Connecting the dots

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Are you a connector of dots?

I am fascinated by root cause analysis (what causes what) and links between things, concepts etc. The implication is that I am extremely inquisitive about almost anything. From the perspective of others, I appear to have very broad interests rather than a classic 'narrow' aspie interest. However, I am fascinated with causation and general conceptual connections for their own sake. The connected items are less important than the connections between them and the overall model that results from the connections. The broad general knowledge is a necessary extenson of being an obsessed dot connector.

This has always been both an advantage and disadvantage. For example, when at university, I tended to spend extremely long hours reading materials and therefore I did quite well academically. However, I also tended to become interested in subjects that were remotely related to my academic curriculum. In some cases I would go completely off the prescribed academic trail and then get into a spot of bother with meeting deadlines. Generally I simply burnt serious midnight all to get assignments in on time. In more recent times, I have learnt to always seek clear mandates from the boss before I involve myself in completely new workplace 'territory'.

Consequently, everything I know is in some way connected in my mind and the more connections I can make within the whole mind model the happier I get. These connections are somewhat abstract or esoteric at times and at other times they are very rational and empirical.

Now, obviously all people make connections between things. It is essential to the operation of the brain. Its the active pursuit of connections for its own sake that I think is a little different in my case. I value those rare and unique connections that potentially lead towards and illuminate the Great Unknown. These are scary at times but hold the most potential. Essentially, I harbour some ideas that might be regarded as off the radar.

For example, I suspect strongly that all machinery, plant, infrastructure are reincarnations of the dinosaurs. I also do not see inanimate objects as 'dead'. I do not talk to inanimate objects in the way you would communicate with humans or animals but I do feel connected with inanimate objects. For example, when fishing I feel at one with my fishing rod and in turn I feel at one with the sea. I 'talk' to the universe through the activity of fishing. I believe that I 'talk' to all things all the time in everything I do. I do not see living things as being independent entities but rather as parts of a greater entity that includes inanimate matter. I therefore believe we are part of a universal 'soul' rather than having our own innate soul. Therefore, I believe when we 'die' we are simply progressing through a cycle that includes phases of being separate living entities to being subsumed in the universal.

As a natural extension of all this dot connecting, I am a natural explorer. I love geography and visiting far flung places.

Any other obsessed dot connectors out there?

Yes, l pretty much live for it.

This is an aspergers-y thing. As well as an associative thinker thing, which aspies are (or can be).l think this depends on hemispheric dominance among people with AS. l;m just an associative thinking NT.

This has kind of become my entire life though, l'd say l've always done it but in more recent years it has become more important than actually living to me lol. So l do try to curb it >.>

At times, l don't really interpret an event objectively because of this, which is in contradiction to my being a pretty objective thinker. l'll just interpret ANY event or interaction in relation to whatever pattern l'm trying to work out.

That's when l start to become a little concerned for my mental health because reality just becomes this sort of game to me with a series of events and happenings that l'm just "waiting" to play out and l don't even assign significance to them on an individual basis.

Meaning l don't even engage in it while it's happening because, what's the point? And at that point l've almost gone completely into my own head just to observe life. but l'm doing it subjectively.

But anyway, that's why l try to keep it check lol.

Not to mention l have sometimes made misconnnections or assigned a random event as part of a pattern and interpreted the meaning as something it wasn't. That's when l realize that this is handy tool but something you shouldn't let consume your mind.

Last edited by EXPECIALLY on 02 Feb 2013, 6:54 pm, edited 3 times in total.

opposite, i think, although I am not certain I completely follow your post. i tend to reduce ordered things to chaos. i erase the lines between dots, so to speak.

i tend to think no order no safety no boundary and, in so doing, worry obsessively about the fragility of life. frightening.

I make my living doing it.

Interesting notion.

The closest I can imagine of that would be mental implosions when the connected models in the mind collapse under their own weight. A classis book about this is 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert M. Pirsig. Its a risk I am very aware of and ward off. I have learnt the warning signs of such collapses and have 'controlled collapses'. This usually involves engaging in something very mindless for a while and not hanging onto the connections that have gone wild. At such times I remind myself to 'keep it simple' (yea right) and 'just walk away'. In the aftermath, the state of mind would best be described as a junkyard. Its a great place in some ways because all the bits of mental scrap pose great potential. However, I couldn't leave the junkyard as it is. Not possible.

