Carrying on with the idea of Allism as a neurotype with a short spike for actuarial matters, and of Allistic psychology as almost exclusively a matter of the self and not society, I wish to extrapolate something, specifically that we should see problematic personality types along a different vector than the psychology of individuals.

I will need to start with the dictionaries and definitions – it does sound like “sociopathy,” already draws this distinction from psychopathy, I need to check that, plus we’ll have to do Autism/Allism again. Alphabetically, I suppose.

Allism

 – this is understood to be the majority or “normal,” neurotype, often interchangeable with “neurotypical,” but “Allism,” has etymology, “Allo,” is from the Greek for “Other,” and I believe the inference is that it describes a mind that connects with and is concerned with others, with the people around us, but I don’t think we have a list of Allistic traits as such, a definition as such, it is most often explained simply as the absence of, or opposite of Autism.

If there is any list of traits and features, it is most often gleaned through the looking glass, approved Allistic traits are to be found in their pathologized mirror traits among the neurodivergent, such as the name shows, “Autistic,” means self defined or involved, so “Allistic,” means connected, more of a group orientation.

Just Me:

For my part, I have extrapolated things already, and I have theories about Allism in and of itself, I have spent my life trying to understand them, I never knew what I was, but I guess I always knew I wasn’t one of them. For me, Allism is a version of humanity with a “specific set of skills,” yes, meant exactly like the action movie meant it, Allism is humankind’s warrior neurotype, and war is a group activity.

While peace looks more like parallel play.

Autism

 – ha, I only have my own, I’m having a hard time writing down the usual definition for you. “Aut,” is the Greek for self, as in automatic and autonomous, so Autistic is “self –“ self directed, surely self-stimulation created this meme, self involved, in the simplest terms, we don’t listen and do what we’re told, we think we’re supposed to listen to our own minds or something, at least this is why we’re a problem and a thing, we’re not much good in a group project.

There are a lot of health problems that seem to come with it, and they are part of the working definition of Autism, notably verbalization and sensory issues, and as the brain runs the body, that does seem to be a part of one’s neurotype.

Just Me:

For my part, I need to turn the entire edifice upside down and say, yes, “a part of one’s neurotype,” but that this statement in not directional, and that the presence of much variance does not make a type, rather that that the adherence to a specific set of traits is what makes a type, and so Autism is less of a specific “type,” than Allism is, that rather perhaps what we call “Autism,” is many types, perhaps the label “Autism,” or maybe “neurodivergence” in general is the whole gene pool and Allism is the emergent, specific, purpose built “type.” With a rather obvious purpose, mentioned above. A purpose that I would hope humanity will some day abandon.

OK, I’d better crack open a dictionary for these Allistic psychology terms, my intuition is probably wrong.

Psychopathy

 – from the N.I.H (USA):

“Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.”

–  from somewhere high on Google’s list, place called PsychopathyIs:

“Psychopathy  (sai · kaa · puh · thee) is a common mental disorder. It is characterized by personality traits that include reduced empathy and remorse, a bold and daring personality, and difficulty inhibiting behaviors.

People with psychopathy may deceive, manipulate, exploit, threaten, steal from, or physically harm others. At the same time, they may seem outwardly friendly and well adjusted. This ‘mask of sanity,’ described in the quote above, can make psychopathic people very hard to identify.

Psychopathic traits vary across the population from mild to extreme. In other words, psychopathy is a spectrum disorder, like other well-known spectrum disorders such as autism and anxiety. Severe psychopathy can cause significant impairment and affects approximately 1% of children and adults in the United States today.”

– from Psychology Today (and Good Lord, they’re catty):

 “Psychopathy is a condition characterized by the absence of empathy and the blunting of other affective states. Callousness, detachment, and a lack of empathy enable psychopaths to be highly manipulative. Nevertheless, psychopathy is among the most difficult disorders to spot.

Psychopaths can appear normal, even charming. Underneath, they lack any semblance of conscience. Their antisocial nature inclines them often (but by no means always) to criminality.

