Aspies For Freedom

Ah, but of course! *smacks forehead*

I was trying to think if there was a slang word that covered the concept, and I completely overlooked "arsed".

Just as well, or a would have had to come up with a new rant idea...

Ah, one of the classics... What sorts of day-to-day things to you do to seek contentment?

Rant for 13/11/07 - Really sleepy and mind-numbed

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It can be like that sometimes - Some people live entirely happy lives without bonting to do anything bigger than getting through the day.

That being said, from what I've read of your writing, I suspect you'll do something pretty impressive one of these days...

It's a very good goal - and one that far too many people forget...

Nope, the definition includes the effort - so it would be more correct to say that this would make you unsure if you bont the thing...

At the moment, the main thing we bont is to quit our jobs, move out to the middle of nowhere, & set up a little sustainable living house... With high-speed internet, of course. *grins*

To get there, I've dropped back to 3 days a week of work, and I'm trying to get some little internet projects off the ground to make some "working from home" money - we worked out we'd only need about $200 a week or so between us. So I'm working on a writers community website, 2 webcomics, and a few flash games.

The other things I've been doing are researching alternative building materials (settled on papercrete), keeping an eye out for bushland property areas (looking at Tabulam in NSW at the moment, for those that know Australia - amazing setting, and the land costs almost nothing because there's no jobs out there), working out all the essential survival needs - water tanks, sewerage processing systems, satellite internet...

The best thing about buying land in the middle of nowhere is that you tend to get huge blocks of it, so we can eventually look at creating an artists retreat - or even an autistics retreat, if there's enough interest.

We also bont kids in the near future... I'm not going to go into those day-to-day activities, though... *grins*

Rant for 14/11/07 - My theory of autism

One of the main reasons I had for starting this little project was to try to discuss & challenge some of my long-held beliefs about autism and the autistic rights movement, in preparation for getting more involved in autistic rights advocacy. It seems that there's nothing quite as fundamental to this as my personal theory of what autism actually is - so here goes.

Firstly, I believe that all conditions across the spectrum are different aspects of the same thing - in other words, Aspergers, PDD-NOS, and all forms of Autism come from the one source, and not from different "amounts" or "combinations" of autistic genes. In other words, I think you've either got it, or you don't. The reason it appears so differently from person to person is that it is profoundly affected by personality, emotional state, and developmental processes that are so complex as to appear almost random.

The entire reason for the invention of an "Aspergers" category seems to me to be because psychologists did not want to let go of their idea that Autism was about not reaching verbal learning benchmarks, rather than because the "Aspergers" category is significantly different.

Secondly, I believe that most of Autistic behavior can be explained by a lack of "herd instinct". Herd instinct is the need to belong to a group. This instinct constantly compels NT's to become like the group that surrounds them, to constantly seek status updates on what place they hold in the group, and which others are "in" or "out" of the group, and influences likes & dislikes based on the likes and dislikes of the group. As a side effect, it also allows "social osmosis", which is the ability to pick up behaviors and skills from the people around them based on subtle social cues.

The positives of this instinct are that they are able to blend in and be "liked" very quickly in new social situations, that they are able to pick up new skills and expected behaviors via subtle social signals without needing direct explanations, and that they are able to influence a group more easily to support their ideas, thus creating "strength in numbers".

The negatives of this instinct are a constant need for social status updates and social interaction, the fact that it becomes very hard to distinguish individual "likes" & "dislikes" from the "likes" & "dislikes" of their group, that they can be easily influenced by "herdlike" words and behaviors (e.g. from TV ads, telemarketers, faux-friendly behavior), and that they cannot turn social osmosis off, meaning that negative behaviors or incorrect ideas are also socially osmosed.

Thirdly, the things that cannot be explained by the lack of herd instinct are because the "neuron power" usually used in maintaining the herd instinct is directed to different parts of the brain, which can result in information being processed in more than one part of the brain (resulting in synesthesia, hypersensitivity, or unusual talents like artistic, musical or mathematical abilities), or in the wrong part of the brain altogether (resulting in hyposensitivity, prosopagnosia, & verbal or movement restrictions). This extra "neuron power" is also channeled into specific thoughts and tasks, resulting in special interests and hyperfocus.

So, there you have it - my theory of autism. Highly unscientific, but it works for me...

Not at all - I was hoping that there'd be a few alternative theories out there. After all, there'd be no point opening the floor for debate if I was expecting everyone to agree... *grins*

What would be your personal theory of autism?

And just to throw this out there as food for thought, is it possible that you've happened onto the desire to fit in through logical means, rather than instinctual means? For instance, you might enjoy conversation, and you've found that the only way to get a decent conversation is by fitting in to an extent?

