Artificial realities existed before electronics or even optics, right? They don’t have to show you anything. They can just bypass your senses altogether.
You know what I mean. Think about the ancestors, think about gods, or God. You only have to tell them it’s invisible, right?
Deterrents were my first one, the first time I saw this business of invisible causes, after a lifetime of arguing against spanking and punishment. I started where we all do, with, “it doesn’t work,” which seems to satisfy a for awhile regarding punishment, that it mostly fails at its ostensible function of eliminating bad behaviour, but I’m autistic and my mind keeps digging and has for decades. The next step was biology and evolution and things don’t exist and just “not work,” do they? – well, not only does it “not work,” it harms, and again, things don’t exist and “just harm,” either, so it went to – what if that is exactly what does “work?”
What if the “harm” was it “working?” That theory seemed to be far better supported; results appear far more consistent that way, kids seem to start out sweet and grow up mean more reliably than they grow up saintly – and then I went off into something like evolutionary biological theory about how this damage would be advantageous and selected for, but that isn’t necessary today: the damage is not a secret, and it’s not the invisible sort, we know this in every other context – except it must all disappear when the evil spirit named deterrents is invoked, apparently.
The point here is that it is a more consistent explanation, and when I look at the conflict in other terms, it seems so obvious now that it’s a debate over which is the true function, the harm that happens in the real, physical world, with bruises and decisions and cortisol and hard feelings, making us worse – or the deterrent which happens only in speech and metaphor, making us better? – it’s real world abuse versus abstract ideas – and we wonder which is the more effective.
Why, is the world virtual, abstract?
Also why, are we better?
But this is the public debate, has been for a long time. I have sociology ideas about what this function means, why the virtual is invoked, and it is to hide and so protect the real function and the damage hinted at above, but again, the point is, this is the public level of debate, real versus virtual, biological physical reality versus . . . people talking.
You know what I’m saying – people.
Talking.
Ha. Science let me down, let us down, I had to figure that obvious bit of flummery out for myself. Like I say, that was my first one. I was proud, as plain as it is on paper, that’s the social conversation, and I don’t know, I suppose it’s because the net is invisible, few seem to escape!
But then I had forgotten my disabled beginnings and I just thought I was a clever “normal” person. Now that I’m part of a persecuted minority, there’s no pride, it’s a common trait for us, this sort of outsider insight. Even if it’s clever, I will forget how to breathe or walk or something in a minute. Pride is not for our sort, I guess.
But I am seeing more of these virtual walls from here, of course.
Of course, autism comes with a full load of deterrents, punishments, and even ABA torture. We suffer the full power of the invisible demon named deterrents, even more than normal people. I have questions about whether my “true” function functions with us, whether the additional damage to us is the sort that is selected for, I sort of think it doesn’t “work,” for autistics in whatever real way the damage “works,” for regular folks – but again, not today’s talk. We suffer under the false rule of invisible, take my word for it deterrents, as do all, is the point.
It irks me when we argue against ABA as though it were a one-off event, as though the dominant culture only harms autistics and not pretty much everybody. We are all sacrificed to this demon. It’s not good for them either – and I think they wouldn’t do it to everyone if they didn’t do it to themselves first. And ABA is not the only nightmare that this invisible monster has spawned, even if it is among the worst of them.
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But there are other magical, invisible demons, ones I may never have noticed from my unhatched state, namely, to make a start, empathy and intuition.
Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? – answer the second question first. Once I start on the first one I may never stop, and the second one is easy, dare I say, we can dispense with formality? And respect?
Intuition? Seriously?
This is an NT trait, y’all standing there with your bare face hanging out, looking people in the eye and saying “whatsamatter, you don’t have ESP? Most people have ESP,” you are kidding, right? Are the hippies a legit source suddenly? Registered therapists and PhDs researchers and . . . intuition?
Fuuuuuck you. Say what you mean, one time. Validate your intuitions once, with any detail at all, so we can be sure. Fucking with people’s real lives with some generic “intuition” as a criteria? Are we researchers or aromatherapy moms? Apologies to any harmless aromatherapy moms who aren’t these sorts of activists. Astrologers . . . you know what I’m saying, these things may be real, but they are not part of science or law.