Yup.
I wonder what work InThisTogether does?

Last edited by alpineglow on 04 Feb 2013, 8:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Because I cannot tolerate so much human contact anymore, I'm transitioning from interim-pastoring into a conflict-resolution and helping the Regional Minister with transitional issues around the state.

The dots are how congregations and people go from healthy to diseased relationships and the resulting broken systems. Since I am emotionally uninvolved, and very analytical, this line of work will support me, and keep me out of the longer-term, horribly draining pastorates.

I really like to see the workings of people, their systems of behavior and the corresponding results. However, church-folk make their own lives way too hard many times!

I love to follow the flow from years of files, reports, meetings and congregational profiles to see the ways in which health and disease ebb and flow. It's very satisfying to see the dots link from thoughts, decisions and actions that move congregations. Sometimes very sad.

Organizational development. I am often used to figure out organizational problems that, to date, have not been able to be solved effectively. It is most often that the problem expands beyond the readily observable issues into things that others have not considered and therefore left out of the solution. Other times I am asked to make order out of things that seem disordered, or to find the order in something. And other times I am asked to figure out the root of performance issues so that they can be appropriately addressed. I am successful at all of this because if I sit and look at "data" long enough (whether it is true data or more just information) eventually a picture forms and I see how things are related and once I see how they are related, I can make recommendations regarding how to fix it.

What follows below goes well beyond responding to the aspects quoted above. Thankyou for our patience in advance.

I can relate to this sort of disembodied 'astral travel' experience where you are in events but not of the event (well, at least thats the way I picture it). Its a beautiful state of mind but not sustainable. This is where I believe the esoteric and the purely rational are balancing entities in the mind. From a purely mechanistic point of view, the chain of connected dots is infinite. As Einstein found, time can move backwards as well as forwards i.e the Newtonian world of fixed scientific facts is not so fixed. When such edifices come crumbling down, whole civilisations become deeply unsettled. Ask Galileo; he declared the world round and revolving around the sun and see where that got him. Consider Darwin who completely undermined literal interpretations of the Biblical version of Creation. I think that the out-of-mind experiences that you talk about would have been well known to Galileo, Darwin and Newton. It is essential to be able to put oneself into the strange, unsafe, insecure and unknown realms of hitherto unthinkable thoughts if you want to move beyond the known.

Cautionary: I have come to realise that the purely scientific connection of dots is ultimately superficial. There is fuzziness that supercedes science. It is here where new understandings emanate. It is the connections with the Great Unknown that illuminates. Acknowledging the existence of the fuzziness is essential for prevention of calamitous collapse of connected-dot mind constructs and ensuing mania (occasionally affecting whole civilisations as described in the preceding paragraph).

As I say I have a number of connections between dots that would be considered unmentionable in polite society. I believe too that there are many others (besides Newton, Darwin, Galileo etc) who have been lost to us in the fog of history but who pioneered and ultimately enabled those whose ideas are known to us. In the final analysis, who cares if it was Darwin or if the person happened to be Peter Brown or the tramp ... living under the bridge? It is more about the thought than the person; they rest upon the shoulders of other great yet unknown people. It is not important but what is important is those of us who are extreme dot-connectors do it justice. What is important is that we take seriously our innate talent to see things from a completely unique perspective. For us, it is the pursuit of these things that is important, not whether we get famous or wealthy in the process.

I think your feeling of being inside your head and separate from what is going on around you is a great gift rather than something to be avoided. It is a tough road because doing that is often not conducive with functionality in day-to-day society. It comes at a cost. However, in 100 or 200 years time, what of your life and/or those of our ilk will be deemed significant? To my mind we all melt back into the Great Everything so our individual achievements are really not significant except in context of their relevance to that Great Everything. My name is Jabberwokky and I know that nobody will remember me a week or two from today and I have peace in that knowledge.

it's an interesting decision to have to make. l'm not sure about people who actually have AS here but when l was considering that l might have it or finally realizing that there was at least a name for what was most similar to my brain, l really debated to what extent l was going to live outside of my head.

The option of just going in my head forever seemed feasible at one point. And l did go as far into as l've ever been for about 3 months.

l cannot remember if l even left the house, l think l just stocked up on everything and somehow made food last that long.

l wasn't...anything. And it wasn't bad. l was totally depersonalized.

l'm not sure if most Aspies could go into a state like that if they did let it happen. l certainly wasn't functioning.