Just Me:

– I’ll summarize: perhaps what makes it not the majority type is that psychopaths apparently don’t let public opinion bother them or change their behaviour, one might almost apply the “Aut,” syllable to that, but again, for me, I think that just makes them not, or less Allistic, going with what other people think seems to be an Allistic feature.

As an Autist, I clench at the word “empathy,” but perhaps it’s appropriate for psychopathy to say it isn’t there or is attenuated. For my “just me,” section, I will say that this language is all psychological and ahistorical, or asociological, I mean it refers to people in the present tense, people are used, people are hurt – as often with what I think of as Allistic psychology, there is no attention paid to the future, to the ongoing cause and effect, the reverberations of this hurt through time, I mean, a classic movie psychopath doesn’t worry about the pain the knife causes the victim, and this is the psychological definition – but he doesn’t worry about the future either, about the altered lives that didn’t end, about his victim’s children, he doesn’t worry about generally adding to the misery of humanity and bringing the next apocalyptic reset a little closer. I think?

There’s some of my Antisocialization Theory in there, that you can’t just keep adding to the misery forever, that there is a cycle to it, a point of critical mass and an explosion, or implosion, a reset, the Antisocialization Jubilee like a world war or a total collapse. An actuarial idea, I suppose.

The classic psycho lacks empathy AND actuarial sense, maybe? That ought to have stopped him too. The two things are surely related and connected, and mostly move through the world together . . . or not?

One may be rarer than the other, in some sense perhaps instead they exist in inverse proportion, even, perhaps me and my friends can be tight and caring about one another as we wage war on the world, then we’d have empathy and not be psychopaths, pass for “normal,” and lack only the actuarial empathy – and destroy the world?

But perhaps I digress and I’m so far behind I only think I’m leading. Back to the dictionary.

Sociopathy –

OK, I’m out of date, it’s called Antisocial Personality Disorder now – but maybe only the name has been updated, it just sounds like “psychopathy, only just the bad kind,” more impulsivity, more violence, less disguise. The following excerpts are a little contradictory, it seems a good definition is still a matter of debate.

– from the Mayo Clinic:

“Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference. They lack remorse or do not regret their behavior.

People with antisocial personality disorder often violate the law, becoming criminals. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively, and have problems with drug and alcohol use. They have difficulty consistently meeting responsibilities related to family, work or school.”

– from Psychology Today (and again . . . bitchy, I guess, LOL):

“Sociopathy refers to a pattern of antisocial behaviors and attitudes, including manipulation, deceit, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others. Sociopathy is a non-diagnostic term, and it is not synonymous with “psychopathy,” though the overlap leads to frequent confusion. Sociopaths may or may not break the law, but by exploiting and manipulating others, they violate the trust that the human enterprise runs on.”

Just Me:

For my two cents’ worth, again, it’s all present tense, clearly this person doesn’t seem to be worried about what sort of world they are creating with their behaviour, and . . . I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, or maybe me and others of my type, but the speaker, the folks telling me about it don’t address the world of tomorrow either, the way psychology reads to me, mainstream psychology, Allistic psychology only ever sounds like a personal matter, interpersonal at most . . . I’m sorry, I know I’m not landing this thought, but let’s leave it there for a moment. If I can tie the whole thing off, it will because we got there with this bit, leaving this dangling forever is not an option.

If you’re seeing this, we got through it, hang in there.

-OK, sort of. For this, what the hey, I’ve already said it elsewhere. Allism has an attenuated or missing actuarial sense, and I am calling the psychology they have developed “Allistic Psychology,” because it somehow never translates into sociology or what people’s behaviour does to the world, it seems stuck on one’s personal pain, the social aspects, reaching no further than something specific about our parents or our kids. One has the sense that abuse is rare, a minority issue for most, because it is never spoken of in bigger, cultural terms, at least in the future.

Regarding the ‘Psycho and Sociopath CEO’ Theory

I think I hit it already, on route, that it’s a separate matter, whether you have empathy and whether you have actuarial empathy, the vision for the people of the future, right? Empathy is nice, in its way, but it is at best, not enough. We are still creating circumstances that no amount of mere empathy is going to fix, our empathy is extremely short sighted if it can’t deal with a plague, or pollution, climate change, etc., if it seems to be no prophylaxis for conflict and war.

