Building Asperger's Society; Who We Are, Who Will We Become

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It is such a strange thing, going through life, KNOWING that you are an alien in some very vital way...it is such a struggle...wasting your time studying peoples body language so that someday you will 'fit in' when in your heart you know you never will, wondering why you are always alone in a world that for the most part you don't relate to in the slightest...all that time wasted 'pretending'...friends lost because you won't lie to them or provide them with sympathy (something you have no use for when you have empathy)...all the limits and the meaningless rules...and then you see one of your kind and to suddenly know that you are not alone, and that while you might not 'belong' here, that there are people 'like you' out there...your kind...your people...

It is indescribable, it is like being the only blond in China, and seeing in the far off distance that flash of pale cream color of hair bobbing in the blackness, that mass of humanity, that tells you, finally, you are not alone...

I have Asperger's and I am in my 40's (MWF with kids). I have lived my entire life trying to 'fit in'. My IQ is 148. I completed an advanced degree and worked somewhat successfully my whole life, although I am currently un-employed due to my choice of professions, architecture, and the recessions effects on my industry. I was told by two different people, one psychologist that I probably had AS, but at the time I thought 'Baloney, I DON'T have a disability, in my heart, I know that I am better than the average person, different yes, but better, not sick or dysfunctional, there is nothing WRONG with ME'. At the time books and later the web classified AS as a 'disability or mental/morally deviant' so I blew off the diagnosis.

I knew my whole life I was different. I KNEW I was alien to 'regular' people (btw this is something that we all see, but AS people know it because we live it, we see the differences)...but I wanted to fit in desperately. I felt that my 'safety' depended on blending in with the great homogeneous majority of humanity. Instinct told me that humans were on the whole a vengeful, illogical, mostly ignorant and intolerant majority. As I got older, school age, it seemed more imperative to 'fit in' as I learned human history and the 'culling' of anyone different meant my instincts were very correct to try to blend in unnoticed.

We are very different from them...as anyone with Asperger's knows in their heart, we feel the 'alien' nature every day. When I first saw videos of people with Asperger's on Youtube a few days ago, I KNEW these were my people, and I celebrated intensely because I was no longer alone (35ish years of being someone you are NOT because you feel your future depends on 'blending in' as a response to perceived threat will take its toll). In fact, now that I no longer feel the need to 'fit in', I can evaluate more carefully what it means to be me, as opposed to wasting so much time on the process of 'fitting in'. What are MY values as opposed to the values imposed on me?

I was partially 'humanly' successful at blending in but my closest friends and family know that there are differences in the way we think that will not be bridged despite our efforts. IMO people with AS are different in a good way, I am proud to be who I am and wonder what we have suffered at the hands of our homogeneous human society (though some of them caused us suffering without intent; indeed, loved us, but could not provide for our needs because of a fundamental lack of understanding 'what we needed').

Historically humanity has persecuted, ostracized, killed and 'cured' the people who didn't belong till there is less variation and variety in homogeneous human society than in a family of chimpanzees. IMO instinctively we, people with AS know what is as stake here...this is the driver for our longing to fit in...but we are not like them and although we may be parallel in experience, we are different enough to need to be cared for by our own kind.

The real questions remain...what is our destiny as a variant of humanity? Will we have a chance to realize who we are, before they have a chance to 'cure' us?

I don't want to be 'cured' I want a chance to realize who I can be, see MY culture thrive and see who we are without having to worry about the meaningless rules, insensitivity and inane limits imposed on me by this homogeneous humanity.

I am tired of having my increased empathy and sensitivity wasted on regular humans who have no capacity to feel or see the way I do. I have problems with authority because I don't believe that people deserve to have authority over me, they haven't proved themselves, so far, at even basic understanding or reasoning...I am tired of being forced to fit into their mold when I know that it is not appropriate for my style of humanity, learning or growth. I am angry that any of us could be made to feel lesser, depressed or psychologically ruined because we require a more refined sensitivity, teaching and insight into human nature that cannot be matched by regular homogeneous humans.

