Can we drop the D?

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One side of the discussion itemizes, breaks everything down, into finite pieces. You are observant, have a firm grasp of reality, remember and never forget it. Structure and form. These are like nouns. Proper names, descriptors, persons, and places. Trivia.

The other side of the discussion is pure association. Continual movement. Busy for the sake of busy. It is the verb.

In my way of thinking, AS people think in nouns. NT people think in verbs. Neither of these forms a complete sentence. NT's have a different set of shortcomings.

You're speaking as a male.
You don't speak for me.
And no, Neptune's not even close.

Well, that would be lovely.

That's cool. We can disagree.

It's an interesting question; reminds me of "if a tree falls in the forest..."

I can not speak for others but I do not believe that society is persecuting Autistics. I do believe if you are a very small minority for whatever reason be it skin color, impairments and so on you are at a considerable disadvantage and life is often going to suck. Most people will ignore you, misunderstand you, and think what you do is wrong and usually a combination of the 3. With Autism this reality is compounded by the fact that differences/impairments are in the realm of social presentation most valued by most people. I do believe many elements of Autism are disadvantges not defects but it varies with each individual.

The question is how to approach this bad, complicated and frustration situation.
We can be like the Aspie Supremicists, think of ourselves as having similarities to Einstein. Do that and we will be laughed at and ignored and give people reason to find defects to disprove our "superiority" and at the same time give reason for people to descriminate against us because not only are "we" defective but since we claim superiority we deserve scorn not accomodations.

We can say we are born broken and are defined by our defects. That means all efforts must be made to cure autism and until that time fix as much as possible. This is a continuation of the mainstream narrative and the attempted solutions society has been trying for the last 70 years. Finding a cure has been a b***h because Autism with its hundreds genes combined with envirmental factors, combined with wide variation in presentation has made curing Autism very very complicated. Fixing us or making as NT as possible had led to mixed results and caused issues such as burnout, PTSD, and depression. You recommended facing reality to the point of suicide ideation if need be. Suicide is the leading cause of early death amoung autistics without intellectual impairments and the suicide rate among diagnosed adult aspies is not only way higher then the general population but significantly higher then with other people with disabilities. This is why the idea of that there is this massive Neurodiversity belief is BS. I only wrote the first paragraph because the belief of massive amount of ND autistics in denail is so widespread and perception effects reality. Nobody is cured or fixed or improved if they are dead, the last thing we need is more suicide ideation or continuing the current course of bieng defined as a set of impairments.

The other course is complicated and can go against the Autistic black and white thinking inherent in the first two approaches. It is to what I said for Autism the difficulties are as much about if not more about disadvantage the disability/impairment again fully reconizing this is going to vary greatly amoung individuals. People if they do not feel horrible about themselves have a better chance of treatments working for them. But society has to have a better understanding also in order to provide better treatmeants and to get the benifits of whatever talents there are. There are many who believe that this will never happen and this is understable because of the reasons given above. History says otherwise. This is no guarantee, society may never change, and it is likely the change will not be as dramatic as has happened for LBGQT. But a slight chanch and a slight change is better then no chanch and no change.

If the anti neurodiversity backlash based on the largely false beliefs ND is based on elitism, supremism, and denial continues to grow the likehood of us continuing on the failed path of the last 70+ years will grow with it.

There are people who would oppose a cure if it were to come out tomorrow, I would allow people to choose if they wanted to, allow children the choice as well. Neurodiversity may not be slowing down progress but the less moderate wings are certainly preventing it from speeding up. True compassion for autistic people can only come if people acknowledge we don't have it as good as them, and that it's not just because they don't accommodate us. Alzheimers and cancer are also tough to crack with numerous enviromental factors and hundreds of genes too, but that won't stop people from rallying behind putting in research into treating them someday. People with autism on this forum keep having children, they could adopt but they don't. Alzheimers is a great threat in the coming decades as people live longer, should we stop trying to put in research despite little progress being made so far, (same with cancer)? A compassionate rational medical view of autism is better than creating division among us with any identity ideology.

I would support a truly voluntary cure. I just do not think if a cure is found it will be truly voluntary. With the autism "epidemic" panic it would not surprise me if the cure, like vaccines is mandated but what I would expect is significant peer and finiancial not legal pressure for individuals take the cure and parents to give thier kids the cure such as insurence companies either not writing policies, or tripling the rates for people who refuse, employers not hiring people who refuse. People will look at the refusal to take a cure not as a rational choice but as a sign of mental illness or charactor flaw. Supports and treatments will dry up as the attitude will be why spend money on treatments for a disease that has been cured, why should we help people who do not want it?. Compassion will radically decrease in a post cure world.

Cancer is cured in a significant number of people, but also treatments that help significantly with the symptoms are available even in terminal cases. In any case we do not say to cancer patients your treatment is a much lower priority then curing it someday as is the case with autism. For visual impairments most of effort has been on treatments (glasses). Hearing impairments are an interesting case in that similar to autism there is a group of people who do refuse treatments. There does not seem to be a backlash against them. They are not accused of bieng in denial etc. Implant wearers for the most part do not seem to believe the people who refuse treatments are hurting them by deligitimizing thier difficulties. For most other conditions there doesn't not seem to be accusations of elitism and supremacism against advocates many of whom presumably have more "mild" versions of the condition. This is probably because the other conditions are mostly physical and visible. With mental conditions there is still the stigmas of weakness and moral failure which is why I do not think an Autism cure will be truly voluntary.

