Do Aspies Run The World?

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The problem with this autistic pride hype is people like the OP take these quotes literally and do a tremendous disservice to the truth.

Not only do we get these ridiculous thread topics, but the same logic displayed by the OP is used to attack research into autism treatments.

Some of these fools actually believe that if a cure for autism were found, it would mean the end of progress for the human race.

I have seen it argued on this forum that the suffering of people with autism is a acceptable price to pay for our advanced technological society.

My brain misread this thread title as "Do Aspies Run Wild?" and the image of frolicking in a field that immediately entered my mind was delightful.

We don't run the world. But when it breaks for some reason a lot of very angry extroverts seem to always arrive at our doorsteps with the smoldering ruins to say "Well? Fix it smartass! I thought you said this thing worked!" even if we told them if they keep shaking it like that it would break.

Of course that could just be the cynical techie in me. But it does seem to be a reoccurring theme that I'm expected to fix what's wrong with toys I never get to play with, for people who can't understand simple instructions like 'don't jostle it', because they think it's too uncool to learn how to do it themselves.

Not only that, but autistic people are not logical or ethical any more than nonautistic people.

Seriously. Yes. Seriously.

What I see among the autistic people who yammer on and on about how "logical" we all supposedly are (and I for one am very openly not logic-based in my thinking, not that there's anything wrong with how I think)... is a whole lot of self-delusion. A whole lot of people who think they're "logical" but who are just as ruled by illogical forces as any other human being. But who won't admit it. Even when they show standard (illogical) cultural prejudices, etc. Of course it's not just autistic people who do this, I've noticed there are people who claim to be really into "rational thinking" to the point of being almost creepy about it, who do the exact same stuff.

The human brain is not built to be logical. That's not how it functions. Many times when human beings think that we're making rational choices, it's more like we're rationalizing choices already made on an instinctive level (I believe there's science behind that, but it's pretty observable as well if you know what to look for). And I think one of the most dangerous self-delusions that human beings can fall under is that we are rational, logical creatures (whether all humans, or just some humans like "aspies" or whatever). What I also see in people who think they're highly rational and logical, is... sort of people who are very intellectual, very abstract in certain ways, but being intellectual and abstract doesn't mean being rational and logical. It just doesn't fit like that. Reality is shaped different.

As for ethical, seriously?!?!?! I have known autistic people who would also qualify as sociopaths if the definition of sociopath is a person utterly lacking in either conscience or obvious connections to one's conscience. I have known autistic bullies. Cruel, hateful, twisted autistic people. Flagrant, bitter racists, sexists, etc. And that's just at the extreme end of the ethics spectrum. You also get the apathetic types, the "the world can go to hell for all I care" sort of thing. People who think that human beings can be measured as dollar amounts or in terms of "level of contribution to society" (as measured by the worst of capitalist values, naturally). You get the ones whose idea of ethics is to try to calculate it out as if ethics can be decided like a set of mathematical equations (which nearly always ends in disastrous effects because of unacknowledged biases that factor into the calculations, besides the fact that ethics don't work in a way that can be calculated). And it goes on, and on, and on.

Which is to say, autistic people have the same spectrum of ethics as any other kind of human being has -- we range from highly ethical to outright sociopathic. And everything, and I do mean everything, in between.

This isn't the first time I've heard things like this though. Early feminists believed (some still believe) that if women got the same kind of power that men already had, they would use it more wisely, be less aggressive, less power-hungry, more gentle, and so forth. But when women get that power, surprise, we're just like men, only... female. People who don't generally have the power to run the world often seem like we'd run the world better, because we seem to have fewer of the disturbing attributes of people who do run the world. But what isn't acknowledged by many is the fact that those disturbing attributes are often only visible in people with power. So they're invisible because we lack that power. Once we get power, they become visible, and bam, we're the same as anyone else. Heard this said about women, gay people, people of color, transgender people, poor (and/or working-class) people, disabled people, every kind of people who are disenfranchised, and none of it's true, we're all equally corruptible. Worse, people who are unaware they are corruptible are more corruptible than people who are aware they can be corrupted and thus able to take at least some measures against it.

So, heard all this before, didn't believe it then, don't believe it now, nothing new under the sun, and nothing great or useful about saying all this crap as if it's true.

Oh and I can't figure out how this kind of thing "encourages self-advocacy" either.

I'm all for positive views of autism. These are good, these are needed, these are important. But there's a difference between valuing traits that happen to be related to being autistic (for some people -- there's no obvious universal autistic traits unless possibly you go very deep down into cognition/perception and stuff like that, which is virtually never what people are talking about when they try to "be positive about autism"), and making things up about the way the world works.

I know some people think it's horrible to look for positive aspects of being autistic, but it's not actually horrible. People who have been categorized entirely according to the idea that they're defective (which is all disabled people including autistic people) have a valid claim to looking at their pathologized traits and finding good in them. Every disabled person has a total right to do that.

