Autistic culture?

Ofcourse we have a culture, we are just as human as anyone else. Culture in it's simplest terms is what a demograhphic focuses it's time and energy on. Cultures form where groups of people collectively or individually within a demographic hold frequently reoccuring and/or strong experiences, ideas and engage in similar behaviours that overlap, and we also form our culture where we experience do things that cross over with those of other autistic people, allowing ourselves to stop masking and pour fully into our areas of interest unashamedly creates a culture distinct from NT's specifically because NTs don't do it, or don't do it in a similar way. Everytime one of us engages with our special interests and share it and other ideas with eachother we engage in our own culture, this forum is a microcosm of it. People just don't think it exists because spaces safe to be ourselves %100 in public are rare and getting us all together irl is logistically difficult. But if we did all meet up irl and not just the people who are on these forums then it would extrapolate upwards into a larger phenomenon, there would be micro groups in the whole community just like there is on teh forum but what ties us together in similarities is what unites us and those would result in the formation of things more or less shared, enjoyed, reviled, etc. Autistic artists create autistic art, ofc we do, becaue it's cooked up by autistic minds and made by autistic hands. You can't separate me from my autism and thus you can't separate my behaviours, interests, activities, acts of creation and my creations themselves from autism either.

there is no culture aside from the culture of the nation you grew up in.

if you grew up in the west, your likely in this day of the culture that watches tv, eats junk food, and plays on video games all day.

your life and culture depends on what nation you were born in, thus there is no clear culture in a personality disorder as your life is shaped by the culture and lifestyle of the nation instead. the personality disorder just determins that you have less chance to fit in, less likely to have a job or friends or a relationship in your culture, but your still part of your nations culture.... and in this day and age with how shut in and home electronics based western culture is now, even the neurotypicals are now shut ins with no life family or job anymore so theres not really much difference anymore if you tried to analyse it.

apologies but it sounds like your just using this to advance yourself and your book, i DO NOT APPROVE, but then im cynical and untrusting of nhs in general 

Dear @Moderator :   Sorry to post to the forum, but I cannot find an email address to contact you direct. This looks like an intersting piece or research ... why ban contact with the researcher / author?

Music Therapist is a protected designation - if the author was allowed to post his name it would be possible to chreck the HCPC register and establish that he is genuine ... anonymity is illogical. Anonymity means that anyone can pose as a  member of a registered profession with impunity - thus making this site LESS safe

Given the title of the book, I was able to get his name and institutional email in about two minutes using a search engine ...so the email ban is illogical.

How does one challenge the paternalistic attitude of the NAS that we are poor disabled people who need to be "protected" and need a moderator to make sure we can't use our real names and contact details to follow up posts in the real world?  Caveat lector ... let the reader beware.

Is there an email address where, as a NAS member, one can contact the trustees? As an NAS member I find this attitude paternalistic and offensive. As members who pay our subscription, do we get to have any say in policies like this, or does the NAS  hierarchy just want us to pay our subscriptions and be patronised?   The principle of the Mental Capacity Act is to treat individuals having capacity until established otherwise; the policy of this forum appears to treat everyone as "vulnerable" and incompetent ...

I would sign my name and give you my email address, but ... oh yes, it would breach the terms of service.

Music Therapist, have you seen the work of Jon Adams?

network.autism.org.uk/.../jon-adams-autism-diagnosis-and-creativity

you're welcome. 

also, check this thread op'd by Arran community.autism.org.uk/discussions/general-discussions/general-chat/asd-people-foreign-backgrounds <--- as discussion explores much about 'culture' and autism (see Japanese culture) in a broader context. Deepthought and others discuss the historical evidence towards autism. as usual, DP is the 'Bertrand Russell' and checks all logic. glad they weighed in on this one.

one note: re: definitions - need to check whether you are subsituting 'role' for 'mask'. role = NT thinking/interpretation of purpose and contribution to society and culture. mask = autistic thinking/behaviour used and employed to navigate society and culture. <--DP will need to 'Bertrand Russel' my logic on this one.

