2 Wk Window to Discuss Here 2 Autism Documentaries

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littlebee
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13 Nov 2013, 3:08 pm

Marybird wrote:
I's a bit of a stretch to come to the conclusion that something like fear of sounds is connected to something arbitrary like separation anxiety. There is no logical reason to presume that.
It is just a noise, but if the noise is interpreted as fear, the logical conclusion is that it is a sensory processing issue and then you can only speculate on what effect that would have on someone.

For me not so much of a stretch. I forgot to mention this, but through most of my childhood, though I forget at what age it started, I went to sleep with the cover over my ear. It had to over my ear as there was sheer terror that some kind of evil force or creature would enter me through my ear. I am not saying it would be like this for a two year old child or for you at any age, but such a loud and sudden airplane noise could come to represent a shift in ones own brain function, which it surely would involve, and that could easily represent some kind of shift in object relations that the child was unable to make or struggling to make. To me it is very easy to see this as a possibility, especially since I am very sensitive to sound and have observed how this has changed and shifted in myself over the years according to various external situations and my own internal state of mind..



littlebee
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14 Nov 2013, 1:37 pm

One of the main points that is becoming more and more clear is that people do not really know who they are. Some people use the word "essence" to suggest the original biological 'self' a person is born with and then say that in order to develop, a person needs to strip off all the false stuff and get back to pure essence and then develop from there. I think this is technically kind of correct, though the word essence implies a primal substance which is the self, and I think that is wrong, but some people need to believe things exist in such a way. In any case, I do not think that people know how they actually were when they were born. I have given birth to a child who had a lot of the characteristics that would fall under the label of autism.and I was amazed, or better put, stunned,. The difference was very distinct from my other child who had a different father---very distinct and observable differences which I will eventually name, but this is getting hard to write about. Anyway this is not who this child really was, as she did not know herself yet. It was just a new born baby, but these genetic characteristics did play into how I responded to her and how she responded to my responses

Imo nobody is going to be able to go back to home base either with themselves or anyone else and be able to sort all of that out, but I am convinced that in the case of this particular child.the biological characteristics which she inherited were evolved to help her survive. This is obviously not the case with some others, such as the young people in Best Kept Secret. So there are (at least) two kinds of autism with some similar characteristics. I think that to put all of these people under one tent (spectrum:-) just because some characteristics coincide makes no sense at all. If it is being used as a diagnostic device, then I would want to take a look at who are these people who are diagnosing you and me and making such a lucrative profession out of it, as to me it is downright stupid.



littlebee
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15 Nov 2013, 1:50 pm

Marybird wrote:
I's a bit of a stretch to come to the conclusion that something like fear of sounds is connected to something arbitrary like separation anxiety. There is no logical reason to presume that.
It is just a noise, but if the noise is interpreted as fear, the logical conclusion is that it is a sensory processing issue and then you can only speculate on what effect that would have on someone.

It's hard to understand how the child develops object relations, to get a sense of that. Sadly it is a kind of esoteric subject. If you try to read about object relations theory, there is not that much info available to the general public, and it is all very difficult to understand, and there are many different theories about this, many different schools of approach and many different angles. One would have to study oneself to begin to get a grasp of it all. Basically it does need to be simplified in some way and presented to the general public.

Anyway, I do not get how it seems reasonable to assume it is a sensory processing issue. I was a preschool teacher for a few years so worked with young children, and also from observing many babies and having two children of my own it is easy to see that sometimes when a child cries from one thing such as a very minor boo boo it represent something else. The quality of the crying, the affect of it is quite different. It is observable..



littlebee
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16 Nov 2013, 12:29 pm

littlebee wrote:
Marybird wrote:
I's a bit of a stretch to come to the conclusion that something like fear of sounds is connected to something arbitrary like separation anxiety. There is no logical reason to presume that.
It is just a noise, but if the noise is interpreted as fear, the logical conclusion is that it is a sensory processing issue and then you can only speculate on what effect that would have on someone.

It's hard to understand how the child develops object relations, to get a sense of that. Sadly it is a kind of esoteric subject. If you try to read about object relations theory, there is not that much info available to the general public, and it is all very difficult to understand, and there are many different theories about this, many different schools of approach and many different angles. One would have to study oneself to begin to get a grasp of it all. Basically it does need to be simplified in some way and presented to the general public.

