It is so ironic that autistics are often described as "not being able to see the bigger picture". What this stereotype relates to is the absence of social intuition, i.e. in neurotypical terms "the bigger picture" is always "the social picture", or more precisely "the immediate social context within a situation".
For neurotypical individuals, including psychologists and other experts who study human behaviour, it is virtually impossible to understand the autistic ability to think recursively and in systems of systems, in the same way that it is impossible for autistics to understand social intuition from a first hand perspective.
The following article describes neurotypical thinking about the stages of mental development http://developmentalobserver.blog.com/2 ... heory-cdt/. The pattern and the statistics mentioned in the article seem compatible with my observations (anecdotal evidence), but I can definitely say that it does not apply in my case. I've never had a mode of thinking that corresponds to the "3rd Order: Socialised Mind". I think this is a direct result of a lack of social intuition and a lack of social motivation, in the sense of not having any need or desire to establish or negotiate social status. The whole notion of social status is foreign to me. Star Ford's book A Field Guide to Earthlings is a brilliant treatise on social status from an external anthropological perspective.
In my case, and I suspect in many autistics, the stages of mental development as outlined in the article linked above start to make sense only if 3rd order thinking is removed from the picture. As a result, 4th order thinking then becomes a stage where interpersonal, relationships, and mutuality exist alongside one's needs, interests, and desires in the "What can be seen as object" column.
Once the autistic mind progresses beyond 2nd order thinking, it intuitively grasps that all humans have needs, interests, and desires, and that the self is just one of many, and that life seems to be governed by human relationships that seem to function in highly bizarre ways to anyone who is largely blind to the notions of social status and hierarchy. The 3rd order thinking that dominates neurotypical behaviour can be very taxing, because it is in constant conflict with one's own set of values, and because it stands in the way of solving the really big environmental and social problems that humans are facing.
Once an autistic "anthropologist by birth" has got a good handle on how human cultures develop and propagate, collective human behaviour becomes quite predictable in many (and often depressive) ways.
If autistics, due to a lack of social intuition, are forced to get their head around human relationships from a conscious perspective from a very young age onwards, it is only logical that they often become proficient in 4th or 5th order thinking much earlier than their neurotypical peers. It seems to take neurotypical individuals at least 40 years or longer (mid-life crisis or similar) to arrive at a perspective that allows a meaningful dialogue with autistics. In particular, autistics develop a significant awareness of human diversity at a young age, and by default assume that others are different from them rather than similar to them.
The Web site referenced above is linked to an interesting book http://developmentalobserver.blog.com/2 ... -overview/ that illustrates the neurotypical challenges related to learning and to adopting new mental models. In the same way that autistics resist externally induced changes to their highly personal routines and rituals, neurotypical individuals resist (and are unsettled by) changes to cultural norms in their social context.
09 Nov 2015, 10:03 pm