What I really want to get at, only hinted at off the top, is the idea that psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder are not the most useful and productive ways to think about the most callous of our leaders and CEOs, that this pop psych meme isn’t helpful.

I mean, what are we to do, run our Earth-consuming money making machines with more heart? Somehow keep the psychotics out of the destroying the world for money industries? Keep them out of the army?

I think if it were a matter of any minority so small as psychopaths, fixing the world’s problems would be pretty much doable, our problems, I’m sorry, I suppose this is hard to hear when unlike myself you spent your whole life thinking you were normal and that’s good – our problems are because something is terribly wrong with most humans. Even if it were only that we’re too wild or stupid to control a few psychopaths and let them trash the world and kill us all, there would still be something terribly wrong with all of us for that, and it isn’t only that.

I mean really – oh, perhaps I oughtn’t be writing just now after all – stupid wins, doesn’t it? Never mind, that’s not going anywhere. Ha.

The point – the corporate and military worlds are very social, very human, social structures, meaning there are a lot of group dynamics going on, and it’s all about friends and enemies – I think those friends sort of take most neurodivergent people out of the picture as leaders, probably the psychopaths and APD folks too, mostly. I think the leaders are not socially disabled, but perhaps they even have superpowers in that area, and so this theory about a percentage of people with antisocial disorders being our CEOs and leaders is . . . I know, bizarre, but read me, I do this a lot – backwards, totally.

My neurodivergence means something, damnit. Yes, upside down and backwards.

The problem ones have social gifts and rational disabilities, not the other way about. I am postulating, in lieu of our sociopath CEO’s a sort of a super-Allist.

“Normal,” to the point of disorder.

More to come, probably.

Jeff

Nov. 3^rd., 2023

Allism, the majority neurotype, is humankind in warrior mode.

It’s a set of options that optimizes the human animal for its group conflict, which is the standard explanation for the size of our brains, our supposed intelligence, the learning curve of conflict – and that’s problematic, isn’t it, it’s a thing that evolved because the environment changed – but the environment was us, so the environment changed because we changed too. It adds complexity, human social environments do not appear in the fossil record, and while the evidence of conflict is almost the only evidence we have, stone weapons and broken skeletons, that is all there could be, really, so it doesn’t prove much. We don’t get to look and say the equivalent of see it was wet here then and dried out over centuries, we have no corroboration, no physical trace of past social environments, no evidence for social change that would oblige us to explain how it shaped us.

I mean, even if we wanted to, which, this would be us searching for actuarial evidence and knowledge about ourselves – and for most, “Human Nature,” has already answered, made these questions irrelevant – people don’t change. Sure, maybe apes did, mindlessly, in response to the climate, etc., but “people,” don’t, and certainly not for each other. We are apparently controllable, but not changeable.

Again, I’m trying to shout and I think I sound like Goldblum, you’d think I was talking about the menu when I said in the first part, “ . . . the “Human Nature,” in which the Allistic finds us lacking and themselves lamentable but inevitable is really only one neurotype, and one with an off switch . . . ”  – I suppose it’s a different conversation, but this is not really an abstraction, “Human Nature,” – the whole world is structured around, it, I mean politically and legally.

“People don’t change,” is fucking law, despite the obvious falsity of it.

If law acknowledged causality in human affairs, it would disappear. With no static “Nature,” to simply control, a policeman is only hurting people and causing all the same problems as the criminals – which is exactly the case, in my mind. Sigh.

I’m not getting closer to the point, so let’s just teleport there and start again.

“Autism,” isn’t a thing; it’s only an attempt to define “non-Allism,” – but Allism, ironically to an Allist, is a thing, a discreet, heritable, definable thing, with specific traits and functions. It’s counterintuitive, because the numbers are sort of backwards, but Allism is a genetic thing, a variance, a sort of a mutation – while what we call “Autism,” is probably the whole gene pool. No?

So tell me, what are the Autistic traits and functions?

Isn’t every savant different?