Anyway, I do not get how it seems reasonable to assume it is a sensory processing issue. I was a preschool teacher for a few years so worked with young children, and also from observing many babies and having two children of my own it is easy to see that sometimes when a child cries from one thing such as a very minor boo boo it represent something else. The quality of the crying, the affect of it is quite different. It is observable..

To continue, it is a sensory processing issue, but it is not just that, as one thing represents something else. When a child falls and has an extremely minor boo boo such as a little scrape and is sobbing hearfelt sobs or with some children crying what is called crocodile tears, then one can assume this tiny boo boo experience represents something else. But the question is-- what? But who knows? The sad answer is----no one. The child does not know, as this inner stuff he is trying to work though out and probably just acting out is unconscious to himself. The teacher does not know, if she even notices the varying quality of different kinds of tears, and she probably doesn't even notice, and if she does notice this or other anomalies she can speculate it has something to do with the home situation, which it surely does, but she is powerless to do anything about it.

Once a child is born to a certain parenting situation, he is in short, subjected to that situation and the way he will be imprinted by it, and no one knows much of anything about what is happening. It is all kind of written into the situation. Marybird, I'm not saying you are doing this, but it is the general gist of my entire thread. To say that someone is behaving a certain way because they were born that way really does make no sense, and I do see a general tendency on WP for many to look at their situation from that angle.



Marybird
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16 Nov 2013, 3:44 pm

Nature vs. nurture. Both influence our reality. Imprinting happens. Nature intended it to be that way because we are animals that learn from experience.
We survive by learning from experience by interpreting our environment using our brains and senses that we were born with.
If a child is born blind, it wasn't caused by bad parenting and won't be cured by good parenting. The child was born that way, but good parenting could cause the child to be happier and have a better life outcome.
Through scientific research, autism has become accepted as a brain difference that people are born with and it is that brain difference that causes autistic behavior as described in the DSM.
I don't know about things always representing something else and influencing behavior. Maybe that is true for you. Maybe that is true for some people in some situations.
I have a good idea of to what extent my upbringing has influenced my behavior and my life. Other than that, the way I behave and experience reality is what it is and no more.



littlebee
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17 Nov 2013, 2:19 pm

Marybird wrote: Excerpted from message above:

Quote:
We survive by learning from experience by interpreting our environment using our brains and senses that we were born with.
If a child is born blind, it wasn't caused by bad parenting and won't be cured by good parenting. The child was born that way, but good parenting could cause the child to be happier and have a better life outcome.

This analogy cannot be directly applied across the board to what I am trying to talk about, which is autistic encapsulation. That there are different kinds of brains which will affect perception in certain specific ways, yes, but as I wrote on another thread today-- http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5753770.html#5753770 --all brains work by encapsulation, so that a person is blind may be behind why a person encapsulates, other things can play into it just as much or even more so, and I believe the brain of an infant is very flexible. That brain may develop in various ways for various reasons.One thing starts building on one factor, sometimes. Or the brain function does not organize in certain ways. This is a kind of complex subject...
Quote:
Through scientific research, autism has become accepted as a brain difference that people are born with and it is that brain difference that causes autistic behavior as described in the DSM.


There has been quite a lot of talk about scientific research, but I would need to see specific studies and how they are done. I forget which thread it was on, maybe this one---I will try to find it--, but I posted something about a big flaw being discovered which affected a whole bunch of studies and a scientist had to publicly refute his own previous opinion..
Quote:
I don't know about things always representing something else and influencing behavior. Maybe that is true for you. Maybe that is true for some people in some situations.


No it is not true for me:-) Sometimes something just is what it is, as I am sure is the case for anyone.. Well it what it is and it isn't. Thanks for this comment, which I greatly appreciate, as it points to something about how encapsulation works. I will try to go into this in the future.

Quote:
I have a good idea of to what extent my upbringing has influenced my behavior and my life. Other than that, the way I behave and experience reality is what it is and no more.


I am not disputing your knowledge of yourself, but If this is the case with you I would say it is an anomaly in that it is not at all the case with myself, or actually is kind of the case now after over fifty years of intentional self observation starting at age twenty, and I see my case as also an anomaly, but I think it is not the case with most other people, though I am sure many would .disagree and say they know themselves.

