Is Autism the next step in evolution?

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I LIKE the weather....it's one of my "special interests."

Weather is certainly going to be impactful in coastal New England tomorrow. 1-2 feet of snow is forecast in many places there.

I've had the thought over the last year that society, whether knowingly or not, seems to be attempting to cultivate some aspie aspects.
Like very specialized and specific education. Only allowing a very narrow group of courses to study within specific degree programs.
Becoming detached from face to face interaction, people text. They don't talk. They don't acknowledge each other in public. They don't talk on phones. They don't smile at each other.
For varied reasons, people seem to be developing very high levels of anxiety. Weird quirks. Not sure what to call it, really. But I have to think that some of it is attributable to lifestyle.

Maybe I'm way off track, and I definitely didn't organize or articulate this statement as well as I would prefer, but it seemed like a reasonable place to say it.

No.

There is evidence that Autism has always existed. Because it was not recognized does not mean it was not there.

I find the theory of Autism as the next step in evolution theory to be a form of Autistic Supremacism.

Autistic traits are perhaps more valuable to society now than in the past given the role of the technology industry in every day life. This could perhaps increase the prevalence of people with more significant autistic traits (and also the observation of a higher rate of autistic diagnosis in high technology centers). On the other hand it seems like poor education, irresponsibility, and religious fundamentalism correlates more with people having large numbers of progeny than autistic characteristics. Thus the next step in human evolution seems more likely to be dumb fundamentalists than Autism.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist though.

I don't see it as the nest step in evolution. I see it as something that just is. Autism is what we make it for ourselves.

Do you think you have an advantage over others, because all I get is emotionally overwhelmed, disappointed, pain, struggle. Does ASD help you reproduce more than NTs? I don't see girls lined up for that. They are generally not wired for that. So no, I see ASD the exception, not ever the majority.

Whether autism is an "step" in evolution, I do not know.
But I would absolutely say that an all Aspie earth would work wonderfully.
I mean, we do not know how to behave because we have no point / person of reference. We are raised in an environment where everything is designed the exact opposite way of how we need it to be. We have no aspie peers as kids, no aspie parents who would tell us how to live with our "condition".
And now that Asperger's is seen as a real thing, look at the kids who get therapy early. They totally "pass".
If everyone was an aspie (parents, teachers, politicians etc.), there would be no need of "autism specific therapy".
As kids, we would just learn and accomodate naturally by looking and learning from other autistics (parents, older siblings, teachers, movies etc.)
There is no problem with asperger's, it's the unfit environment we grow up in, and if autism is an step in evolution, I can totally see it working. The world just needs to reinvent the wheel, because almost all the "old" rules and psychology and social norms just do not apply, and different ones must be created and put in place, which will probably happen quite naturally (in the case of all autistic world).

There's no such thing as "more evolved." There is only better adapted to the environment.

With that being said, I think yes and no. One hand, many autistic people tend to do well in our highly technological society, in which they can find jobs relating to their special interests. Many "successful" people are on the spectrum.

However, in terms of reproducing, I think autistic people are actually at a disadvantage, as our lack of understanding of social cues can be harmful in the dating sphere.

I tend to dislike people who think autistic people should be accepted only because they can "succeed" in a traditional way. For example, some autistics might make a lot of money and have a high-tech job, but some might never be able to care for themselves, and that's okay. Success is really an ableist construct.

i think society as a whole has to adapt to increase specialisation and having asperger may be beneficial in some cases - particularly when it comes to having special interests which are useful and important to society. Moreover, in an information society we need to develop ways in which to categorise information and have groups of people specialising in the subtleties within each category in order to understand/ work with in. the complexity is ever increasing and having the ability to specialised is required out of everyone - those who can't compete are left out.

from a sensory point of view - the world is getting louder and more stressful to navigate in due to increasing inputs. it's easier to be left behind socially if you're not well versed in networking (both professionally and personally) to begin with and easier to be lonely and get depressed.

society has become more autistic - a world run by highly specialised gadgets and information that needs ordering. we must all become curators or be left behind.


i hypothesise the possibility of a split in the population - some will continue to capitalist corporate dream driven by messianic fantasies of post human intelligence, space travel and planet colonisation (basically all the rich white dudes from silicon valley) and people who worship these rich white dudes and hope to get a share of the pie (aint gonna happen) and.... hippies, non conformist who prefer to live off grid.


Finally - let;s not forget the ever pressing issue of inequality - what will happen to the billion of poor people? what about third world countries? i think it's their time to shine.


thoughts welcomed.

I think autism is a step backwards in evolution. Evolution is about better adapting to our environment & those of us on the spectrum tend to have a very hard time adapting & functioning compared to our peers who aren't on the spectrum.

Autism and evolution are probably not related to each other. Even though autism is usually some sort of mutation.

Then again.....some autistic-like "oddness" was probably necessary in order for us to have domesticated plants. Domestication of animals, though, needed NT-type socialization.

It's not a next step, it's another possible direction. It follows the logic of human evolution: be childish as long as you can, and learn as long as possible. Currently NT's need 18 years to grow up, for autistics it's longer. And what others see as disadvantage, by twist of evolution might become quintessential for surviving. Because evolution is not a surviving of the best fitted, it's just applied chaos theory. Too much success can kill the entire species (or rather too succesful species will destroy itself), by means of overpopulation (sometimes downward slide cannot be stopped, by having a larger variety of different "subspecies" we have greater chances of avoiding such fate). Autistics are less greedy for earth's resources, so it's definitely possible that humanity will be autistic as a whole or there will be no humanity at all.

Tony Attwood sure seems to think it is :