Dropped into this middle state, as Pope calls it, we are, so far as we are aware, the only creatures on this planet with the capacity to wonder about our own existence and to question it. We stare into the infinite void that surrounds us and try to make order of it. It is the horror of a Lovecraft of Maupassant which scares us, if only momentarily, into believing that beyond the veil we cannot see there is nothing, or, if it is there, we are insignificant. Religion tells us otherwise and consoles us that in the vast universe we are not an accident or an aberration, but a key part of a grand plan. It would be, indeed, a terrible irony if the swirling chaos birthed us only to dump us like so much flotsam and jetsam on the shore of life alone and horrified, cut off from anything else.
Some time ago I was riding the train into work. The sky was overcast and the intermittent splatter of rain drops on the car windows left rivulets that formed intricate patterns as the wind drove the forlorn drops backwards. I had settled into my chair, one of the last on a train that was fully loaded, and like always, I began filling out my crossword puzzle. I always get some sense of satisfaction from forming the words. It is not solely pride at figuring the clues, but something much deeper about putting the chaos of the puzzle to rest. Once I start and answer even one clue, I have to finish.
We rocked gently back and forth. No one talked. No one ever talks during the commute, unless it be on their cell phone to a faceless interlocutor who, for his absence, might as well not exist in our little self-contained reality here. My seatmate stared vacantly out the window; the static of noise that escaped her earbuds did not afford me enough of a tune to identify her musical stylings. We were just fifty some odd people who lives had, for a brief moment, intersected and would, we believed, pass on without ever seeing one another again.
We passed underground and the soft sunlight blinked out to be replaced by a the yellowing glare of the rail car's florescent bulbs. The clacking of the wheels now echoed off concrete walls and the sudden drop in elevation caused a static to hiss in my ears until I could again equalize the pressure.
As we passed out of cell phone range, the last of the conversations died down. Save for the occasional "Excuse me," or "Sorry," there was only the sound of the wheels on the track. At every station, we made room for the new arrivals. The doors chimed and once more the track slipped behind us and was swallowed by the darkness; only the mysterious and occasional light shone in the darkness of the tube.
Not far from my stop, the train eased to stopped. Standing passengers muttered automatic "sorry's" as they jostled one another. A few looked up, but such stops were not unknown. A older gentleman, rotund and red faced, looked nervous. "What is it," he asked. No one answered. With a screech and lurch the train moved forward a few feet then stopped. The red-faced man let out a groan; the passenger next to me just sighed.
"Ladies and gentleman, we are being asked to hold our position. There is a train ahead of us on the track. We will be moving momentarily."
"What does that mean?" asked the nervous older man. Again, no one answered him. The everyday needs no explanation, even when it is inexplicable; it has the comfort, at least, of being familiar and no one bothers to question it. One outsider, though, can provoke a situation.
A lady in front of me with a wide face and a hat that reminded me of ones I had seen in old movies with matriarchal women on their way to church answered, though she did not address the questioner specifically. "Never run good, this train. Been riding it for years. Don't think a day has passed that something didn't go wrong." Whether she intended this to comfort our agitator or not, it failed. His face was flushed and only grew redder as time drew on. Now, more heads popped up from their ipods, newspapers, books, and naps. A svelte, high cheek-boned lady sitting across from me began to bounce her leg in irritation and sigh loudly as she shook her thin face.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for this delay. The train ahead of us is experiencing mechanical difficulties. We will be moving momentarily."
More people grew agitated by the further delay and quiet sounds began to pierce the hum of the background noise: the rustling of papers, the beeping of cell phones, the din of overlapping voices. I sat stock still, taking in the new sensations. A new energy quickened the passengers. Whispered conversations ebbed and flowed. Sentences were let loose and then hung; half ignored, half answered, merely passing each other and carrying only the slightest resemblance to real conversations.
"Not again..."
"This never happens on the New York Subway"
"How difficult is it to get a train to run on time"
"I know! Can you believe it? I was once stuck for over an hour"
"Hiking rates, buying new cars, and they still can't keep the trains running for a single day."
"I hope that doesn't happen today"
"I'm gonna be late again today!"
Somewhere in this concatenation of half-hearted conversations, the confabulations began to coalesce. Two theories emerged almost organically from the crowd and grew seemingly independent. They developed legs and wings and dwelt among us quite as though they were face. Somewhere down at the end of the car the word "fire" drifted from one of these half-formed conversations and was taken up with gusto by our corpulent, ruddy friend.
"Fire?!" he said. "Everyone! We need to find the nearest exits. We going to have to evacuate the train. I'm serious. Look around you." He wiped the sweat from his face, his leg nervously bouncing. A few people laughed at his suggestion, but nonetheless many eyes wandered toward the emergency exit signs. Just in case.
The other theory came from wirery gentlemen of indeterminate age with salt and pepper hair and glasses. To a not very attentive partner, he extrapolated his own interpretation of events.
"It's likely just a stuck door or maybe even a sick passenger. They never tell us what's really going on. They afraid people will panic if they knew the truth. Could be a lot worse."
His would-be interlocutor nodded, but did not raise her eyes from her paper. We waited now; the novelty worn off. Humans are amazing adapters and soon fell back to their papers, their novels, their crossword puzzles or their sudoku. The whispered conversations now ebbed away until only the occasional whisper or soft rustle remained.
"Ladies and Gentleman. We apologize for the delay and would like to thank you for choosing MetroRail..."
--"Choosing?! What other choice do we have?" said the wirery, bespectacled man.
"There is a train ahead of us that is experiencing mechanical difficulties."
The ruddy man with the round face gulped obviously. "Does everyone know where their nearest emergency exit is?" He asked loudly.
"We have been asked to push the train up to the next station, allow the passengers to exit and then push the train forward and unload this train."
"Oh my g--!" shouted the round man. He stood up for the first time and moved closer to the exit.
"See," said the bespectacled philosopher, "I knew it was worse. It's probably even worse than they are letting on. I'll bet there was a fire. Can you see any smoke." He looked out of the window into the dim light of the tunnel. Apparently unable to see any smoke, he said down without saying a further word.
The train jerked forward and with a creaking groan it crept forward. With a jolt, we coupled with the train in front of us and began our shaky journey forward. The train vibrated. Every eye looked up and out as if expecting to see something, though logic said there would be nothing to see.
We sat in a sepulchral silence and we moved jarringly forward. Even the most jaded of commuters now looked up. No one spoke. The rustling and beeping was silenced. Only the groaning of fatigued metal and rusted joints remained. It echoed through the car. The round faced man paced nervously, but never strayed far from the emergency exit. The thin man sat stoically but shot occasional furtive glances in search of smoke.
