Aspies For Freedom

I think I lean toward embracing Asperger.

I've visualized human evolution ending with Asperger.  After the naked human, put someone carrying a laptop.  Or put them together, not just to show equality but also because we've always had autistics, but now their time has come.

I am a Master's in sociology.  The first thing we learned in 101 was that over the centuries, societies go from hunter-gatherer, horticultural (gardener) or pastoral (herding, think Jethro and Moses in the Ten Commandments), agricultural, industrial, and now, since World War II or 60 years ago, post industrial.

Post Industrial is characterized by technical, scientific, and technological solutions to human objectives.  We are heavily invested in applied sciences (not just chemistry or physics but also economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology) and better and better computers.

When someone says SCIENCE or COMPUTERS, and someone else says ASPERGER, they get the point....  "hey wait a minute, aren't these savants really good with math, science, engineering and computers?"

I know I am.

But I personally feel that I am not simply Cro Magnon with a PC.

Much of the time I have felt different from average people.  I did before I was employed in the technical career I have today (8 years).  I still do, because I am not only a single, heterosexual male, but as single as single gets.

But so far I have only seen average women.  Unless that one I dated last year was AS.  But I didn't ask.  It is impolite.  

I stopped seeing her because I am a Christian and she is not.  It is more than just a magnetic personality throwing off your moral compass.  I'm suggesting that I'd no longer see Jesus as God who cares about things like marriages.  I'd lose a lot of respect for Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit if I did not marry within the faith, because that would mean God had failed me, because how can Jesus and the Spirit send a Christian a non-Christian (that phrase "do not be unequally yoked with nonbelievers")

I became a Christian because I was impressed with the Spirit of God making a bunch of thirtysomethings respect me at age 22 when I subjected them to 6 months of hostility.  I was happy to know that God lives and has power in people's lives.

But I was sad later, between the ages of 32 and 35, as a member of a Washington DC Christian fellowship.  I attracted two or three dates although trying to date maybe two or three people.  The manager suggested that the Asperger was the problem.

I am also 120 pounds overweight, and my best friend says that is the problem.  I am confused.

I am beginning to feel like a human sub-species.  When I do date, it seems to be within the neurological disability community.  Two of my three girlfriends have bipolar disorder.  

I know two out of three is a poor sample size, but why am I attracting other neurological minorities?  For more, see the NT/AS Interaction forum visible or invisible, to whom.  

In a Washington DC disability singles group, my attractive and intelligent (but not Christian) colleague replied, when I said, "I feel invisible to average women", she replied, she feels invisible to average men.  She uses a wheelchair which is obviously visible in ways AS is not.  But in the forum, equal margins are not sure or convinced that human attraction falls on neurological lines.  Only one disagrees.  

I have attracted the interest of neurotypical women in a simply platonic way.  We seem to relate on intelligence in ways we can express verbally, at employer-related events.  These women are married, however.  That may give further evidence to the question of if love has tunnel vision (in the NT/AS Interaction forum this Wikipedia article helped me....)

I am searching for truth because truth leads to a solution.

No, tenaciouscj.  The magnetic personality and the moral compass is not nearly as bad as how you'd feel about Jesus if you believed He denied you something important.  

It took me 23 years to become a Christian and I hated Christians between age 20 and 22.5, so let me try to explain.

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The difference between a Christian, Adam, marrying a Christian or a non-Christian
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Adam is a Christian with Asperger.  Eve is a Christian too (whether or not she needs to have Asperger I dunno, any ideas?).  [I mean, my experience in a Christian singles group was disappointing and the manager said it was Asperger.]

So every morning Adam thanks Jesus for sending him Eve.  Makes sense, if she is a believer, Jesus must have sent her, because (where's that verse?) 2 Corinthians 6:14 (Whole Chapter) would suggest that's what Jesus would want.  

1.  Jesus blessed Adam.

2.  Adam is a stronger Christian.  He believes Jesus cares about Him and other people, even if it means waiting.  

3.  Adam is grateful to Jesus.

4.  Eve strongly reinforces Adam's faith because it is hers too.  Look, I am a virgin but I do believe what they say about the influence one mate has on the other.  

5.  Adam and Eve looks forward to the Second Coming because they'll be together, and with Jesus whom they love more.

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OK, Adam is a Christian with Asperger.  Eve is not a Christian.

