I now feel that we are "Natural Born `Scholars'"

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My personal philosphy of who we are, and my expression of it, is always evolving as I go along though my philosophical life.

One thing I have been learning, or re-learning, as the case may be, is that we can't Hear and See each other yet, as we communicate here, and it takes time, especially for older aspies like me, to re-learn how to communicate in this written form with my aspie mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, whom I did not even know existed until a few months ago, and not all of whom seemed to have been as privledged in their aspie life as I seem to have been, based on my observations of the wide range of personal self-expression of aspie life experience I've seen here, that for some has been a very painful existence compared to my own.

I grew up until about the middle of fourth grade in a very sheltered environment, right in the same neighborhoods as congress critters, commissioned officers, FBI personnel, secret service,various and sundry other higher-level official government-types, and lower-level personnel who had enough pull or got on the war housing lists quickly enough for themselves and/or and their families.

So I went to school with their kids, walking every school day from our apartments alone or in small groups of brothers and sisters, with crossing guards at the heavier traffic intersections, and you better believe their PTA was heavily dominated by parents with very strong personalities, "with all the right connections," as my daddy used to say, and serious concerns for the general welfare and education of all the children in the neighborhood.

These folks had got some very nice new primary schools indeed when the war ended, as part of the deal, so I went, though I had no idea at that young age, to what was one of the best equipped, top primary schools in the U.S. at that time.

What with the war and it's aftermath, the spread of "the bomb," Stalinism and the newly evolving "cold" war, my environment was very priviledged and protected indeed, and being isolated from knowledge that there was anyone else like me on the planet for at least the half century since I turned teenage, it was always with a certain sense of bewilderment that I slowly discovered the "outside" world, beginning with leaving the "protected" environment of the world of high-level government employees and their families in the middle of the fourth school year, and entering a rural, small American town with a new, but not as elaborate elementary school, and at a lower scholastic level than what I had experienced for the first four and a half years of my education.

After elementary and high school, and an abortive attempt at college, I went into the working world and just carried on, "pressing on regardless," until finally arriving here, exactly a half-century since my 13th birthday.

Being a "scholarly" type since birth, I can recall the parents generation calling me "little professor" or "doctor" from an early age. As I was born about a year before the end of WWII, no one had known of Asperger's usage of the same term until 40 years later. When I went to tech school in my early thirties, my calc professor instintively nicknamed me 'Doctor', as he would greet me in the morning as he walked in through the tech lab, where I worked on my own projects in a free early morning space.

I'm learning and evolving as I go along, my "PhD" isn't written on parchment, and doesn't mean "Piled Higher and Deeper."

I've recently mused, and suddenly felt the realization that our modern useage of the word "Scholar" best describes my strong feeling of what I perceive as our genetic nature.

I just learned also, that on this board, one can only edit posts within the first 9999 minutes since OP, which means I cannot go back and upgrade my older posts for terminology, so you may, if you like, consider my previous useage of the Sanskrit word "brahmin" to be philosophically replaced with what only my own logic and intuition tells me means "Scholar" in modern English.

It is my sincere belief, if you will, that we could well be one of four "normal" basic genetic types that a higher level human civilization would logically require in order to have a balanced social and functional poplulation, and such a balance would tend, even by natural selection, to have a small population of Scholarly types, and a larger popoulation of their symbiotic, non-identical twin, the Warrior type, the aggressive and somewhat less "scholarly" "Alpha"personality.

The need for these two types would be fundamental to the early evolution of man, as they're all that nature would require for hunter-gatherers; the less aggessive merchant and general labor force twins would have to descend from these fundamental hunter-gatherer twins to meet the needs of a more complex, civilized world.

As all these types are of mixed genetic descent from the original "Daughters of Eve", although genetic types tend to run in the same families they are not "pure" DNA strains which accounts for standard statistical variation of children of one type being born in families of other genetic "personalities."

It is my hypothesis, as I have exressed piecemeal here and there on this board as it evolved, that, based on the "7 Daughters of Eve" hypothesis as a beginning, that we may really be those genetic subtypes, the genetic sibings of the aggessive alpha-kid and the quiet bookworm.