Evidence indicates that there are 191 million of us on planet earth right now and that births are rising in unprecedented numbers (take that for what you will, but someday there will be more of us than there are of homogeneous humans).

We don't need to 'fit' into humanities systems of society, we need to make our own, so that our potential and destiny are not wasted bashing our heads into a brick wall of their making. Traditionally we have been 'thinkers', geniuses, and creators while being servile to societies framework, but we are more than that...we deserve more than that...we deserve to reach our potential and not to be 'ruined' by being made to fit in to homogeneous humanities understandings or worried about conforming to meaningless and often illogical rules.

IMO whether regular homogeneous humans like it or not, we are the future, either by the worlds purpose or by pollution/poisons or by God's design, it is time we stopped letting the future of our kind be compromised by regular human 'understanding' and began to develop systems and societal structure for our own furthering and future. We CAN'T always be 'gray' for 'them' at some point we will have to develop systems that will allow us to thrive without fear, persecution or misunderstanding.

Christian Hart

I agree with you. People ask me if i'm sad or disappointed because I have AS and I tell them I look at it as an advantage.

What if it is the cure what will finally show us who we are meant to be and what our purpose is here? What if the autistic were the first people ever able to go back and forth between two personalities, oh the things we'd learn... things the normal are dying to know...

Well, I've heard it said that we're one of the only human groups to show genuine assortative mating (the other's tall people). Maybe speciation has already begun! That'd be cool! Although I'd hate to think what some nastier NTs would do to us then, considering the worst of the lot can't even put up with different races, let alone a subspecies!

Just a little fantasy I like to have...daydreaming about a few hundred thousand years into the future...

I just hope global warming holds off long enough to give us that excuse not to fit in!

(And I bet you a chocolate Santa that Tim Tex pops up and says "Welcome to WP"! )

Great post, CH, and welcome to WrongPlanet!

Do you have any specific thoughts along the line of "systems and societal structure" you believe might work, and have you given thought to intentional community?

Love to see if we develop further from nts over the course of a thousands years.

Autism is undisputedly on the way up in terms of awareness and accommodations, but this is only within the bounds of the established world and is focused primarily on acclimation. I agree that the equivalent of a Chinatown or Amish community would be the beginnings of a solution which would require a much less painful journey than the faux remedy that we currently see offered. Due to the endlessly diverse sea of ideas among us, I imagine that something close to an absolute commonwealth would be the simplest way for all voices in the community to be heard.

Can anyone imagine a system where you could be politically satisfied by a representative? If so, under what conditions?

Hello Everyone!! !!

I haven't had time to form any ideas yet...but I will...but more than anything I get the feeling that it is a cooperative endeavor, it really belongs to US, not to me...this is far too important to be left to an individual...I think, as a group, we need to start thinking...because time isn't going to wait for us.

I was told about AS, but had always pushed it aside, because I thought, 'disability/deviant' because that was all I knew of it. Bear with me, because I am very new to this...I saw a video of Ruben Walsh on YouTube and it was like being shown your image in a mirror for the first time ever...it was like a gut reaction...like having a light turned on or seeing color for the first time...I always felt that way about my son, but assumed it was a 'blood' relation thing.

There are big changes and small changes...society is very, very old. It is like a set of bones that we 'drape' political systems on, the bones never change but the flesh and clothing changes. No matter how many times we change the 'clothing' or the 'flesh' the bones remain, and the results remain the same, with certain 'expected outcomes' that fit and feed into or re-enforce the original equation. Along with being a very old system, I see it as a very paranoid system. It is like an equation that has very specific number sets or variables inserted into it. As long as variables remain within a certain set of numbers or parameters [or types of people] there are no perturbations in the system.

Perturbations cause wobbles and shifts in the equation that are 'unacceptable' to society because it means that they have to adapt to something they are so un-used to that they almost can't 'see'. Here is where we come in, ?I think?, we are a shift in the system, a perturbation that is occurring whether they are ready or not. I didn't ask to be born like this, it just happened. Do I care 'why' it happened? Not really...

