Asperger's Syndrome and the Importance of Expressing Oneself Honestly

I had a really interesting conversation with a group of people who have Asperger's syndrome about whether or not they found it easier to express themselves online. Several of the comments caused me to think about how many of the obstacles they face mirror those of people who don't have Asperger's, but the ways in which both groups handled these obstacles differed.

When you communicate in writing, you basically are posting something which contains past, present and future. As people with ASD tend to gravitate towards others with similar interests to their own, if they're reading a post which is long and they get to a boring bit they can easily skip to the next interesting part. A bit like taking a remote control out and pressing the fast forward button at someone rambling on about their passion for drainpipe design in real life

One person recalled that they were always the only person in class that would put up their hand if they knew the answer. To them it seemed like "everyone else was too scared to contribute anything to the discussion". Often in lectures at Uni, I watch the lecturer ask basic questions to check whether the students are up to speed on the essential elements of a subject and be met by a hundred blank faces staring back at them.

Often in the real world people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will struggle to respond immediately or need a bit more time to respond so they can gather their thoughts. Being online means that they can take as much time as they need to say precisely what they want to say.

Things got really interesting when on the topic of expressing yourself honestly a person wrote "Without the social programming, I don't think we are as aware of societal pressures. Being partially mind-blind also helps with not knowing or caring as much about what people think.

It's kind of like how humans aren't embarrassed or hyper-aware of themselves around their pets. When there is nothing in your brain that "connects" you to a certain species you feel free to do as you please (not in a bad way). It's like how you can still care what your pet thinks, but also not care. You certainly don't care if your pet thinks you look fat or if he questions your career choice. That's what it's like to have ASD, for me at least."

Another person said "I am the opposite of mind speaking because I don't get exhausted, I just get mad at myself and feel like a coward for not speaking up and I feel dishonest. I also refuse to have opinions about things I care nothing about and I don't have opinions on lots of things so people won't really get an honest answer out of me because I don't care. I don't care what you have on or what you have on your head so I won't really have an opinion about it if nothing is on my mind about it. You just catch me off guard if you ask "What do you think of my hat/outfit?" and my automatic answer is "I don't know.""

Other people were more direct: "I say what I want when I want to. I'm a good person so if I step on someone's toes I assume they will give me the courtesy to explain myself. If not, fuck em."

The most intriguing response for me was by someone who almost saw their Asperger's as a gift, bestowed upon them in order to help them thrive in the new world that is rapidly being created around us:

"I know I am fairly alone in this camp but, not only do I not believe that ASD is any kind of error or aberration to the progress or evolution of human-beings, but I also believe it is occurring for many reasons to point us towards greater advancement.

Regardless of how easy or difficult it is for someone to accept their own nature, transcend a lot of the outdated social norms or ways of thinking and being, I believe those with ASD have specifically chosen to be born in a way where any deviation from authenticity will be acutely felt. They will not be able to lie to themselves or others about who they are, what they think, feel or want.. without experiencing tremendous awareness of this falsity, and it is in this awareness, this driving force to honor themselves, that a lot of anxiety, depression and suffering is born.

Point being, neurotypical and neurodivergent people can both suffer from the sometimes crushing presence of external expectations and standards, but the neurodivergent are coming forward in large number, as a large conscious energy, to move beyond it, to complete a paradigm shift."

Don't Manage Anger. Eliminate It By Articulating It

I like to explode. You have to explode, but it has to be a controlled explosion. A contained explosion, and the way I contain it is through writing. If my anger can be articulated and its essence be captured in writing then guaranteed I will feel 100% better afterwards.

For some people their container or preferred way of articulating their anger is in music, or going to the gym or sports. Whatever it is, I think that you have to feel like you've let something out of you which is equivalent in magnitude to the anger you were feeling.

The world is more and more filled with stewers, who allow their anger to sit and fester inside. Not healthy whatsoever. They can look forward to an unexpressed life followed by an early grave. Stewers I find tend to use vehicles like sarcasm, parody, irony and satire to assert their frustrations, defending themselves whilst simultaneously attacking the thing which they perceive as a threat.

The problem with using these devices is that they seldom leave people feeling like the anger they were gripped by has been fully released, and so it continues to build up gradually over time, albeit at a slower pace until they too have to explode, often in a more dramatic and damaging fashion.

So my advice to people would be to try and find your container or the activity that best helps you articulate your anger, be it a physical or mental activity. Anger is something which requires eliminating from the body, it doesn't deserve to be managed, just translated into something positive.

ADULT SHOP - short story

ADULT SHOP

I went in an adult shop in Birmingham and true to the shop's sign on its store front the place was full of them. Curiously in this shop the adults were allowed to roam freely about the shop floor and it seemed none of them had price tags on. "How much do you cost to buy?" I asked one of the man adults.

He repeated exactly what I said but with a slight upward inflection when saying the word 'buy'.

I'll not bother with that one I thought to myself. I need one that can do more things than just repeat what I say.

The place went silent and I noticed the other adults had started looking at me with their eyebrows furrowed so I began walking towards the door

“Ah! I understand what you mean now”, the man adult I'd questioned shouted. "You're looking for someone you can 'buy'".

This time he said 'buy' with an inflection that started low, went up before coming back down again.

This adult must have a very low CPU speed I thought. How it ever made it into production was baffling.

