First Time Posting - About Autism

Post Reply New Topic

I have been lurking around here for a year or so reading a lot of messages, but have yet failed to post anything. Maybe it's because of an internal inadequacy on the part of myself in regards to what I feel will be said to me. Or maybe it's because I feel what I would write is likely to come off as too convoluted or selfish. The one thing I know is that I don't understand conflict. And I probably never will. I do not like to write or speak in areas where I feel there are going to be conflicts and disagreements, so I tend to go out of my way to cover most of the angles in regards to something I feel or say. Regardless of that, let me just start off by tuning into what I think of autism in general. I'll give a brief history of myself. And I'll go from there.

I am in my late 30s as of now and currently work at an outdoors recreational center near Bryson City, North Carolina. For much of my life, I was brought up in a special-needs school, diagnosed with ADHD and PDD. Back in those days, autism was never talked about unless one was low-functioning. The PDD diagnosis came about back then because therapists and the school felt I was more preoccupied with my inner world than I was with people. More or less, that was true. The term autism didn't really enter my life until I began to enter college in the early 1990s, primarily from a series of testing procedures I had to go through to determine my skill levels before entering college. I was told then that I was on the autistic spectrum.

What has been concerning me when reading many messages on this board and other related boards is a constant talk regarding efforts to cure autism. I suppose that some of this may be due to a fear of losing the interests that are so dear to us, which is something I definitely would not want to lose myself. I tend to think that if we do find a cure for autism, then we would be depriving the world of talents that could be useful in various ways. It could essentially turn us into boring social creatures. The world would never know what our talents were if a cure is forced upon us, and there would likely be a major loss of creative force. On the other hand, there were things that had gone in my life that I wish there was a cure for. I can not make sense of the world around me, for example. I lack the ability to put a lot of my knowledge into a coherent picture. There is just too much information. When I make attempts to do so, I simply come off as selfish, arrogant or haughty for even attempting to speak up. It causes massive amounts of frustration and anger, with my own inner mind twisting and turning at nearly a hundred miles a minute. I am too exhausting for relationships. I don't understand conflict, therefore I can't understand how relationships last with a lot of fighting and what not. I have seen it with my parents. How they had stayed together is a mystery to me. I can't figure it out. Everything around me is chaos. And the only way that I see to bring some kind of order is for all individuals to be involved in the creation of a new society, period.

Another aspect of curing autism also has me concerned, because it likely has to do with medication. I would imagine that if a cure was to develop, it would be in the form of some sort of medication. I am not personally against medication, but I do have concerns regarding a lot of the workings of the pharmaceutical industry. Most doctors and hospitals tend to be linked to the pharmaceutical industry in more ways than one, and thus their patients are going to be unwillingly locked into such a network. My guess is that such a method will begin with an experimental trail and progress from there, possibly involving some sort of genetic recoding. This can be dangerous in a number of ways, given that fooling around with genetic code can easily have unintended consequences in the future. We're not talking about any sort of simple medication to alleviate an unwanted side effect. We are talking about a medication to re-create the mind of an individual. I don't have problems with alleviating a facet or two of an individual that has proven to cause major concerns. When we talk about a cure for autism, we are not simply talking about symptom alleviation. This brings to light similar images in my mind that have resulted from reading about the intended future prospects of genetic engineering, namely the creation of the perfect baby in the eyes of the parents.

Secondly, another thing that sort of bewilders me is how we make distinctions between us and NTs. Most of the time when reading a lot of stuff regarding that, the main images that pop into my mind have to do with racism. Sociologically speaking, we could be considered a minority group. It is probably true that a percentage of NTs are out to try to change us to fit their mold of the way things ought to be. As I hear many of our own refer to NTs in the manner that we do, it tends to conjure images in my mind having to do with "reverse racism." Now, reverse racism is likely to be a sociological anomaly that is perceived by the ruling class to be a force of denial. Still, though, it is the perception that tends to bother me. I simply don't see us moving in a more positive direction if we make blatant assumptions about where we should be in some tabular categorical system. Should we simply present a table and say these are autistic traits and the other side are NT traits? I see a future where we will be claiming something is pro-autistic and something else is pro-NT. I can't help it. That is what I see. And I have concerns about it.

Great first post.

I don't understand conflict either. Actually I'm bad at it. I get so heated that any conflict is definitely going to turn out for the worse.

Hmm, on the cure. I have the type of autism where I barely make improvements. I've been unemployed and dependent for too long. 10 more years of this and I'll be begging for the cure. I think most of the refusal for this comes from an aversion to change which is probably my most severe symptom. I don't even want to be cured of epilepsy because that will change me.

Your last paragraph interests me. I read up about future science and of course they mention manipulating genes to cure diseases.

I don't see that there is a "type" of autism defined by how much improvements one can make. There basically is low-functioning and high-functioning, and varying degrees in between. I simply think of it as a scale from one to ten. Where is your placement?

As far as employment and dependency goes? What I suppose we ought to think about is creating a community that provides for us the unemployment and support that we are looking for. I would love to see that. In fact, I can envision it. I just don't see it happening that easy, mainly due to systemic issues. It's definitely not impossible.

Independent living is linked to economics. I see a lot of discussions here about us trying to live free and independently. There is one problem with that: the cost of housing. Whether or not one can live independently is not linked to not just whether one can work, but also to how much one is getting paid. If you're working for less than ten dollars an hour, you may be able to find an apartment. That does not count the other costs involved, especially electric. If you also have a car, forget it. The economy is tipped in favor of getting about 20% of the population rich. It's also tipped in favor of property ownership. The sole purpose of a corporation is to reduce labor costs as much as possible, because that's great for investors and the stock market. Independent living is linked to that. In an economy such as ours that is slanted at like a 120 degree angle, surely many are going to slip and fall and continue to make attempts at climbing up the slippery slope. Dependency should therefore not be simply thought of in terms of good or bad, but as a resource for economic sustenance.