At long last, the shuddering stopped.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we thank you for you patience. We will be holding here until the train ahead of us unloads all its passengers."
With the last click of the mic, a deep and overwhelming silence stole over the rail car. No one spoke; not the thin man, not the ruddy man, not even the church-hat lady or the peaked-nose business woman. Aside from a stray cough or two, it was total silence.
In a few moments, a creaking groan signaled we were moving again. The train shuddered forward, its engines straining to propel twice its normal load along the underground track. Light broke out around the forward edges of the car as the train emerged into the station. The packed crowds all along the platform stood shoulder to shoulder completely filling the whole area. They watched us with weary glances, more annoyed than angry, but still resigned to their fate. We stared back no less drained of expression by the prolonged exasperation. The trained continued to jerk along. The faces of the passing commuters on the platform shook wildly, but passenger in the car looked inward.
At last we stopped and the doors opened. Crowded as we were on the train, it was even more difficult to find room on the platform which was packed tight with two hours worth of angry passengers. The ruddy face man was the first off, scarcely pausing to say the obligatory sorrys. I saw him last as he exited the station carelessly brushing people aside.
I followed the thin man with the salt-and-pepper hair and the business lady with the aquiline nose. We stood on the platform and waited for the train to depart, weighing whether it would be best to stay and fight for room on a crowded train or take a cab. The business woman typed furiously on her blackberry with her thin lips pursed tightly. She made no sound other than an occasional and much too emphasized sigh of annoyance. The thin man continued to espouse his theories.
"Of course, if they had had the foresight to establish a double rail line, they wouldn't have these problems. This place is so poorly managed, that its no wonder I have to leave so early just to make sure I'm not late every day. This is what happens when you have a socialist model that doesn't allow competition. You get substandard service 'cause they know they're the only game in town. I'm sure their is corruption, skimming from the funds. They why the trains keep breaking down."
He continued his philippic to no one in particular. A blond lady with cheap jewelry and sensible flat shoes who had been on the platform already listened politely.
A new train came and whisked away a sizable crowd, including the bespectacled man and the thin businesswoman. I was not yet late, so I remained for the next train. Instead, I watched the people milling about having parallel conversations speaking at the air and only occasionally intersecting in their words. The only real conversations seemed to be over the phone, but that was only inferential deduction on my part.
Bit by bit, we dispersed until I finally took a train and made it to work, being left only to think about what had just happened. It was, in reality, no spectacular event; nothing worth being recorded in the newspaper or a history book. Yet I saw much of humanity in there. Face to face with the seeming randomness and apathy of the universe, we each sought the divine will. The ruddy man saw danger and evil, unwilled, unwilling, and uncontrollable; something that can only be escaped. The thin man saw a malicious design that actively worked against us in the pursuit of its own interests. The businesswoman saw nothing. She scarcely even noticed the world around her, but absorbed in her own solipsism, she went about her way.
I saw a story. It was story about sight. We all saw and heard the same things, but we each experienced something completely different. Whether it be experience or prejudice, or disposition, we each saw a different shadow of reality. The world, for its part, continued to swirl around us on its eternal course as we scampered about its surface rushing about in artificial haste for unimportant reasons. Important reasons exist, but we mostly miss them while we are distracted by the trivial. I suppose what matters, is what we were before we entered the train.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
On Pre-Judging
I like to think I am an a non-judgmental, fair-minded person. Whether I truly am is, I suppose, a matter for others and for God to determine more definitely. However, one trait that I can say positively that I possess is that I rarely make assumptions about people and things and when I do, I am open to changing them. My reasons for bringing this up today is that several recent encounters have forcefully shown me the dangers and power of humanity's innate sense of categorizing thoughts.
Humans think in categories. We have, for example, a category called cat into which we stuff the various sensory imput objects we encounter that correspond to our notion of cat; that is, a furry mammal with whiskers, four legs, a long tail, slit-shaped pupils, and a particular propensity for cat nip. Now, this definition is not precise and like my earlier discussion about clouds, these notions can be ambiguous for there are indeed cats with no fur, short tails, even missing limbs. Note, however, that in these cases the specific cat in question is usually referred to as a "shorttailed cat" or a "hairless cat" indicating that we know these particular instances of "cat" are at the fuzzy margins of our categorical thinking.
Our minds tend to follow heuristics, that is, rules of thumb that help us speed up our thinking. In this way, we do not have to continually analyze everything we see; we come to take certain things for granted. We do not often even notice things that are the same; our brain continually looks for movement and changes in our environment. This propensity not to notice those things that are similar leads us to often over emphasize differences we perceive in those we meet. This leads us further to construct this person (or these persons) as the "other." We neglect the ways we are similar because our brains are drawn to the exotic.
As I mentions before in connection with Asperger's Syndrome, I have the frequently annoying ability to notice everything all the time. I see the mundane again and again and am constantly fascinated by it. I have read in the scientific literature on Asperger's that persons with it are frequently far less likely to be prejudiced because they are less likely to think of things in terms of categories. The more severe the Asperger's/PDD/Autism, the less likely the individuals is to think in categories. At severe enough levels, this constant inability to filter sensory input is actually disabling. Some scientists studying spectrum disorders believe that this difficulty in censoring input is one of the primary aspects of autistic behavior and that therefore teaching such individuals to filter by helping them learn proper behavior and what is expected will aid in their integration.
It is clear, then, that this categorical thinking is actually essential for us to function. Filtering out the normal keeps us sane by allowing our minds look for deviations from expected patterns that might be dangerous. This same pattern-searching behavior leads us often to see connections between disparate things. Hence we see faces in rocks or ascribe human emotions to animals (though personally, I believe animals do have emotions that are comparable to human's).
It seems that we are doomed to pre-judge, though I believe we can limit its more deleterious effects if we remain cognizant of our own biases. That is the only key. We can never eliminate categorical thinking and we should not, since it essential for sanity, but we can be aware of it and by checking our emotions and biases (like the good stoic philosopher have enjoined us), we can be sure that we are never motivated by prejudice and bias.
Humans think in categories. We have, for example, a category called cat into which we stuff the various sensory imput objects we encounter that correspond to our notion of cat; that is, a furry mammal with whiskers, four legs, a long tail, slit-shaped pupils, and a particular propensity for cat nip. Now, this definition is not precise and like my earlier discussion about clouds, these notions can be ambiguous for there are indeed cats with no fur, short tails, even missing limbs. Note, however, that in these cases the specific cat in question is usually referred to as a "shorttailed cat" or a "hairless cat" indicating that we know these particular instances of "cat" are at the fuzzy margins of our categorical thinking.
