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cyberdad
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16 Jul 2021, 5:01 am

magz wrote:
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Overall Western countries generally are more socially inclusive of autism compared with non-western countries. But this is complicated by collective cultures where an autistic child is more likely to be accepted and tolerated within the extended family compared to individualistic cultures where the child might be more accepted by the wider society but feel more isolated from their immediate family.

[citation needed]

Really. I'd like to know the sources of this claim. Unless by "non-Western" you mean only Han China and Japan.


Yes I mean the Han Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. There is saying in Japanese that a nail that sticks out must be hammered back. Autistic children bring shame to face-obsessed east Asians. Its patently obvious.

Other non-western cultures it varies. Traditional collectivist village societies tend to raise an autistic child as part of the village. It's resonates with the saying, "it takes a village to raise a child". There's a beautiful story of a surrogate mother in Thailand refusing to give up her non-biological child (she gave birth to twins) to the Australian parents when she realised they didn't bond with the little baby as the child had downs syndrome. The Thai woman wasn't even related to the child but she wanted the child to be loved. The Australian couple rejected the downs child but took the healtyh child back to Australia, one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever seen on TV.



Last edited by cyberdad on 16 Jul 2021, 5:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

magz
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16 Jul 2021, 5:02 am

rabo wrote:
magz wrote:
Like this?


YES!! ! That is exactly what I was looking for. My idea was something like that: Autism is not a "disability" to however you want to call it. It is a very specialized qualification that is maybe no more needed in modern society.

If that is right, that brings a 100% change of the view towards autism. Because if so, it is the society that changed and created a problem that was not here before. I would be very interested to learn more about that idea.

The autistics with talent for Math aka the "Lucky Silicon Valley Aspies" are absolutely needed by modern society. Similarily with a few other talents.
Schools are a big problem. Surviving them can cause lifelong toll on one's mental health.
Saying this from experience of myself and my friends from Faculty of Physics where over 50% of academic staff have "intrinsic nerdosis", as we sometimes call it.


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magz
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16 Jul 2021, 5:12 am

cyberdad wrote:
magz wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Overall Western countries generally are more socially inclusive of autism compared with non-western countries. But this is complicated by collective cultures where an autistic child is more likely to be accepted and tolerated within the extended family compared to individualistic cultures where the child might be more accepted by the wider society but feel more isolated from their immediate family.

[citation needed]

Really. I'd like to know the sources of this claim. Unless by "non-Western" you mean only Han China and Japan.


Yes I mean the Han Chinese, Koreans and Japanese. There is saying in Japanese that a nail that sticks out must be hammered back. Autistic children bring shame to face-obsessed east Asians. Its patently obvious.

Other non-western cultures it varies. Traditional collectivist village societies tend to raise an autistic child as part of the village. It's resonates with the saying, "it takes a village to raise a child". There's a beautiful story of a surrogate mother in Thailand refusing to give up her non-biological child (she gave birth to twins) to the Australian parents when she realised they didn't bond with the little baby as the child had downs syndrome. The Thai woman wasn't even related to the child but she wanted the child to be loved. The Australian couple rejected the downs child but took the healtyh child back to Australia, one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever seen on TV.

Japanese culture must be particularily hard for autistics, as it's full of subtle contexts that need to be read to use the right words and take the right actions. An autist's nightmare.
On the other end, Germans tend to be very literal in their communication and polite formulas are simple and easy to learn. That's way simpler to navigate.

Pre-industrial cultures tend to live in small communities, so individual approach to each child is way more affordable - you don't even try to use some universal measure stick on people. You know, "it's just our Joe, he's always been like that".


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rabo
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16 Jul 2021, 5:15 am

magz wrote:
The autistics with talent for Math aka the "Lucky Silicon Valley Aspies" are absolutely needed by modern society. Similarily with a few other talents.


Yea, but that is not really a solution. ;) "Cultivating" the needed ones and putting the others (the "not needed" ones) to the welfare. I would prefer to have a broader solution to the topic. ;) Maybe to change society in general and accept more diversification.

But as you said: schools are a major problem. The but a sign of everybody "not average". :(



cyberdad
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16 Jul 2021, 5:15 am

magz wrote:
On the other end, Germans tend to be very literal in their communication and polite formulas are simple and easy to learn. That's way simpler to navigate.


