About Einstein and other Role Models and Heroes

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The thread about Einstein has digressed into a "is he or isn't he?" squabble that doesn't really address the core issue of role models and heroes for disabled people. Here, I'm using the term disabled to mean those of us who are disabled and/or marginalized for being autistic. Disabled doesn't mean "not able".
IMHO, Albert Einstein was certainly autistic. That aside, I think he is a good role model for lots of things; philosophers, those living outside the box, scientists that try to engage the non-scientific world, minorities "making it", and yes, autistics. People don't put up pictures of Albert Einstein looking pensive and normal, but with his wild hair, sticking his tongue out, riding a bicycle, wearing weird clothes. I don't see autistic superiority when people claim him as an "Autistic Poster Boy". I see people pointing at how odd he was seen as and saying, "look, he did it! He had trouble and he still succeeded. He looks happy too!"

My role models are the people that are doing what they want to do. It's not monetary success, fame or IQ level. I remember a SNL skit about Bill Gates (years ago with Chris Kattan). They were showing him in his monstrous house with all sorts of gadgets. But he was terribly lonely and bored. It was a caricature, but there is a kernel of truth to the idea that you can be rich and famous and very smart and still absolutely miserable or immoral.

My role model for my son is an old college peer I knew 15+ years ago. He wasn't diagnosed until his 30's (autistic). Despite the misdiagnosis, he went to college, lives on his own and has a wonderful job. I'm pretty sure he isn't rich by any means. This isn't a "mild Aspie", but an autistic adult. Dr. Temple Grandin is another hero.

I don't really understand why people accuse those of us that "claim" Einstein of feeling or acting superior. He's just one guy. No one person can possibly represent millions of people that are extremely different from each other. But he can still be someone to look up to, as an inspiration.

I think it all comes boiling down to how you define genius. If people define genius as "being able to realize what other people are unable to" then certainly aspies/autistics have the heads up due to lack of filtering and social awkwardness that allows us not to be meshed up into the "groupthink" mentality. As we are not as easily influenced to think in a certain pattern, we're more likely to see things for what they are. If you define that as genius, there you go. Certainly because of that, I do think that most famous people probably had some degree of autism because it's much easier to get to that position if you don't let society dictate what is acceptable to believe and what isn't. There's also the additional plus that Aspies can thoroughly obsess over a subject, allowing us to study and dedicate ourselves for hours to our obsession without getting bored effectively giving us a boost to go where no NT can really go to. Clearly I do believe most "geniuses" were on the autistic spectrum for a reason.
(It's also why I see so many little kids dubbed as geniuses fade in the background and never reappear)

However, superiority is another story. If anything, especially if you've payed enough attention to that study revealing chimpanzees having better memory than human adults, autistics are behind in the evolutionary scale. It is assumed by this study that Homo sapiens, when evolving into it's modern version, lost a lot of memory skills for the sake of socialization skills and a filter to be able to withstand extreme social and chaotic situations and to be able to socialize and relate to one another more. We, however, sort of stayed behind on that and never really went as far as NTs.
At least that's what the studies seem to show, anyway.

Tl;dr: I believe Hans Asperger when he mentioned that a dash of autism is needed for great success in science of art, but I think jumping into saying we are intellectually superior is just silly because still most of the time we have difficulty achieving independence. It's like men and women with grades; women generally have higher grades than men, but the ones with the highest grades are more likely to be men than women. I think it's similar between Aspies and NTs and the coining of genius.

I really don't believe in having heroes. I never have. I appreciate people's work but I don't necessarily admire them.


And I am one of those who get tired of post-mortem diagnosis. Frankly, if they weren't diagnosed themselves, then I wouildn't claim they carried the disorder. Even though he might have shown certain characteristic traits, it would be illogical to outright claim a person was autistic, at least for me.

I think, Einstein himself has said that a genius is only 2% talent, this talks of all the effort Einstein had to do and it looks like Einstein himself did not think he was born a genius but that everything was result of all his hard work (obsession on physics) rather than any intrinsic superior intelligence .

Pretty much everyone you have ever read a story about, or looked up to, or studied in history was NOT NORMAL. If they were normal it would not have been worthwhile to write about them.

This whole "Was he Autistic" in inconsequential, clearly he was not typical, and we can all relate to that.

I know a guy who's clearly autistic. He had some unusual, innovative ideas and was at the right place at the right time. Some NT's took his ideas and developed them. Then the guy became a millionaire.

I think that spectrum people may not be smarter than NT"s but what they think about takes them in directions that are not the well trod on paths so there's some clever ideas lurking in autistic brains that could be put to good use.

Roger Bannister was certainly not "typical." He was made fun of as a child for being smart and was criticized by the British press for training for his races in his own way. He not only became the first to break the four-minute mile, but also became a physician, specializing in neurology. He has been married to his wife, Moyra, for over 50 years and the couple has four children and 14 grandchildren. He succeeded in athletics, medicine and life.

I think superiority is a tribal, NT construct.

NT's think we are inferior.

We do not think in such linear terms of simple dominance.

So the debate need never occur :-b *resumes building a full-scale reproduction of L'Arc de Triumph out of legos.

Note, however, the following experiment : a modern day human is transported back in time 150,000 years. He would be adjudged : social inept, incapable of hunting and fighting effectively enough to sustain himself, uncomfortable with the social norm of picking insects off his peers, and strangely possessed of the notion that he can somehow make fire.