If you stamp out autism in the population, you could lose a lot of great engineers, but given that the greedy sons-of-rich-b*tches tend to outsource tech jobs anyways, I guess they couldn't care how many future engineers exist in America. Furthermore, having a population of citizens who are naturally less susceptible to their lucrative memes would also work against them.
But I think the misunderstandings and the high frequency and/or publicity of low-functioning autism are a much more likely proximate cause of the desire to cure the condition than a conspiracy to rid the country of nonconformists so that the corporations can sell stuff. Sentiments against nonconformity have deeper roots than making sales.
Maybe more normal people should read the kind of stuff about autism that I've read...the chapter about it in Ratey and Johnson's Shadow Syndromes, Temple Grandin's Thinking In Pictures and Animals In Translation, the story of Victor the wild child (who enjoyed the solitary life and the beauty of nature), the internet posts of you folks and other autistic spectrum people...I've read so much good stuff about autism that I tend to romanticize it and even envy it. I suppose this other extreme could have its own faults if it became the norm, perhaps working against the promotion of therapeutic programs for those who really need them (IMO, support for the sensory issues and education in how to deal with normal people and basic self-preservation would probably be best). But if people could operate from a reasonable middle...well, that would be quite a miracle, as the middle ground can be so fleeting, like a pendulum that swings at its most rapidly past its stable point where the forces are balanced.
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Right planet, wrong country: possibly PLI as a child, Dxed ADD as a teen, naturalized citizen of neurotypicality as an adult
04 Dec 2005, 5:48 pm
