around me. i am autistic and this is how it has been for me.
and yet i care. but the care is secondary to my own world and my narcissism.
I leave to pursue my own thing. i paint through dinner. i paint through breakfast. i am in a place of my own and the world goes on about me and i rarely engage with it if i can help it. My ex separates from me. I am told i am a bad mother - a good mother but a selfish mother.


Self-absorbed and selfish? You see, I am. Not because i want to be, but because that is the nature and essence of me. and that is what i have truly begun to accept.
And i do not have a problem with that. I do not want to hurt people, but i know i operate from a place that really is quite emotionally rudimentary when it comes to exchange with others. anger, hilarity,sex, analysis and worry. that is how i am.

(When i am on my own with my special interest, i live in an orgasmic world of fully fledged emotions. But these subtleties only happen in isolation.)

People for the most part are the great thwarters of joy. those that are bearable are usually other autistics who offer me acceptance - which is what i need more than anything in the world.
It is an unspoken acceptance - not borne out of empathy but identification. And this acceptance is again all about me.

These days i accept that and get on with the business of WP - which has saved my ass as i was ready for another suicide attempt just before i got here.

And i get on with my special interest and i live an unconventional life that glints and shines for me, but looks mighty weird for most other people looking in at it....So I am told.
and finally, nearing 50, i could not give a toss.

and thank you Inventor. Your posts and those of some others help me to really accept who and what and how I am.

inventor - why do we talk about autism as if it is a difference rather than a dysfunction, if we do not believe in neurodiversity? a "difference" only makes sense if we assume there are differences everywhere, rather than "autism and nt are a difference, and everything else is wrong."

unless you don't think it's a difference, in which case we are not merely "functioning in an alternative way" but in a "dysfunctional way" and in that case we have no excuse for the way we are. although, as millie has mentioned above, this does not mean we can't accept it: just that we can't justify it. and the moral response to something we cannot justify is at least to attempt to change, although it does not necessarily have to succeed (as i say, a moral response rather than a logical consequence... i am sure millie and everyone else here including myself has made a huge attempt to be more functional, with varying success - i do not presume anything in this department!).

am i confused somewhere? it seems a simple issue of definition to me.

inventor, it sounds like you think autistic people are better than anyone in the world, including aspies, nts who think they are aspies, nts, and all mental illnesses (which you feel autism is not a type). (i may have interpreted your post wrongly?). it sounds a little too much like textbook elitism to me?

(btw, i have a schizophrenic friend and i would hesitate to say that his disorder has anything at all to do with iq...)

Sora - yes :)

Some people think autism is like a rainbow, made up of different hues of differences... that's what some people think.

Liresse,

I am not mentally ill or ret*d. My slant on thought is mainstream in that I follow the same Physics, Chem, but may reach other conclusions about how all that fits together. I have a difference of thought and perception, and that is all, six billion other people share this trait.

I have heard that there are structural differances in my brain, I have not looked, I hear I lack mirror neurons, it is hard to see what you lack.

In behavior, I am not a social person. I have my own interests that fill the whole of my life, I like it that way. Nothing immoral about how I live, and as it is my life, I am fully justified in living it as I please. My life does no one else any harm. Except for maybe making them think.

At 62 you think I should try to change? For what reason, not my own? All of those efforts would be a waste of my life, which I doubt would work, and even if they did, who should I seek to please but myself? I do work to change, to become more like me.

Autism is. Autists are better at being Autists than anyone else. Since no two are alike, there is no common answer. We more than anyone have to find what works for us.

Just by being autists we have blanks in our IQ. even with the social blanks, some still score high, some low, and some both. Looking beyond what seems to be missing to an outside observer, we do get by with what we have, and the key to anything is doing it.

Autism=Self. It is the center of all the snowflakes. It is the difference of thought and perception, seeing eveything from where I am.

millie paints, I write, we both pace, it is a full life. Not only are we one of a kind different, and enjoy our life, we have an impossible time figuring out why anyone would see it any different. Do they wake up thinking, now what does everyone else on the planet want me to do today?

From reports, many do, as Autism=Self is a seperate classification, Usual=Lack of Self. Some of it I can see, spouse, children, living for them is right. Some of it is work related, dealing with other people does pay, or is a waste of time.

Many here attend church. They go to church with people somewhat like themselves, which is as much social life as many non autist people have. In general they are seeking people like themselves. They want to live within their set. I do not see Christians merging with Islam or Jews, because they are all religious, and besides if they did, they would exclude all of the other religions. It is just religion, why can't we all worship together? When they all agree I might join.

The same for Republicans and Democrats, they are both lying thieving scum, so why two parties?
What about Independants, Libertarians, Socialist Workers?

Autist are the only people who their religion and politics are their own.

Self is as Elitist as one can get, and it works for me. I have everything in common with myself.

It is an old concept, but "Life's Work", I have one, millie has one, a life, and work, and that is all.

your thought, labor, and days are all you have.

I do deal with people, I do it when I want to.

And since I think the next move will be, Narcissist, I will leave you with the words that have comforted me.

"Who taught you to hate yourself?" Malcom X

I've also noted in my own highly unscientific poll that a persons outlook or opinion about thier personal condition is largely dependent, or at least influenced by what they consider to be the source of autism, genetic, chemical, electrical, curse from God, etc. etc.
I think the 'condition' is actually caused by naturally occuring differences in quantum mechanics of a mind (not a brain), so that colors my opinions.

Of course I'm oversimplifying - it's hard to distill years of research on genius into a small post. If you want to read more, I've provided you with names you can look up at the library. Hans Eysenck is on Wikipedia - he was a prominent psychologist who studied giftedness and IQ, as well as psychopathology. Dean Simonton is a psychologist at UC Davis. He has studied genius and creativity, and now studies the arts, in particular film. He's my coauthor on a paper I'm trying to get published. R. Ochse, who may or may not be female, wrote a great book on genius (Before the Gates of Excellence). I know nothing more about this person, since googling gets me nowhere. And then there's Terman's five volume set on a cohort of exceptionally gifted people. I believe the first volume contained research on famous geniuses.



In previous centuries, the number of single-parent families was probably just as high, except it was caused by death rather than divorce. And I think death of parent and divorce have different effects on kids, though I could be wrong about that.

Look, there is a huge difference between someone who is creative and smart and lives a full life with a job he or she loves, and someone who slogs away brutal hours and gets a Nobel. Most people would rather have a life than do all that extra work. You know: get married, have kids, spend time with the family. You don't usually get to be a creative genius on a 40-hour work week, though there may be some exceptions (and if there are, I'd like to know more about them, since they'd make good role models).

My point is, if you want to be a famous genius, there are usually some sacrifices to be made to get there, and you usually have to have strong reasons for making them. Personally, I'd rather just have a life.

I think you have autism and giftedness confused. Some autistic people are gifted. All autistic people are significantly impaired. You need the impairment to get a formal diagnosis for any autistic spectrum disorder, including AS. You don't need to be gifted.

And there's a difference between "special interest" and "gift", too.