Encapsulation is different, imo, as it falls into an area of brain function which is very difficult to observe, as it is built into perception.



littlebee
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19 Nov 2013, 10:27 am

Am not trying to beat a dead horse, but it seems to me important to understand that most people do not have that much knowledge of themselves or of how their upbringing affected them. They have all kinds of stories and false memory about this, and it is fascinating the way false memory works. It just kind of silently weaves itself into the fabric of what 'happened.' and it all feels to be very true, so there is no looking at the tapestry of what happened.. It is just accepted as true, and there must be some functional value to this dynamic. I am talking of not just of people with overt psychological problems but ordinary people.

And another thing, if it works, why try to fix it, and for a lot of people things do seem to be working until their is divorce or heart disease, and, of course, since we are all interconnected in a intricate biosphere, there is this individual discrepancy factor connected to general facets of human behavior which builds up and ultimately affects group survival. For example, shopping makes me feel calm because it fills a hole in myself, so therefore keep doing that, and this supports the manufacture of various products to a degree the earth can't handle...

It might be very interesting to look at the functional value of approaching ones own high functioning autism from the genetic more than the environmental angle, and vice versa.



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20 Nov 2013, 12:19 pm

Quote:
It might be very interesting to look at the functional value of approaching ones own high functioning autism from the genetic more than the environmental angle, and vice versa.

So, once a person has accepted that hie is the way he is because he was born with a certain kind of brain, this is going to radically affect his own life view and subsequent responses if he frames his whole emotional existence around this rather than just factors it in as one kind of data.. Causal chains are very interesting, as the person say8ing this is causing that is to subjectively choosing where to make an intersection on the chain, which chain is interconnected with many other causal chains intersecting from man y different directions. In some cases it is kind of cut and dried, such as for instance, this hurricane caused this kind of wreckage, but even then it may not be so simple.

If a person says he is this way because his parents did this and that to me or because he was born this way, this may be true, but in terms of sorting things out in terms of actually changing ones behavior, this line of thinking is probably not that productive.

To Marybird, the above comment is not in reference to anything you wrote, as I do think some people's brains are different. What I wrote to you about my own childhood experience did involve quite a bit of speculation, and this kind of speculation can surely also possibly be a downfall in terms of sorting things out, as it is so subjective, but in terms of enquiry, the example you gave and the examples I gave you do present two kind of different perspectives. I am trying to look from both angles, but to quote Dr. Seuss, "Two fish in a tree...How can that be?" That is very interesting to the child within me, as from a child's perspective I think the most delightful aspect may be that there are two fish in a tree, as this implies that there could possibly be one fish in a tree:-)



littlebee
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21 Nov 2013, 3:13 pm

A further comment on the Doctor Seuss quote in the message above on this other thread:

Playing The Autism Card May Be Harmful To Humanity

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5760551.html#5760551



littlebee
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23 Nov 2013, 10:53 am

A direct perception IS the way the brain is functioning in present time, but thinking ones brain is functioning the way it is because one was born a certain way is a thought about how the brain is functioning and such thinking most likely puts a lag into direct perception. The aim is to know what to do without having to think that much about it. The question is, can thinking about how the brain works make the brain work better? It seems like it would, but that premise is questionable.

To try to explain my wild Dr. Seuss interpretation --of "-Two fish in a tree..How can that be?--a child knows there are not wo fish in a tree and that it cannot be, and yet it IS, His imagination is real and yet it is not NOT, and he knows this, which is the delight, but the special delight is that there are TWO fish in the tree, not just one, so in this imaginary world, which is real, things are occurring in sequence. The 'reality' of one fish precedes the 'reality' of two fish, and all of this is interconnected with the present reality which he is perceiving. It is sheer delight! (Note the use of the word sheer:-)

I am looking over some documentaries to use on this thread, but first want to get back to the subject of documentaries and discuss the previous documentaries and documentary making in general..



littlebee
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26 Nov 2013, 11:43 am

Some people may not like this message, but to lump all autistic people under one general label or spectrum makes no sense. Imo it is a form of disorder to do this .It makes me sad to think about how simplistic people are to do this and to 'buy' such an approach, so sad that I can barely contemplate it. They are not getting much of anything with the money they are paying. Yes, for diagnostic purposes, certain similar characteristic are grouped by diagnosticians (a lot of them power mongers with all kinds of personality disorders) under a broad spectrum. Maybe there is some kind of functional value there, but for a higher functioning autistic to group himself under this kind of tent simply makes no sense. I hear so many people saying they were born this way and using it as an excuse.

