Asperger's/autism, civilization, primitivism...suspicions

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(LONG, and possibly with imperfect flow. Read only if you have a good amount of time to work with)

While chasing down pages about how, if humans were supposed to have evolved as herbivores/frugivores, we were meant to get B12 (I'm personally suspecting this plus a teense of scavenging/pescivorism--probably a shore shrimp or two. I understand that just a little B12 lasts a very long time...), I managed to run into one page (which I'd rather not remind myself of, thank you, because of what I'm about to mention in this sentence) that was particularly scathing about non-frugivores. Comments about how we were never supposed to leave our niche (even if she was thinking more in terms of general tropical forest, and not specifically the near-water parts), that our ability to exceed our instincts was baleful, etc. On one page, though, I noticed something curious about opioids.

For those of you wondering, opioids naturally occur in milk and various organs (e.g. the liver) in small amounts. Human milk included--the opioids there help becalm the child. There's a belief among some that omnivore humans literally become addicted to animal products on account of the opioids. Back to the page, there was a small section linking to pages about opioids. One claimed a connection between opioids and autism. Another (whose link was non-functional) apparently suggested that opioids had a role in the appearance of civilization.

Now, I know I've suspected that civilization is an artefact of mild autism, but I kept thinking this was just pride (as in the Cardinal Vice superbia) on my part. Since the above frugivore page had the leanings of primitivism that I mentioned, I decided to poke around a little on primitivism. Somehow, I did the search for primitivism and entropy. And...well...

http://www.primitivism.com/

What really caught my attention was the essay about language. In short, human woes may actually stem from having a mindset that only looks at the world through symbols/terms/etc.--that is, depends to some degree on abstraction. Originally, humans understood everything directly. I skimmed several parts from the essay, but I'd extrapolate, from this and the primitivist view that proper action and thought are strictly day-to-day, and the claim that time as a distinct, independent entity is illusory, that originally, humans had no concept of the far future. They were strictly instinctive/emotional. The concept of making an effort not just to envision the future, but also to recall the past beyond a vague nebula, would have been utterly alien.

(The claim that voluntary, self-chosen language probably originated as a means of deceit didn't exactly go well with me, by the way...Someone is taking the "lovers need no words" concept far too literally)

So, if humans started out as bound-in-diamond-instinct tropical frugivores, how did they ever range so far, in geography, diet, and thought alike? I then recalled something else from the B12 hunt--a message board where someone mentioned that our surviving the Ice Age by partaking of animal flesh didn't automatically mean that we should stay that way.

Let's see...if we'd still been bound in instinct and naught else by the time the Ice Age came calling, we likely would have become extinct (depending on how close to the tropics we actually were). The above message, meanwhile, suggests that omnivore behavior likely started as an emergency measure--something I don't think instinct knows much about, at least to that magnitude of divergence. In fact, Ice Age survival would have called for constant omnivorism, REALLY beyond any instinct other than self-preservation. The opioids in flesh might have helped in this. While the flesh gave the bodies something to work with, the opioids may have helped becalm the stress from being stuck in an environment vastly different from the one evolution had forged. ({sigh} I hope the sharp-line biocentrists aren't claiming that the only proper thing to do in the face of the Ice Age was to obey nature's decree in the form of unmoving instinct and LET ourselves go extinct...)

Now, I have to admit that thinking more in terms of abstraction than the sensual/concrete sounds like paradigm autism to me (how abstract are emotions, anyway? The hormones behind them aren't exactly abstract...). Looking at the opioid/autism connection claim, I suspect that, by genetic mutation and/or opioid adsorption, there had already been a trace of autism in humanity by the time the Ice Age began. Not enough to mark one as such outright in this day and age, but enough to let one see beyond instinct's veil. Once the Ice Age was in full force, it would have been those who could resist instinct's unthinking calls enough to consider eating other animals who survived. Nor is toolcraft a thing of instinct. Instinct only understands what currently is. Toolcraft (as distinct from using stones or sticks as is) needs a bit of abstraction. Humans as omnivores? Considering our lack of speed or talons, we'd DEFINITELY need modified tools. I think Temple Grandin herself once said that the first crafter of stone arroheads and spearheads would not have been a perfect match with most of the crowd.