Our minds tend to follow heuristics, that is, rules of thumb that help us speed up our thinking. In this way, we do not have to continually analyze everything we see; we come to take certain things for granted. We do not often even notice things that are the same; our brain continually looks for movement and changes in our environment. This propensity not to notice those things that are similar leads us to often over emphasize differences we perceive in those we meet. This leads us further to construct this person (or these persons) as the "other." We neglect the ways we are similar because our brains are drawn to the exotic.
As I mentions before in connection with Asperger's Syndrome, I have the frequently annoying ability to notice everything all the time. I see the mundane again and again and am constantly fascinated by it. I have read in the scientific literature on Asperger's that persons with it are frequently far less likely to be prejudiced because they are less likely to think of things in terms of categories. The more severe the Asperger's/PDD/Autism, the less likely the individuals is to think in categories. At severe enough levels, this constant inability to filter sensory input is actually disabling. Some scientists studying spectrum disorders believe that this difficulty in censoring input is one of the primary aspects of autistic behavior and that therefore teaching such individuals to filter by helping them learn proper behavior and what is expected will aid in their integration.
It is clear, then, that this categorical thinking is actually essential for us to function. Filtering out the normal keeps us sane by allowing our minds look for deviations from expected patterns that might be dangerous. This same pattern-searching behavior leads us often to see connections between disparate things. Hence we see faces in rocks or ascribe human emotions to animals (though personally, I believe animals do have emotions that are comparable to human's).
It seems that we are doomed to pre-judge, though I believe we can limit its more deleterious effects if we remain cognizant of our own biases. That is the only key. We can never eliminate categorical thinking and we should not, since it essential for sanity, but we can be aware of it and by checking our emotions and biases (like the good stoic philosopher have enjoined us), we can be sure that we are never motivated by prejudice and bias.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Environmental Repentance
The company I work for, the Mosaic Foundation - a non-profit that seeks to help women and children while promoting greater understanding of the Arab World, is working on a major grant for this coming year that will address water access and sanitation and how it affects society's most vulnerable: women and children. Anyone who knows my family knows that my father is obsessed about water. Growing up, we were always the first to have low-flow toilets (which instilled in a me a fear of overflowing toilets that persists to this day), low flow faucets, drip irrigation (for the roses), and, of course, timers on our showers to keep us wasting too much water, which we generally ignored when my father was not at home. So I was generally more in my comfort zone than my fellow employees as we discussed these issues with the technical people we are partnering with. I knew something of aquifer depletion, watersheds, osmosis desalinization, and so forth.
Despite my rudimentary familiarity, I have been reading extensively on the subject in several books including, "Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource" by Marq de Villiers and "Last Oasis" by Sandra Postel. At the core of both books, and numerous others, is the idea that water scarcity cannot be solved solely through technological innovation. What must occur is that society at large must change fundamentally its attitude toward water and stop regarding water as a free given, but as a finite, fragile resource that must be conserved and protected. This, they argued, would lead to changes in behavior regarding water and ultimately to, as Ms Postel terms it, a new water ethic.
As I read this, I was brought forcefully back to my youthful Sunday school classes. This was repentance! Every piece fit: recognition that our actions were harming the environment, remorse for our past bad actions and a desire to change, restitution through environmental restoration, reformation through changing water use habits and, in a new agey sort of way, absolution by coming to more connected to nature and our place within ecosphere (i.e. atonement with the natural world). Every step as my youthful instructors had sermonized was present.
Repentance is changing behavior to be in harmony with spiritual realities and eternal law; ought not all behavior therefore be subject to repentance including pillaging our natural resources and our water? It made sense. What strikes me, though, and here I will tempt the stagnant cesspool (to expand an appropriately hydrological metaphor) of politics - something I normally avoid - is that people on the so-called "left" reject the idea of repentace as being "right wing" or "conservative."
Let me state that I detest the terms Right, Left, Conservative, and Liberal. I almost never use them in describing myself or anyone else. There is so little agreement as to their meaning that in public discourse they become more than confusing, they become dangerous. All words are subject to being understood by different groups differently (ask a Mormon and an Evangelical what grace means and watch the fireworks!), but these four terms have been more abused than any other similar set of terms. Ambrose Bierce, an American humorist from the early 20th century, once defined Liberal and Conservative as follows:
A British comedian, whose name I forget, one said of Britain when trying to describe its political parties to an American audience that there were, in fact, two parties in England: the Labor Party, or as Americans would call it, the Liberals, and the Conservative Party, or as Americans would call, the Liberals. These terms are so fluid, so relative, that in cross-ideological terms they are useless. A Liberal in the 1880s would be a Conservative in the 1980s while the conservatives of 2000s would could actually be termed Neoliberal in their approach to government, but conservative in policy. A Liberal in 1990s would be a progressive in the 1890s and on and on. It can give you a headache. I propose the following definitions: a conservative is anyone who calls themselves a conservative and a liberal is anyone who calls themselves a liberal. Not quite a tautology, but it plays dangerously close to the edge.
My reasoning for going into this aside, is to set up what comes next. Among many described as Leftist or Liberal in America, meaning that they advocate a policy of using government power to recreate society through redistribution of wealth and who are the inheritors of the social progressives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth, there is tendency to eschew any and all religious colorings in policy to the extent that now they often bend over backward to avoid letting the majority cultural norms have any say on policy (and even go to the extreme of letting minority views rule). This movement generally has environmental protectionist leanings and believes that government should be the locus of societal change, including of environmental protection. The Progressives, at least 100 years ago, believed that social mores and practices followed scientifically describable patterns and could be controlled and developed. This led to social engineering programs and ultimately to the excesses of forced sterilization and eugenics programs, which were supported, regrettably, by so-called liberals and conservatives alike. How would you describe a person like Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor who advocated both socialism, nativism (i.e. restricting immigration, esp. to non-whites), and eugenics? It seems like a strange amalgation of right and left as frequently defined today. You can see why I hate those labels.
Returning to the "Left." As typically understood, this movement is for environmental protection through government action, minority rights, affirmative action, gay rights, abortion, and so on. In essays and speeches I have heard over the years, proponents of this viewpoint argue that we must accept others as they are. This seems to me to be espousing total moral relativism, but though their words seem to indicate this, leftists cannot mean it, for that idea, taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that we could not require intolerant people to tolerate others, which would contradict a whole slew of leftist legislation which require us to tolerate others regardless of race, religions, ethnicity, etc. I recall a conversation I had as a Mormon missionary with someone who argued that I had no business telling other people to change their behavior (i.e. calling them to repentance). He apparently did not see the irony in telling me to stop telling other people to stop doing something. He felt that tolerance was the highest good, though he could not, apparently, tolerate my intolerance!