additional note: re: self-realisation - you may notice from contributors and reading more widely (though selectively, see topics first to narrow your research) on this site that many autistics are self-educated, self-taught, self-directed in their /personal journies of discovery aka realisation. i propose therefore that realisation of the self, when considered in terms of the autistic /being/, is innate. the question which arises therefore is how? proposal: like nature, it is slow, but it will find a way; it - being realisation - is inevitable for the autistic person. there is also evidence on this site that many autistics are, although living quite separate and often isolated existences, they are all following, coming and reaching the same conclusions/points of self-realisation. proposition: is self-realisation in fact some 'other' self-organisation, a gestalt if you will. see: Asimov's 'ghost in the machine' (dp would have to weigh in on this proposition if appropriate to check my logic)

I've heard of Steve Silberman. He has the double "difference" of being both autistic and gay. I haven't read his book, but really should as it is so relevant. I'm glad you found a group of like-minded friends. As you say, everybody does stuff that others may consider weird, but that just shows how diverse we are. I'm so sorry to hear of your friends that died, it must have been an awful period of your life.

Thankyou for your response. I like the anarchic side. One possible positive, but which some people find difficult is the total honesty of a lot of people on the spectrum. They'll often say what they think, no matter what. I prefer that to people hiding their opinions, and it can be very refreshing to be told if you're speaking nonsense or to have the inconsistencies of "NT" life pointed out. I also appreciate that it can be an incredibly isolating existence, often due to the lack of understanding in the wider world, but also, as you say, also the difficulties people have relating to each other.

Thanks for your considered reply. Apologies firstly for the mispelling, not sure how that got past my internal editor, as I'm normally very careful. Apologies also if the questions were too vague. The answers you give are very much what I was looking for, even if I didn't phrase the questions properly. I find your ideas on self-identity very interesting. There will be a chapter on that concept, and the idea of "self-realisation". I personally have a strong sense of identity, but with many facets including (but not limited to) musician, therapist, father, son, husband, Christian, friend, lover of the arts, etc etc. However, there is a difference between how I perceive my identity and how others perceive it. This can be according to my role in that person's life - for a client I am a therapist and they know little about the other aspects of my identity. It also depends on which mask/camouflage I choose to wear. I love your thoughts about music being a bridge to finding unselfconscious being, and seeing beyond the mask to connection. I also appreciate that autism can be commodified - we can talk about "autistic art", "autistic music" and so on, without appreciating the uniqueness of the individual. The danger of forming any culture/community is that it can homogenise even though it aims to celebrate diversity.

Many thanks again for your comments and your permssion to use them.

Music Therapist said:

Hi all, I'm a Music Therapist working for the NHS and am Chief Editor of a book called "A Spectrum of Aprroaches: Music Therapy and Autism Across the Lifespan." I'm writing a chapter on the idea of seeing autism in cultural terms, not just disgnostic and would love contributions from people on the spectrum and their families and carers. Is there such as thing as "autistic culture" as separate from "neurotypical"? How is this manifest in terms of self-identity, the arts, and fitting in with others. If anyone would like to make some comments here, or get in touch with me via jazzmanhenry@hotmail.co.uk. If possible, I'd love to include some comments in my chapter.

Many thanks,

Henry

There is a book entitled, NeuroTribes; The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently, and is priced at about £18 ish, or as much as it costs, by Steve Silberman and Oliver Sacks. Thanks for reminding me about it as I have read some of it, but  unfortunately due to siezures forgot to get the whole of it from the book shop. I really enjoyed what I had read of it. So thanks again - very much appreciated.

In my more crash and burn socially experimental days I used to wonder off for increasing periods of time, and just avoid everyone and everything when and where possible. I went about helping people who wanted help with odd jobs and who would give me food or money for food in exchange, and even a place to sleep.

Met people like myself with neurodivergent minds, and we would talk about how to get on with things and make the world a better place - how to understand the nature of human depravity and barbarism and do something about it without adding to it. Many of us were doing co-morbidity to extents and degrees that most psychologists could not or would not believe, and there were nine of us who died in as many months on account of which.

Being abused was generally OK back then unless you reported it and got yourself more abused as a result.