I’m not saying intuition doesn’t exist; I’m saying it’s fucking invisible so it’s whatever you say it is, and ‘conflict of interest’ isn’t big enough for that. I’m saying some folks are more intuitive than others and some very much so, but you can’t say the lack of it is a disability, FFS. I’m saying you shouldn’t take a person’s children on the basis of an ESP test. Controversial, I’m sure.
“For the purposes of autism research, we would like to put ESP into the science record, Your Honour,” yeah, no, it doesn’t fucking work like that, and no, I can’t stop swearing, WTF.
Next.
No, I need a cooling off period. LOL.
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OK, new day, let’s have at empathy. This demon is a politician, comes on like your best friend, don’t they. Empathy is good, can’t argue with empathy!
Again, generic. There is plenty of good empathy to cite – so why just the general term? Sometimes our empathy is misdirected and misplaced, it isn’t all “good,” in the end, sometimes bad folks receive empathy and good ones do not. It can be stated that racists over-empathize with their own, even if their own do terrible things – so is this a deficit, if someone doesn’t have that? Of course it’s not an official autistic trait that we lack “racist empathy,” is it? We are to understand that we lack empathy for puppies – but they could have said that! I mean, if it were true.
The generic “no empathy,” wouldn’t serve their cause as well as “no empathy for puppies,” but that is not true and they can’t say that, and “no social, racist conformist empathy,” this is embarrassing, this isn’t supposed to be a social norm in the first place, but it pretty much is – so it’s just plain, all inclusive, generic, content and reality free, “empathy” that we lack.
Vapid like that.
Information free.
We get the title, the heading, “empathy,” or “feelings of empathy,” we do not apparently need to know the details, what it’s about, the context – there it is, takes me so long: context. It’s context free.
Some people aren’t very good with the entire concept, with the box labelled “empathy,” never mind what’s in the box. This, always in the context that this argument is being made by the practitioners of ABA torture of children, talking about their victims’ dearth of empathy. Somehow, torture of children in these cases is not in the practitioner’s empathy box. Interestingly, or not depending if you grok this stuff or not, ABA, like conversion therapy, like all forms of abuse, like punishment generally, are empathy killing machines, they make you “strong,” not sensitive, or the army would treat the soldiers better and prison would soften people.
AST really has it that it’s an absolute reversal, that human life is about overcoming empathy (not an endorsement, just a sad, little known fact), and that ABA would surely kill your heart and soul and so that must be its purpose, to kill empathy. That they slander us about exactly empathy in order to apply their cure, killing our empathy, that is just cruel, adding irony and insult to literal injury. A riddle, wrapped in an enigma. When Dad said the abuse would make you strong, that was pretty near the truth – when the ABA doctors say abuse will cure a lack of empathy, this is Bizarro World, the worst sort of gaslighting reversal of all that is true and obvious in this one.
Keep it generic kids, it’s about “empathy,” not torture. One, we are to understand, has nothing to do with the other. Worst case scenario, their box is empty. Best case: contents are apparently optional.
Point is, it’s fucking invisible, the box, and the contents, and we’ll never know. Only the label is verifiable.
They have us fighting nothing, phantoms. Invisible, made up bullshit, not to put to fine a point on it. Empathy, in its simplest form is just pattern recognition, and autistics have that, “normal” folks, I don’t know, some do, I assume. Everyone has these actually basic functions, that some folks would suggest are some fancy, “high” functions that only perfect people possess. The real differences are going to be found in the specifics, in the details, and when someone pulls the generic language on you, they are, as we say, selling something. It’s not always torture – but often enough it is.
I worry, I worry that if we only defend ourselves, what are we saying? If we protest, if we object and argue the first thing, the simplest thing and say, “We do too have empathy, same as you,” that all we are doing is asking to be let into an evil club, if we have it “the same as them,” then are we OK with torture? And I know we don’t, the state of the conversation is, “We have our own, we have it too, like you, but different,” and that is better, but still – theirs isn’t OK, theirs isn’t empathy, not the good kind, and this sounds generic, context free, they’re all OK, whatever. I feel we’re not doing our job of correcting the species if we’re not fixing what’s broken, if we’re only both siding the world.