I have come to realize that the basic principles of the gospel, most especially faith and repentance, are near universal, even amongst the non-religious. To act one must have faith. We would not work if we did not believe we would get paid. Now, we have experiences that teach us this faith is warranted, but ultimately, I do not know that I will get paid. Confidence in the company and in the ability of the judicial system to defend should my rights be trampled ensure that I am confident enough to keep working. A farmer does not know his harvest will come when he plants, but he has experience that tells him it will if he does certain things like water and weed his crops. Repentance is changing one's behavior either to accord with one's prior beliefs (a behavioral realignment, perhaps), or to accord with new-found beliefs as in conversion. How we know what we know is another matter. I am not speaking of faith in terms of how we come to believe, but rather faith as an operational, motivating principle. Under this definition, then, it is faith when scientists shoot a rocket to Mars to be guided by the mathematics of Newton and Einstein even though the knowledge and/or assumptions underlying it were gathered empirically. That is because we are discussing how this knowledge/belief drives us to behave not how it originated.
It is a mistake, therefore, for "Leftists" to claim they do not believe in repentance. They do. They are calling for people to change their behavior to stave off global warming. This is not say I think that we ought not work to conserve and recycle. In fact, I am a big advocate of it and likewise I believe that in all probability anthropogenic global warming is real. I am merely saying that the Left and the Right (understanding all my prior caveats) both believe in repentance, it is merely that they have different values and standards toward which they seek to conform behavior. It would seem, then, that left and right are really more alike than I suspect truly partisan practitioners would likely admit. They just cannot see it and so spin their tires arguing about all the wrong things. However, the right thing to argue about is even more intractable for it concerns the origins of our beliefs, the beliefs which, by faith, compel us to repent.
Despite my rudimentary familiarity, I have been reading extensively on the subject in several books including, "Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource" by Marq de Villiers and "Last Oasis" by Sandra Postel. At the core of both books, and numerous others, is the idea that water scarcity cannot be solved solely through technological innovation. What must occur is that society at large must change fundamentally its attitude toward water and stop regarding water as a free given, but as a finite, fragile resource that must be conserved and protected. This, they argued, would lead to changes in behavior regarding water and ultimately to, as Ms Postel terms it, a new water ethic.
As I read this, I was brought forcefully back to my youthful Sunday school classes. This was repentance! Every piece fit: recognition that our actions were harming the environment, remorse for our past bad actions and a desire to change, restitution through environmental restoration, reformation through changing water use habits and, in a new agey sort of way, absolution by coming to more connected to nature and our place within ecosphere (i.e. atonement with the natural world). Every step as my youthful instructors had sermonized was present.
Repentance is changing behavior to be in harmony with spiritual realities and eternal law; ought not all behavior therefore be subject to repentance including pillaging our natural resources and our water? It made sense. What strikes me, though, and here I will tempt the stagnant cesspool (to expand an appropriately hydrological metaphor) of politics - something I normally avoid - is that people on the so-called "left" reject the idea of repentace as being "right wing" or "conservative."
Let me state that I detest the terms Right, Left, Conservative, and Liberal. I almost never use them in describing myself or anyone else. There is so little agreement as to their meaning that in public discourse they become more than confusing, they become dangerous. All words are subject to being understood by different groups differently (ask a Mormon and an Evangelical what grace means and watch the fireworks!), but these four terms have been more abused than any other similar set of terms. Ambrose Bierce, an American humorist from the early 20th century, once defined Liberal and Conservative as follows:
Conservative: A old liberal
Liberal: A young conservative (Source: The Devil's Dictionary)
A British comedian, whose name I forget, one said of Britain when trying to describe its political parties to an American audience that there were, in fact, two parties in England: the Labor Party, or as Americans would call it, the Liberals, and the Conservative Party, or as Americans would call, the Liberals. These terms are so fluid, so relative, that in cross-ideological terms they are useless. A Liberal in the 1880s would be a Conservative in the 1980s while the conservatives of 2000s would could actually be termed Neoliberal in their approach to government, but conservative in policy. A Liberal in 1990s would be a progressive in the 1890s and on and on. It can give you a headache. I propose the following definitions: a conservative is anyone who calls themselves a conservative and a liberal is anyone who calls themselves a liberal. Not quite a tautology, but it plays dangerously close to the edge.
My reasoning for going into this aside, is to set up what comes next. Among many described as Leftist or Liberal in America, meaning that they advocate a policy of using government power to recreate society through redistribution of wealth and who are the inheritors of the social progressives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth, there is tendency to eschew any and all religious colorings in policy to the extent that now they often bend over backward to avoid letting the majority cultural norms have any say on policy (and even go to the extreme of letting minority views rule). This movement generally has environmental protectionist leanings and believes that government should be the locus of societal change, including of environmental protection. The Progressives, at least 100 years ago, believed that social mores and practices followed scientifically describable patterns and could be controlled and developed. This led to social engineering programs and ultimately to the excesses of forced sterilization and eugenics programs, which were supported, regrettably, by so-called liberals and conservatives alike. How would you describe a person like Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor who advocated both socialism, nativism (i.e. restricting immigration, esp. to non-whites), and eugenics? It seems like a strange amalgation of right and left as frequently defined today. You can see why I hate those labels.
Returning to the "Left." As typically understood, this movement is for environmental protection through government action, minority rights, affirmative action, gay rights, abortion, and so on. In essays and speeches I have heard over the years, proponents of this viewpoint argue that we must accept others as they are. This seems to me to be espousing total moral relativism, but though their words seem to indicate this, leftists cannot mean it, for that idea, taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that we could not require intolerant people to tolerate others, which would contradict a whole slew of leftist legislation which require us to tolerate others regardless of race, religions, ethnicity, etc. I recall a conversation I had as a Mormon missionary with someone who argued that I had no business telling other people to change their behavior (i.e. calling them to repentance). He apparently did not see the irony in telling me to stop telling other people to stop doing something. He felt that tolerance was the highest good, though he could not, apparently, tolerate my intolerance!
I have come to realize that the basic principles of the gospel, most especially faith and repentance, are near universal, even amongst the non-religious. To act one must have faith. We would not work if we did not believe we would get paid. Now, we have experiences that teach us this faith is warranted, but ultimately, I do not know that I will get paid. Confidence in the company and in the ability of the judicial system to defend should my rights be trampled ensure that I am confident enough to keep working. A farmer does not know his harvest will come when he plants, but he has experience that tells him it will if he does certain things like water and weed his crops. Repentance is changing one's behavior either to accord with one's prior beliefs (a behavioral realignment, perhaps), or to accord with new-found beliefs as in conversion. How we know what we know is another matter. I am not speaking of faith in terms of how we come to believe, but rather faith as an operational, motivating principle. Under this definition, then, it is faith when scientists shoot a rocket to Mars to be guided by the mathematics of Newton and Einstein even though the knowledge and/or assumptions underlying it were gathered empirically. That is because we are discussing how this knowledge/belief drives us to behave not how it originated.
