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paolo
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26 Mar 2007, 3:07 am

Having committed a crime shuts the author of the crime in an hell on incommunicability. That’s the subject of Patricia H.’s novels. Of course the theme started (if there is a start in this thing) with “Crime and Punishment” of F.D. But the odd thing (is it odd?) is that the crime shuts into the world of communicability and irredeemable loneliness also the victim. The horror (“the horror, the horror!”) contaminates both the “criminal” and the “victim”. Perhaps Mersault is both criminal and victim. No one anyway wants to be a part of the life of the victim.

That’s the way we live. A clear mind here helps perhaps. Unbearably clear: it soothes.


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calandale
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26 Mar 2007, 3:09 am

???



paolo
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26 Mar 2007, 4:18 am

You don’t have to escalate to murder to commit a crime against life, to destroy something valuable like the trust of a person who thought you were worth his/her love or affection. So, when you did some piece of crime, you are the only one who can know and evaluate the evil, the horror. You may even be only an accomplice, you may only have witnessed in silence and done nothing to straighten things (to call the police is not a solution at all to this kind of dilemmas). Well, if you have been contaminated by horror, your intercourse with the other will only be awkward and defective. The same holds if you have been the victim. You will never be able to communicate with other people.
I don’t know which crimes I may have committed in my life (nothing of legal import to tranquillize people here). But I have certainly been a victim, and the horror I lived in is incommunicable.

Mersault is a character of Camus (The Stranger). He kills an Arab but is killed in turn, not because of the Arab, but because he didn’t weep at his mother’s death.



calandale
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26 Mar 2007, 5:01 am

Murder is an act of love, not a crime.



paolo
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26 Mar 2007, 5:23 am

It may be an act of lust, but not an act of love.



T-rav20
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26 Mar 2007, 5:27 am

Interesting thought, but this can be connected to any sort of traumatic event. Accidents, illnesses, the sudden deaths of those who are close to us, all are instances of chaos that rip into the ordered fabric of our lives, all of them cut us off from those who haven't experienced the trauma, and all of them are inevitable, though we like to pretend otherwise.


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paolo
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26 Mar 2007, 5:47 am

That’s true to some extent. It’s true in the sense that people are deadly frightened of death (pun). So they avoid dealing with a cancer patient, because they fear to be contaminated by sickness and death. Avoidance of any contact with crime, with evil, is much more absolute. If in the case of a terminal illness people keep clear for fear of death of their body, in the case of crime, people are determined to keep clear out of fear for their identity, o soul, or however you want to call it. So people who are responsible (or victim) of a crime, are more insulated than the sick or the relative of the dead.



MrMark
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26 Mar 2007, 6:28 am

Does having AS make you feel like a victim?


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T-rav20
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26 Mar 2007, 6:35 am

So you're saying it's similar to most 'normal' people's aversian towards the the mentally ill, some underlying fear of being similarly afflicted.


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paolo
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26 Mar 2007, 7:08 am

MrMark wrote:
Does having AS make you feel like a victim?


No. But behind all this there is part of my story.
When I grew up as a child, my parents realized I was somehow "special" not apt to a normal life.
My being "special" was not a result of my mother incapacity of love, she had her own background of autism and mental sickness (I stress the and), but this was aggravated by her emotional shallowness. When you are "special" you need more availability not less, from you parents. My mother had less. Moreover, until recently, nobody knew anything about autism. The relationship between my parents was bad, so their availability was further diminished. The idea that prevailed was to rear me as someone to do some menial services, not to look for a place in life where I could develop the qualities I might have (I had some). So this was horrible. A compounded hardship, where there was an element of human fault.

I think that this situation is common here (I see from the posts). I listened just now "Harry King live" about autism. It was not a great thing, but there was this datum: a great percentage of couples with autistic children disintegrate, due to the stress imposed to them. Unavailability of the parents is a very usual condition for auties.



SeriousGirl
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26 Mar 2007, 10:23 am

MrMark wrote:
Does having AS make you feel like a victim?


Only if you let it. Being a victim is nothing but a state of mind.


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paolo
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26 Mar 2007, 11:53 am

T-rav20 wrote:
So you're saying it's similar to most 'normal' people's aversian towards the the mentally ill, some underlying fear of being similarly afflicted.

No, I think it's different. With the fatally sick you normally don't have a fear to catch the sickness. You are put in front of a problem, death, that, in all our cultural climate, founded on continuous consumption, we absolutely don't want to face. It's having your consciousness flooded by the reality of death. With the physically handicapped you don't experience dread, even if you availability is limited. With the mentally handicapped the availability needed is greater and you don't know how to deal with the condition of the other. Communication is difficult on both sides. For the autistic person it's like being condemned by some secret tribunal inside yourself. In Patricia Highsmith's novels (she was herself autistic) the main character is guilty in an internal way, not before the law, but before himself. He cannot tell his lovers or friends what happens to him. They would never understand. Same with Joseph K, on Kafka's trial and his mysterious tribunal.



T-rav20
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26 Mar 2007, 7:22 pm

paolo wrote:
T-rav20 wrote:
So you're saying it's similar to most 'normal' people's aversian towards the the mentally ill, some underlying fear of being similarly afflicted.

No, I think it's different. With the fatally sick you normally don't have a fear to catch the sickness. You are put in front of a problem, death, that, in all our cultural climate, founded on continuous consumption, we absolutely don't want to face. It's having your consciousness flooded by the reality of death. With the physically handicapped you don't experience dread, even if you availability is limited. With the mentally handicapped the availability needed is greater and you don't know how to deal with the condition of the other. Communication is difficult on both sides. For the autistic person it's like being condemned by some secret tribunal inside yourself. In Patricia Highsmith's novels (she was herself autistic) the main character is guilty in an internal way, not before the law, but before himself. He cannot tell his lovers or friends what happens to him. They would never understand. Same with Joseph K, on Kafka's trial and his mysterious tribunal.
Ok, I'll have to take your word for it. I've never been a victim (or perpetrator) of crime, and I've run out of ways to compare it to my own experiences.


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aspiebegood
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26 Mar 2007, 9:15 pm

I think aspies feel crimes against them more deeply than the average.


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maldoror
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26 Mar 2007, 10:09 pm

For an autistic person, since we're so often excluded or ignored, those of us who are more neurotic generate ideas of malignancies we might have committed and figure one of them must be applicable to our treatment.

It's weird that you've mentioned Camus because I'm just finishing up the Plague right now.



Who_Am_I
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26 Mar 2007, 10:28 pm

How is murder an act of love?


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