Playing the Autism Card May Be Harmful to Humanity

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Everyone is unique. This is a key point, but if you are talking about learning and discovering about yourself, this is something else entirely. Also, it is questionable if a person who is having a certain depth of problems around his own functioning which is in some or many ways confused and not in synch with others, ect.---do not know how well I have put this--can really solve this kind of situation by himself and in his own way. To me that is kind iof a stretch and more like a pipe dream. Personally I have had all kinds of help, and also advantages and opportunities, and even with this help and in a kind of advantageous position was barely able to turn things around.

To continue. this is my main thread right now, but also please read 2 Wk Window to Discuss Here 2 Autism Documentaries http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt241175.html as I will go going into specifics from the two films, Neurotypical and Best Kept Secret on that thread. These videos are no longer online, but if you have not seen them you can still understand the entire gist of that thread, and I may eventually be mentioning some other autism documentaries which can still be viewed, and, also. I will be working that thread and this thread in conjunction.

Re this thread, if you are interested in the subject matter, stay turned, as I am just getting started. It is not going to be an easy read, but it will be rewarding one for those who are interested enough to actively read and ponder the material.

So what do I mean by playing the autism card? I am talking about how we know what we know. We know what we know by making various correlations, many of which are, unfortunately, false, and by sorting and grading material in such a way which will determine our subsequent actions into various categories, and many of these categories have different subjective representations to the persons who are doing this kind of categorization, and then we expect others to comply with the way we are organizing various data,. The documentary, Neurotypical, is kind of a good example of this.

For those who do not understand the sorting and grading material I have written about and will be writing about, it may seems difficult in the beginning, but if you think about it it will become much easier to understand.

What is eggsample of sorting and grading from Neurotypical?

Two categories, "autistic" and "eurotypical"--:then 'above' this a more general category, "people" or "person" (the same general shape and brain as 'me.'. If I put myself in the nt or autistic category when I am relating to another person, this will surely limit the interaction or at least shape it in a certain direction. Or actually a person doesn't even have to name other people neurotypical, but when I am talking to someone I can think of myself as being autistic, but the interesting thing to me is that this so called thinking is really more of a feeling.

This has been a very interesting day to me in terms of understanding because of a discussion I had with someone yesterday, my daughter's roommate, about brain function, and he actually seemed to understand me, and because of this I was able to understand everything better and it is much simpler. I would say this principle regarding understanding is a key point in terms of the potential of human brain function. If someone else understand me then I can understand everything better. I think there is a perceptual quality where one 'me' connects with another person's 'me,' and this is the generative borderline of the actualization of human potential for the sake of each other.

There's autistic, there's dyslexic, there's ADHD, there's schizophrenia, there's other mental illness, then there's neurotypical. Everything has a lot of overlap, and the last category overlaps with all the others because most of the traits that lead to diagnosis are present in people who are otherwise undiagnosable.

I also think that several mental illnesses do not actually fall outside of neurotypicality.

There are all of these kinds of things, and often they overlap, and also people often have tenuous definitions of what this and that is, and these definitions are constantly changing, and ignorant people and/or authoritarian people oftern define what this definitions are and impose them upon naive people--pretty confusing stuff for a confused hurting person trying to figure things out, don't you think? And yet making labels and categories serves many kinds of functional value.

I am assuming you watched the video, Best Kept Secret. It is obvious, at least to me, that many kinds of young people with many kinds of problems and genetic predispostitions or whatever you want to call it were being lumped under the heading of autism....or maybe this was done more for the purpose of this video, I am not sure, but it presents a certain view to the public, and as I wrote on that other thread about the videos, then some people get angry because other people are lumping them under that category and some others are angry because the first group which is higher functioning is trying to imply that the other gropp isn't trying, and this could go on forever. I think its time to try to sort it out, but it maybe can only by done by looking at the the entire subject entirely differently..

For me, becoming higher functioning in an area or in general has always had almost eberrything to do with trying and the rest to do with smarts, but it seems like this view is not verry merry berry popular on wp, but it is my eggsperience throughout my life.

I think that autism category has helped me a lot by giving me guidance on how to bester skills in areas that I need to do what I want to do in life.