It is a mistake, therefore, for "Leftists" to claim they do not believe in repentance. They do. They are calling for people to change their behavior to stave off global warming. This is not say I think that we ought not work to conserve and recycle. In fact, I am a big advocate of it and likewise I believe that in all probability anthropogenic global warming is real. I am merely saying that the Left and the Right (understanding all my prior caveats) both believe in repentance, it is merely that they have different values and standards toward which they seek to conform behavior. It would seem, then, that left and right are really more alike than I suspect truly partisan practitioners would likely admit. They just cannot see it and so spin their tires arguing about all the wrong things. However, the right thing to argue about is even more intractable for it concerns the origins of our beliefs, the beliefs which, by faith, compel us to repent.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
On the Defining of Clouds: Life on the Spectrum, Part II
As I reread what I wrote last time, I noticed, in addition to a few typos, that it still seemed a shallow treatment of this issue. I thought that today I would address two issues that are of utmost importance to myself: Asperger's and religious belief and socially constructed Asperger's. I shall begin with the second first, apropos given that the first shall be last, et cetera.
What do I mean when I say that Asperger's might just be a socially constructed artifact? Well, from this aporia let me continue by saying that there is no one normality in human behavior. There is rather a range or spectrum of behaviors. Some of these are functionally adaptive, meaning that they lead to success. Others are maladaptive; that is, they lead to failure. These can be maladaptive or functionally adaptive in various spheres. For example, the ability to concentrate on one issue or thing may be useful in studies or science, but it might be maladaptive for social situations where stimuli are many and transient. This means that the degree of adaptivity or maladaptivity is relative to the frame of reference from which it is viewed.
Human behavior ranges widely and the variety of behaviors and traits is difficult to comprehend. However, for any individual, his behavior is defined as normative by the society in which he lives. Thus, for example, when I board a bus or train in America and there is only one other person on board, it is typical in America for me to seat myself a fair distance from that person. Alternatively, if there are lots of people who enter at once, they will most likely each try to space themselves equidistantly (if possible) throughout the train. However, on my brief experiences abroad in the Arab World, I have noticed that people tend to group together. when they board a train or a bus. Now, let me state in all fairness that public transit in Egypt as I experienced was much more widely used and the city had a much larger population, but I couldn't help notice that people, when there were empty spaces, tended to prefer being around other people.
It is difficult to define what is normal in human behavior, even within a single society or group. I have recently been reading Umberto Eco's "Kant and the Platypus," which treats semiotics and linguistics. He discusses how language shapes our understanding as well the interplay of cognition and language. Frankly, I find much of it arcane, since I am not an expert in semiotics, but I can understand his greater arguments. For example, in the first chapter he discusses Being, the mere fact of existence. No one can adequately define what it is to exist without generating a tautology. If you say, To be is to exist; you have merely restated in your predicate what you said in your subject. You can try a negative approach (and this is popular both in metaphysics and its less rigorous cousin mysticism) by saying, Being is not being nothing.
Eco argues that while we cannot define Being, we cannot let it mean everything (and hence mean nothing at all), but nor can we define strict limits. Instead, we have "resistances" as he terms them. We can't define exactly why a cat and a dog are different, but they are. Something resists them being lumped together in the same genera. This means that as we trying to assay experience, we run into "resistances" that force us to categorize what is around us. Like the blind men and the elephant, we grope and feel. We are aware that there is a boundary, but the harder we try to pin it down, the farther it slips away. Imagine, for example, a cloud. From far away a cloud (and let us take a nice fluffy cumulonimbus since they are my favorite) has a very distinct border that separates it from blue sky. True, there may be wispy fringes, but in general, if you were asked to describe the boundary of the cloud, it appears very evident. However, the closer you draw to the cloud, the less clear this liminality becomes. Blue becomes gray becomes white without every showing a clear boundary. Still, we know when we are in a cloud and when we are out of a cloud. These two facts exists, but they overlap like a Venn diagram creating a space that is both cloud and sky while also being neither cloud nor sky!
Human behavior is much more complicated but analogous. It seems clear that many people fall along a continuum in various fields of behavior such as sociality, deliberateness, introversion, et cetera. Human beings exhibit many different behaviors and in each of these they fall within a wide range along the spectrum and so the individual can be quite complex behaviorally. It seems likely, however, that some behaviors are interrelated and that the relationship among them complex. The degree of one behavior influences the degree of another (as I noted before). I will not, however, go into that here. Another time, perhaps.
All human societies have normative behaviors that are both obvious and impossible to pin down. These are often termed (negatively) "stereotypes", or (positively) "traditional values." Like our cloud, we cannot always pin down the boundaries of these behaviors, but the center seems clear and is orbited by a periphery of interrelated and dependent behaviors that arise from and influence one another in a fashion that I will not attempt to delineate here (both because it is beyond the scope of my interests for this essay and because I am not qualified to discuss it).
It American society, where in recent years there has been an explosion of Autism spectrum diagnoses, we live in a society that sociologists term "low context" culture. That means that unlike a more homogeneous society like Finland or Japan, Americans have much less shared cultural and interpersonal shared meaning. Norms of behavior are much less rigid here. That means that each individual much be constantly interpreting the signs around him anew. Non-verbal communications are not a given in our society as they might be in Japan. Individuality matters much more. We Americans praise our individuals and make heroes of the mavericks (a word, naturally, coined in the American West and originally referred to a stray calf). However, the down side of the low context culture means that each of us must put much more effort into understanding others.
This low context, highly individualized society makes it difficult for persons who might have a predisposition towards having difficulty distinguishing the subtle non-verbal clues. In fact, studies (and my own experience have shown) that people on the the Autistic Spectrum fare well in structured environments where the societal relationships are well defined. Thus, it would seem, persons diagnosed with "Asperger's" in America, might, in Japan, be fairly well integrated by virtue of the fact that they need not be constantly trying to figure out verbal clues. These structured rules of interaction allow him or her to concentrate their efforts on other issues and thus they are able to be more successful at navigating society. However, those same persons in America would find society almost unmanageable because without rules, the subtle clues are too numerous and contradictory to make out. Thus what is a strength in one culture, leads to failure in another for the individual with Asperger's would feel liberated in the high context culture while someone with a more maverick personality would feel constrained. This means there might be disorders in Japan that would have no social meaning here.