They ought to play Metallica "The God That Failed" (black album 1991) at their wedding.  Yes, I am a Christian who still listens to Metallica.  I think that blows some of my married sisters' minds.   From what I read on Wikipedia, Metallica lead James Hetfield wrote or helped to write the song based on his Christian Science parents who died of cancer and refused medical treatment.  (My parents died of cancer and Dad refused final stage medical treatment, he went with hospice, in other words, die comfortably at home and don't prolong it, don't fight, Mom died fighting, more or less). It was the loss of his mother that motivated The God That Failed (lyrics suggest the death of a child, instead of a parent).

1.  Jesus did not send Eve to Adam, unless you are ready to believe that Jesus strongly encouraged Christians to marry each other in everyone else's marriage except theirs.
2.  Worse, Jesus kept Adam single all these years.  It was because Adam loved Jesus he turned down Sarah, Rebecca, Deborah and so on, before he gave up and married Eve.  

I gave up Julie, Rebecca, and Martha.  I think I might have fallen for Rachael if she hadn't married John.  Some, like Rebecca and Rachael, think or thought they are/were Christians but they don't understand it like we do.  Julie never said one Christian phrase to me in 17 years.  My Christian brother Russ wondered when the heck Rachael would get out of being in between Jesus and I.

Shall we continue?

3.  Adam is happy now, but he is not grateful to Jesus.  Jesus had nothing to do with Eve.

4.  If Eve wants Adam to stay in bed on Sunday morning, is Adam still going to go to church?  

4a. At best, Eve may help Adam with his faith but not understand what is really is, or why he's doing it.  

4b.  At worst, Eve thinks Jesus sucks.  Adam is not going to deny to himself that he doesn't think Jesus gave a damn about his need for marriage.  If Adam still believes Jesus saves, what is he going to say to someone who isn't saved: "Jesus saves your soul and He really loves you... no, my wife is not a Christian... are you suggesting Jesus doesn't care about Christians?"

4b1.  My brother is not saved.  He condemns Jesus for the lack of my relationship and the lack of our friend Mike's computer career.  "Jesus doesn't give a damn.... and it is all just a fairy tale anyway."

5.  If Eve never gets saved, is Adam really going to look forward to the Second Coming, because she can't come along?  Adam doesn't sound very happy about the Second Coming when he witnesses.

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Would Adam be hotter for Jesus if he married a Christian?
Would he be colder if he married a non-Christian?
I tend to think so.

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Note: my hatred against Christians was motivated primarily by a failed attempt to date one Christian woman who, oddly enough, spent at least four months trying to get my attention for friendship and conversion before I knew who the heck she was.  When that soured, it escalated: it seemed like the fellowship was on her side.  Rightfully so, but without understanding.  Before the head honcho graduated he either said he hoped I learned a lesson or asked me if I did.  Poor choice of last words.

The Christians who tried to be sympathetic seemed to number about three, compared to a fellowship of maybe fifty.

Add to that my dad telling me, truthfully, throughout history that so-called Christians have killed, silenced, and rejected a good many people: the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and oh by the way except for Dietrich Bonhoffer, Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth and a few others, let the Jews in Europe be killed by the Nazis.  Dad was between the ages of nine and fifteen in Wisconsin when World War II was on.  I think Dad was trying to say that churches don't quite understand people with disabilities or how to include them.

Of course, on the flip side, Christians fought as well as perpetuated American and British slavery and Spanish treatment of people in the New World.

May I ask, what is your faith, if any?

My decades of biological training says "que?"  Just what is a "preadaption" and how does this concept fit into evolutionary science as it is generally practiced?

Likewise, just how does this "next mutation" fit in with real science's rejection of teleology within evolution?

Not in the least.  It's a realistic appraisal of the success chance of a relationship when the members do not share fundamental beliefs.  They are "unevenly yoked"--yoked in different directions, and the uneven yokes will pull them apart, or at least provide a very high risk for it.

Natural selection is not the same thing as "gets a good job".  Natural selection is most often measured by counting grandchildren.  Given enough time, the "stupid" will prove to be far more "fit" in an evolutionary sense than the "smart" if the "stupid" merely out-breed the "smart" because the "smart" will have no children or only one child to maintain their "good job" or "lifestyle".

and that,unfortunately,is true,and scares me somewhat

Just curious.  
I was really intrigued by what tenaciouscj said about practicing what you preach.  I try.  Seems like I have some promise, then.

