Another save the world from autism website

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I guess I wouldn't. It should be left up to them to choose. Although such a situation would never happen.

And if they couldn't choose for themselvs? The choise was entirely up to you.

I don't know. It would depend on why they couldn't choose. Such circumstances wouldn't happen. I don't like to discuss a question like that intended to get me to appear as a mean jerk.

I think we might be getting somewhere. What you have said here is exactly what we've been trying to get across.

There is this myth that autism is something that is "suffered". It's not. It something that sets us apart. It causes us some problems, especially with interacting with the standard forms of modern society. The only suffering is that imposed from outside.

Some of the people who you will find on this site are very articulate, but there are also those who find it very hard to communicate their thoughts.

There certainly are disadvantages a-plenty, with being autistic, but there are benefits too.

Other than general griping about the way we are treated, and moaning about things in general (especially the co-morbid conditions that often seem to tag along with autism), you'll find that most will not really wish to be "cured" if that might take away their positive parts.

If anything, it is those who started out at the lower end of the spectrum who are more outspoken against a cure. They know they didn't want it then, and still don't now - if that cure might have any effect on their minds, beyond the will'o'the'wisp idea of being more social.

Why they couldn't choose? That would be those who had intensive "treatments" imposed on them, when they did not have the ability to say how much is was damaging them.

Such circumstances wouldn't happen? Well yes, they are still happening now. It's sad, but true, that some parents are performing what should be called child abuse on their children, in the name of "curing autism". The Judge Rotenberg centre is an example of this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Rote ... nal_Center

We are discussing a question where non-communicative people are having treatments and cures forced upon them. When those who have survived, and gained some level of communication ability, speak out against how they were treated - and are discounted.

Not true. There is no way that the problems don't cause suffering. The suffering does not come from outside. There is no way that the suffering doesn't come from the mental disability. There is no way that the suffering doesn't come from the inequalities in ability between someone who is low functioning autistic and someone who isn't.


It's not fair that some get to be articulate while there are others who can't communicate well.


Why should the benefits be concentrated in the high-functioning elite, while the low-functioning bear the burden of the disadvantages? What makes you think that the low-functioning just want to stand in awe of you, and hail you high-functioning ones for your intelligence and consequent power?


The positive parts won't go away. Please stop with the scare tactics.


The Judge Rotenberg torture center isn't a treatment or cure facility, and so is not an example of such circumstances.

OK dalurker... I thought we were beginning to communicate with you. Obviously not. None of your points above make any sense. You are not listening.

I've had enough of listening to your nonsense. You can't refute any of my points.

There is a principle which is a bar against all information,
which is proof against all arguments, which cannot fail to
keep a man in everlasting ignorance.
That principle is contempt before invesigation
~Herbert Spencer

Sinsboldy, you attributed that quote to the wrong person. It's the famous misquote who Mr. Wilson attributed to the wrong person. Herbert Spencer never wrote or said anything that resembles the quote you wrote above. A man by the name of William H. Poole is the one that should be credited for that particular quote. In his book Anglo-Israel or, The British Nation: The Lost Tribes of Israel (1879) he wrote on the title page;

Although, William H. Poole attributes the quote to a man named William Paley. Pretty neat, isn't it. Sadly though, that famous misquote will stay in the book Mr. Wilson co-wrote/wrote. I'm assuming you probably don't really care that much.


The KOboxing website people are actually taking one of their sons to Costa Rico to have stem-cells squirted into their child brain. At least, that is what one of the videos on the donation page is about. It kind of reminds me of this book called My Lobotomy. The book is about some guy that got a lobotomy when he was 8 or 9. He's the youngest person to have received a lobotomy. He's in his 50s or 60's now. Anyways, the book is about how having received a lobotomy totally messed up his life. It's sort of similar to these people that are having stem cells squirted into the child brain because no one really knows how this may or may not affect the child life. Just as the fellow that had a lobotomy back in the 50's or 60's. No one knew how the lobotomy would affect his life.

You're stuck, you know that right?
No one suffers becouse they are themselvs (unless there's some psycal error). Why? Becouse they don't know how to be anyone els. I have had a childhood that makes people respond in either two way:
1. "I can't belive you went through that, I would have commited suicide."
2. "How could somebody do something like that to anyone?! Have you never been to a psychologist?! "
Or they think I lie becouse I seem so untouched by it.
I don't really understand what the fuzz is about, becouse its a part of me that I can't change and a part of my life that is behinde me. To me it's nothing strange, it's even normal, since it the everyday routine. It was how my world at that time was built.