This is important. This is not awful. This does not somehow oppress people who don't happen to feel like there's anything positive about being autistic. People who find nothing positive in autism are in total agreement with the vast majority of people with the real power to define what autism is, and because of that the idea that their viewpoint is being oppressed is kind of silly. (Yes, there's plenty of posturing by a small number of people about how oppressed they are by people who find something positive in being autistic, but it bears no resemblance to the real power realities. In order to think it does have to do with the real power realities, you really have to be practically deliberately looking at a tiny number of people and exaggerating their power while simultaneously ignoring the much greater power of the medical establishment.)

The way that it's important is that all disability has been defined entirely in terms of pure pathology and deficiency, despite the fact that it's not inherently a 100% negative situation, just about ever. It's important for people to be able to crawl out from under that genuine oppression and say "Hey, there are aspects of being disabled that bring me genuine joy." And it's important for people to be able to do that without being constantly shouted down as somehow evil by people who aren't willing to take that step. The fact is that the human differences that are defined as disability, are rarely 100% bad or 100% good. Even in what many people would think were "the most obvious" cases. And nearly always the "100% bad" viewpoint is a viewpoint steeped in unquestioned ableism (the false beliefs about disability handed down culturally and the like). So it's important to say "Hey, you know what, there are good things about having a body like mine, even if most people will never see them and will even question my connection to reality for mentioning them."

But... but... I can't see where saying that we "run the world" fits into this. We don't run the world. We aren't paragons of logic and ethics. And frankly... stuff like that isn't climbing out from under ableism, it's simply keeping the basic assumptions that underlie ableism, and turning them against a different group of people. No, it's not "equally bad" as how we're treated, because how we're treated has power behind it, and this upside-down ableism has no force behind it to really seriously harm the people who are being labeled illogical and unethical and the like in comparison to us. And you always have to factor in power when looking at how harmful something is. If autistic people ruled the world, then seeing nonautistic people as illogical and unethical would have terrible force behind it, the same force that views autistic and other disabled people as simply defective, and that would be terrible. But it doesn't, so it's just sort of... meh, like peeing in the wind or something, kind of pointless and gross but not very dangerous to most people.

Because of all that, I've never really been fond of the "It's my l33t aspie sk1llz that make me good" line of reasoning. Yeah, we do have skills, and we do have skills that exist because of being autistic. Yes, practically all of us. (Not always skills the way most people think about them -- like "computer skills" -- but yes virtually always certain cognitive and perceptual skills that are sort of at a more basic level than what most people think of as a skill. Not "skill at math" but, say, "skill at finding embedded figures" and things like that, different depending on the person but nearly always there.) And it's good to talk about those skills, celebrate those skills, etc.

But. I get annoyed when celebrating those skills takes on the same air of ableism that other people are always using against us. When it becomes not "It's cool that some of us can do this," but rather, "Those other people are inferior because they can't do this." I also get annoyed when people act like the value of autistic people hinges on these skills. Because that's saying that people's value hinges on skills in general, and that's ableist thinking, period. People are valuable because they exist, if they're valuable at all.

Even worse is when autistic people value only certain autistic people but not others. That's dangerous, seriously dangerous, to autistic people, in a way that the "We're better than NTs" thing is not dangerous to just about anyone. That's because "Aspies are more valuable than LFAs", for instance (note that I'm not saying I agree with those categories, I'm just repeating them), is a view that most people, including people with lots of power, have already. Anything that reinforces that view, whether it comes from autistic or nonautistic people, otherwise powerful or not, reinforces the fact that those labeled "LFA" in that equation are devalued immensely and in ways that are actively damaging to their/our lives and even chances of survival in the world. I take that incredibly seriously, both for highly personal reasons (lots of people designate me as "LFA" on sight, including medical professionals, meaning this affects how they treat me) and because I can't stand watching this happen to anyone. When you aren't valued, and you're really not valued, that means that if you end up in the emergency room with an infection then there are people who will do their best to let you die instead of giving you the treatment that they would give anyone else. That's bad. Really bad. Which is why I won't stand for "aspie supremacy" at all in any form, it literally can kill.

Anyway, even better than simply taking some trait you consider positive and celebrating it (and possible to do even if you see nothing to celebrate, at least initially), is to really learn to look underneath everything you've been taught about disability, and to look at how that affects your perceptions of disabled people in general, yourself or others. And see how it shapes how we're treated. How other people see us, and how that perception affects our lives. And this includes looking at the "really obvious" stuff that "everyone knows" and is "just facts", because all of that is suspect. Including the "I'd hate all this even if the world were totally fair to disabled people" idea. It's possible that would be true. But it's also possible you have no idea what a world that was totally fair to disabled people would look like. (For one thing, it's unlikely that there would be a firm dividing line, or any dividing line, between disabled and nondisabled people. Not that differences wouldn't be acknowledged, but that they'd be seen differently even when acknowledged, in ways that are hard to explain to people who've never had the chance to see societies that even marginally lack such obvious boundaries.)