CJ, maybe some Christians think I am a bad influence because as a Christian 14 years running I still listen to Metallica, RUSH, and so on.  Just because a song does not say God does not mean it is bad.

Let me be clear.  My parents did not raise either my brother or I to be Christians.

Mom was openly skeptical about Christianity until the very end of her life (like, why would God give people a sexual desire and punish them for exercising it).  Mom found it convenient though to put us on the church bus on Sunday morning (a nice break from being Mom).

My uncle was the last family member to see her alive (her brother).  I think he saw her Saturday and Sunday and she died late Monday night.  He insists that she converted on her deathbed.

Dad, as I said, had a oppositional agenda he gradually revealed as we kids got older.  He described himself as "philosophically" committed to Judaism (humility, mercy, walking humbly with God, and even gave to various religions), but opposed the kind of Christianity that failed to protect or worse that attacked certain populations.  

He especially opposed the political Christian right.  When Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition was on a magazine cover, Dad took a blue ballpoint pen and gave him a Hitleresque moustache.

I agree.  I inherited their politics, but not their religion.

Lately I've joined an American Baptist church whose retired husband-and-wife pastor team (each got their divinity credentials recently, I think he has his or almost has his) can be accurately described as... Christian left.

Like, the cost of a B-2 bomber could feed a hell of a lot of hungry people.

Or, how dare we continue our petroleum addiction when people have to die for our access to oil?  We know how to generate free electricity from solar and wind power.  Yes, that will not be enough, and may take 100 years to change over from fossil fuel and nuclear to solar and wind.

It may take 20 years or longer to take the intermediate step of replacing coal and oil with nuclear fission power.  Keep your dirty petroleum, we're taking our troops home.  In the 22nd century we will have enough free electricity to give away to the whole Western Hemisphere.

Bush calls himself a Christian, but I preferred Jimmy Carter.  

Even when America had the perfect reason to clobber Iran over the hostage crisis in 1979 (I remember WMAL 63 AM "the fifty two American hostages still held captive in Iran" every morning), Jimmy Carter did not do anything more than Operation Eagle Claw, the failed Delta Force rescue of the hostages, on my tenth birthday, April 24, 1980.

And George W. Bush hallucinated weapons of mass destruction so we could invade Iraq?

Who's following the Prince of Peace?

Bush scares me.  I'll be happy when his term is up.  

The Project for the New American Century, look that up on Wikipedia.  Some of the books I've read (David Griffin  the New Pearl Harbor, Crossing the Rubicon, somebody else) are downright scary.  

The fire at the Reichstag that made the Germans support Hitler, the Mukden Incident that gave the Japanese a ready made excuse to invade Manchuria?  What was 9/11?  

Is fascism next for America too?

Did FDR let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, too?

I was watching something on Dateline last night, NBC.  Something about death row inmates and a writer claiming they're innocent.  

Something is wrong with America.  Too much excitement watching someone else's blood spill.  Jesus doesn't love the Iraqi dead any less because they aren't American- they're all human to Jesus, and somebody has to die because the easy-to-get oil is running out real fast.

And the Survivor reality shows?  9 times out of 10, get rid of the dweeb.

It is important to remember that even though George Bush is the President of the United States until some day in January, 2009, when the winner of the 2008 election is sworn in, not all Americans support the President's public and foreign policy.  

Most Americans who voted in the 2000 Al Gore/George Bush election voted for Gore.  Why Bush won needs explaining to our Aspie siblings in Australia, UK, and elsewhere.  The original 1789 Constitution (in a day and age before electronic communication and computers) specified that each state had a number of votes for the President, not a direct total of all voters in all states.  The Federal government was designed to be smaller in power compared to the states within it, and even later on the loyalty to the state rather than to the nation prevailed:

in my current state of Virginia, a U.S. general named Robert E. Lee eventually led Southern (the ones rebelling against national authority) forces, not Northern (committed to keeping the original order) during the four years of war 1861 to 1865.  Why?  Lee wrote that if the Union of states broke apart, he would not support a system maintained by "swords and bayonets" and would simply resign and go home, and never fight again except to save his home.  His home was in Virginia.  After seven states succeeded and the central government decided on military action, four more states succeeded, one was Virginia.  Lee lived on the edge of Virginia near the Potomac River (site of Arlington National Cemetery, the central government decided to punish him by turning his house into a hospital and his yard into a cemetery).

