the Autistic Republic of Aspergia

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At a different website someone launched the idea that there should be an autistic homeland, a seperate country intended to be a home for all autistics and aspies that want to live there. The idea was launched as a nice fantasy rather than as something real, but some joined in the fantasy and the idea started to live its own life. I doubt if someone takes the idea for real but I am sure many aspies fantasised about it at some point, even if you know it is only daydreaming.

Imagine that the rest of the world would want to corporate in the idea and create an aspergic state, would you support the idea and consider moving there? Or do you think it would be wrong to create a seperate country for people in the autism spectrum?

The idea would basically be that the country has regular visa requirements and processes but with special rules for autistics. Diagnosed autistics and aspies would be able to claim automatic citizenship and partners of aspies would also be able to get automatic visas. A bit like the "law of return" that Israel uses where Jewish people worldwide can get an Israeli passport straight away.

Would you support an autistic state and consider living there?

I will start off myself. Being a traveller it would be another country on my list so just try and stop me I don^t think the idea can ever happen but if it would, I would support it. In a country where the majority of people are in the autism spectrum and thus the majority rather than a minority, it would be a lot easier to build a social life. So I would like the idea of an aspergic state yes.

I think hippies should be allowed in as honorary aspies. Aspies probably invented hippies in the first place.

What's wrong with the countries and states and towns we have now? We have communities of our own - families and (in some cases) friends.

There's no reason why a country of only AS people could ever work: if there were one and people were really desperate enough to go there, they'd lose all contact with the outside world and even each other. Any country full of antisocial people with little or no desire to become social is headed straight for disaster.

It would perhaps be a more accepting place, but wouldn't be a more lively or fun place, and the majority of people shunned because of their Asperger's syndrome are well capable of being accepted by the NTs around them anyway with a bit of work.

I always thought that this website, as well as a couple others, were the "homeland" for Aspies who need one. We're a community, and though we're not in the real world, that's actually more manageable due to far fewer problems and much more privacy for those who want it.

Really, I think it's silly for people to want to change the world for themselves when it's easier and more sensible to change themselves for the world.

There would be a minority of NTs living there: partners of aspies who qualified for a visa, skilled visa workers in the few professional fields where there is a lack of people, ... The state would have a majority of aspies but not solely aspies so I don^t think there would be a risk of losing contact with the outside world. Plus, no one moving to the country would completely lose the connections with the place he is originally coming from.

Selo, I don't knw if my aspy son would have a good life without me and his father keeping him shielded from those who would misunderstand him and cause him to backslide. He isn't assertive enough to save himself. Maybe in a few years he will be, but I really want him to be surrounded by those who understand and embrace aspies and recognise their enormous potential.

Without his parents, I think he'd give up.

I did think about the fact that people would definitely keep in touch with their families, and they would, at least on some level, but if you look at the majority of people with AS they don't have any contact with the outside world to begin with - and they're in the outside world! We're talking about a nation where about 75% of the population would stay locked in their houses building futuristic machines or studying the laws of physics or something. Saying hi to mom and dad once in a while I can see happening, but with how little Aspies talk to other human beings in general, the rest of the world will most likely forget about this new country and even its own citizens will probably be too preoccupied with themselves to really devote time to the work force or government or something.


I see that with a young child (he is pretty young, right? Like under 15 or so?), but with an Aspie country/state people would obviously have a choice of whether or not they wanted to go. If he needs your support for another few years, there's nothing wrong with that, and in the event of an Aspie-ruled province he wouldn't have to live without you if he didn't want to.

why only for aspies? the rest of the spectrum can be able to contribute in ways to.

am live with,and have lived with other auties,and some aspies over the past few years and am think it's great living with other autistics-no one else understands the ASD problems and differences like an ASDer.
can see this working as a larger village type place due to how successful places like Botton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botton_Village is?are|?. that is definitely proof it can and does work [some of the botton residents are also ASDers].

but,there needs to be the funding,the area for it to be in and support in place for those who need it.
it would be good because where autism and aspergers are disabilities in the social model [aka being disabled by society and the lack of adaption] everything would be adapted for auties and aspies as the majority.

not all people on the spectrum avoid people,some like going out-restaurants,pubs,clubs whatever,can't see why they couldn't be included so that all on the spectrum have their wants and needs catered for.