Early psychologists used to speak of women suffering from "Hysteria" (a typically female's only disease according these all-male scientists who thus named it from the Greek word for uterus). In a repressive, Victorian middle class society, suffering from nerves was a natural for women who could find no outlet for their frustrations. This "disorder" has all but ceased to exist. In southern Egypt and the Sudan, there exists the Zar cult among traditional societies. This cult (in the ethnographic sense, not the pejorative sense) is confined mostly to women. In the Zar cult, women become possessed by spirits, frequently male spirits, and under the influence of this spirit, they act and speak like men. Men in the community will even treat women under the influence of the Zar spirit (which comes from the Arabic word for visitor) as a man. In a society where women have no voice, those who struggle against the social norms have no outlet and so they become men in order to give vent to this possible subconscious desire.
These examples show that some "disorders" might very well be socially construed. They represent the inability of certain segments of society to adapt to the prevailing societal norms. For people like me, who thrive on order and structure, our inability to adapt to the chaotic social norms of American culture manifests itself as "Asperger's Syndrome." This is not to argue that all the behaviors and traits of Asperger's are socially constructed. If any reader things I have argued that, then either I have done a poor job of explaining myself, or the read has done a poor job of reading. My argument may be summed up thus: Whether it be due to nature, nurture, or both, there are those whose personality traits are ill suited to the prevailing societal norms. These traits, neither good nor bad per se, lead to classes of behaviors. Under a society where these traits are maladaptive, these behaviors become a disorder; whereas under different conditions, these traits might be an asset. Let it be said, however, that even under contrary society where said traits are maladaptive, they may still bear fruit if only fruit choked by weeds.
As the hour is late and the words verbose, I will save my second theme; Asperger's and Mormonism, until a later entry.
What do I mean when I say that Asperger's might just be a socially constructed artifact? Well, from this aporia let me continue by saying that there is no one normality in human behavior. There is rather a range or spectrum of behaviors. Some of these are functionally adaptive, meaning that they lead to success. Others are maladaptive; that is, they lead to failure. These can be maladaptive or functionally adaptive in various spheres. For example, the ability to concentrate on one issue or thing may be useful in studies or science, but it might be maladaptive for social situations where stimuli are many and transient. This means that the degree of adaptivity or maladaptivity is relative to the frame of reference from which it is viewed.
Human behavior ranges widely and the variety of behaviors and traits is difficult to comprehend. However, for any individual, his behavior is defined as normative by the society in which he lives. Thus, for example, when I board a bus or train in America and there is only one other person on board, it is typical in America for me to seat myself a fair distance from that person. Alternatively, if there are lots of people who enter at once, they will most likely each try to space themselves equidistantly (if possible) throughout the train. However, on my brief experiences abroad in the Arab World, I have noticed that people tend to group together. when they board a train or a bus. Now, let me state in all fairness that public transit in Egypt as I experienced was much more widely used and the city had a much larger population, but I couldn't help notice that people, when there were empty spaces, tended to prefer being around other people.
It is difficult to define what is normal in human behavior, even within a single society or group. I have recently been reading Umberto Eco's "Kant and the Platypus," which treats semiotics and linguistics. He discusses how language shapes our understanding as well the interplay of cognition and language. Frankly, I find much of it arcane, since I am not an expert in semiotics, but I can understand his greater arguments. For example, in the first chapter he discusses Being, the mere fact of existence. No one can adequately define what it is to exist without generating a tautology. If you say, To be is to exist; you have merely restated in your predicate what you said in your subject. You can try a negative approach (and this is popular both in metaphysics and its less rigorous cousin mysticism) by saying, Being is not being nothing.
Eco argues that while we cannot define Being, we cannot let it mean everything (and hence mean nothing at all), but nor can we define strict limits. Instead, we have "resistances" as he terms them. We can't define exactly why a cat and a dog are different, but they are. Something resists them being lumped together in the same genera. This means that as we trying to assay experience, we run into "resistances" that force us to categorize what is around us. Like the blind men and the elephant, we grope and feel. We are aware that there is a boundary, but the harder we try to pin it down, the farther it slips away. Imagine, for example, a cloud. From far away a cloud (and let us take a nice fluffy cumulonimbus since they are my favorite) has a very distinct border that separates it from blue sky. True, there may be wispy fringes, but in general, if you were asked to describe the boundary of the cloud, it appears very evident. However, the closer you draw to the cloud, the less clear this liminality becomes. Blue becomes gray becomes white without every showing a clear boundary. Still, we know when we are in a cloud and when we are out of a cloud. These two facts exists, but they overlap like a Venn diagram creating a space that is both cloud and sky while also being neither cloud nor sky!
Human behavior is much more complicated but analogous. It seems clear that many people fall along a continuum in various fields of behavior such as sociality, deliberateness, introversion, et cetera. Human beings exhibit many different behaviors and in each of these they fall within a wide range along the spectrum and so the individual can be quite complex behaviorally. It seems likely, however, that some behaviors are interrelated and that the relationship among them complex. The degree of one behavior influences the degree of another (as I noted before). I will not, however, go into that here. Another time, perhaps.
All human societies have normative behaviors that are both obvious and impossible to pin down. These are often termed (negatively) "stereotypes", or (positively) "traditional values." Like our cloud, we cannot always pin down the boundaries of these behaviors, but the center seems clear and is orbited by a periphery of interrelated and dependent behaviors that arise from and influence one another in a fashion that I will not attempt to delineate here (both because it is beyond the scope of my interests for this essay and because I am not qualified to discuss it).
It American society, where in recent years there has been an explosion of Autism spectrum diagnoses, we live in a society that sociologists term "low context" culture. That means that unlike a more homogeneous society like Finland or Japan, Americans have much less shared cultural and interpersonal shared meaning. Norms of behavior are much less rigid here. That means that each individual much be constantly interpreting the signs around him anew. Non-verbal communications are not a given in our society as they might be in Japan. Individuality matters much more. We Americans praise our individuals and make heroes of the mavericks (a word, naturally, coined in the American West and originally referred to a stray calf). However, the down side of the low context culture means that each of us must put much more effort into understanding others.
This low context, highly individualized society makes it difficult for persons who might have a predisposition towards having difficulty distinguishing the subtle non-verbal clues. In fact, studies (and my own experience have shown) that people on the the Autistic Spectrum fare well in structured environments where the societal relationships are well defined. Thus, it would seem, persons diagnosed with "Asperger's" in America, might, in Japan, be fairly well integrated by virtue of the fact that they need not be constantly trying to figure out verbal clues. These structured rules of interaction allow him or her to concentrate their efforts on other issues and thus they are able to be more successful at navigating society. However, those same persons in America would find society almost unmanageable because without rules, the subtle clues are too numerous and contradictory to make out. Thus what is a strength in one culture, leads to failure in another for the individual with Asperger's would feel liberated in the high context culture while someone with a more maverick personality would feel constrained. This means there might be disorders in Japan that would have no social meaning here.