I've been looking into this disability stuff for my entire adult life now and I am still catching biases I didn't even know I had, things I thought had to be inevitable and aren't. I can close to guarantee that if you haven't looked into it then you're utterly full of them on a level you can't even comprehend yet. Of course for a lot of people, looking into this isn't even an option, and I don't mind that lots of people will never look into it. But if you haven't looked hard and in the right places into what disability means and doesn't mean, then there is just so much you probably take for granted as "just facts" that are anything but. And for those willing and capable of looking into it, it's worthwhile.

Doesn't necessarily require a whole lot of abstraction either. Sure, there are people who do "disability studies" in enormously abstract, postmodern whirls of bizarre long words and longer sentences. And that's as incomprehensible to me now as it was ten years ago. But there are other ways to look into these things. Dropping down below abstraction and seeing how much falls away is one interesting but unorthodox way of doing it. (Even without abstraction you'll have picked up biases though, so that doesn't fully do it. And it only works if "below abstraction" means "below abstraction" and not just "down to the most concrete type of abstraction". But it's still interesting.) I also was part of a small group of people who emailed back and forth about this stuff, all of us people who wouldn't be considered capable of traditional "studying" of these things. One was someone who was capable of translating things from incomprehensible babble to concrete easy language, which was great for me with my comprehension issues. There's just so many ways to approach learning about these things if you're serious about it. And it will take you so much further than just flipping standard prejudices upside down and calling that positive (and I don't call that positive at all).

So... yeah, I can see a point in recognizing and even celebrating positive things where they can be found, but I can't see where a lot of the stuff on this thread falls under the category of "self-advocacy" at all, nor do I see it as all that positive in the first place. (Flipping something negative on its head doesn't make it positive. Sometimes I'd rather the original negative statement than the flipped-on-the-head supposedly better one. Meh.)

A friend commented that if the world was run by women we wouldn't have less wars. We'd just have less official reason for wars because "you know what you did, and if you don't I'm not gonna tell you" was such a common tactic used by angry women. I have to admit I kind of could see that happening.

I don't think we're less capable though. What's that saying? Same same, but different?

Your dismissal of those of us with the condition who find nothing positive with this disability is very convenient for the pro autism propagandists.

They attempt to silence us who despise our autism, and then turn around and attack everyone on the outside because "they can't possibly know what its like to be autistic."

Personally, I do find the pro-autism side threatening, despite your underestimation of their power.

If the public face of autism becomes exclusively the very high functioning individuals like John Elder Robison and Alex Plank (who go around pretending that AS isn't a disease), then the very limited funding for medical research could be threatened as those in power redirect the funds to more vocal interest groups.

Autistics and aspies need real concrete advice, not superficial, feel-good nonsense about "ruling the world".

The people who actually rule the world pay aspies to be cogs in the wheels and invent atom bombs and stuff and then they drop it on innocent people.

OK, fair enough, you've clearly proven that it is anecdotal evidence. But I found the way it was said by the original poster to be somewhat self-demeaning to HFAs so I denounced it. Maybe I should call it "circumstancial" evidence. To say that historical figures like Da Vinci and Asimov didn't display clear signs of ASD is like saying Caligula didn't display signs of being a sociopath. We know that many current innovators ARE HFA.



Autistic pride, at least the way I advocate it, is not "hype." It is a movement for a group of people who are being marginalized by society to take charge of their lives, when they are often quite capable, despite being told otherwise. Autism is unquestionably a disability regardless of the benefits, and I can understand why people on here who are unhappy with their lives as a result of difficulties caused by ASD, would not see those benefits.

When I look at my own life, which I've managed to turn around because of my own personal autistic pride movement, in which I recognized my strengths, yeah, I am pretty proud of myself, and I've managed to do OK while pretty much everyone I know is floundering. So it's logical that I would want to encourage other people with ASD to feel positive, and utilize their strengths.



I haven't been on this forum for long, but I would like to think the advice I've given out on the various forums is pretty real and concrete, and not "superficial, feel-good nonsense."

The title of this thread was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek question intended to rouse discussion, not a statement of fact.

Also, people keep referring to the title of my post as "rule the world." I said RUN the world, not rule it. There's a huge difference in connotation.

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I really don't understand how you can continue making these assertions given the preceding posts, which clearly illustrate the problems with presenting this idea as fact.

