You are a deviant. Be proud.

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Good piece on the effects of market economics on mental health
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ty-economy

Love the conclusion:

So, if you don?t fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed ? it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

i am proud, at times.

I feel the same way too.

IOW the ones who fret and have dark nights of the soul, who are full of self-doubt, are really the spiritual adepts, and all the other glad-handing glib alphas are the ones who are just treading water and learning nothing but self-impressed dandy delusions from their time on earth.

Glad-handing glib alpha would make an excellent addition to drop-down lists of formal academic titles in various online forms

Life has taught me that being human is the only thing that's worthwhile being ashamed of.

It would be an honest one, at least.

I celebrate my differences every chance that I get, because I'm proud.

Now if only it wasn't such a lonely road.

we're born alone and we die alone.

Could you explain this quote to me? It never made sense to me. Born alone? What about your mother? Doctors? How are we born alone? I can understand the die alone, but that's not a guaranteed situation either... :/

we go through the birth canal singly, alone. no co-travelers through the birth canal onto the midwife's lap. we shuffle off our mortal coil singly, alone- nobody else goes through that long dark tunnel with one to keep one company, it is just one. birth and death are highly individual experiences. anyways, my point was that if we find ourselves solitary and bereft of bonhomie in between birth and death, it is at least not the first time and won't be the last time. this is at least a cold comfort to some.

Beautifully stated, thank you.

I don't feel any of that.

I've never been ashamed to be different, but have always felt different. Looking back, over the years, it takes a lot of energy to ignore all the external encouragement to change and adapt. In this context I feel the label deviant is appropriate, and even something to be proud of.

Today I read a new thread titled "Being conditioned to like Autism?!" http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt264994.html. I find the conclusion that the negative aspects of autism always dominate over the positive aspects somewhat depressing, and not generalisable, even if it may seem to be true from the perspective of certain individuals for potentially long stretches of their lives. I did not comment on the referenced thread, because the example it uses to illustrate autistics with a positive outlook on life is flawed and simplistic.

To understand and appreciate the positive side of autism I highly recommend the book "Through the Eyes of Aliens" by Jasmine Lee O'Neill http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/book/9781853027109.

From my personal perspective life feels like trying to catch a wave on a surfboard when you've started paddling 0.5 seconds to late. You can expend as much effort as you want, you never catch the wave. Good surfers learn to get the timing right and avoid the effort. With practice autistics can become good surfers, but at least in my case, I still waste too much time paddling at the wrong time.

When the negative aspects seem to prevail, the feeling is comparable to sitting in a sea kayak going downwind, where the waves in your back continuously push you onto the back of the preceding wave. You can paddle all you want, but you will never be able to push through the preceding wave. There is nothing you can do about it, and it's not even worth trying.

I think these feelings of wasting effort stem from autistic perseverance, and the tendency to always compete against our internal bar of standards in relation to our special interests, which we push higher and higher.

From experience I know that I have the capability of reaching all the goals that I set myself, if I am allowed to work towards these goals along the path that I chose, and if I don't have to explain every 5 minutes why I do things certain ways, or explain why I don't do them the same way as 99% of people would do them.

Hence in a social context, especially in a neurotypical context, the positive side of autism is always only one step removed from the negative side.

In concrete terms I have changed jobs several times because I could no longer take the insanity around me, and ultimately I ended up starting my own business, only to run into a new set of frustrations. On two occasions I have been offered to rejoin the corporate world in senior management roles, but in both cases I instinctively refused, because I can no longer live with the insanity that is at work in modern corporations. I think more and more people, autistic and non-autistic, are experiencing the insanity of modern life, and are suffering as a result. Hence my OP on being a deviant and being proud.

Currently I'm in a stretch of life where the positive side of autism has the upper hand. After more than 10 years my business has grown into team of 4 like minded non-conformists, and together we are able to complement our individual strengths. Relating this back to my special interest in water sports, I'm now on a windsurfer. The power of the team is like the wind in the sail, allowing me to ride over the back of waves, and even jumping over some of them

Still every day is a lot of effort, there are regular crashes along the way, but overall I'm sailing.

Idk. That article seemed to me a bit like mental mumbo-jumbo. You know, said to be said but nothing you can actually hang your tin foil hat on.

I think Conan the Barbarian (paraphrasing a quote attributed to Gengis Khan) was closer to the truth as far as what was the best thing in life: "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!"

I think this perspective is overly negative. Yes, humans can be the cruelest of animals (including autistics that have been shaped by sufficiently unhelpful experiences), but some (including autistics and non-autistics), can also be extremely kind and compassionate. I found the book "The Age of Empathy" by Frans de Waal to be a good antidote to black and white thinking http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/empathy/.

Humans are highly programmable from the outside, neurotypicals largely via the surrounding human culture, and autistics largely via their personal interaction with the physical world.

From my personal perspective, the essence of human economics is captured in the following 5-minute segments from these videos:
1. Getting a grip on perspective; economics in context: http://youtu.be/5wtUMM8SDws?t=43m59s
2. Reality check on markets by Noam Chomsky: http://youtu.be/9qzliIR3TU8?t=1h15m17s
3. Markets are figments of human imagination, an illusion that shields humans from physical reality: http://youtu.be/rRmu7RKE4dI?t=59m13s
4. "This s**t's got to go": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMVjmxf642M

The outlook for humans may be bleak, but life will continue. I'm not in love with humans in general, but I am in love with life.

Ironically the autistic perspective probably keeps me sane. I can imagine that the typical human perspective dominated by social hierarchies can lead to severe depression. For autistics trying too hard to fit in can be the worst "therapy".

Last edited by jbw on 13 Aug 2014, 11:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.