Early psychologists used to speak of women suffering from "Hysteria" (a typically female's only disease according these all-male scientists who thus named it from the Greek word for uterus). In a repressive, Victorian middle class society, suffering from nerves was a natural for women who could find no outlet for their frustrations. This "disorder" has all but ceased to exist. In southern Egypt and the Sudan, there exists the Zar cult among traditional societies. This cult (in the ethnographic sense, not the pejorative sense) is confined mostly to women. In the Zar cult, women become possessed by spirits, frequently male spirits, and under the influence of this spirit, they act and speak like men. Men in the community will even treat women under the influence of the Zar spirit (which comes from the Arabic word for visitor) as a man. In a society where women have no voice, those who struggle against the social norms have no outlet and so they become men in order to give vent to this possible subconscious desire.
These examples show that some "disorders" might very well be socially construed. They represent the inability of certain segments of society to adapt to the prevailing societal norms. For people like me, who thrive on order and structure, our inability to adapt to the chaotic social norms of American culture manifests itself as "Asperger's Syndrome." This is not to argue that all the behaviors and traits of Asperger's are socially constructed. If any reader things I have argued that, then either I have done a poor job of explaining myself, or the read has done a poor job of reading. My argument may be summed up thus: Whether it be due to nature, nurture, or both, there are those whose personality traits are ill suited to the prevailing societal norms. These traits, neither good nor bad per se, lead to classes of behaviors. Under a society where these traits are maladaptive, these behaviors become a disorder; whereas under different conditions, these traits might be an asset. Let it be said, however, that even under contrary society where said traits are maladaptive, they may still bear fruit if only fruit choked by weeds.
As the hour is late and the words verbose, I will save my second theme; Asperger's and Mormonism, until a later entry.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
On Asperger's Syndrome: Life on the Spectrum
As some of you may know, I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome some time ago. I have pondered this a great deal and even now do not know what to think of it. Some days I reject the diagnosis entirely as an artifact of poor human understanding into the differences of the human mind. Yet there are still days when that diagnosis hangs its pallor over my consciousness and disturbs my thoughts. Humans know so little, but we presume so much. Being aware of the vast, infinite void, unlike most of our fellow creatures, we feel compelled to fill it with something. We cannot allow ourselves to be surrounded by the unknown, unknowable chaos. It is that fear that gives Lovecraftian horror its staying power.
For those that don't know, Asperger's Syndrome is a milder variant of Autism. According to the diagnostic manuals, the following are the basic criteria for diagnosis:
What continues to bedevil me, though, is whether this real. True, I have many of these symptoms, though a patient mothers and years of counseling have helped me temper some of them. I am not nearly the socially isolated, monomaniacal kid who used to stack Legos obsessively in coordinated color schemes and scream if anyone touched me or moved my stuff from its appointed place. I no longer go catatonic when forced to change my schedule at the last minute and even, Mirabile Dictu!, find joy in spontaneity. Still, though, when I am stressed, I find myself organizing things by color. But a lot of people do things like that to control stress. I know people who clean when stressed; people who run, people who eat, et cetera ad infinitum. What makes my idiosyncrasies symptomatic?
Experts and Aspis (someone with Aspergers) alike talk about the Spectrum. Asperger's Syndrome is a spectrum disorder, meaning that it falls along a line of varying degrees. There are the severe, which includes persons with Autism so severe that they cannot even feed themselves, and the mild who scrape by in society but are usually deemed as a little odd. If anywhere, I'm more towards the "little odd" category.
I was diagnosed in 2002 while attending Utah State University. This diagnosis was confirmed by Dr. Nancy Isenberg of Princeton University. While there, I participated on a study on Mirror Neurons, which aimed to show that persons with Asperger's Syndrome do not have the same mirroring ability as others. In short, mirror neurons allow humans (and other primates) to learn by observing because the motor cortex, the strip of your brain that controls your motor functions like your hands, fires up regardless of whether you are the one doing or watching. However, in some people, like those with autism and Asperger's, this mimicry system does not function very well meaning that these persons cannot easily learn motor skills and are, hence, clumsy and slow to learn new motor skills.
This has certainly been true of myself. Without trying to be too down on my athletic skills, I can honestly say that I was never good at anything that required quick hand-eye coordination. Even my piano playing skills are good only in slow to moderate speeds. No fast music. I have also always had unsteady hands. I had never thought much about this until Dr. Isenberg pointed it out to me. When stressed, I find that my arms, usually the right one, tremors. At times, even the slightest touch is painful and I need to take a shower or soak in the tub to overcome the pain of even my own clothes.
As a child, I could not be rushed, nor did I speak to others. Many of our neighbors, no doubt, believed me mute. I did not speak to my father until I was five or thereabouts. I collected shells obsessively and if anyone tried to move my stuff or even touch me I would scream. Needless to say, I was a difficult child. Whatever I am, if indeed I have achieved anything beyond these limitations, I owe to my mother who patiently entered my world and learned my rules. She adapted to them so that I could learn to adapt to hers and in time I felt more able to interact. I developed friendships, though I never was a social butterfly and even now, many of my memories are solitary ones. I hate admitting this, lest I offend any that I esteem highly, but while I have a good memory of many things I have done in my life, I can only with difficulty recall who was with me. I remember trips and outings, but I cannot say who, besides myself, was there. It is a like a type of solipsism.
But let me not overstate my case, lest any accuse me of playing the "Autism" card on myself and trying to skew the evidence. I no doubt have friends and do recall a great deal about many of them. No one remembers every detail of their life. Memories are not camcorders. They filter and remember best that which relates to other items in their cognizance. Perhaps I am just more selfish than others, though of a more solipsist bent. Pride, I believe I have mentioned before, seems to have a passive variety and an active variety. The active believes that the self is genuinely better than others, while the passive pride simply does not bother to consider others. There may be little difference between the two (and certainly little difference in effect), but there is a difference, I feel, in intention.
We come to what constantly troubles me. What is this thing? Some say, and I lean in this direction, that it is merely a different way of being wired, not some deviance from proper normality. This groups talks of different traits and strengths as well as weaknesses. If, for example, red hair is frequently linked as a gene to pale skin, then is it not possible, that the intense focusing abilities and recall of those with Asperger's Syndrome is linked with social awkwardness?