What I care about is whether or not the 'bones' of society will still work with us or we still work within them (no reason to assume they won't, but I think we need to NOT ASSUME, but contemplate what is correct and will actually work, rather than blindly favoring what is traditional).

The problem being that if more and more of us are born, but the structure of society doesn't work for us any longer, unless we figure out something that does work, the shift or change to something that actually works will be needlessly painful and potentially destructive.

We are being 'back-loaded' into the current system...we exist within it, but as the numbers of AS children grow, that social framework may not be able to support the changes that would occur as the result of our 'being'. We need to begin to think about what it is that we require, or need, and what framework is right for us, if it is the current system, fine, NBD.

Lets say, for arguments sake, that we are fundamentally different in terms of our sense of hierarchy (I am just positing this as an example, I don't know this)...eventually such a small shift in outlook would fundamentally change society because the equation or system displays like a great big pyramid. Smaller systems act as tributary to larger systems until the disruption or fundamental shift causes a major instability in the structure. To make matters worse, global capitalism has cut all societies normal margins for error to a razor thin margins making it very susceptible to perturbation. So far this hasn't been to much of a problem, things still function, trains run on time, politics happen, etc. But shifts will have to happen, at least until we understand what is the determining or deciding factor of these changes.

Here is an example of a small shift that could happen to accommodate us...

My son is different than me but still displays most of the symptoms of AS. Just the simple act of watching him endure a public school education has been torture for me. Here I see a brilliant inquisitive spark who loves learning, thinking, daydreaming crushed into a system that causes him depression, self loathing, and the further he retracts into himself, the harder it is going to be for him to rebound and be functional later.

But it is 'the law'. I am not allowed to pursue an alternative (I will explain this in a second). So the reality is not about the individual, it is about the crushing conforming weight of the law (the old adage 'if you want to make an omelet, you got to break a few eggs). In this way we are 'fed' back into the system [or equation] that produced us, for the supposed 'benefit' of all (except, of course, my son). Now, had there been an alternative that didn't 'eat him alive' society itself might have benefited in a much greater way, because he would have been brilliant, sensitive and inquisitive, but primed to solve problems, to help, to achieve for humanity, not for the system.

How many years do humans have that he can waste on rebuilding ourselves after the system finished 'eating us alive'? We have all these people who are like thoroughbreds, but we beat them down, humiliate them, hobble them, shove them in the starting gate and expect them to 'run their best race' all in service of the system or equation, but never in service of humanity.

So, alternative education, right? I have had some pretty questionable experiences with 'alternative' education. My brother was dyslexic but one of the most creative and intelligent people I ever met, he could have been a true gift to the world, as he was far smarter and more creative than I will ever be. I am younger than him so when his learning difference was discovered, it took all my parents time to deal with him and I flew under the radar (partially because I was a girl and partially because, at the time, no one had any idea why I was different).

Anyway, he was my Hero, I loved and looked up to him. We had our own language and before he began kindergarten he taught me how to read and write. Then I watched while he was 'ground into nothing' by the system. My parents really tried but they just couldn't relate to him or what he needed...for example, when the Principle at the elementary school found out that my parents were religious, he told them that 'They didn't spank my brother enough, that he was 'acting out' because they were not able to maintain discipline'. So they did. They disciplined him every night, for something that was hardwired into his brain (it was sickening). Watching the world's 'cure' was pretty difficult because I saw them complicity destroying their own son. That was first grade...it went downhill from there.

So I wanted alternatives for my son...but couldn't find any that would full fill what I thought he needed and was afraid of putting him through the things my brother suffered. I protected him as much as I could, sent him to public school (where he has suffered) but try like hell to keep him treading water, long enough to get out...I am hoping it works out, but again I am forced to watch while 'the system' and the other children chew through another beautiful, thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive being. The whole time, my brain is screaming at me, 'It shouldn't be like this'.