"Yes. That's what I said at the beginning", I replied.

After I had said this, the eyebrows of the other adults simultaneously corrected themselves and they began to roam again which caused me to presume they were all on the same demonstration setting.

"The place you're looking for is about 300 yards down the road as you come out of here. Go under the bridge and You'll have to wait until 10pm for the 'shop' to open”. The man adult's left eye temporarily malfunctioned as he said 'shop'. “It's near the taxi rank"

That's a very unsociable time to open, I thought. The quality of the products must be very high and worth the inconvenience. “What is the name of the shop?", I asked

He paused for several moments before telling me I would know when I saw it.

I followed the man adult's instructions which were surprisingly very accurate and caused me to reconsider the possibility that I might have made a mistake in overlooking him for purchase.

I had read a journal about these so-called pop-up shops and was keen to be present at the moment one emerged. 10 o'clock came and passed but still nothing resembling an adult shop was within view.

At midnight I concluded the man adult had most likely given me incorrect information as a result of a virus. As I turned to head back my attention was drawn to a glowing red light emanating from a small cabin-like building.

"This is definitely the place I thought. The cabin had a window and in the window sat a female adult behind a desk. I looked up at the shop's store front sign and it said Private Hire".

Amazon Go and how Google retaliates in the War for Shopping

This morning I watched a video posted by a friend on Facebook about Amazon Go, a process of buying things which involves you scanning your smart phone upon entering the store and then taking stuff off the shelves and placing them directly into your bag before leaving. Most people will be in awe of such a smooth and effortless transaction as it means less inconvenience for them and no waiting in queues. As society seemingly continues to accelerate at a pace its never known in its history, things that slow it down and hold it back are seen not only as obstacles, but oppressive and eventually no doubt, evil.

I can see Google going much further than Amazon in this game. They will have expected something like this a while back and probably incorporated the idea into their ultimate vision of the shop. When he was CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt in an interview casually announced that Google was aiming to create an algorithm for serendipity, that fortuitous stumbling upon of something which you end up loving. Although Amazon Go is smart, it still requires the consumer to know what they want to some degree, and as is the trend these days, consumers seem to behave as though knowing what they want is an inconvenience that ought to be fixed with technology.

With its masses of bulk data about our preferences, biases and habits, Google I think will have stores where a person walks in, not having any clue about what it is that they want. They'll go up to the counter and the person behind the counter will present them with a box. The consumer is excited by receiving this unknown package. They're excited to get it home and guess what the algorithms have 'given' them. They open the box and find within it something they hadn't even conceived of wanting but are amazed by the how much they do. “It's like magic! How did Google know? Every time I go in I get something I didn't even know I needed.”.

In an age increasingly devoid of an appreciation of introspection and personal self-reflection, Google's algorithms have assumed the role of analyst of our own wants and desires. It knows what we want but didn't realise we wanted, but more importantly, it knows what we will want and desire in the future. And the entire transformation is happening so quietly, without any fanfare because people feel like they are the ones that are being empowered.

If we continue to automate everything we do, even choice itself, then ultimately we become the automated. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc

On Autonomy and the Modern Changing World

It's curious that more and more people are wanting autonomy over their lives while the world around them becomes increasingly more automated. This trend of outsourcing everything we do for the sake of convenience will have to stop if we wish to remain human beings.

On Freedom

I think if someone has a large online following there must be a certain degree of self-censorship involved in order to be responsible as you potentially have a virtual army at your disposal, especially if you are a pop star with fanatical fans.

Unless you're someone like Kanye West, who either doesn't care what people think about him, because he's a sociopath, or he knows that his fans see him as an agent demonstrating the 'no fucks given' attitude they perhaps wished they possessed and so vicariously live through him.

I feel like I have more freedom to say what I feel when I know less people are listening. A little bit like the adage 'Dance like nobody's watching', because there's no obligation to factor into my thinking the consequences of how others will see me.

So the most free I could ever be would be to have no audience at all.

This isn't realistic and even if I disappeared and went off to live in a cave, I'd still at the very least have an audience of one. Myself. I watch and judge my own actions constantly. I might even have an audience of two if I believed in God and God had nothing else better to do.

The only way a person could have no audience whatsoever would be if they didn't have the ability to be conscious and aware of themselves as well others, and I'm not sure that such a person would be a person at all. 

I think the audience is more of a sense than a fact. A mental construct. There have been times when I've gone to the supermarket looking like a right reprobate, feeling smelly and unclean, thinking that while I'm checking the avocados to find a good one there is a congregation of shoppers behind me pointing and gasping in horror at my disheveled appearance. But then I look around and notice that everyone is just do their shopping and so I feel fine and normal again.

In the future I can see this understanding of things being used to deal with social pests like internet trolls. I remember an incident on Reddit a few years back where a guy had been posting for two years on the site, but because one of the moderators didn't like one of his posts, his posts were made invisible to the rest of Reddit and the internet, but he could still see them on the site, so he just thought that no one was interested in what he was saying. He finally realised, set up another account and that post went straight to the top. A massive shitstorm then ensued.

Being in your presence

Feeling like a nothing
Weighs a lot
I carried on chatting
Rambling away
About nothing in particular
Because you were surveying
My mouth
And froze in abject horror
As you considered me upside down
I didn't ask why
But proceeded to affirm my impotence
Distilled and reduced myself
To nothing