This seems possible and I can even perceive a possible causal chain. One of the common traits of those with spectrum disorders is difficulty filtering their sensory input. I experience this sometimes when I feel overwhelmed by sounds or physical sensations. Because of this, my preferred seat was in the front of the classroom in school where the noise and visual stimuli were less noticeable. Being distracted is not, of course, limited to those with a spectrum disorder, but for me it was often overwhelming sometimes causing physical pain.
I feel the same thing, often, in other places. When I walk into a room, I see everything and notice everything. My family has often noticed my ability to notice changes in my environment or when things have moved. I perceive the whole and this applies also to social situations. In large crowds I feel overwhelmed by all the different subtle stimuli. Communication is frequently non-verbal. The tilt of a head, the sideways glance of the eye. I perceive these things consciously and the sheer volume, in a crowded environment, is overwhelming to the point of being almost suffocating. More the point, I cannot help but see the myriad of meanings behind these subtleties. It does not help that we live in a highly atomized society comprising the detritus of some many cultures that there is scarcely a societal touch point for social clues. In a more homogeneous culture, such clues might be widely dispersed, but here there seems to be little transmittal of social norms. It would seem, then, that my very ability to be observant and analytical of things, might contribute to my ability to interact. It is, if true, one of the inherent ironies and vicissitudes of life under the sun.
For those that don't know, Asperger's Syndrome is a milder variant of Autism. According to the diagnostic manuals, the following are the basic criteria for diagnosis:
- qualitative impairment in social interaction
- restricted, repetitive and stereotyped behaviors and interests
- significant impairment in important areas of functioning
- no significant delay in language development
- no significant delay in cognitive development, self-help skills or adaptive behavior (other than social interaction)
- criteria are not met for another specific pervasive developmental disorder or schizophrenia.
What continues to bedevil me, though, is whether this real. True, I have many of these symptoms, though a patient mothers and years of counseling have helped me temper some of them. I am not nearly the socially isolated, monomaniacal kid who used to stack Legos obsessively in coordinated color schemes and scream if anyone touched me or moved my stuff from its appointed place. I no longer go catatonic when forced to change my schedule at the last minute and even, Mirabile Dictu!, find joy in spontaneity. Still, though, when I am stressed, I find myself organizing things by color. But a lot of people do things like that to control stress. I know people who clean when stressed; people who run, people who eat, et cetera ad infinitum. What makes my idiosyncrasies symptomatic?
Experts and Aspis (someone with Aspergers) alike talk about the Spectrum. Asperger's Syndrome is a spectrum disorder, meaning that it falls along a line of varying degrees. There are the severe, which includes persons with Autism so severe that they cannot even feed themselves, and the mild who scrape by in society but are usually deemed as a little odd. If anywhere, I'm more towards the "little odd" category.
I was diagnosed in 2002 while attending Utah State University. This diagnosis was confirmed by Dr. Nancy Isenberg of Princeton University. While there, I participated on a study on Mirror Neurons, which aimed to show that persons with Asperger's Syndrome do not have the same mirroring ability as others. In short, mirror neurons allow humans (and other primates) to learn by observing because the motor cortex, the strip of your brain that controls your motor functions like your hands, fires up regardless of whether you are the one doing or watching. However, in some people, like those with autism and Asperger's, this mimicry system does not function very well meaning that these persons cannot easily learn motor skills and are, hence, clumsy and slow to learn new motor skills.
This has certainly been true of myself. Without trying to be too down on my athletic skills, I can honestly say that I was never good at anything that required quick hand-eye coordination. Even my piano playing skills are good only in slow to moderate speeds. No fast music. I have also always had unsteady hands. I had never thought much about this until Dr. Isenberg pointed it out to me. When stressed, I find that my arms, usually the right one, tremors. At times, even the slightest touch is painful and I need to take a shower or soak in the tub to overcome the pain of even my own clothes.
As a child, I could not be rushed, nor did I speak to others. Many of our neighbors, no doubt, believed me mute. I did not speak to my father until I was five or thereabouts. I collected shells obsessively and if anyone tried to move my stuff or even touch me I would scream. Needless to say, I was a difficult child. Whatever I am, if indeed I have achieved anything beyond these limitations, I owe to my mother who patiently entered my world and learned my rules. She adapted to them so that I could learn to adapt to hers and in time I felt more able to interact. I developed friendships, though I never was a social butterfly and even now, many of my memories are solitary ones. I hate admitting this, lest I offend any that I esteem highly, but while I have a good memory of many things I have done in my life, I can only with difficulty recall who was with me. I remember trips and outings, but I cannot say who, besides myself, was there. It is a like a type of solipsism.
But let me not overstate my case, lest any accuse me of playing the "Autism" card on myself and trying to skew the evidence. I no doubt have friends and do recall a great deal about many of them. No one remembers every detail of their life. Memories are not camcorders. They filter and remember best that which relates to other items in their cognizance. Perhaps I am just more selfish than others, though of a more solipsist bent. Pride, I believe I have mentioned before, seems to have a passive variety and an active variety. The active believes that the self is genuinely better than others, while the passive pride simply does not bother to consider others. There may be little difference between the two (and certainly little difference in effect), but there is a difference, I feel, in intention.
We come to what constantly troubles me. What is this thing? Some say, and I lean in this direction, that it is merely a different way of being wired, not some deviance from proper normality. This groups talks of different traits and strengths as well as weaknesses. If, for example, red hair is frequently linked as a gene to pale skin, then is it not possible, that the intense focusing abilities and recall of those with Asperger's Syndrome is linked with social awkwardness?
This seems possible and I can even perceive a possible causal chain. One of the common traits of those with spectrum disorders is difficulty filtering their sensory input. I experience this sometimes when I feel overwhelmed by sounds or physical sensations. Because of this, my preferred seat was in the front of the classroom in school where the noise and visual stimuli were less noticeable. Being distracted is not, of course, limited to those with a spectrum disorder, but for me it was often overwhelming sometimes causing physical pain.
I feel the same thing, often, in other places. When I walk into a room, I see everything and notice everything. My family has often noticed my ability to notice changes in my environment or when things have moved. I perceive the whole and this applies also to social situations. In large crowds I feel overwhelmed by all the different subtle stimuli. Communication is frequently non-verbal. The tilt of a head, the sideways glance of the eye. I perceive these things consciously and the sheer volume, in a crowded environment, is overwhelming to the point of being almost suffocating. More the point, I cannot help but see the myriad of meanings behind these subtleties. It does not help that we live in a highly atomized society comprising the detritus of some many cultures that there is scarcely a societal touch point for social clues. In a more homogeneous culture, such clues might be widely dispersed, but here there seems to be little transmittal of social norms. It would seem, then, that my very ability to be observant and analytical of things, might contribute to my ability to interact. It is, if true, one of the inherent ironies and vicissitudes of life under the sun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)