He deserves better.

But what is better? Well the best the public school would do for us is tell us that he is auditory sensitive, disruptive and highly gifted. But the would officially 'diagnose' him in any other way because to 'diagnose' someone in the public school systems means that the school must pick up the tab for a special education (the legal battle my parents won against the public school system turned around and bit my son in the butt because it only functioned long enough for public school to figure out how to avoid serving the children inside it). I think they ended up decided that $60 a year in extra funding materials for classroom enrichment was good enough to 'help my son overcome any difficulties'.

But this is one tiny issue in a much larger problem. What would the world be like, what changes or perturbations would occur as the result of our children not being 'ground into nothing', but left to pursue their agenda without interference...I feel like we are the first real generation emerging battered and bruised, will we decide to protect the next? Can we give them what we weren't given?

So...what is 'better' to you guys? What do you see? What do we need? Who are we? Who would we like to be? What do we expect?

The idea of living in an AS society is both tantalizing, like a wonderful dream, and frightening...frightening because I don't have any answers, and so far 'under the radar' has worked for me, although the loneliness is Terrible... Frightening because I don't look forward to the moment when the system realizes that it was back loaded and potentially hijacked, not because of malicious intent, but because we 'exist'. Frightening because we might make terrible mistakes, like a bunch of misfit toys, incapable of coming together as a cohesive whole. Frightening because without the system, would there be anything at all?

Like I said already, time isn't going to wait for us and we either begin to think it through now or potentially suffer the consequences of a break down in the system later.

Or we become 'cured' through science...although those words are like acid in my mouth, like being lobotomized...and fed back into the system, before we ever realized who we were. I am not so prone to self hate that I am willing to give up 'myself' or 'you', who seem precious to me, before I even know or understand what we represent, who we are or who we could be.

I too am a MWF in her forties with AS and a son with AS (and other assorted alphabet soup labels). I too flew 'under the radar' in school. My grades were good, my behavior acceptable. I had learned to submerge my temper/frustration/etc with control that would have made Mr Spock proud. Engineering school was the first time I truly felt among my 'own' kind.

My son has had major run ins with public school and luckily where we are, we have an alternative (special) school district, funded by the taxpayers that has Autism groupings. It took a 2 hour meeting between my husband and myself, his old school, the new school, and the special school and our refusal to allow them to send him to a school where we knew he would be expelled within 2 weeks to get him into the special school. It was all about the money that follows him to the attending school. He has been there 2.5 years and it has made a world of difference. Inclusion is great where and when it works but my son needed more. I know that we are very lucky to have that school available to us. However, the next challenge is high school and where he will go, a regular public school or a high school within the special district.

I understand thinking about an AS society, but I do not think that AS people are essentially 'better' or 'more moral' than NT people so there would be similar problems to the ones that we experience now. Hopefully we would be more tolerant of those different in terms of empathy, color, sexual preference. But what about intelligence? Would we be any more tolerant of those less intelligent? What about those 'drama queens/kings' those whose emotions are free flowing, so different than most AS people?

Separate but equal just doesn't work. Period.

mjm

And I must say, it's starting to sound a little like some sort of cult...

May sound like a cult but makes more sense than these constricting barbs that the human race decided to never get rid of, I myself would rather shred these terrible things. I myself suffered too long under this leash, got the scars and stories to prove.

In short when some local decide to light my left arm on fire and is set off with a slap on the wrist compared to I was in a baited conversation and I was expelled there is something wrong!

To respond, I will put your statement in the context of U.S. history. Segregation was an unjustified kind of separation that was almost unanimously unasked for by the discriminees. And why would they? There is no reason that African Americans population would be any less dominated by neurotypicals (that's the word that people keep abbreviating with "nts," Meatpoet), so any neurological differences between blacks and whites would have been created only by nurture, not nature. Likewise, since, bigotry is learned, not hard-wired, neurotypicals of different races always had the potential to live together without racial tension. It clearly follows that, over time, the benefit or want for segregation will diminish into nothingness.