Are you familiar with German culture and language?



rabo
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16 Jul 2021, 5:22 am

magz wrote:
Japanese culture must be particularily hard for autistics, as it's full of subtle contexts that need to be read to use the right words and take the right actions. An autist's nightmare.
On the other end, Germans tend to be very literal in their communication and polite formulas are simple and easy to learn. That's way simpler to navigate.

Pre-industrial cultures tend to live in small communities, so individual approach to each child is way more affordable - you don't even try to use some universal measure stick on people. You know, "it's just our Joe, he's always been like that".


About Japanese I do not know, but I can imagine that you might be right. German communication is somehow strange to me, as I am originally from Vienna. ;) At least partly you are right.



rabo
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16 Jul 2021, 5:24 am

cyberdad wrote:
magz wrote:
On the other end, Germans tend to be very literal in their communication and polite formulas are simple and easy to learn. That's way simpler to navigate.


Are you familiar with German culture and language?


That depends. They use a strange language if you see it from an Austrian point of view. ;) But maybe the difference between Austrians and Germans is not the right topic in that forum. ;)



magz
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16 Jul 2021, 5:29 am

cyberdad wrote:
magz wrote:
On the other end, Germans tend to be very literal in their communication and polite formulas are simple and easy to learn. That's way simpler to navigate.

Are you familiar with German culture and language?

Been there a few times, got to know a few people. Why do you ask?


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magz
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16 Jul 2021, 5:40 am

rabo wrote:
magz wrote:
The autistics with talent for Math aka the "Lucky Silicon Valley Aspies" are absolutely needed by modern society. Similarily with a few other talents.
Yea, but that is not really a solution. ;) "Cultivating" the needed ones and putting the others (the "not needed" ones) to the welfare. I would prefer to have a broader solution to the topic. ;) Maybe to change society in general and accept more diversification.

But as you said: schools are a major problem. The but a sign of everybody "not average". :(

I think we generally need a society-wide shift towards diversity. Lol, that sounds as leftist as possible :lol: but I mean, diversity is healthy. It gives more options - and in rapidly changing world, we need as many options as possible.

Also, I believe every kid should learn their strengths but it's particularily important for autistic kids.


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magz
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16 Jul 2021, 5:47 am

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-fro ... e-40493398
Modern Maori minted a word for autism in their language as 'takiwatanga', meaning 'his or her own time and space'.
I like it.


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rabo
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16 Jul 2021, 6:47 am

magz wrote:
I think we generally need a society-wide shift towards diversity. Lol, that sounds as leftist as possible :lol: but I mean, diversity is healthy. It gives more options - and in rapidly changing world, we need as many options as possible.

Also, I believe every kid should learn their strengths but it's particularily important for autistic kids.


In the process of industrialisation we tend to become less and less undiverted. The interesting point is that I like to live nowadays. My job (webdesign/programming) did not even exist some time ago. But nevertheless we can learn from some aspects of older cultures.

About the kids and their strength: Yes, it always depends on the point of view aswell.

But coming back to the article you linked to: I am interested in learning more about such interesting ways of looking at autism. Do you have any ideas how to find more articles of that kind? Setting a google alert maybe? Or are there specialized groups/ places where I can read more of that kind of information.



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16 Jul 2021, 6:54 am

rabo wrote:
But coming back to the article you linked to: I am interested in learning more about such interesting ways of looking at autism. Do you have any ideas how to find more articles of that kind? Setting a google alert maybe? Or are there specialized groups/ places where I can read more of that kind of information.

Hard to tell. I encounteed this one by a chance and recalled it when you asked.


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16 Jul 2021, 10:35 am

rabo wrote:
If that is right, that brings a 100% change of the view towards autism. Because if so, it is the society that changed and created a problem that was not here before. I would be very interested to learn more about that idea.

In modern Western society, the main thing that changed was the advent of mass public schooling, which suddenly made it important for little kids to fit in, both socially and intellectually, with a large same-age peer group.

While the discovery of autism is often credited to Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger in the 1940's, it actually was first discovered in the Soviet Union by Grunya Sukhareva, way back in the 1920's. (See How history forgot the woman who defined autism.) That's probably because the Soviet Union placed a higher value on universal public education than any other country in the world did at that point.

In the U.S.A., on the other hand, "ret*d" children -- and other assorted misfits -- were commonly excluded from public schools and either institutionalized or homeschooled (if possible) by their parents. What we now call "special ed" didn't exist here in the U.S.A. until the 1970's, after a long fight by organized parents of what were then called "ret*d" children.