Too bad Lee didn't live on the other side of the river, in Maryland or Washington, D.C., which stayed with the central government (Washington D.C. being the capital).    

Anyway, each state was allowed to allocate its votes, two (one for each Senator) plus one for every seat in the House of Representatives (435, which now represent 300 million people, or nearly 690,000 people per House "district" in each state, for President.  Generally a state puts all its votes to the person who wins in that state (from the voters in the state).  Two states now have a system to split votes between the two candidates.  

Florida was not sure whether or not to give its votes to Bush or Gore, and the process to decide took weeks, and was controversial, especially as Bush's brother was Florida governor and Gore was the sitting vice president.  But Florida, which is one of the states that gives all its votes to only one candidate, decided that its voters voted for Bush.  I will say in all fairness that some Gore supporters alleged that some Florida voters were removed from the rolls, possibly on the grounds of race, which has been protected on paper in the Constitution since the end of the Civil War in 1865, and was given laws with teeth 40 years ago during the 1960s, when the central (Federal) government decided that some of the southern states were denying rights to some of their citizens because of race.

Anyway, many of us think that in the age of electronic communication and tabulation, the "electoral college", as this is called, should go away.  After all, many parts of our national identity as Americans, the permanent Federal income tax (1913), the "Selective Service" independent agency that would decide how to fairly conscript men (and maybe women, for the first time) in time of personnel shortages during war (it is amazing to note that America has fought two wars with Iraq without the draft, and the first Iraq war was just like the 1898 Spanish-American War in that neither had a draft, relatively few Americans died, and the outcome was quick and decisive) make us think of ourselves first as Americans, and, sorry Mr. Lee, second as residents of a certain state.  

Many Americans live in more than one state in their lives (I was born in Washington, D.C., when my parents lived in Maryland, to West Virginia just before the end of high school I moved with the family when Dad retired from Federal government service, and have lived in Virginia for five years, because of its proximity to my job in Virginia).  We almost change states like we change apartments or cars.  Maybe one every few months at most.  Not quite like changing our socks.

Note: West Virginia was Virginia's north and west half (55 of its counties) before the Civil War.  Virginia said screw the Union.  West Virginia said screw Virginia and the Confederacy.  The highland residents of WV had little sympathy for the plantationists and slave owners in the lowlands.  Also, Maryland was a state that allowed slavery, but like its neighbor Delaware remained loyal to the Union.

Back to Bush.  We were told that terrorists hate us because we are free.  We read, however, that many countries hate our foreign policy, and a few of us don't like that foreign policy either.  It seems that people who have money have a disproportionate influence on our President and legislators, or maybe that the legislators are not organized enough to make change.  Many Americans are poorly informed (some poorly educated, too) about the state of the world, and a few have arrogant attitudes.  Most of us cannot speak a foreign language.  I can passably speak and read Spanish.  Most of us, numerically, support certain measures to exercise control over the southern border, because we want to eliminate unemployment in this country and even give better wages to our worst paid.  Things like a wall and proper enforcement of certain laws enacted in previous years, even though enforcement makes many of us uncomfortable.  You can't have a democracy without law and a law without enforcement.

We know things are different in other countries.  We know most of the industrialized nations have national health care, many of our people think that is socialist (if you don't like it, say it is evil and no one will want to be associated with change).  We know most democracies have abolished the death penalty.  We know many countries want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.  We know countries like France and Iceland are trying to meet their energy needs at home without going somewhere hostile to get it, and having to send soldiers so we will always be allowed to buy it, maybe at a price we like.  We know we could transition to more nuclear power, and create oil from coal for petrochemicals, over maybe 30 years, and maybe in a hundred years have enough solar and wind-generated electricity to forget there is even a Middle East.  We respect international cooperation but our President seems to want to go it alone.  We don't like double standards in places like the Middle East.  We know we have maybe ten trillion dollars of foreign debt: what ever happened to paying for your own government yourself?  We know one person, one vote is a given in most democracies: we have the electoral college and we don't even let D.C.'s representative in the House vote, and we don't have any Senators for it.   Many of us are uncomfortable with Christianity having such a cozy relationship with politics.  We know that kind of government gets people killed (the Inquisition in Spain, Salem witch trials).  There are more important things than weapons and tax breaks for rich folks.  We know in other countries, especially Europe, taxes are even worse than ours.  We're glad to see Europe not infighting and working together peaceably.  Maybe some of humanity has learned to move forward.