We are victims of a different case. As far as discrimination in history against the neurologically diverse goes, it would unwaveringly be against those for whom the labels "mad" or "crazy" would, behavioristically, come easily to. Generally, this does not include us, as we have been told that the real problem with us is that we need to suck it up and take life (see Michael Savage, I kid you not). Since the birth of autism in the 20th century as a diagnosis, efforts have only increased to somehow mesh us into the rest of society without incident. Therapy that we might glean neurotypical social skills, paras to follow children around, IEPs so that they can attend normal classes, searching for a "cure"... integration has largely been the approach used thus far in dealing with autism.



Not to get on your case , but I'd like to keep responding to your points for the sake of discussion.

Aspies can connect with each other significantly better than we can NTs. It's that simple. This is why I am in favor of the aforementioned society; because the struggle to work together with others would not exist, as everyone could understand each other. There is not a single aspie that I know who I am not good friends with.

I once volunteered during the summer at a center for mentally disabled persons of all ages. I can only speak based on my own experiences, but I appreciated and was able to get along with even the most severely autistic people there. This is not because I am a people person, because I'm not. No matter what characteristics aspies around us might have, we will always united by a common way of thinking.



It would be fallacious to confuse any act of unity with the forming of a cult. Are citizens of a Chinatown members of a cult? Are the Amish a cult? Are nudist colonies a cult? No, yet all of these people, in order to form their physical communities (which they would invariably declare a good idea, since they are in them), had to go through the exact same process that we are discussing.

Last edited by introspective on 31 Dec 2009, 1:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

O.K., my NT roommate has just pointed out two major potential problems in this idea:

-We would be WAY too vulnerable for a particularly manipulative NT to get in and basically take over, take advantage of us, twist our strengths as a group to their own ends.

-If we're all as 'in tune' with each other as a few, especially the OP, seem to have said so far - and I must admit, I myself have yet to meet an AS person I don't feel in tune with - we'd go off like a nuclear reactor if one of us had a meltdown! Think flow-on effect...

Not to mention, Aspies come from so many different cultures, countries and backgrounds -how could we ever decide whose culture to base our society on? You know - issues like crime & punishment, road rules, economy, language even?

O.K., so last night, I was thinking about this completely analytically, and I was skeptical. But I have a tendency to jump from one extreme to the other in terms of how I look at an idea, and today, the emotional side of me has been thinking it over, and is now saying...woo! Yeah! Bring it on!

Which side should I go with?

Maybe for now, I'll just keep an eye on it and see how things turn out...

If you get more people wanting to support the idea, I'd suggest a mailing list, so we can all communicate separately by e-mail and try and organize something...if it goes that far...

I am still kind of scared of you guys...

A cult? Yikes, that is exactly the opposite of what I was intending to convey! I was hoping for more of a cooperative council that anyone with AS could join or leave at will or on subject of interest. Who could know us better than us? Now I am going to have to spend some time thinking about this...and considering the dangers involved.

I have never met another AS person (that I know of)...outside of my son...I was even sure if anything would come of any attempt at community...but I know how alone I have always felt and I thought it would be better if we were cooperatively vested in our own needs and future.

Aietra
"-If we're all as 'in tune' with each other as a few, especially the OP, seem to have said so far - and I must admit, I myself have yet to meet an AS person I don't feel in tune with - we'd go off like a nuclear reactor if one of us had a meltdown! Think flow-on effect..."

This would be really strange. My son and I communicate, much of the time non-verbally, but we have never expirienced that problem...I would love to know if cascades were a possibility with enough of us in one place...

Does anyone know if there is already a gathering (seems counter intuitive given how I feel about large loud crowds) that I can go too? Some kind of AS group that meets where I can meet another AS person, I mean actually see/meet another aspie? Maybe I could start there...

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I am really not in the mood to read this babble, but why are you using the term AS instead of autistic?