So, I have a tenuous suspicion that abstraction was what let humanity survive the Ice Age. And if the earliest humans were strictly non-abstract, then perhaps it could be argued that virtually all humans today are, strictly speaking, at least very slightly autistic.

So this brings us to civilization. I have no way to check the opioid/civilization connection claim without the article, but that next to the opioid/autistic bit made me wonder anew if there were a causal connection between civilization and autism. The foundational aspects of civilization--agriculture and animal husbandry (even if only to get steeds and draft animals)--have as their purpose dependability. In the wild, changing winds/rainfall/etc. can drastically reduce the chance of survival. With domestication, you have a much better chance of getting food when you expect it. At the specific time you expect it (q.v. harvest season).

Isn't one of our hallmarks supposed to be an inborn desire for things occuring regularly, without anomaly? That's not a certainty with the wild (certainly not with regard to leopards and crocodiles thinking your child could make a good meal! How predictable is that supposed to be?!). Once the local environs have been set to a schedule, though...

This brings me back to primitivism. One of the things that is yearned for by its advocates is a return to total or near-total wildness. And yet, I can't see how this would be good for Aspergerites' psyches. Entering into pure conjecture and suspicion, I think our psyches look for a schedule stretching out into long periods of time. Several years, say. I'm not sure how a strictly wild, non-abstracted existence is going to see beyond one year (i.e. one cycle of seasons). A wild existence is supposed to have as one of its boons spontaneity. I don't remember that and autism getting along that well...

I know many primitivists think civilization materialized as a thing of powerlust, a desire to dominate. I think it more likely (threat of superbia, again) that mild autistics, not needing to be among everyone else all the time, came up with farming in lieu of gathering bands on their own, and normatives, noticing the better survival rate, decided to copy them (obeying the survival instinct). The desire for predictability is NOT the same as the desire to dominate, for the latter includes a wish to subsume, to make everything your mirror. Predictability doesn't need those.

I suppose my concern, ultimately, is whether primitivists are even considering the role mild autism might have played in the formation of civilization (regardless of whether you agree with my little fantasy or not)--that it might have been more of a fount than powerlust. How are autistics even supposed to thrive in a primitivist world?

{begins wondering how much sense the above made}

I wonder how prevalent autism was in early societies - my guess is extremely rare. Anomolies in nature that spur change do not occur only due to autism, but by many things - eating plants for example. Some plants have psychoactive qualities and inspire incredibley bizarre visions that likely in some cases, over enough time, reveal new and more workable systems such as civilization from primitivism. What we ate then (and now) determined(s) more out perception of things than anything else I can imagine. We consume it - we become it - our ability to perceive the abstract has to be closely tied to diversity in diet. Out of that diversity comes autism and a wide range of diversions from the norm that are staples of evolution.

I also suspect that classic aspie/hi-functioning autism could account for the major first steps in the tragic (! to go all primitivist about it !)construction of civilisation, but triggered by glutens effect on the brain instead. Which would put the first "exposures" no earlier than around 12,000 BC because gluten simply didn't exist before then.
Gluten was the result of a mutation in grass plants at the end of the last big ice-age, and to begin with appeared only in the Fertile Crescent ,in the Middle East where it was almost immediately (!!in evolutionary terms) followed by the first signs of sedentary agriculture and animal husbandry, houses went from round to rectangular, and there are the first representations of entirely abstract deities.
And pure abstract writing ( based on speech sounds rather than any ref to the object ) was invented in wheat eating areas, whereas in rice and corn eating ( both non-glutenous) countries writing was/is pictogrammic. (Less abstract.)

There is no particular reason to think that this "revolution" was a positive one!! ! Which doesn't mean I loathe modern society, just that life might have been just as tolerable for humans if hadn't gone technological.

I too think that it quite possibly evolved as the first aspies, in " difficulty", and alarmingly or impressively ( to the others, non-gluten sensitive, in their group) questioning and theorising , tried to regulate their environments and make them more consistent and reliable and rigid ! !! More efficient and more perfectly dependable.
Which kind of enterprise can ,and often does, feel like oppression before long ! !! !