This thread is intended to look at documentaries. When you look at some of these documentaries, which I have just started to do, after seeing the first two,especially Neurotypical, it is amazing the stories people are telling themselves and each other about their own disorders and/or the disorders of other people, though I understand that to these people their own stories seem very real. but it is on film, and if you tell someone what to look for then he will see it---if he turns the picture at that angle, there it will be, clear as day, but no one really turns the picture. This is because they are following the script from a given story line which most likely fits in with their own story. We all do it.

So what exactly is the function of a documentary film? It is to record something that is true, to show people facts. If you see a movie about India that has a scene where really poor people are shown in the streets and this is filmed in an actual street, then that is the fact, but people will not focus on that as they are watching the main character, the protagonist as he walks through the street, so their mind is on the storyline. However, if it is an actual documentary showing poverty in India, then because this is the focus, then people will look at it from this angle, though there is still a implied story. Most if not all documentaries have an intended slant, if only to get people to look at a certain subject, such as poverty in India. The intent is not just to film poor people in India, though that would be interesting, actually, now that I think about it. It tells its own story and would make other people want to help them. It would be fascinating, except if something was not put in there about people who were trying to help them, then it kind of misses a shot. It would be more a form of voyeurism.

This is going off track a bit, and I am running out of steam...

So how do you document that someone is the way he is because he is born that way? You don't and you can't, because that is not really the reason he is the way he is. He is the way he is because of how the way he was born has been built upon, and of course the way he was born played into this. Actually, imo, though some others may disagree, to say a person is the way he is because he was born that way is to thing-ize (objectify him),and if a person says this about himself---if this is his way of thinking about himself, then in effect he is thing-izing and objectifying himself. I think this relates back to autistic encapsulation. I just thought of something interesting to quote which will illustrate this, but have now run out of steam, so, to be continued.


.



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29 Nov 2013, 2:06 pm

To continue and this is hard topic to write about--I do not think it is possible to take the subjective element out of making or watching a documentary, as all human experience has a subjective aspect. People will be making documentaries from their own subjective contexts for various reasons, and the viewer will interpret the documentary from his own subjective context. And there is an area of influence where these two overlap, and is is possible for the filmmaker to work with such an overlap to influence various social trends and tendencies, and I'm sure this is really interesting and even fun.

I never really saw any documentaries about autism until recently. The two mentioned here were the first, but now that I am discovering a wealth of material online, a whole new medium of learning is opening. What is holding me back from going on to a new video is the extremely charged nature of this kind of topic. I think people are even more apt to have emotional reactions to pictures than they are to words, and then there is the ethical consideration of how to discuss the behavior of various people who are seen in these films.

I am looking over several videos, but cannot decide which one to do next, as it is all such charged material...should we just plunge into the depth of very deep water or should we start with toe dipping?

In the meantime: Each person has his own story. As I said previously, I think it is important to try to honor that story, but when people are putting out various material and an accumulating body of material is being presented and built upon that will influence various social trends and tendencies, then it is necessary to enquire into certain premises around which this material is built which may be false.

In the meantime, here is something to think about. Will not name the video where I saw this,and I have recently seen very many, but one person was telling an interesting and quite elaborate story about his childhood which I am sure is very true and meaningful to him or her, and who am I to say it is not true, as how would I even know?---but what this person described from I forget how many years ago, maybe around thirty-five or forty, if described today to any psychologist or teacher, the first thing that would come to mind would be sexual abuse..This is not to suggest this person was sexually abused or does not fall under the spectrum of autism, as he/she obviously does,, but it is a different way to think about it, as there is no way to know if this person was actually born to be the way he is today. That is way over-simplistic. That the person IS this way is something else entirely, and imo a much better way to look at it. So what are the implications, if any, of looking at this in one way rather than the other? I myself am not even sure, but it is something to think about.

Secondly, I actually know a person in one video I saw,--not well, but this person used to hang around where I used to play music many years ago, and once I had a conversation with him/her about pot smoking. Now this person has an interesting story on the video about how autism affects him?her and a technique he/she used to adapt to that but I think the real culprit is pot smoking. Most people who smoke marijuana socially do not have much of a concept about how much pot some person can smoke it or how it can affect at least certain people, especially after so many years[, maybe thirty or so. Also, some people can experience psychosis from pot smoking, (and it happen to a person in my family when a teenager, and this person had to be hospitalized). Personally I suspect think this other person's communication style and detachment from other people may have more to do with marijuana smoking than with being autistic. Of course the point could be made that any of us smoked all this pot or did this or that[i] because we are autistic:-), but see how it goes? See the problem here?