I don't know if it's popular or not. I know that trying only works for so long for me before I hit a wall and everything falls apart, sometimes catastrophically.

My frustration with a lot of the discussion on this forum is that some people seem to assume that if they can do something, so can everyone else. There was that thread not too long ago in which it was suggested that autistic people who need accommodations or disability benefits are "overly entitled," with at least some posters here saying "I did this, so can you" with lists of what they've done. Maybe if I'd had a diagnosis earlier on I would have been able to receive accommodations and work at a pace that wouldn't burn me out or cause decompensation that takes months to recover from.

I know that you (btbnnyr) are saying what has worked for you, and not what would work for everyone, necessarily. I'm trying to explain what these discussions have been like for me on this forum. Sometimes it seems like sometimes people think I (for example) come from a position of just not trying hard enough when I actually come from having tried so many things so many times and only getting worse over time. Or I can think of an instance in which one member was talking about not being able to drive and another member kept insisting that she could drive if only she gave it a chance - but she had given it a chance, and it didn't work out.

Yes, there is this problem of tangling things together that may not belong together and doing this affects mental clarity in that it dulls the mind,,making it harder to sort things out and take direct (compassionate) action. People do this kind of tangling in many different ways regarding many different subjects. I am pretty sure that all who are reading will agree.

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we need diversity in this world. God makes no mistakes.

Be proud of who you are

This evening, I was going to post verry merry berry brilliant thoughts in this thread, but an eggstremely gigantic queen ant has been crawling my walls for several hours, and I am too slow and scared to eliminate her from my soon-to-be paranoid slumber, omg save me, beegeebus.

Your comment doesn't seem to be quite on topic, because this thread is about grading and sorting by humans, but to speak in your vernacular, if "God" made no mistakes, then are you saying that bullies, liars and cheats should be proud of who they are? .I do not think this is what you are meaning to be saying. Could you be more specific, please?

Also, in order to experience real pride a person would have to really know who he is, and I do not think most people even know that. They have a lof of false notions, negativities, vanities and other bull sh-t piled on.

I like your message, though,,,,

This thread is about aspie brain function and intelligence and not about those lower functioning on the spectrum, though if you are reading this as an autistic parent wanting to help your child, and you understand what I am going to be saying, I think it could help you help your child, and also be helpful to you, too. In short it might be helpful to anyone reading as an affect of understanding how your own brain works---how the brain works-- is that it begins to work better.. This is a key point in that we are talking about the connection or edge between two different modalities or dimensions. Actually it should be noted that an edge is not quite the same as a point, but a 'point' connects to an edge so in this sense can function as a door.What is this edge where knowledge is literal but also subjective and symbolic?. Try to tell another person some extremely subtle but important facet of what you understand, and there is no way to explain it. You can still feel you have communicated, and in some way, if you feel this, you surely have,, but who knows? This is what is fascinating about the edge to me. Sheer alertness and great mental clarity can be a function of being on the edge, but also, in some instances, sheer terror. Will explore this more later when we take a look at object relations theory and what some have called autistic terror.

Anyone reading who is actively thinking about this material is an active participant here.

To the B girl (btbnnyr), I had an interesting dream about ants and amethysts a week ago which I wanted (hungered) to put out here somewhere on WP, but restrained myself...anyway, according to me, ants are a classic symbol of details so of left brain function.In Grimms Fairy Tales there is one story or maybe more of ants coming to help the protagonist complete a seemingly impossible task. They help him because he was previously kind to them and did not destroy their ant hill or whatever.I realize there was a real ant walking around on your wall,, but queen ant could also be taken as a symbol for where the point connects to the edge...

The queen has returned to her queendom, so I have been released from monitoring her movements, and I am now free to obsess over autistic brain function.

This is how it works, eggsackly, ha ha.......but there may be some other kind of application which is what some people are looking for, or maybe all of us are looking for, but do not know it..

("Even in Kyoto, hearing the cuckoo cry, I long for Kyoto." Basho) .

Well, what if someone found it many years ago, or even many people found it, but they could not tell anyone, only show them? How would that work?