Aspies For Freedom

I am by no means an authority on anything i'm going to be posting about here, i'm just offereing up my theory on why autism is here and growing. This theory is based on evolution. (If you want to get to my theory, i've underlined it so you can skip ahead if you want) [/u]I'll start with an example.

Dogs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Dog_breeds

Given it is a wiki so question is authenticity at your will. In the wiki article it outlins various breeds of dogs. In the wiki page it outlines how Mastiffs were bred to be used in war, protection and the like. As such the Mastiff breed evolved to suit this purpose, large bodies and bones to better support their role.

On the flipside there are sighthounds (more specifically Greyhounds) which were bred to chase down and attack prey. Much like a cheetah, as such their bodies changed to better suit their roles as dogs that persue and chase down prey. (More streamlined, thin, smaller bones, etc..)

The same thing can be applied to the big cat families where there is no human effect on the breeds of dogs.

No, how this relates to humans is this. My theory is that autism is the human brain trying to adapt to what the social enviroment wants out of it's people.

Humanity at large can be split into two ages. Physical and mental stages.

The first part of humanity is the physical stage, where basic survivakl in the wilderness was essential. As man evolved as he bagen to use tools, weapons, and change his surroundings to suit his needs, tribes were set. But still hunting was needed to be done on the most part for need of meat. Through natural selection i'd guess the females who picked the better example of what can survive (or who could bring in the most kills for the tribe) were better picks for mating. The lesser picks were either unable to pass on their genes or were killed trying to prove themselves.

As humanity progressed survival became less necessary, where as brawn was the key in early human evoltion, no brains is the key. (Yeah, some football star may be able to put me in the hospital, but with a high education not only could I pay for said bills, but have a steady line of work to help support a family in a material world. Where as the football star is only as good as long as his body is intact.)

This goes along with how society has been percieving how higher learning should be treated. Where as a few decades ago a High Schoool diploma or a GED was good enough, now you need a College education or higher. This has been going on for generations, the brain recieving massive amounts of stimuli in order to become smart and get ahead in life. Society wants people like Einstien, Bill gates, Tomas Edison and the like and the ages where children are begining to be taught is going lower in years. (Baby Einstien anyone?)

Like I said before: My theory is that autism is the human brain trying to adapt to what the social enviroment wants out of it's people. Beause society wants people to be smart, people here on this forum and myself are simply an evolutionary step into adapting to what society wants from us. Our brains are simply evolving into better tools (or whatever you want to put) so we can adapt and use what knowledge we get more effectivly.

Backing up my theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_autism <-- Brain Size and Extreme Male Brain Theory

My theory is in no way verifiable at this time (maybe never) and is largly based upon analysis of the evolution of humanity and the current social enviroment. Itself probably isn't entirely right either, if anything it's a step in the right direction.

My theory of why those with autism are not accepted: We are not what society intended when they wanted smarter children. Mainly because parents see their children exhibit strange behavior (to them) and wonder if something is wrong. They go to a doctor and say "yeah somethign is wrong' because it is not a normal behavoir of a child at that age. And very little research has been done into it before autism got a bad PR image.

If you've made it this far, congrats! I'm done. Once again this is just my theory. If you've taken the time to read over all of this thanks for hearing me out. ^^

~Andrew

Public education in western culture has only been practiced on a wide portion of the population for the last 150 yrs.  Before that people were educated privately and in family trades or as apprentices.  Public education and day care is the problem that is causing autistics to be singled out.  Public education and day care demand conformity.  Public education and day care are unnatural.

Perhaps I should have made a disctiction of when the stages changed. In my first post the time between when humanmity changed into the basic format it is now was around the Neolithic Period, when the Agricultural Revolution began. The earliest being the Sumarians roughly 9500 B.C.

Back then the brain stimulation was light, all you needed to know was how to survive and that was that. As societies formed (Egypt, China, other breadbasket countries) And the amount of information needed to learn to survive was compounded since then: Religion, war, ethics, survivale, hunting, gathering. Add that to when other nations began to trade and interact with one another: Other countries customs and ethics, tactics in war, strategies and philosiphies.

And as time went on and humanity itself matured the amount of information kept growing, putting more stimuli onto the brain with each passing generation.

In an apprenticeship, it would take only a handful of years to be deemed a master at your craft. Or at least enough to make a living for yourself and a family. Now, often times you need 12 years just to get a grasp of the knowledge out there and to provide for yourself only, maybe more. (Pre-school up until 12th grade) And this is not counting colleges.

Albiet cases where the above is wrong are rare. Only one I can think of with a high school equivilent education and is able to provide for himself and his family is George W. Bush.

And I never made a distinction between public and private education either. I mean education in a general sense. We had the intelligence of monkies at one time and look at us now.

Another thought to support my arguement, just because we can change the world to our needs and not adapt in a traditional sense doesn not mean we are free from change itself.

Hey, sounds interesting. I think one must conclude that there's an important evolutionary advantage – whose side-effect might be LFA [no offence meant] – for a society with a number of Aspies in between. Otherwise, it wouldn't be hereditary. – The advantage for the society can differ gravely from the (dis)advantage for the individual!

Public education and daycare are not natural learning environments for children when we look at  the long development of humans.  Public education has only been widely used in the past two hundred years and daycare is fairly recent invention.  Children who do not conform to these institutions are considered abnormal and undesirable.

Before families or extended family (villages) tended to children and educated them.  Children were educated to the family business/trade.

I do not mean to say that I think that public education and daycare are environmental causes of autism.  What I am trying to say is that autism is considered to be a problem to parents and teachers because public education and daycare are widely used.  Public education and daycare require conformity.

I wondered if alot of stress of different kinds in early childhood could make autism "more severe" later. Often it seems like when the chaos around autistic people settle they have alot more energy to act normal. If they received alot of stress in childhood that would mean that they are alot more vulnerable to such stress - That I take from a science magazine I read once where they mentioned that people who had already had depression where more likely to have it again, and it also said that too much stress could cause depression.

I also read an article about some research that showed a relationship between autism and stress during certain months of pregnancy.

Babies can be stressed out too by too much changes, noise, strangers.  Centuries ago most people did not travel around with babies much outside their own communities:  no excess noise, no strangers etc.   Babies did not often even really receive much stimuli other than rocking or being carried around on their mother's back.  Do educational toys and mobiles really make children more intelligent or just stress them out?  There could be a difference in how an autistic baby reacts to those types of stimuli and how the NT baby reacts.