It is false that ND advocates do not want research. They have a different view then the mainstream about research priorities.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 19 Sep 2016, 7:39 am, edited 5 times in total.

Then again: if one is "cured" of autism, what does the person "pick up," instead?

Maybe some other psychological condition?

Because, to me, "curing" autism totally is akin to somebody getting a lobotomy.

I believe, more, in the mitigation or amelioration of troublesome symptoms.

A full-blown "cure," I believe could have consequence which can't be anticipated.

No, older folks who don't need accommodation that dislike the medical diagnosis should understand that there are people that do need real assistance more than they need their self esteem reassured to feel apart of 'the club of Autism'. If you don't need accommodation and don't have any impairment then I question your self-identification, be happy you are so mild.

You cannot cure a disorder.

A "disorder" by literal definition is something that falls outside the perceptive boundaries of an experienced sense of normality.

Go back 500-odd years & being a scientist was a disorder.
Go back 200-odd years & having black skin was a disorder.
Go back 100-odd years & being a woman was a disorder.
Go back 50-odd years & being a homosexual was a disorder.

Thus disorder will always exist within the minds of those who choose to deem what is different to them a disorder.

Let's assume it happens, I will have all my memories and will still be me, I will start doing things the way an NT would, I would go and have a nice day, watch a movie and be able to absorb it like I can't now. My IQ and overall intelligence would go up since performance and executive function would not be an issue. I would be able to read other people and empathize, forming deep emotional bonds I can't do right now....I would hang out with friends and get pleasure from social interaction (chemical would be released that aren't now). etc. Maybe the biggest difference is that I don't feel comfortable with how I am now. Some autistic people are comfortable being autistic, but I feel like a transgendered person in a way since I have aspired to do non-autistic things and lead a different kind of life.

If it does that to you....then cool.

But it could also have consequences which we can't anticipate.

Because, by "curing autism," you are getting to the "heart/essence" of a person.

Why not just get rid of the bad symptoms?

If we are talking about an individual with all the strengths of an autistic person and neurotypical and none of the weaknesses, some sort of daywalker, then we are talking about something else.

If that's the result, then that's cool.

It's silly to even have this discussion hypothetically, there can't be a cure for autism anymore than there can be a cure for an amputated leg as the damage has already been done. You can only treat and accommodate, unless you can 'cure' autism and have a time machine to relive your life without it then you will always be autistic. I don't worry to much about 'a cure' effecting me because the cure they are looking for would most likely be if/when scientists can screen the genetic markers for autism prenatally so they can be aborted en masse. It's eugenics! The cure is never being born!

Autism is believed to be some combination of genetics and the environment.
The rapidly improving CRISPER-CAS9 technology can edit multiple genes at a time.
Our brains rewire constantly. The most rapid and important brian wiring occurs very early in life
Behavoir modification is believed to rewire brains
Scientests are starting to identify autism in infants. A current priority is diagnosing autism as young as possible.

If you identify an infant as autistic concievably through behavoir modification Autism can be intercepted or deflected before your genetic predisposition makes you present as autistic which is often noticable in the toddler years.

People arguing that a cure can never happen but is an existential threat is bizarre
Curing adults right now looks impossible, but I have seen so many things thought to be impossible happen (see Trump)

If Autism at a future date via eugenics or early behavior modification or something not even on the radar at the moment is in the process of bieng eliminated or greatly reduced priorities for supports treatments will go down.

From what I see the anti ND people for the most part define the ND movement by how a few self deluded radicals on Tumbler view autism. This to me is a victory for the supremicists and seperatists and the paranoid in that they are driving the debate. People should actualy read what most ND people, people who fear a cure and do think society's impairment model has problems actually have to say about research, treatments, and the difficulties and deficits of autism.

We may not be able to "cure" adults the same way as children, but we can sort of "plaster" the brain. Editing a gene in adulthood can still change behavior and physical structure of a brain. The brain is closer to a liver than it is to a leg (even a missing leg can someday be replaced with a bionic leg or perhaps we can artificially grow one in a vat. Dunno, organs are much easier in some ways ironically than muscle and bone to deal with). Plus there is a technology also being developed to reintroduce critical brain periods via drugs, it has had success with mice. On top of that there is also another technology to convert certain cells into new neurons. Someday we will begin to question the definition of a self, our free will, and much more considering so much of who we are can be tweaked. Or it turns out there is something that remains unaffected despite all the tampering. I am interested in the Buddhist concept of anatman vs the traditional view of atman. (Non-self vs immortal self). Dunno, but that is a question for philosophers. Ideally with these technologies we can create humans who have all the strengths of neurotypicals, autistic, and whatever and none of the weaknesses. Let's also eradicate any genetic predisposition to disease too! Make all of our children also 10x stronger and faster than normal and able to live to be 150! Let's hope North Korea doesn't do something with this tech!

Edit: Okay I've been looking into neurodiversity a bit more and it seems to be very factioned now, I noticed this before but did not see the significance. There are huge differences in views and beliefs among different groups over different concept such as "is" and "ought" or "descriptive" and "prescriptive". But this makes it less of a movement and more of a group of ideologies. In fact it may not be worth mentioning the word since it has so many definitions it practically is meaningless in certain cases.