Mental "disabilities" do not exist

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Isn't that sort of the point. In this culture, at this time, Asperger's is disabling. No matter what I choose to call it, all things being equal, a person with Asperger's will have a more difficult time navigating this world successfully. And a significant number of those with Asperger's will need significant assistance.

Even Temple Grandin, for all the amazing success she has attained, would not have got there without a doggedly determined mother that refused to accept anything less than the best for her. She is brilliant, but that brilliance was locked up inside a mind that was unlocked by her support network.

I like this style of architecture.

For most of my life I have been decidedly unsuccessful, living in denial of my condition. I only found success when I accepted my condition and started looking for ways that I could use it to my advantage. Just because someone may not be able to succeed in the "normal" ways does not mean they cannot succeed at all. I am sure that everyone with low functioning autism has areas that they are good at. For example the BBC horizon program about languages features a low functioning autistic whom is extremely good at learning languages.

Success is a point of view.

Labeling someone with a disability in this society essentially is killing them off. The modern world looks down on anyone who is different, denying them the chance to succeed in other areas. Success is nothing but a point of view, it does not have to be achieved by normal means. There is always more than one way to do something.



Werther someone is disabled or not is just a point of view. If the "normal" method of doing something does not work for someone, they can find or develop a different way.



Good points, people don't get diagnosed just for being good at computers. However the logical aspie mind is naturally souted to this. A lot of programmers have a high social anxiety and live on the net weather or not they
have another condition like Asperger's. The nature of programming just tends to attract solitary people. I don't understand the mechanics, but programmers are still marrying even with the social issues. I exist, my dad is a programmer and not the most social person in the world.

Sure, evolution does not happen overnight, I'm not saying that it does. However a lot of mental differences, including Asperger's have a genetic aspect and may be inherited.

Except not every LFA person is a savant. And what about mentally ret*d people?

This is nothing more than confirmation bias. You look at a sub-group of aspies that are good at programming and assume that it applies to the entire population. Aspies are disproportionally represented among technical fields not because they are aspie, but because aspie's lack of social skills are more tolerated and their tendency to hyper focus is a positive thing. Look up some hard numbers. How many aspies are NOT logical? How many CAN'T program? How many are good at music but can't work with numbers? How many can remember things like crazy but can't integrate what they know into something useful to a money driven culture? Who is going to pay an aspie to catalog every detail of every Hot Wheel ever made? I SUCK at programming. And I am at the high end of the intelligence bell curve and am very comfortable with abstract thinking.

Aspies are also disproportionally represented among the unemployed. They have higher suicide rates. They have higher comorbid conditions such as OCD, depression, ADHD. None of this is an advantage.

I really understand the attitude "If you've got lemons, make lemonade". We should each strive to do the best with what we've got. But you can't make a chocolate souffle out of lemons. And you can't make even make lemonade until you realize that what you have in your hands are lemons.

Asperger's and autism is what it is. It is a neurological state that pushes us to the edges of society simply because of how we perceive, integrate and use information. Without first accepting this FACT, I cannot begin to adopt any strategy that will allow me what, in my country at least, is a fundamental right - life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And this FACT about my neurology is invariant. Period. There is no changing it. I might be able to attenuate its affects through medications, understanding how it affects me, behavioral modifications and support of family, but I will never make it go away.

Yeah. Society makes most disabilities way worse than they have to be. Society doesn't have to be like that, though; we can change it. Disability is still a necessary concept to keep around, as by saying we're not disabled many people would hear that we should be able to function normally with standard support... which we can't. And even with extra support, we might not be able to function as well as the abled. And there's nothing wrong with that, it doesn't mean we should lose our human rights or get ostracized or pitied. Trying to get everyone to live up to some mythical standard is impossible and harmful.

This isn't just for mental disabilities, or "mild" disabilities, but all disabilities.

Definitely. It's just that applying evolution to genetics in today's society / Social Darwinism doesn't work, the environment is changing too quickly for our bodies to adapt to it. We've short-circuited evolution with ideas. So, let's evolve the ideas, and accept the bodies we have.

Well said.

"Run whatcha brung" is an auto-racing expression I first heard many years ago, and I have been doing my best at that -- What else *could* I have "run" in this race anyway?! -- for all my life ...


... but points of view do not pay the bills.

Asperger's is a double edged sword, but it is a gift as much as it is a "disability", if not more so.

Just to clarify, I am not saying that computing and programming is the only filed that aspies fit into, it is just a very prominent one. Aspies can become obsessed with almost anything, especially things which do not depend on social interaction. There is nothing wrong with that, focus on what you are good at.

Whether a certain sort of people are disabled or not has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it has positive aspects. And even most conditions most people consider wholly negative have positive aspects. What I get sick of is the idea that the less successful you are in a particular society, by that particular society's standards, that means the condition itself is wholly negative. But being disabled has nothing to do with how negative or positive a condition seems to be to any given person, so arguing that "positive" is somehow different than "disabled" makes no sense.

Yeah. Before I was about 19 I fit the stereotype of the techie-computer-programming-AS-person pretty well. And then my brain melted and a lot of those skills went away. At that point I saw the problem with the "...but I'm great at computer programming (or whatever skill is deemed valuable enough to justify one's existence)" argument -- it's playing into the same game that if you're not useful to society in a narrow way, then you're worthless (and maybe better off dead).

Given how society is set up it's hard to see how that's going to change, or change very much anytime soon, at least, but I can't see an argument that addresses the problem in a more fundamental way. Disabilities aren't handed out so there is always some "saving grace" that makes society say, "oh ok, you're not actually worthless, then."

While you may not be disabled, many others are, and their suffering is all too obvious.

Last edited by Molecular_Biologist on 12 Dec 2010, 10:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So what if a disability is caused by a genetic mutation?

A man born without legs due to a mutation is just a disabled as a man who has had them amputated.

Yes, but a man without legs is still perfectly capable of functioning in other ways. The whole concept of disability is based on the assumption that everybody has to be exactly the same, which they do not.

Are you unable to see that there is a continuum between fully functional and dead?

A disability is the loss of some functions, while death is the loss of all functions.



No, that is not the concept at all.

I doubt you could find any medical professional who thinks that everyone with the same disability is going to be exactly the same.

I think your understanding of disabilities is flawed, and you are fighting against your own strawman meaning rather than the commonly accepted definition of the word "disability."