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How do you describe Autism?

Lotus

I identify with these points that Wendel1994 wrote:

"I can study how other people who are not on the spectrum live and compare it to my life and see what is different, and the fact, no matter how hard I try to get what they have, it never feels right, it feels like an awkward replica of what they have..... people with autism are different and mine is as far from who I am as possible! Autism is not my personality, my true personality cannot be let out as it is being weighed down"

I have recently come up with an idea of how to explain what autism is. I think of our brains as computers which are not connected to the mainframe of society, like NT brains are. I see NT brains as being part of an interconnected web, like the world wide web, but we don't have the correct software to connect to it. This means they can't read our "code" either and so often fail to understand us. I've often been frustrated by well meaning people who think they know me, when they really don't. And I'm a fairly well adapted female Aspie who is assumed to be an NT by most people.

But I think that autism may encourage individual thought and development, often giving us insights and skills which NTs don't have. (Star Trek fans - think of Seven of Nine and her struggles to become a free thinking individual). 

Maybe our society, in it's struggle to become less prejudiced against people who are a different colour, race, religion, etc has promoted an idea that we're really all the same under the outward appearance. Of course, treating people badly because they are different to "the norm" is totally wrong, but treating everyone as if they are the same seems to me to be the way to stifle individual development and creative thought. 

What do you think?

Parents

  • Martian Tom said:

    I grew up in an era when 'cowboys' were always the heroes and 'injuns' were always the villains, because of how they were portrayed in dime-store fiction and the cinema - and because of how it was seen as acceptable to portray them: wild, murderous savages pitted against the reason and civility of the white settlers.  History teaches us the truth of those times.  Just as history teaches us that white colonial rule in India and Africa - and the grandness and greatness of the British Empire - were all about far darker and deadlier truths.  Subjugation.  Slavery.  Imperialistic ambition. Greed.

    Tom, in the interests of developing this compelling discussion I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment, ok?

    What do you say to people who point out that imperialism actually developed and organized the countries where it was implemented and, in fact, united what before, were divisions in the 'subjugated' society? Things like railways, hospitals, democracy, the civil service  and places of education were created only as a result of the British Empire. 

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  • Martian Tom said:

    I grew up in an era when 'cowboys' were always the heroes and 'injuns' were always the villains, because of how they were portrayed in dime-store fiction and the cinema - and because of how it was seen as acceptable to portray them: wild, murderous savages pitted against the reason and civility of the white settlers.  History teaches us the truth of those times.  Just as history teaches us that white colonial rule in India and Africa - and the grandness and greatness of the British Empire - were all about far darker and deadlier truths.  Subjugation.  Slavery.  Imperialistic ambition. Greed.

    Tom, in the interests of developing this compelling discussion I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment, ok?

    What do you say to people who point out that imperialism actually developed and organized the countries where it was implemented and, in fact, united what before, were divisions in the 'subjugated' society? Things like railways, hospitals, democracy, the civil service  and places of education were created only as a result of the British Empire. 

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