Is it important to make a value judgment that...............

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In his book, 'The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome' Tony Attwood suggests that;

'It is important to make a VALUE judgment that one culture is not better than the other (referring to NT/AS)


Do you agree?

Definitely.

It CAN be viewed as just a 'difference' but id say usually not. 'normal' will always be with the majority.

In spite of the damage to the brain, some people with AS *can* be smarter than normal people, but when that intelligence is given at the expense of all the things that can motivate them, it ceases to be useful. So sorry, i have to disagree.

The subjective assessment of one condition being "better" than another should not have any relationship to any normative standard.

NT may be the norm, but that does not mean that deviation from the norm has any particular deviation in quality. Yes, some people with ASDs are so profoundly impacted that their lives are, by almost any standard, "worse" than those of the maintstream. But the same can equally be said of NTs with other deficits.

One would never ask if Deaf culture is "better" than hearing culture.

There seem to be a disproportionate number of people with Asperger's (diagnosed OR demonstrating clear traits) represented in groups like:

Inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs in general, engineers, composers, artists, philosphers, University professors...........

Much of our social development and social evolution, as a species, is because of people like these, who are a very small minority of the population..

No one chooses to be NT or AS, we are just born one or the other.


It seems that for all of the differences between the NT mind and the AS mind, we probably need each other.