Your point about hunter-gatherer lifestyles being a challenge to asd's is a moot one. Possibly it is the very tendency towards more and more movement, mobility, fluidity, etc in modern society which is exposing us in all our weaknesses ( IF it is not a real increase in incidence as a result of environmental factors acting on a fragile group of genes) ... more than at any time in history ,.... apart from the mass exodes at certain periods, which might explain why the old testament looks like the frantically obsessive and compulsive scribblings of an aspie under stress!! The lists of allowed foods, the lists of geneologies, the lists of other rules and regulations minutely categorised etc,the many repetitions , and the lamentations about injustices in life ! ! the pervasive sense of not being understood , of being the odd one out.

What if the first ever wrongplanet style support group was the Jewish religion ! !!? ??! ! Wow.

( NB: Wish to state that this is not intended in any way as a derogatory statement ; that I do not want to cause offence with this idea, that is intended in the most friendly and respectful spirit , while looking at the phenomenon of the Old Testament and ancient Exodes in the context of aspergers and asd. )

Last edited by ouinon on 06 Oct 2007, 4:05 pm, edited 8 times in total.

WOW WOW WOW

that is a thought to take away with me to think about.

A new thought , a new thought ................... ! !

I love it when that happens.

Anthropology always intrigued me and what intrigued me the most is how little humans today understand humans of the past. I think if one grows up in nature they understand and know the systems of nature. It's highly predictable to them. They know when the rains comes, where the animals are grazing and what types of food to eat and avoid. Necessity is the mother of invention. I love that phrase. If our Earth didn't change we humans probably wouldn't have either.

The effects of milk products has always fasinated me. I am from the cheese state so I have seen how cheese affects the mind. It's like a small high. You feel warm and comfortable and at the same time like sugar it makes crappy food taste good. It can be argued i think that it could of served as a necessary fat supplement if other fats weren't available when humans decided to become animal lactose friendly. I have read many a book (grapes of wraith comes to mind) in which women would let adults drink the milk from their breasts to prevent starvation. The brain craves fat in order to function so it seems to me it wouldn't be too picky of the source.

I think the problem with language is that it generalizes. Humans try to fix this problem by sound and nonverbal gestures and such but it's really just a band aid to the larger problem. I think there are limits in understanding others no matter how articulate a humanbeing can be You just can never know what goes on inside a person's head because half the time that person is using instinct and is not even conscious of what is going on inside their head. Communication to me is an arduous process in which first I must concentrate on what iam thinking and then relaying that information by finding words in my brain to express what Iam saying. The system itself is really quite primitive which is probably why mind reading is such a big sci fi cliche.

Then again i always fall in the habit of thinking people are thinking what I am thinking. Often times i have the problem where I wouldn't say anything at all such as when opening a door because i wrongly assumed i conveyed some message to the other person. Mind reading if it was real would really help me.

So at the end of the last ice age , exposed to new plants and to new landscapes, and losing old land under the melt waters, must have been a time of major uncertainty and readjustment for people used to understanding the laws of their universe. Things would have changed from day to day , and increasingly with each year, and if one of the new plants had an opiate like effect of increased abstract thought/alienation/detachment on at least part of the population , ( those sensitive to the unprecedently large molecule which is gluten,) with the associated increased sensitivity to chaos/disorder/uncertainty ,this might have provoked the "newly created " aspies to try and make sense of their world in completely new ways.

I think we already have the first aspies account of their experience in ancient NT society.
The Old Testament.
They ate something they shouldn't have , and became "aware" of ( hungry for the securities of) right and wrong, and were excluded from the garden of eden!
From peaceful co-existence with man and beast and nature they went to feeling outcast, misunderstood, and unjustly treated by the illogicalities of figures in authority.