Life isn't fair, it has never been and never will be, even if everyone becomes NT.
Thinking that it ever will be is just plain stupid. It's only one fair thing, in the end we'll all die, no matter who we are and what we did.


You've got to be NT, you see only the surface and then makes you judgment. Becouse you don't want too see them doesn't mean they're not there.


They will, look at someone that's drunk, or look at all aspies that becomes social when they drink. Afterwards they can't explain what they were thinking when they did things, becouse they don't think the same way. What do you think rewire their brains will do?
The more legitimate question is; how dare you think that you can mess with someones brain like that and assume there will be no consequences what so ever exept improvement.


That would surely depend on who you ask...

I didn't want this to pass without comment, though my comment may not fit the topic of this thread:

You cannot have gone through that crucible unscathed or unchanged (even if you were unaware that the daily roast in the oven was you). But you can, as you have, pass through hell successfully - recognizing benefits from having survived it. Simple problems of everyday life are now mere nothings by comparison! You have gained skills that enable you to more easily navigate bad situations. You gain perspective attainable no other way. You learn deep empathy and concern for the feelings and welfare of others. You become aware of your impact on others, and try to cause others no harm if possible. You learn the benefit of choosing a life of effort over one of comfort. You learn to value daily struggle.

You emerge from it a silver wolf! The silver wolf you are today would not have resulted from a life of problem-free ease, simplicity, and a catering to your every whim. Or even from a "normal" one.

You see the value in having passed through hell, and the resulting change in your core and inner being, even if no one else can. You will carry this gift with you all of your days, and it cannot be taken from you.

That is why you do see that the life struggle that living with autism (a struggle - not from autism itself, but from navigating a non-autistic world with an autistic brain) brings is not necessarily bad, and that autistic people will gain gifts - gifts attainable only through this lifelong hardship. And you, through your own life experience, have seen that the hardship lessens as one gains insights and skills, which then also become gifts.

And that is why people who have not struggled in such a way cannot see and are unable to see any possible benefit to living such a life.

...and if something truly "bad" were to happen, like a catastrophic climate change, or whatever, "normal" people will drop like flies, commit suicide, and wail and weep in a struggle they don't know how to handle.

You will easily wade through, wondering what the fuss is all about. And then, you will smile, and remember that you are a silver wolf. Just another day in the life of a silver wolf.

Life has drastically changed, and I will have to adapt myself to a completely different world? Ho hum. No problemo.
Been there. Done that.

Last edited by Chuck on 03 Feb 2009, 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My message to those who would "cure" my autism:

Life outside can be hell to us (people with autism), until we learn to negotiate it. The gifts attained in learning to negotiate hell are inside us. The hell outside us necessitates skill attainment, and is therefore itself a gift - a "gift" most of us learn to tolerate (but some despise). Reflecting on this hell, and the skill one has attained from learning to survive it, brings some of us one day to appreciate it. And to see that it isn't really hell, but the best instructor of all in clever disguise.

I am an unfinished product of negotiating hell. I have attained hard-won skills that I do not want to lose. But there are still a lot of skills I have not yet attained, and there is still much that I need to learn. So don't be monkeying with my brain, thank you very much. And don't go about trying to make hell easy for me. I still have a lot to learn from it.

Finally, here's a quote that I had wrongly attributed to Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens):
"It's not what we don't know that hurts us. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so."
Turns out, a humorist named Josh Billings was the author. Who knew?
(the Library of Congress did! ) Dadgummit! The learning never ends.
(But how ironic that I just knew for sure that Mark Twain wrote this! )

I want someone to make it fair, through any means necessary. What makes you sure it will never be fair?

Why won't you address my points instead of making snide remarks? What surface? What don't I want to see? Why should I ignore the huge gap in ability that exists among those on the spectrum, and the restricted lives that those who lack ability must live?


I think your example doesn't apply. Scientists can deal with the questions of how to do rewiring so it only increases ability.


Well not all people's opinions are deserving of respect.

Hehehe!

Then you get me into "research mode". And I find these attributed to Josh Billings (real name Henry Wheeler Shaw):
"It's not ignorance does so much damage; it's knowin' so derned much that ain't so."
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/autho ... _shaw.html
"It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so. "
"The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so. "

However, none of those are quite the one you gave, which seems to be attributed to Sam in various places.

Ain't the internet fun.