I didn't dismiss people who don't find anything positive about autism. I just said you're already in agreement with the people with the real genuine power. Medical professionals have far more weight in how autism is seen than any autistic person ever did. Outside of a tiny community of autistic people, all most people hear about autism practically is that it's a terrible disease that steals everything good about children and leaves a mess behind. Really. When I talk to ordinary people about autism that's all I hear. I don't hear anything good unless they think we are Rain Man. None of them have heard of Alex or the silly little ego faction wars that pass for an autistic community these days regardless of which faction we are talking about.

These are people that for the most part irritate me because of the shallowness of the views, but they're having very little impact. The ones that actually are making an impact are often the ones who do in fact acknowledge the problems autism can cause. But even they have little impact outside a tiny, circumscribed world. Additionally, simply finding things positive about being disabled is something every kind of disabled person does and doesn't have to be threatening to people who loathe being disabled. (It's also something done by every severity of disability so the whole idea you have to be high functioning to do so is inaccurate.) It's honestly possible to disagree without being a threat to each other in some way. I have no animosity at all to people who want to be cured, I just don't happen to, but some will take even that as some kind of massive threat.

And as things stand, all the Internet shouting of the various factions barely makes a dent one way or the other. Autistic people are simply not the people who define what autism is for most of the world -- it's professionals on top, parents next, us on the bottom. I think a lot of people who mostly interact on these online communities lose sight of the real scale of things.

Nobody on this thread is challenging that people with AS can be innovators.

My point is that there is no evidence that it is at all necessary.

If you point to someone with AS traits (ex: Einstein), I can also point to someone like Ben Franklin who was both a scientific innovator as well as a consummate socialite.

Okay, now show some proof. "Well, they kind of display symptoms of ASD" doesn't count. Lots of people display symptoms of ASD without actually being on the spectrum.

This is correct.

You also cannot just assume that these people are on a "broader autism spectrum".

There are multiple causal factors that have nothing to do with autism that can result in individual symptoms.

For example: A person whose underlying neurology doesn't predispose them to social anxiety can develop this symptom if they become physically disfigured.

Many of these so-called HFA innovators are neither medically diagnosed nor self-diagnosed with HFA.

Rather, they are often "diagnosed" by anonymous posters on the internet who often have an agenda to push.

The first sentence is fact-- these historical figures did display signs of what is contemporarily considered HFA. This isn't to say they actually had it; of course we can never know for sure.

As for the second sentence, well I've done some research into it and come up frightfully short. I've clearly overstated who has been confirmed to have it and who hasn't, so I will admit, I misspoke. There is a lot of "propaganda" out there that says this person has it, that person has it, but indeed very few actual confirmed diagnoses. Temple Grandin seems to be the only one, and I know there are a lot of people on here who aren't fans but she IS an innovator and her contributions to cattle research are indispensible. We also can't expect everyone who has been diagnosed, to come forward and say they were.

So it does sort of annoy me that I was misled by this "propaganda" that all these contemporary people have been diagnosed with it, when they've not been. But I still believe that most of them are on the spectrum, and there is "evidence," clearly proven by Molecular Biologist as "anecdotal," that they do.

I am glad to have been corrected by other members of the forum and I admit I was wrong... but I still stand by my support of "autistic pride" with utmost passion. (See my earlier posts.) My opinion on this topic remains basically the same, that HFAs are extremely important to humanity and a large proportion of very (often indirectly) influential people throughout history had/have HFA, and it's highly likely we do sort of "pull the strings" in a way, so I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree.



See my above comments.

At any rate, I am glad this thread has caused some good discussion, but it was intended to be light-hearted and it appears to have generated a lot of hostility, and I am surprised by how many forum members seem to be almost angry over it Well I've admitted I misspoke, anyone who wishes to continue the discussion can go from there.

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I do wonder about the questions anbuend raised about human beings as not built to be rational, something along those lines. I think good points were made, but I question some of it. Look at all we've invented which is systematic and rational; numbers, science, computers, etc., all of which are reflections of the human brain. I however see numbers themselves as essentially abstract. Like why they work the way they do and do the things they do, it's really amazing and magical in a sense. We came up with the word magic to describe those very things which, even when reduced to their most basic, still seem to elude us. The most hyper-systematic, logical, rational anything has at its core a deeply esoteric quality, at least for me. Yet when held up against so much else, things like numbers seem more rational, for whatever reason (which mathematicians get a kick out of, I think). I think that it's fair to say that there's plenty of logic at work in NTs' emotionality and so forth. Autistic people can pick up on that stuff they just conceptualize it in diifferent ways. Calculators all spit out the same numbers, for instance. Sorry, that relates to what I was saying before about numbers. I often hear the saying that the computer is like the human brain and not vice versa. Still, I'm sure there are plenty of people on the spectrum who are less rational than they claim. I don't know anyone well enough to really speak anecdotally about biases. Sadly, almost all my experiences are with NTs.