I'm beginning to think that it's no accident that so many aspies are afraid of genocide.
And wonder whether so many jews were apparently immobilised, and paralysed , so extraordinarily passive and still , in the loss of all their safe routines of what to eat and when, and when to have sex and how, and what to eat with what and when, and where to wear what, all their "markers" lost, and so almost mysteriously unable to fight back , because their group originally ( and perhaps still partly) was aspie/autie based.
I am seriously thinking ,since last night, with astonishment and awe ,and overwhelming impressions of light dawning , that perhaps the jewish people were , at least for a while ( several thousand years ? or more ?!), a group founded on the discovery by several people that they had similar,( genetically determined , but they wouldn't have had that language for it of course !), ASD reactions to gluten, ( eaten either by themselves in childhood or by their mother while they were in the womb ,) ,who stuck together.
They were the first aspergers and autistic spectrum people on the planet in any numbers. So many of the classic descriptions of "jewishness" fit. From brilliance and feelings of "superiority", to rigidity and peculiarly elaborate rituals for daily life.
The Old Testament is perhaps the "Notes, minutes , regulations and speeches, with personal diary entries and sporadic efforts at art" of the first aspergers/autistics organisation/collective.
Who else would have written something like that, with its lists and rules and laborious family trees and repetitions and all pervasive feeling of being excluded and miserable , but "chosen", superior in some way as so many aspies on here seem to feel ! !? ?! !

Again I mean no disrespect, being aspergers myself , this feels more like finding possible roots of incredible magnitude .
( Have to laugh at the NT world reading old aspergers diaries and speeches and OCD lists with such attention all this time!! !! !! !! )

Last edited by ouinon on 06 Oct 2007, 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thinking about it I am also struck by the possiblity that it is the MOTHER's eating gluten during pregnancy ( maybe only if she herself is in some way sensitive to it ) which provokes ASD in a child.
Are there any studies relating to this?

What a buzz, to be able to see our ASD experience of the world expressed in one of the most ancient books that exist ,( of course it would be ASDs to write the first records and rules!! !!) .
To be able to look at how another group dealt with their ASD way way back, when because genetics had not been discovered they had to find another explanation of their differences, and they expressed this as " being Gods chosen people"!
And wondered from place to place complaining!! !!

I agree that nature during settled times might not put too much pressure on ASDs sufficiently protected by skilful and experienced nomadic peoples, but there is always the unforeseen, always the unexpected snowfall or drought, or migration of prey, or infection and ruin of fruit/seeds at an accustomed seasonal gathering place.

Wheat may have been forbidden to them, probably as soon as its effects on children of women who ate it was discovered , but gluten is addictive, the trip is seductive, the longer term side-effects might not have seemed sufficiently offputting.
Once made highly vulnerable to change and uncertainty I am sure that the first aspies would have used their creative energy , their capacity for imagining alternate realities , to look for ways of introducing stability. But ,( like magic is reputed to do,in some stories) if you use some in one place something changes somewhere else, and things change faster and faster. The more the aspies invented ways to avoid or minimise disorder and illogic around them the more things changed.

What a nightmare.

Last edited by ouinon on 06 Oct 2007, 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

About primitivism , I think that I would love to live that life , if it was well run ............ ! I love sitting in a forest , so long as it's not too far from safety , or I am an invincible creature,(! ! !) and watching the thousand shapes of leaves and stems and flowers and branches, and the ants walking around in the tiny world , and the insects coming and going from flower to flower. Hearing only insect noise, and the wind , and the birds. I love looking at hillslopes across a valley, and feeling safely far away from them, as I feel safely on a different scale from the ants. Eating sweet ripe fruit and nuts, and clear spring water!!
But at the worst times even a field is too 3D and present in its immense complexity, and I'd rather sit in a white walled cell for a while. Or fall asleep in a place I know I won't be interrupted. And eco-villages don't seem like those sort of places.

(Has anyone seen the film " Safe" by Todd Haynes ( i think) starring Julianne Moore? She ends up in a womb-shaped igloo like place ( set apart from the other chalets in the community), saying repeatedly to her reflection in the one tiny porthole like window " I love you" because the others say she just has to learn to love herself.)

I think ASDs are virtually doomed to wander the face of the earth finding fault with everywhere they go, or asking so many questions about the way things are run that they're thrown out.

Maybe we do need to limit our consumption of wheat!! And give up on the thrill of uncontrolled abstraction.

Last edited by ouinon on 06 Oct 2007, 3:03 pm, edited 3 times in total.

It would be great if someone else had something else to say about the origins of civilisation and ASD's possible roles in its emergence, and ASDers potential for any simpler pre-tech soc life.
And whether language would always be an insurmountable problem. I don't think so ; I think it's ASDers use of it which is the problem. ( the word as god )

An unexpectedly amusing angle to the thought that ASD'ers , having been disordered by glutens effect on their genes while in the uterus, then introduced ways to regulate life and exclude disorder , is that as agriculture became more and more successful it was possible to eat more and more wheat!! !
As a result ASDs became more pronounced, more disabling, and even more order and logic was needed to satisfy them.
Rules became more and more complicated.
And still aren't enough.
Now nature seems potentially simpler and safer than civilisation!! !
Hence the fashion for primitivism.