For the sake of argument, I submit the following hypothesis, that if the above hypothesis, and my other hypothesis that "autists could be genetically damaged aspies," turns out to be correct, then it could help to bridge the political divide that exists in the real world between those aspies who instinctively have feelings of being "a race apart," which is divisive, although it's their honest expresssion of how they feel at the moment, and parents of autistic children, competing, instead of cooperating, in the same confusing political world to get funding for autistic research.

Now, if my hypothesis is correct, then the austerity of science, what with modern DNA re-search and analysis, will reveal this, and help destroy the superstition that not infrequently divides us both from our fellow "autistic" human beings, and the so called "NT" world that we have that same symbiotic relationship with, and help us to replace it with one of respect, beginning with our own developing self-respect and our evolving abilities to characterize and express our feelings.

So, in conclusion, please allow me to nominate the term "Scholar" to replace the term "Aspie" ...

'leastways, that's how I feel about it, I don't expect everyone else to agree, by any means.

Thanks for listenin'

Your Friendly Neighborhood Kshatriya-Brahmin, sometime bagpipe player, would-be bagpipe maker, Household Handyman, and Homespun "Filosophyr,"

John,

I think that might work for some aspies. For instance, I actually am an academic scholar in the area of new religious movements (sociology of religion). You also appear to be very knowledgeable and inquisitive.

However, my father, also an aspie, is an 88-year-old retired optician. He is one of the least scholarly people I have ever known. When he was coming out of optical school, back in the late 1940s, he met another new optician who had tremendous business skills but no money. My father, on the other hand, had a bit of inherited wealth but no business skills. They went into business together and made a fortune.

Even though my father turned out to be successful in the optical business, he was not remotely close to what I would call a scholar.

That sounds like a good idea.

Tim

That's quite understandable. I would suggest that he might have grown up more scholarly, developing those special gifts he obviously had from your description, even more than he did to work together with a partner and succeed at business, if he, or any of us, were properly identified for the extra-intelligent people we usually are, and educate us to play to our strengths from the getgo.

I certainly had to struggle to get to the level of understanding I generally have now, and school for me, even the best the world had to offer, was not geared toward my strengths, and didn't now how to recognize those and my intelligence and put me into the right levels.

They were bound up by lack of knowledge and buracracy, and no one heard of 'Asperger's back then, neither for your dad nor for mine, both aspies, nor for myself. Mine went into the USMC and later the WMPD, hardly a scholarly life.

"It's the same the whole world over, a dirty rotten shame ..."

Thing is, we all know that we can do almost anything we set our hearts and minds too, even if it isn't playing to all our inherent strengths.

Thanks for responding,

According to his brother, he was always the same as he is now.



Ultimately, my father was diagnosed, if you can call it that, by his primary physician. His physician had never heard of Asperger's until I explained it to him. He then did some research and ended up agreeing with me about my father.

My father is a very simple man. Whenever I would try to engage him about something even slightly intellectual, he would simply say, "Alright," and leave the room. He drove my mother, who is very socially outgoing, out of her mind.



Yes, a strong achievement orientation can make up for a lot of lacks in natural abilities.

One of the understandings that is beginning to emerge, is the range of where we are all at.

One thing important is that although there should be 4 principal genetic strains for us humans, none of them are pure, therefore the strengths of characteristics would naturally vary within each "personality."

So not all "aspies" are going to be "scholarly" out of the box; and by what you have observed, not all are going to have the scholarly inclination.

I was reading in the Tarbell Course in Magic, Vol. 1, History of Magic, something that sounds apropos.

He was talking about Zoroaster and the Mazdaznans. They "stressed the Triangle of Life--spiritual, mental and physical. Man was diagnosed according to his base, whether spiritual, mental or physical--and according to his first an second inclinations."

All four of us basic human types have a little of each other, from that original "Daughter of Eve." So, I would expect some range of variation within the "four personalites."

So, we are not quite as simple as we used to be, and we're going to have to remember that and take it into consideration.

Hi, John,

I don't think my father could be scholarly even if he wanted to be. He is a very simple person, strongly attached to his rituals, and totally clueless about social nuance.



I am familiar with the subject you raised. I made it up through the (6th) level (perfect initiate) in the Ordo Templi Orientis. However, to me, it was just a way of exploring the movement.