I don't think such a country would function very well. Like others said, the general social interaction would be very limited. Also, aspies in general have difficulty relating to others...might be NT's or other aspies. I can relate to some things other aspies talk about, but when I don't share certain idiosyncratic traits with other aspies, I can't guarantee I'm able to relate to those.

I think it would be an interesting scientific experiment because it would outline handicaps shared by the majority of the aspies, but other than that...nope.

Maybe being surrounded by other aspies would take some of the frontier in socialising away and encourage the citizens to socialise more than they would in a regular society?

But a lack of social skills is a lack of social skills, whether both people involved in a conversation lack them or not. A conversation with two Aspies would just be twice as awkward as a conversation with one Aspie and one NT. Just because Aspies are surrounded by other Aspies doesn't mean their AS will automatically go away.

Creating our own autistic homeland (I think it's called "Aspergia") is a great idea. It would create a country where people on the autistic spectrum can enjoy lives free of persecution. The concept is similar to founding Israel for Jews; in a way, Aspergia could be our Israel (so to speak). But one question remains: where are we going to start our country. Modern-day Israel was founded on the site of the Biblical Jewish homeland, but now it has to constantly fight with its neighbors. If we pick the wrong site, we'll be fighting with PaleNTine all the time, rather than enjoying lives of never-ending happiness.

NTs certainly don't enjoy lives of never-ending happiness. No one does, not in real life. Why would you assume that being surrounded by autistics would create a life of never-ending happiness for you? You'd still have to work, you'd still have all your regular life responsibilities, and many of the same daily living issues that you have now.

It seems impractical to me. Part of the syndrome that affects me most is sensory issues, and even though im very mild on the scale, I'm positive there are certain things a country needs that autistics just plain aren't suited for.

Very few autistics could deal with being military, for instance. Same for policing - you need to overcome sensory issues, as well as social issues, not to mention overloads, and obey orders without explanation or logic. All of those things are autistics natural weaknesses, and unfortunately they exist for good reason in most societies.

A soldier who tries to reason can end up dead, a police who can't deal with all the static information coming from a messy crowd can't operate efficiently, etc etc.

The only way I could see it working would be to have paid workers for the unsuitable jobs, and without introducing segregation (which in my person opinion is pretty amoral) that would erase the whole point.

Nt's are a pain a lot of the time, but they're damned useful at others.

I came up with an idea similar to this and tried writing it into a novel. I called it Oregon, since the country was founded as a continuation of the historic Oregon Country. It was a British Dominion until 1954 when the autistics/aspies overthrew it with Soviet support.

Why Soviet support? Because the leader of this autistic revolution came up with a unique leverage - the Trans-Bering Pipeline, which would pump oil and natrual gas into North America from Siberia and the Middle East without having to ship it. Their expertise allowed them to build it and get the continent hooked on a steady supply of cheap Soviet fuel.

I envisaged that Oregon would essentially enslave its NT population and use it as a supply of cheap labour, much as South Africa's whites did. It would have a centrally-planned command economy directed by the state.

The Oregonian state would not need to have any secret police since its autistic population would consist almost entirely of desperate refugees - an automatic, unlimited source of support. So long as the government maintained the autistic population at a sufficiently high level and kept weapons out of the hands of NTs, its existence was guaranteed.

I thought about how the aspie government might treat the native population and decided that they have too much in common to be enemies, especial if the revolution took place in the 1950s. I postulated that the natives would end up simply being largely left alone to do what they wanted, save for the occasional unwelcome intrusion by the government.

The premise of the novel was that the government would run into problems in the even that aspie couples might still have NT children - and that to deal with it, it had come up with a pill that could cure what it called the disease of "Normalcy."

I don't think I could ever live there. Life and people cause me stress, I don't believe that would change. I believe I share the company of a couple undiagnosed aspies and they annoy me just as much as other NT's
besides the government of said country would be a mess for sure lol.. not sure how that differs though.