03-29-2005, 12:43 PM
Here are two extracts from a long letter on the Age of Autism -
As part of United Press International's ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism, we invited readers to interact with us. We've received loads of insightful, informative, sometimes critical comment; we printed a selection in a previous column and will make it a regular feature of the series.
One letter we found particularly interesting is from Alan G. Carter, who describes himself as a high-functioning autistic person.
We don't presume that Mr. Carter speaks for anyone but himself, but we thought his comments were worth sharing. We hope this encourages other people on the "autism spectrum" to share their views with us.
"I know you've attracted some negative responses from some within the autistic community, but I think the questions you are asking could lead somewhere useful because you really do seem to be keen to begin at the beginning.
So if I may, I'd like to offer a perspective from the point of view of a "high functioning" autistic person who is sympathetic to your approach, and who has spent many years pondering these issues in commercial contexts - before withdrawing a few years ago because conditions had got so bad it had become impossible to achieve anything useful and seriously health threatening to try. I think this will suggest a very different approach to the medical conceptualisation that you have primarily been exposed to.
First off, I do not regard myself as disabled in any way. I'm very much aware of the cognitive differences between myself and the majority - I've been coping with them for as long as I can remember - and I see no evidence of disability on my part at all. I shall speak plainly about how things look from my point of view in what follows. I think this is only fair, since some others are so forward as to call me a disease, and assert that I must be "cured" - i.e. exterminated - and expect to be applauded for this.
If you look into the matter, I think you'll find that what I'm about to say is echoed in psychoanalytical theory, the various spiritual traditions, the Deming approach to industrial quality which produced such spectacular results in post WWII Japan, and even in the writings of Ayn Rand. One book that I'd particularly suggest you look at is a small volume of management theory called "Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay," by Prof. Howard S. Schwartz, New York University Press. Personally I don't agree with the mechanisms Prof.
Schwartz proposes are in play, but the social phenomena he describes are certainly real.
I'm a software engineer, and I'm very good at it. Typically, problems start when there is a clearly stated objective that I must work towards along with others who are not "on the spectrum."
I look at the task in a holistic way, where no step is any more important than any other, since we must execute them all to complete the task. There are always areas of risk and ambiguity which we presently possess no proceduralised method for dealing with. These areas of difficulty can however be "herded" - much as I imagine you, as a professional writer, "herd" the pieces of your own product together.
There's an abstract "space" in which you shuffle your paragraphs and sentences around, as you simultaneously develop and express your conclusions. That's what I'm doing now as I write to you, and I imagine that to be able to write a whole article which hangs together in its parts and also as a whole, you must do something similar. (Has it occurred to you that to do your job, you may very well be "on the spectrum" yourself, whether or not your abilities and awareness have thus far been categorised and discounted with a "diagnosis"?)
So before I start, I must contemplate the whole task, running backwards and forwards in my mind until a derisked and viable course is apparent.
If I do not do this, I'm just stumbling around in the dark. I must then implement my creatively produced plan in a pedantic and rule following way, if I am to preserve the assurances the first, contemplative stage yielded. (The bits where a mathematician might say "in any case" and really mean "in all possible cases" rather than "if we ignore the issues".)
In contrast, my colleagues do not see that many steps ahead - or are not interested in doing so. Instead they are more concerned with acting out their "fitting in" with whatever random and ill-thought-out approach happens to emerge from a kind of chimpanzee jabbering session. This behaviour appears to be encouraged in schools, and is known as "taking turns and making points." The play-acting seems to be more important than the content of the "points" that are made.
So often we hear that the problem with ADHD children is that they "blurt" - no one every mentions that their swiftly produced answers are usually correct. To the teacher, maintaining the singsong matters more than the stated purpose of asking the question, but these highly intelligent children are responding sincerely and effectively to the stated purpose. For this they are labelled mentally retarded. Similarly the wretched glancing from side to side as my colleagues change their nonsense in mid-sentence, depending on the threatening grimaces of others, indicates the lack of rigour and sincerity in their speech."
"We are already deeply into the next Dark Age, but thanks to the machines most people haven't noticed yet. The slightest deviation from regularised herd madness is now quite intolerable, bureaucrats, teachers, and medical staff are the most ritualised and so bored and so herdlike people of all, and this is the context in which the epidemic of autism, Asperger's and ADHD diagnosis is occurring.
Even so, I am optimistic. This has been going on for a long time - probably thousands of years, since we first invented division of labour and the first humans to go gaga fell into their group hypnotic disease state. I reckon we retain some awareness of this in our legends of the "Fall." Certainly something caused us to lose all our history and culture prior to around 6000 years ago. Perhaps the way out is through a time of maximal madness, when the insanity will become evident to even the most blinkered, even as they physically collapse from the stress of it all. Perhaps, as Dante described in "The Inferno," the road out of Hell is found in the deepest and most terrible part of it.
A full description of this viewpoint, as criticised and improved by many others who can see it too, is online at: http://www.reciprocality.org/thirdage.
Perhaps we who are "on the spectrum" are like miners' canaries, and you'd better get out of the mine now - because the canaries have fallen off their perches.
