Should we have a "national" anthem?

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PLEASE READ BEFORE VOTING

My question is: Should we have a "national" anthem?

By "national" I mean an anthem which symbolizes the aspie and autie culture. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's not - it's all up to you guys to decide! I see both arguments for and against a "national" anthem:

FOR:
- It will unite us as a group if we have some cultural "thingy" in common
- People will see that we have a culture (there are many ways we can show this to people, an anthem being one of them)

AGAINST:
- We will alienate ourselves a bit from society by claiming to be different (but we are, after all, already different per behavior...)
- Our anthem might sound like a cat being pulled by its tail if we can't find any musical talents (but I think we can!)

I was thinking it should be about what we have in common, what aspie/autie culture is like, who we are, what we are like, the good things about autism etc.. I was also thinking that the style must be, well, compatible with what most people would view as good music (I think we might scare people away if we make a Death Metal anthem, for instance). The purpose of the anthem should be uniting us as a group and make people interested in autistic culture.

If you are a musical talent, that's great! We will need both one or more songwriters and one or more people to sing and play the instruments (I have an aspie cousin who's a soprano, but I don't know if she would like to sing for us...).

If you have any ideas for the song (melody, lyrics, etc.), please write them in the reply. I was thinking something like Disney's "United We Stand" or "He Lives In You" for the melody.

What do you think (good or bad?) and/or what ideas (lyrics, melody etc.) do you have?

I'm against it. The thing with an anthem is that it needs to be a song that all those on the spectrum are proud of singing, and that's going to be pretty tough with the diversity of musical tastes. Some will like it, others won't, but want to show pride. How would you deal with that?

Well, you're right - maybe I was just a bit too quick with my idea. But on the other hand, it's definetely not everyone in Denmark who likes the danish national anthem, and I'm pretty certain that is also true for other nations (I, btw., DON'T think that we are a nation and should have our own country... We might be a culture, but we're no nation!). Why should it stop us that not everyone has the same taste in music?

Against: Not if I have to sing it. You don't want that. Really.

An Aspie Anthem is as pointless as using an asterisk as an Aspie Symbol of mutual recognition.

I have heard your opinions, and I very much appreciate your responses!

From what you have written, I have felt compelled to refine the "national" anthem. However, I don't think it is at all "useless", just because there already is one autistic symbol. I have for instance heard about companies which have several different logos - and here we're talking about a whole community, not something as "straightforward" as a company, therefore needing different expressions of culture. Saying that only the puzzle ribbon is a symbol of autistic culture is to me to limit autistic expression.

However, I never meant the anthem to be equal to the puzzle ribbon when regarding autistic culture. I was inspired by the YouTube song "I'm Autistic" when I got the idea of an "autism anthem", because they sang about what Autism Speaks is like for autistics - why not a song (or perhaps several different songs) describing the autistic culture?

My main refinement is that we should have several different "autistic anthems", one for everyone who wants to make one, just like I view my childhood drawings of dragons as expressions of autism. They should not be imposed upon by everyone else. What am I trying to write? I think it is that if someone wants to make a symbol of autism, be it a piece of art, an anthem, the puzzle ribbon or alike, they should be allowed to do so, but it should not be considered an "official" autism statement unless we democratically vote for it as such.

Again, thank you for your quick responses! I very much appreciate them!

I propose the following song as our national anthem. In it the girl Sore sings over and over "I'm so different from the rest of the world."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqgol1Lg_H0[/youtube]

She also spins around a great deal and dances on a train but I don't really like her song.

Shouldn't an aspie symbol be sigma squared to represent the varience?

If someone wants some sort of anthem, then they can create an anthem and find out if people support it. Cultural memes rarely get decided by a legislative process, they spread and become the symbol of something.

This might be beyond the range where abstract concepts are understandable by your target demographic.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXEu1odjKZM[/youtube]