Not that I'm presuming this is the case for you - I've just found it to be the case for myself, and I'm wondering how similar the experience is...

I think that even just criticism is useful, though - For instance, you've already reminded me I forgot to clarify that autistic people may want to fit in, but for the sake of human interaction, rather than just for the sake of fitting in...

Looking forward to the mini-rant!

Going to take another break on the rant tonight. Lately I've been staying up to 1am or so trying to finish off rants, and with a 6am start for work, it's been taking its toll... This is still a fairly new skill I'm trying to develop, and it's still taking me a long while to come up with interesting topics. Hopefully I can eventually "break through the wall" and turn my creative writing ability on and off at will, but until then, I think sometimes I just need a recharge.

I'll try to get up to regular viewing again over the weekend - Signing off for now!

Ah, thankee Mahls! I'm still going to try for an everyday, just needed a recharge day to get an early sleep...

*grins* Thoughts can be provoked, interrogated, twirled, bounced, flipped, yodeled, launched, washed, and have just about anything else you like done to them. Random visual descriptives are fun...

Then all we'd need would be the ad campaign. I can see it now, on big billboards plastered all over the cities of the world:

Use the word. You know you bont to...

Absolutely!

It's the one thing everyone forgets when they're launching and bouncing into new things - if the idea is good enough, the technicalities barely matter. And if the idea is bad enough, the most professional person in the world couldn't make it work.

Rant for 16/11/07 - Unless you are a goat...

Australia's got an election looming in another week and a day(<PROPAGANDA>Vote Greens! </PROPAGANDA> ), and it's started me thinking about how flawed the voting system itself actually is. The reasons for this, aside from the "it ain't broke don't fix it" one, is that it would previously have been difficult to introduce a meaningful system due to the length of time it would take to vote, and the amount of "invalid" votes an in-depth system would create due to misunderstanding. These days, however, a switch to computer voting would eliminate both these problems.

For the international among us, Australia's voting works on a "preferential" system. This means that you are given a sheet with all the party names and representatives written out, and you write numbers next to them in order of preference (i.e. 1 for favourite, 2 for next preference, etc). All the "1" votes are totalled, and if someone has over 50%, they're elected. If not, the lowest party is ruled out, and all the people that voted "1" for them are now considered to have voted "1" for their next-favourite party (i.e. the ones they voted "2" for). This keeps on going until one of the parties has over 50% of the votes, at which point they're elected.

Although it's a lot better than the "most votes wins, no preferences" system, there's two main problems I have with this voting system.

Firstly, it says nothing about how strongly the voter feels about a candidate. For instance, 51% of the population might only slightly favour one candidate, whereas the other 49% of the population might passionately want a different candidate to be elected. Really, the person that is passionately supported should be elected, but in reality, the one supported by mostly indifferent voters would be.

To fix this, I propose a "percentage" voting system, where you allocate a percentage of your vote to each party. For instance, someone who passionately supported a particular candidate would give them 90-100% of their vote, whereas someone indifferent might only give a candidate 40-60% of their vote. You could even work this into a preference system, meaning that when one of the parties was eliminated, the percentage allocated to them is split up between the others you've given a percentage to, in the proportions that you've assigned the percentage.

This would give a result based on actual depth of support, rather than just on the number of voters.

Another problem is with voting every three years. This allows an elected party to do all their unpopular things in the first two years, then "play nice" in the year leading up to the next election, only to do it all again.

To combat this, I propose a "rolling" vote, where each person has a vote that they can change at any time - meaning that a negative action will result in an immediate negative effect to the party. If a different party holds the highest vote count for a particular amount of time - say perhaps 3 months - they would be immediately elected.

Of course, both these problems would be eliminated if we switched over to a dictatorship ruled by me. I shall have to suggest it...

Incidentally, the title of this rant is from an episode of an old flash cartoon, called "Making Fiends" (http://www.makingfiends.com/fiend12.htm). Enjoy!

I quite like the idea of an ebb and flow of Autistic need. I've always thought that we were only just "coming into our own", so to speak - but this makes much more sense. It would certainly explain why we've survived so long...

As far as the theory of Autism goes, I wouldn't worry too much about not being a scientist. You may not be able to give information on gene groups and technical things, but you'll be entirely capable of pondering out loud on the way your mind works... Not that it's a requirement - your latest piece was a wonderful addition, after all...

It absolutely was! *grins* One of the things I'm hoping to eventually achieve with this rant is some in-depth discussion and debate - so the more people weighing in, the better!