Minds Without Borders

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JFK said that my hometown (Washington DC) "combines the charm of large dirty Northern industrial city with the efficiency of a small southern town."

Thankyou for posting a very well written piece. I identify with most of it without trying. I never once saw my school peers as being of a different colour, ethnicity etc. They were just, well, my classmates. I don't like religion per se; while I recognize it as being a manifestation of a personal state of mind it has too often been used as an excuse for control, subjugation and conquest. Just another excuse to express one's superiority in some sense etc. The churches, once held as bastion of learning and wisdom were long ago displaced/replaced by universities which operate (or should) on reason. And lately they've been publicly exposed as being another institution in control of children for often nefarious purposes. I utterly dislike the way religion was and still is being used by governments and illiterate idiots to control people and pillage the resources of foreign countries. That which the less intelligent don't understand they seek to control. <end of rant> Sorry. Again, thankyou.

^^ Sadly, the Universities, once regarded as "the Church of Reason" have been captured by the corporations. They are just a little bit more honest due to lingering traditions that would be too image-tarnishing to stamp out, but the trend is very steadily toward generating profits, not knowledge. People saddled with heavy student debt are used to getting cheated and are desperate for even bad jobs.

I identify strongly with the points you made in your article. I gradually came to understand that the world I lived in was not the world that most people do. I am the boy who never grew up. I qualify that by saying that as I've gone through life and the experiences and challenges it's thrown at me I've had to take it on board and learn to live with it and do the "right things" like them or not. One has to live with society's obligations (filing tax returns etc.). But as I went through my childhood I never once envisaged "growing up", becoming an adult, marrying and raising a family. To me, life was a continuum of experiences and still is. The main change has been that now in my older years I yearn for the times and things I grew up with and initially learnt. I cannot bear the changes that have occurred in the world since about 50 or so. I had to learn to fit in by copying things that I saw my peers doing without understanding the meanings behind them and as a result, ending up in trouble on frequent occasions. I was not made for competitive world. Even now I enjoy my crafts for their own sake and with no idea of making money out of them. I gave the solar lamps I created as a result of a recent rush of blood to the head away to family and neighbours. The wonderful town I grew up in has changed beyond recognition and I could not bear to live there now even though people seem to think it is nirvana.

There is some validity to this premise in that NTs minds are strongly conditioned to instinctively and subconsciously follow social norms from an early age. Social landscaping of the mind.

^^^that was put poetically.

Well why thank you

I too found this significant. I personally very much relate to the feeling of "a vast open space where all my knowledge runs free with my hyper-connected brain".

I feel like I make many more relational associations and distinctions than most people around me, and as newly self-diagnosed, relating that to my autism via the hyper-connected brain theory is very attractive.

But then I got a bit confused by the various neuroscience results I got when I googled "hyperconnected brain" -- mentions of rumination in depression, ways the brain works around physical injury, etc. I can see a common thread at some level, but it doesn't quite correlate with the simple identification hyperconnected = good = me that is emotionally so appealing.

I also strongly relate to the idea of "no borders", on more than one level. I have had similar difficulties with boundaries in social situations, and I think part of it is that I have very fluid identification. I could never understand all the people who are so worried about their identity, which to me suggests something non-fluid (I am the being i will have been, whatever that turns out to be). I can be overly trusting, and I can overshare. Conflict freaks me out, though as an adult I have learned to deal with it to an extent. And on a whole other level, since age 14 I have believed that "relations are prior to things".

And I would echo what several people said above about not seeing people as belonging to categories. That to me is elemental -- people are people; beyond that, what's relevant is what they say and do.