Until the advent of special ed, there was not much need to differentiate between different kinds of what was then called "mental retardation" (e.g. intellectual disability vs. specific learning disability vs. ADHD vs. autism).

Then, in the 1970's and 1980's, childcare centers and preschools became commonplace in the U.S.A. and other Western countries, which suddenly made it important for even littler kids to fit in socially with a large same-age peer group.

And that is the most likely main cause of the so-called "autism epidemic" -- which was an "epidemic" of autism diagnoses, not an "epidemic" of autism per se.


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16 Jul 2021, 12:02 pm

rabo wrote:
Hi everybody,
I wonder if anybody knows how other cultures treat autism? Are there cultures that deal totally different with the topic of autism?

I believe that many of the so-called "diseases" of the brain are not diseases, but rather emerged in the course of civilisation in response to changing living conditions. For example, ADHD allows a super-fast reaction time in the event of danger. Such an ability can make the difference between life and death in a stone-age tribe. Accordingly, such people may have been viewed differently in other cultures because their unique traits could also be helpful.

But back to the topic of autism: as mentioned: Are there other cultures that deal with autism entirely differently? Does anyone know more about it?


The question is impossible to answer as it depends on severity & the wealth & support of the country itself.

Life in the US & Europe is totally different, protected & sanitized.

Ive been to a few poorer middle ranking countries in Latin America & Asia, the local kids in cities there usually come from large families, with low income where kids have to grow up fast for survival.

Many spend their day on the street in groups mixing with adult tourists / strangers usually to sell junk souveniers for cash, really a child welfare nightmare let alone one with developmental problems.

I suspect there is unfortunatly a high mortality rate as there for autistic kids is no one really looking after them, since parents are usually working or looking after their other kids.

In the country i suspect life is slightly less risky with more opportunities to help with farmwork etc..


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16 Jul 2021, 1:39 pm

From where I came from, it's complicated.

It varies between regions (at least 17, and it's individual 'economy', climate and certain demographic traits), ethno-linguistics (in which at least 100+ variations of), other circumstances and affiliations a neighborhood, a household, an individual or so choose to follow.


Acceptance and tolerance are easier if it's plausible to a person or a community.
Go past that, networks and sociability too, are easier.

But the awareness, knowledge and understanding sucked -- it can be bypassed though.
And availability and accessibility of services, formal services more so, are harder to get.


This culture is very counter-aspie overall. But lean towards socially inclusive allistic.


My biggest worry are to do with borrowing too much ideas from the abroad, take the negative ones to heart and carry the fear mongering stigmas.

And the in-joke on plenty overpopulated countries -- "From where I came from, less financial stability = more children" not the other way around. :lol:

But seriously, I understand how that's an issue.
It's not just the family centric culture or poor sex education -- there's also this mindset with children as some form of investment.


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16 Jul 2021, 3:20 pm

Edna3362 wrote:
From where I came from, it's complicated.

It varies between regions (at least 17, and it's individual 'economy', climate and certain demographic traits), ethno-linguistics (in which at least 100+ variations of), other circumstances and affiliations a neighborhood, a household, an individual or so choose to follow.


Acceptance and tolerance are easier if it's plausible to a person or a community.
Go past that, networks and sociability too, are easier.

But the awareness, knowledge and understanding sucked -- it can be bypassed though.
And availability and accessibility of services, formal services more so, are harder to get.


This culture is very counter-aspie overall. But lean towards socially inclusive allistic.


My biggest worry are to do with borrowing too much ideas from the abroad, take the negative ones to heart and carry the fear mongering stigmas.

And the in-joke on plenty overpopulated countries -- "From where I came from, less financial stability = more children" not the other way around. :lol:

But seriously, I understand how that's an issue.
It's not just the family centric culture or poor sex education -- there's also this mindset with children as some form of investment.


Quote:
It's not just the family centric culture or poor sex education -- there's also this mindset with children as some form of investment


Thats because life is hard with no outside support, healthcare or welfare so the parents expect the children to look after them when they are older

There`s also a safety in numbers mindset where if there`s more of you its possible to share round the wealth or food.

The same thing existed here a century ago where larger families were the norm, but this was sadly also because it was expected that some children would die.


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