AS and Culture - a spin off thread

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This was sort of inspired by RadioHead's thread here. His thoughts and the thoughts of others in that thread reminded me of a line of thought I was on about a few years ago. I would have posted it as a reply there, but didn't want to chance it hijacking that thread off in a different direction. The thoughts he had in his thread had to do with how the culture an Aspie is enveloped in affects how well the Aspie blends into the surrounding culture. I'm glad to see others thinking along similar lines.

The mindset I got into was a bit different though, and wasn't about blending into a culture as much as wondering at the time whether cultural roots might have something to do with Asperger type thinking and traits. I guess you could say I was wondering if genetics were involved, but it was really more than genetics I was thinking about. It was the passing down of a culture itself. Here's what got me thinking about this:

One of my grandfather's was Finnish. Both of his parents were Finnish immigrants to the U.S. in the late eighteen hundreds. His father was Finnish, but his mother was very short in stature, and didn't physically fit the typical Finnish body or facial type. She looked more like what most would know as a "Laplander" which I've since learned is a derogatory term probably originating with the Romans. "Lap" referred to the patches they used to fix holes in their clothes. Those of the tribes commonly referred to as Laps, call themselves Saami, with some variation in spellings depending on where you read it. Nobody really knows where the Saami originally came from, but apparently they were all across North Eastern Europe, and even as far east as Asia into Siberia by the time the Roman explorers arrived at their fringes. There are many similarities in language between the Saami and Siberian languages. Saami language is in the Uralic family of languages, and not related to Finnish.

While digging around learning about Uralic languages, I found a site that explained some things about the cultures using Uralic languages. It's hard to remember exactly what I read there now but suffice to say the language reflected a very different way of thinking in the cultures that used them. Very different from their surrounding cultures. A lot was very similar to native American cultures except for religion. They had no concept of land ownership, and the language itself allowed for expression that made no differentiation between the physical and the spiritual. As if both were one and the same. There was a lot more to it, but what started to appear as I kept reading was how much this culture seemed to be alike in thier ways of thinking that many Aspies seem to me. Well, at least THIS Aspie anyway.

That got me wondering whether the way I think was more because of cultural thinking handed down through many generations than it was because of Asperger's, or if cultural causes could be behind Asperger's. I was thinking, "Hey! Maybe Asperger's IS just a different way of thinking and behaving. A different culture!"

There were several problems with the scenario. First, I wasn't really certain my great-grandmother was really Saami. There are no records to prove it. Second, even if she were Saami, that would only account for one sixteenth of my heritage. The rest is Finnish, and then mostly Welsh or Celtic. But then I remembered I wasn't thinking "genetics." I was thinking culture.

It would make sense (wouldn't it?) that me being male, I identified with my father's thinking and side of the family more than my mother's. And that is true. I did. It would also make sense that my father might have been the same way, and that also is true. He does identify more with his Finnish roots than with his English mother's roots. So now what about my grandfather. Wouldn't he identify more with his father's Finnish side than his mother's Saami side (if she were indeed Saami)? Probably, except that at a very young age, his father (my Finnish great-grandfather), left home in Massachusetts to work coal mines in Minnesota, where he contracted black lung disease, and later came home only briefly to die when my grandfather was thirteen. So my grandfather spent most of his life with only his mother and his mother's father as parents. So, culturally, if his mother was Saami, that's the culture he was exposed to.

There is a HUGE problem with proving she was Saami aside from the fact that she and my grandfather are long since dead. Saami's were looked down upon by their surrounding cultures. They have experienced a huge amount of prejudice from the rest of Europe, and in some places, still do. Coming to America, especially the Boston area during the late 1800's, complicated that problem even further. My grandfather actually changed his last name to the English translation in the hopes that his own kids would not suffer the same prejudices he did. It is very possible that once they reached America, they never spoke of her roots, thinking that if the Finns were subjected to such extreme prejudice, how much more so the Saami would be. I have compared photos of her with photos of many different Saami peoples and many photos of Finns. I am convinced, as is most of the family, she was most definitely Saami, and not Finn. She was very short, swarthy, had a button nose (that I inherited a very large version of), and overall just plain "looked" Saami.

So all that got me thinking about the possibility that Aspeger's might only be cultural. Now I know I'm just one person, and not naive enough to think that all Aspies have Saami roots somewhere and just don't know about it. But the things I learned about their culture are not all that unique. The culture is extremely similar to native American cultures from both the North and South Americas. It's very similar to Siberian and Mongolian cultures, as well as many tribal island cultures.

Keep in mind that this thinking came before I learned a heck of a lot more about Autism. None of this accounts for neurological differences observed. Aspie brain patterns have been demonstrated to be different from NT. How can cultural differences account for that?

Well, here's where I go off the deep end and speculate over something maybe I shouldn't, but here goes.

Is it possible that brain activity patterns aren't predetermined by genes. Is it possible that the way our brains work is actually driven and "forged" so to speak, by the culture in which we are most embroiled? Is it possible that being taught certain patterns of behavior actually shapes the way our brains operate?

I'm not looking for a long list of responses from people who agree with this, or think it's possible,but if you are one of them, I'd be glad to hear from you. What I am looking for is a few to jump in who can say, "Hey MrXxx, my entire family is German (or any other culture) among whom the Aspie way of thinking and behaving is considered "out there" so this just doesn't work in my case!"

To me that would as much as debunk any and all of this crazy thinking in short order, and I'd rather that happen to quickly put an end to this speculation than to be led down the wrong path even further by nothing but a long string of agreement if it simply couldn't be.

Methinks I doth THINK TOO MUCH sometimes!

Thanks for reading!

If it helps any, the origins of my AS gene are probably Germanic or similar...

I am half Saami.

Cool! Do you think what I've found about the Saami is accurate or no? (I know it's not much)

Do you think your cultural roots (attitudes and paradigms) "fit" Aspie type thinking? Or is your "Aspieism" at odds with it?

Do the questions even make sense?

i was thinking last night, once my father speculated that he might have had Viking ancestry, because of his parent's blond hair and blue eyes. He really doesnt know what part of Europe they originated from, they would lkely have an incredible mix of European tribes in them, as there were so many invasions... so there could be some Saami in there, or Danish... or some other sort of scandinavian.

As for culture, I dont really know... I am from such a wild mix of invasions and colonisations scattered from one corner of the globe to the other, that i have no idea what culturally i am or what i am supposed to be.

As I understand it, the Saami are not related to any Scandinavian races at all. At least not originally. My understanding is they are more closely related to Siberians and Mongolians. Most of what I've read indicates they were int the northern regions of Europe long before the Vikings and Finns. Of course, Europe is an even more confusing melting pot than the U.S. Hungary is named after the Huns, and the Hungarian language is most closely related to Finnish. The Huns came out of the Eastern Steps, and it is assumed out of Asia originally. But language development often does not follow genetic progeny. Often the descendants of a race or tribe end up speaking languages unrelated to languages their ancestors spoke. Migration and shifts in language are frequently accompanied by shifts in culture, so the descendants of a specific genealogy might think much differently than their ancestors.

Come to think of it, I'm beginning to think I may already be talking myself out of this line of thinking.

Come to think of it more, it's not genetics I'm thinking about anyway, but culture, which is closely related to language, so maybe I'm talking myself INTO the idea. It's interesting to think about, but would be far more complicated, if not impossible to prove. Cultural development is so much more convoluted than genetics. It's almost impossible to quantify accurately.