We all made a consolidatory oath that if any one of us actually decided to do a suicidal one - everyone else had the right to convince them out of it. We were all very well self educated in comparative religious, philospohical and mystical initiation systems - and scientific and magic and all that. Essentially we all socially exploited performers who could do one thing really really well until it had gotten really really boring, or far far too strange.

One thing we were all quite passionate about was being zombie, warewolf and vampire or combination types - with zombie types just groaning and moaning all the time but carrying on no matter what stayed in the way; whilst wearwolf types went all periodically or at will 'fury-of-furies animalistic and nothing no matter what got in the way, and the vampire type that lived at night or also day and could persuade the passion for life out of people no matter how much agreement or disagreement might be offered.

We were all wierdos and odd ones out of all sorts, but we were not as odd as the odder ones in - socially speaking as far as we were concerned; being that we all knew that everyone and everything is different and that was what in all actuality was normal - rather than being abnormally similar.

I don't think there is a separate 'autistic culture', but ASD people tend to gravitate towards the more 'geeky' ends of culture e.g. science fiction, rail enthuasism, academia...

Firstly --> disgnostic <--? I presume you mean diagnostic.

 Q: Is there such a thing as "autistic culture" as separate from "neurotypical"

 In what cultural frame? Global? Western? Regional? Personal?

In what timeframe? Historical? Present? Future? The last decade? Since the identification of autism and the naming of it?

 As you can see the autistic mind immediately identifies variables and the lack of parameters for analysis.

 Rule: one must ask the right question to get the right answer.

Therefore, what is the right question?

I will therefore /presume/ much, and keep to a /narrow guage/ in providing open opinion as follows:

Autism is antecedent, in and of its nature. It is on the outside looking in. It is not included, therefore it appears to exclude itself. It bears similarity to sub-culture. Sub-culture feeds mass culture. Examples: Mozart, Einstein, Tesla, Da Vinci, Van Gogh...It is a wide perspective, taking all information in, all experiences, sensory, and functions at a high level as a result.

 How is this manifest in terms of self-identity, the arts, and fitting in with others.

 Self-identity - as s/I is construct and only exists in context, then one must examine the context; context being a cumulative aggregate of signs, significations, imposed, implicit or explicit meaning - codes. All codes are intrinsically false, therefore lies. People like to lie. s/I is a lie.

 Note: An autistic person masks. I would suggest there is no self-identity, as it is irrelevant, it serves no purpose other than as a means to encounter environment and interact with it - camouflage. The self, in being, merely is. This, I would suggest, is closer to the truth. Better to say: self-state - an unselfconscious presence of being without any requirement other than to be self. Being autistic, I personally look beyond or through surface of identity, even of other people.  I look past the lie. Instead, I seek connection, unselfconscious being - music can act as a bridge to this place. It is the daydream. It is the place you go when you daydream. It is Yves Klein blue.

Seeing autism in cultural terms, not just /disgnostic/

 That would be a start. Autistics have contributed, much. And contribute much. The problem being, that autism, in and of itself, has no worth. Unless it can be commodified - a painting on the wall, a piece of music, a scientific discovery that becomes the destroyer of worlds - then it has no place in society, or rather, it remains on the outside, looking in. It does not fit, not because there is no place for it, but rather, because it is different, it is a different language, a different state of being, one of peace, one which is an antithesis of current Western cultural and societal constructs.

Yes, you have my permission to use any of the above information as quotes should you deem anything appropriate or relevant to your NT needs.

Also: I would recommend you read through some of the discussion pages on this site, you may find some interesting 'autistic culture' present - if you are able to identify it, that is.

A prevalent culture that I have observed, on this forum and elsewhere, is of a rather anarchic and fractious relationships. We are not good at agreeing with each other or of sympathising or empathising with each other. No prizes for guessing why that might be! There are cliques where group-think prevails and people support each other in their idealistic but often Quixotic goals.

The other feature of the culture is the misery that a lot of autistic people live in. Generally speaking, autistic people have difficult and isolated lives that are identified by a lack of community and by desperate reliance on services that are often unable to make a real change to people's lives.