I am honing in on another video, but it is kind of difficult to decide which one to use, and some of the most interesting material can be very volatile, and also the subject matter kind of complex, but these probably offer the greatest possibilities as learning tools, so I am taking a long time to decide. The first two videos were kind of tame. actually, in terms of the material they focus on. Or maybe it would be helpful to go more into some of the material on those. Again, it is not necessary to see a particular video. That is just an enhancement feature, but not required.



littlebee
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30 Nov 2013, 2:24 pm

Here's a link to a short documentary which will illlustrates some of the principles I was talking about in my previous message.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgwYukPReKw



littlebee
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02 Dec 2013, 1:45 pm

The video I gave the link to in the above message is no good, as after watching the material for the third time I realized the material is edited to create a bizarre slant. I suppose it can be done in any documentary, but not to this degree. I am thinking to eventually discuss this on another thread where people are talking about Autism Speaks, as it very much fits into the topic there..

Anyway, that show used actors to create a fake effect, and the aim here is to discuss documentaries of autistic people. I am not sure if I should to discuss it here or not, actually, as the subject of how slant is created by external forces and how we are influenced to think and feel about autism and how subsequently the way we think influences others does very much does play into this subject here. Another video I was thinking of using is Valentine Road, which is not even about autism. All of this is to kind of make a bride before presenting some potentially volatile material.



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06 Dec 2013, 1:06 pm

Okay> I decided to go ahead and speak about the documentary mentioned here. This thread has been getting some recent interest after a lull, and I can only assume it is because of the link to the segment on autism on the ABC show What Would You Do?. I am assuming that this is because this material is now being read by some people from Autism Speaks.

Though I know little about Autism Speaks except what I have recently read on another thread and a very limited reading of material on the internet, on this other thread I have basically been kind of, though not exactly out and out, defending this organization, but because of the obviously extremely doctored ABC video and a certain dawning realization about Autism Speak's possible if not probable role in this, the wind is starting to blow in a slightly different direction. However, to those readers from Autism Speaks, do not worry about it. I am not a political activist and also not that many people are reading my messages, so anything I write, which is only my own opinion, anyway, is surely not going to affect public opinion about anything you are doing, though it may possibly affect how you yourselves think about what you are doing, and I hope so.

In any case, I have decided to go ahead and discuss this video, not today, but soon....

Here is the link again, so for anyone who has not seen it, go ahead and watch it if you want to see a contrived piece of propaganda, and, yes, of course I do understand that the motive behind making it was altruistic, but that is not necessarily enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgwYukPReKw



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07 Dec 2013, 12:04 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgwYukPReKw

Okay, they is much problematic about this tv segment on autism.. First, it is obviously highly edited to create an emotional reaction in the audience watching it, and also the set-up of the situation is contrived to create very reactive responses in the people who are being duped and filmed, plus, though I have no real evidence of this, I suspect that at least one if not more party of diners associated with Autism Speaks is surreptitiously planted in that audience.More about all of this later.

The video starts out by showing a mother from Autism Speaks going out to eat a meal, presumably lunch, with her 14 year old son, who is autistic and she also talks to the camera about how difficult it used to be to take this child out to eat. No problem yet but then she says:(Hope my quotes are exact,but you can watch it on the video to be sure):" I've heard from a family recently that they were out at a park with their child with autism and someone actually came up and accused them of being bad parents."

Well, we do not really know how this child was behaving at this park or how accurately was the reporting of this story which is now being given second hand, but the comment about being bad parents would be really rude to say to some strangers at a park or even to someone one knows. So what's the matter here with her reporting of this incident? In terms of influencing public opinion it is surely effective, but in terms of actually helping autistic children, not so great, as the obvious implication of this comment is that a person cannot be the parent of an autistic child and also be a bad parent.

More to follow. I am going to have to go slow, as analyzing this video is very difficult work for me, and bear in mind that all of my writing is about understanding human brain function with the aim of showing how different ways of sorting and grading.data about being autistic can be harmful or helpful to people with autism and ultimately to humanity in general.