America is not all the same.  It is not the same as the President.  Presidents come and go every four years (maybe eight).  America has been here longer than three average human life spans.

We also know, in closing, that America's system can survive external attack.  We know from history that London survived Hitler, there was blood, toil, sweat, tears, and death and destruction, but Britain refused to surrender.  We know if we refuse to surrender some of us might be killed, but the system founded on right principles can go on.  And maybe we can change some of our ways.

But we also know who can destroy America.  It is frightened Americans.  We could overreact and run the Constitution through a paper shredder, we could do what Germany did under Hitler (I think that Reichstag fire was set on purpose, I am alarmed by 9/11 allegatons).  I'd probably leave for a country that was still free.  

I also hope we don't tank our economy with things like a runaway foreign deficit, dollar collapse, increasing cost of oil, trade imbalances, or a meltdown caused by consumer credit card or mortgage debt (many houses were bought recently with adjustible rate mortgages).
Are we going to have to confiscate wealth to pay off the Chinese and Japanese investors?  I mean, slavery is so not 21st century, but I've read that the national parks are collateral for those loans.












  

thank you,that cleared up quite a bit.

I support you too, Batman55.

I think I read that not every AS has special gifts.

I understand what you're saying.  

The full context of what you said is that if the intelligent were better at natural selection, they'd have more kids, because natural selection means a breeding advantage.  Your point was that the intelligent among us tend to have less children and save their resources.

Agreed.

One application of this is that if we Aspies were a favorable natural selection in the human species, we'd reproduce at a better rate, and crowd out the NTs over enough generations.

It does not seem that Aspies are doing a lot of mating, either with Aspies or NTs.

1.  Aspies: we are widely scattered geographically, perhaps more concentrated in Silicon Valley, about one in seventy births.  Finding each other may be hard, the Internet may make it easier.  Still, the fact that autism and Asperger have a gender bias (men would outnumber women) means that if Aspies get along best with Aspies, some guy is going to be left out.  Maybe one who isn't luckily positioned in an Aspie-friendly career and Aspie-tolerant place of work, like mine, kind of like a nature refuge for our endangered species.

2.  NTs: I have seen plenty on this board to suggest that when NTs and AS marry, and it works, people write books about it, so it seems comparatively rare.  A social worker I had as a therapist suggested: we Aspies are doing a lot of background mental processing rehearsing social responses (I can, I have formal education in sociology, as a substitute for being able to learn fine social skills socially just by observation).   The NTs would interact more quickly without the multitasking in, what else, Windows NT.  Windows AS is always running social calculations in the background and it does slow down system speed.  Maybe if the NTs could be patient for a few seconds, it wouldn't matter, but the MSW thought it would.

It seemed to me a long time ago that people want something out of coupling and don't want to pay too much for it.  Granted, I ceased dating someone with severe bipolar who didn't have common interests anyway (the biggest thing was she doesn't do computers, I make a living with them).  

Seemed that some of my friends (the Christians) were generally eager to start their married lives shortly after college, and with one exception (a pre-emptive surgical strike, let's say), have kids too.  
The non-Christians seemed to wait longer after college graduation but they had fewer, if any, problems with pre-marital interaction.

It is not hard to understand why an NT, especially a woman, would probably consider another NT before one with AS.  The career thing.  A mutual kind of intuition about love, maybe even fluency in non-verbal communication.  Unless she has a strong fascination with very intelligent and/or very educated men, especially in some occupations.

Anecdotal: I have attracted attention from intelligent women in office-related social events simply by engaging in intelligent conversation.  
Problem: It does not work for the purpose of dating.  It worked with two married women and a lesbian.  Could be further evidence of a theory that suggests for the purpose of dating, NT women are playing a non-verbal game that rewards or punishes certain non-verbal responses.

When I read about that game, I hated it.  The danger is that some men who play the game do not want a relationship: they want something else, with or without permission.

I was involved in West Virginia domestic violence suppression research in 1995-1996.  Here is one good reason to accept nothing but a spoken invitation.  No games, I never liked games anyway.  God gave people a mouth, use it.