But, when l "came back", l'd put this "self" back into my mind. lt inherently removes your capacity to make free associations, to some extent. You can, just not as well. As soon as you're looking at the world and reflecting on everything as a person who has internalized biases from subjective experiences and everything that comes with being human, it's not the same.

l would say most of the time l'm "half" in and half out. That's just me and always has been and that way l can function.

One important reason l couldn't stay in my head that way though, is because this is also pretty symptomatic of schizophrenia. IMO it's the main thing AS and schizophrenia can share. l have the genetic risk for schizophrenia and ultimately felt like if l allowed myself to go into...the other side lol...that it was just going to happen.

l think to some extent the brain can be plastic in a way, even as an adult that it may develop new and possibly permanent connections if you allow it to behave one way. Developing that illness has always been a concern for me and l don't think anything good can come of it, ultimately.

So, l didn't, And l joined Earth again. l have found that since then, l don't even pretend to keep up with this "self" when l'm tired of it. l mean, l won't cease functioning. But l will take long breaks from socialization and really don't feel l owe much of an explanation, though it's always something l've done to some degree.

So l'm busy connecting dots, albeit to a limited capacity while functioning and sometimes take time away to really drive it home. l wouldn't feel whole if l didn't.

And l just wrote a post so long l'm not even sure with how certainty l can say that l've joined Earth xD

But l enjoyed yours lol.

You just made me realize something. First, I thought I was the only one to do this. Also, I now realize why I was so obsessed with the movie "The Butterfly Effect" when it first came out. Clearly not the greatest or most gripping film ever made, but the idea really stuck with me for years--The idea that one small event can cause a ripple effect through vast periods of time.

This is basically how I try to break down ideas, concepts, social norms, and/or attitudes. I try to find the point of origin in almost everything. Especially if it's something I find illogical. Because then I know I can trace it back to somewhere where I can at least try to understand HOW it became illogical and how it became accepted.

This sort of topic is why I come here.
I remember as a very young child being very concerned about the welfare of my toys; my trains, my little plastic people and animals, what have you. I'm sure that is typical enough, but as an adult I feel residual remnants of this caring about "things", and seeing more in them than just the surface.
I was at church once and was speaking with the minister about how I could see a strange connectedness between things. I don't remember the term he used, but basically that I was seeing the hand of God in it all.
My religious views have shifted somewhat in the past eight years, but I still sense that connectedness. Even in the things I build, I feel that something of myself has been transferred into them.
In that act of creating, I am putting pieces of me somewhere. And those pieces are just pieces of something altogether deeper.

The last several posts remind me of the concept of right verus left-brain perception. Right-brain is where we discover "hidden" interconnectedness, and a view of the world as timeless or at least in a seriously time-altered fashion.

My Stroke Of Insight, or something like that...a book?

That's what l was thinking too.

And about the variation in dominance with AS. l think left dominant Aspies aren't going to be the totally depersonalized, space cadette types.

BUT, l never thought l was right dominant. l may be non-dominant, l have impaired visual thinking which could just mean that l am right dominant and still have a damaged right hemisphere lol o_O

Wouldn't that just take the cake >_>

But l think it's more likely l'm non dominant and if anything it's kept my brain from ever really fitting a clear cut profile of AS or ADHD,

A very interesting discussion. I know there are some here that really see the World ( meaning the Earth & Universe here) by a very mechanistic, Newtonian view. Which I guess might exists in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, but is even rejected by most modern, theoretical physics. Obviosly these Autists & others dislike things that seem to have no explanation.
While I tend towards a scientific view, I base my World View on my experiences, some of which certainly are outside theirs. Or to put it another way, I connect dots, but do not over do it. I am one of those ASD people who sometimes has some events that seem a bit mystical. I am not someone who sees only dots, or one who connects everything (dot) in sight. I believe that could be considered Optical Matrixing. Afterall, our brains are wired to *FIND* patterns. And we sometimes see what IS NOT there. And sometimes we miss what is really there.
Before I bable more & lose everyone, I think I will control my pedantic urges & let someone else give it a try...

Sincerely,
Matthew

Thank you InThisTogether, for explaining.

Last edited by alpineglow on 04 Feb 2013, 8:00 am, edited 1 time in total.