I know, it would be a real world improvement right now, that sort of “becoming white,” for autistics, the pressure is always there from the dominant group to do just that, conform and join, agree that the dominants have empathy, despite the real world argument of their dominance which requires that they do not so much – but we’re a different sort of out-group, specially positioned.
I mean it was fine for the Irish in America – kidding. An illustration, not a slander. Nothing is fine.
If we could do both at once, that would be fine, but I’m finding that difficult to say. I can’t make that deal. There’s always one, isn’t there?
Funny – I have volumes on empathy, I’ve railed about it many times, but today, it seems, I’m over it, a page and a half is plenty. This invisible nonsense isn’t worth it anymore. That’s . . . liberating. Progress of a sort.
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Deterrents, intuition, empathy . . . honestly, this conversation goes right to the top. What could be more generic and information free and so invisible than “good,” and “bad?”
I mean, “morality?”
If we apply a what does it really mean process to morality, we have to see what specific things result, of course, all peoples with all moralities will say they work for “good,” but truth requires we know what form does this good take? I’ve said this many times, I’m afraid I’m with Sutherland’s character in JFK: the organizing principle for a society is war, and to extrapolate, morality is that which keeps us strong and keeps us from being wiped out in a war, and what they call it when they create it, is strength. So we apply our morality and it makes us strong. Right?
So “morality,” means strength and strength means “proficiency in war.”
I know, that’s not what it means, not what it means to us, it’s something better. I’ve always been a moralist, except not the regular, pushy sort. I don’t want it to mean good at war either, this is only an observation; I’m not happy about it. But in the real world, out of the clouds of invisible bullshit and headings in lieu of actual nouns, this is what it adds up to today, because we banter with words that are not real about it while we teach our children how to fight from the day they’re born with real, physical methods.
So morality is my word for “better,” too, but . . . but “morality” is everywhere and much is not better here in the real world, again, unless “battle ready,” is as good as it gets. What we do to “make people good,” isn’t “working,” except on paper, except in theory, except invisibly. Who you gonna believe, them, or your own eyes, kinda thing – and they’ve already gotten around your eyes, LOL.
Of course, I have a bad attitude, I’m giving it to you from the Dark Side, I am one of those annoying sorts who thinks the dysphemism needs equal time, and if you had to look it up, that makes my point. Equal and opposite is fair play. It’s called perspective. If I go too far, I’m trying to compensate for the fact that I’m the only one over here on the Dark Side talking.
They, Maya, the World of Illusion will say, yes, we run on invisible things, of course we do, principles, values – and if I’ve made my point you can laugh at that yourself now, from the Dark Side – good old “values!” Everybody loves values!
Any particular values in that box, though?
Worst case scenario, their box is empty. Best case: contents are optional, right?
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I’d be finished now, if I could remember the point. I suppose it was just to give the autism moms a thorough debunking, try to put a dent in their myths about communication and empathy . . . I honestly, autistic style, simply cannot stand the unfairness of the power people wield based in this sort of empty bullshit. When they say the Devil is in the details, that means that’s where you have to fight him, and the people that would gloss over things and assail us with vapid, quasi-religious, detail free terms like “empathy,” and “non-verbal communication,” are always and forever working for him, hiding what is real and true, making everything worse.
We all know what is most likely, right?
Their “non-verbal, intuitive communication,” is just bullshit, and “non-verbal communication,” means no communication. They simply do not interact, do not communicate, at all. Best case, it’s a one way communication, and no link is required: orders, authority. If it’s plural, communications, then show us, once. Do some magic communication and then separately, tell us what was said.
Bloody nothing, I bet.
I don’t believe you anymore. If you had a real world example, you’d have led with it. All you got is empty boxes.
“Intuition.”
FFS.
Jeff
Feb. 26th., 2023
Abuse with an Excuse 