Yours sincerely,
Alan G. Carter"
As part of United Press International's ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism, we invited readers to interact with us. We've received loads of insightful, informative, sometimes critical comment; we printed a selection in a previous column and will make it a regular feature of the series.
One letter we found particularly interesting is from Alan G. Carter, who describes himself as a high-functioning autistic person.
We don't presume that Mr. Carter speaks for anyone but himself, but we thought his comments were worth sharing. We hope this encourages other people on the "autism spectrum" to share their views with us.
"I know you've attracted some negative responses from some within the autistic community, but I think the questions you are asking could lead somewhere useful because you really do seem to be keen to begin at the beginning.
So if I may, I'd like to offer a perspective from the point of view of a "high functioning" autistic person who is sympathetic to your approach, and who has spent many years pondering these issues in commercial contexts - before withdrawing a few years ago because conditions had got so bad it had become impossible to achieve anything useful and seriously health threatening to try. I think this will suggest a very different approach to the medical conceptualisation that you have primarily been exposed to.
First off, I do not regard myself as disabled in any way. I'm very much aware of the cognitive differences between myself and the majority - I've been coping with them for as long as I can remember - and I see no evidence of disability on my part at all. I shall speak plainly about how things look from my point of view in what follows. I think this is only fair, since some others are so forward as to call me a disease, and assert that I must be "cured" - i.e. exterminated - and expect to be applauded for this.
If you look into the matter, I think you'll find that what I'm about to say is echoed in psychoanalytical theory, the various spiritual traditions, the Deming approach to industrial quality which produced such spectacular results in post WWII Japan, and even in the writings of Ayn Rand. One book that I'd particularly suggest you look at is a small volume of management theory called "Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay," by Prof. Howard S. Schwartz, New York University Press. Personally I don't agree with the mechanisms Prof.
Schwartz proposes are in play, but the social phenomena he describes are certainly real.
I'm a software engineer, and I'm very good at it. Typically, problems start when there is a clearly stated objective that I must work towards along with others who are not "on the spectrum."
I look at the task in a holistic way, where no step is any more important than any other, since we must execute them all to complete the task. There are always areas of risk and ambiguity which we presently possess no proceduralised method for dealing with. These areas of difficulty can however be "herded" - much as I imagine you, as a professional writer, "herd" the pieces of your own product together.
There's an abstract "space" in which you shuffle your paragraphs and sentences around, as you simultaneously develop and express your conclusions. That's what I'm doing now as I write to you, and I imagine that to be able to write a whole article which hangs together in its parts and also as a whole, you must do something similar. (Has it occurred to you that to do your job, you may very well be "on the spectrum" yourself, whether or not your abilities and awareness have thus far been categorised and discounted with a "diagnosis"?)
So before I start, I must contemplate the whole task, running backwards and forwards in my mind until a derisked and viable course is apparent.
If I do not do this, I'm just stumbling around in the dark. I must then implement my creatively produced plan in a pedantic and rule following way, if I am to preserve the assurances the first, contemplative stage yielded. (The bits where a mathematician might say "in any case" and really mean "in all possible cases" rather than "if we ignore the issues".)
In contrast, my colleagues do not see that many steps ahead - or are not interested in doing so. Instead they are more concerned with acting out their "fitting in" with whatever random and ill-thought-out approach happens to emerge from a kind of chimpanzee jabbering session. This behaviour appears to be encouraged in schools, and is known as "taking turns and making points." The play-acting seems to be more important than the content of the "points" that are made.
So often we hear that the problem with ADHD children is that they "blurt" - no one every mentions that their swiftly produced answers are usually correct. To the teacher, maintaining the singsong matters more than the stated purpose of asking the question, but these highly intelligent children are responding sincerely and effectively to the stated purpose. For this they are labelled mentally retarded. Similarly the wretched glancing from side to side as my colleagues change their nonsense in mid-sentence, depending on the threatening grimaces of others, indicates the lack of rigour and sincerity in their speech."
"We are already deeply into the next Dark Age, but thanks to the machines most people haven't noticed yet. The slightest deviation from regularised herd madness is now quite intolerable, bureaucrats, teachers, and medical staff are the most ritualised and so bored and so herdlike people of all, and this is the context in which the epidemic of autism, Asperger's and ADHD diagnosis is occurring.
Even so, I am optimistic. This has been going on for a long time - probably thousands of years, since we first invented division of labour and the first humans to go gaga fell into their group hypnotic disease state. I reckon we retain some awareness of this in our legends of the "Fall." Certainly something caused us to lose all our history and culture prior to around 6000 years ago. Perhaps the way out is through a time of maximal madness, when the insanity will become evident to even the most blinkered, even as they physically collapse from the stress of it all. Perhaps, as Dante described in "The Inferno," the road out of Hell is found in the deepest and most terrible part of it.
A full description of this viewpoint, as criticised and improved by many others who can see it too, is online at: http://www.reciprocality.org/thirdage.
Perhaps we who are "on the spectrum" are like miners' canaries, and you'd better get out of the mine now - because the canaries have fallen off their perches.
Yours sincerely,
Alan G. Carter"