By the way, correct me if I'm wrong , Skyknight, but I get the impression that you believed the primitivists claims that we were more or less frugivore before the ice ages ( are you talking about the last one which lasted up to about 12,-13,000BC, or an earlier one? )
We weren't . Our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees , happily eat meat, even hunt for animals to kill and eat , in organised groups, with some beating the ground to frighten the prey upwards and others above to trap it or startle it into falling to the ground to be killed. They like us also eat insects and small reptiles whenever have opportunity.
Humans ate mussels and other shellfish, by the million , in areas all around the globe irrespective of climate etc.And ate eggs (raw, obviously) long before cave paintings or arrow heads were developed.
And almost certainly ate the meat of the dangerous predators that they had to kill from time to time simply to defend themselves.
Human beings had obviously developed some powers of abstract thinking sometime between 80- 60,ooo BC , because archeologists have discovered remains of burials from that long ago. Humans had begun to think of a human after their death.( Though dogs do that too apparently, I don't suppose they'd go so far as to bury someone!! !)
And language too, tho have no way of knowing when created.

But abstract thinking is not the same as autism.

It is uncontrolled/out of control , unstoppable abstract thinking , with its tendency to follow all arguments to their logical end ( in the hell of the selfish gene, or the hell of indeterminism) which contributes to the terrors/anxieties and paralysis of ASD , because all possibilities are seen, or glimpsed, with all the chaos of infinity.Like a computer presented with two contradictory statements ( in Asimov this makes several very good stories!!) a crash is likely. The sufferer from unlimited abstract thought needs lots of very finite and definite structures in their life in order to feel safe. ( Though they have to believe in them!! Otherwise they're just another set of illogical meaningless absurd constraints to be discarded ! !)

I think primitivism is a future-afraid movement , led by people who wish to remain unconscious of their unavoidable and daily more impending death, who would rather project this utter anhilation/personal destruction onto the world, imagining that it is the world ,and not themselves, which is on a slippery road to ruin and disaster,( which also means that they need not worry so much about dying because they won't be missing much!!), but who in an increasingly desperate search for the life and hope and future which they have denied themselves seek to replace it with unattainable lost paradises of the past.

Just a thought!

PS: Sorry, you made your thread just too rich. I'm still digesting bits!!

Humans are linked by their memories and their ability to teach others what they have learned. Even if we accidently landed on some foriegn planet we would still have the skills and knowledge our ancesters gave us to help us out. Of course natural selection is always brutal during the tough phases of human history.

I think we already have the first aspies account of their experience in ancient NT society.
The Old Testament.

To a certain extent everyone feels misunderstood i dont think that is a n aspie condition it's just a powerless one. Sure I felt bonded with my Jewish professor but I think that was the case because he and I shared the same passions of social science and human justice.

The Old Testament is perhaps the "Notes, minutes , regulations and speeches, with personal diary entries and sporadic efforts at art" of the first aspergers/autistics organisation/collective.
Who else would have written something like that, with its lists and rules and laborious family trees and repetitions and all pervasive feeling of being excluded and miserable , but "chosen", superior in some way as so many aspies on here seem to feel ! !? ?! !


The word patterns and number associations with each letter and word is probably the most aspie trait the OT has in my opinion.

Basically my feelings on the matter are this. A lot of human groups not to mention individuals use their brain differently. I think this fact upsets people. People esp leaders want people to think how they think so they can more easily control them. That's what I think the whole Nazi Germany thing was about: control. From forcing women to become baby factories, to narrowing down what exactly it mean't to be a German. If you don't fit the mold you have the potential to upset the system therefore you must be eliminated. Jewish pple make ideal scapegoats because they are a tight net community of people who prides themselves on intellectual not to mention philosophical pursuits. In short they intimidate people b/c pple are intimidated by what they dont know. It's easy to pick on someone who is so much different then you at least thats what I think an NT thinks when they go on their meglomaniac quests for power.