Isn’t there a great deal of variety within what we call “Autism,” Autists who work and succeed, and Autists who can’t get out of bed? At some point, you have to give up explaining how everything is “Autism,” except a few things that are part of a much narrower spectrum, and name the narrow bit instead, Allism. Again: what if we are the whole gene pool?

The Allists, with their “Human Nature,” do not speak for humanity.

I mean, they speak, boy, do they speak – but they are not speaking for humanity.

It’s almost the reverse, what they speak for.

But this is the Big Picture: the human gene pool has neurodivergence, which means we always have traits that we can draw upon when the environment changes, active neurotraits and neurotraits in store for what may come, diversity is evolutionary  capital, the more you have, the safer your species is – and Autism is maybe not just one part of it, but it is us trying to name neurodiversity itself with a single label – when the structure is far more clear, simple and true when we say Allism is the label, the individual, discrete thing within the diversity.

I need a metaphor.

It’s like “Autism,” means “not a tree,” and “Allism,” means tree?

I try to say “Autism” is a bush, but no, some Autists are vines, says the community, and it’s sort of fair, fine, we are everything but trees, everything but the tall, strong, can’t see the forest for ‘em trees – so the trees are the thing, the creation, the genetic machines that build themselves out of the gene pool . . . no, I’m sorry, it doesn’t work, really every species of “tree,” created itself out of its previous species’ possibly diverse gene pool, the analogy wouldn’t be “trees,” it would be a single tree species against its genetic backdrop . . . and no easier, no help, we know less about that than about our own backdrop. Let’s try a different tack, go with Jurassic Park, life finds a way.

Is ”Autism,” trying to be a thing? Do Autists select other Autists and seek to outbreed and outlaw other sorts? Not so much, Autism just happens to us and many of us don’t even know about it – but it can’t but help my argument that Allism is the living, genetic thing that it does these things, selects for itself and actively tries to limit the spread of other sorts. On the one hand, it gives us the label – but in many other ways, it wears its label loudly and proudly. They are “just normal,” but rather staunchly so. “Trying to be a thing,” this is a definition for life, for a living thing in evolution – so Allism passes this test and maybe Autism does not?

So why is this hard to say, who am I arguing with? Society knows it is conformist.

We wouldn’t be having this conversation if not for a power differential, if one neurotype didn’t get to declare itself “just normal.” Society knows it is conformist; it just doesn’t know there’s any other way to be. The Allists are apparently everywhere, and they are apparently in charge, so saving anyone or changing the world isn’t about Autistics, or ADHD folks (or POC, or LGBTQIA+), or anyone but them, about their type’s superpowers and disabilities, the rest is . . . I’m sorry, secondary. It wouldn’t matter so much that you’re any sort of challenged, aren’t we all, wouldn’t matter if you were drunk – if you weren’t driving the bus.

Apparently, the only people allowed to drive the bus are the ones who have no idea that they’re disabled.

Hold on, let’s have another restart.

Two weeks later – not happening, what do we say on Twitter, screw it, send. Ha.

Jeff

Oct. 12^th., 2023

Allism, the majority neurotype, is humankind in warrior mode.

A type is a set of options that customizes the human being for particular uses, particular environments, “neurotype,” refers to the customization, the model, perhaps of the brain, and the majority one is by definition, the one that exists for the majority environment. Look at the world, you ought to be able to infer how most people’s minds are working.

It’s conflict – so that’s your neurotype. I’ll point out: authority is conflict, and it’s ubiquitous. Where there isn’t actual fighting, it’s because the conflict is entirely one sided and somebody is doing what they have been bloody well told.

I feel like that should be all caps or something, not delivered Jeff Goldblum deadpan, conflict is everywhere, but you know, you do you.

You know it yourself, you are generally telling everyone about it yourself, your priorities are not a secret. No-one is in a better position to see it and point it out to you than the original non-Allistics, the Autists by which you avoid defining yourselves, we see it starkly, neurotype VS neurotype, where Allistics try to convert Autistics by entirely Allistic methods, army basic training, or simple torture: Allistics pathologize passivity – this should result in more than a discussion of the relative truth of Autistic passivity, it should make clear that the speaker is aggressive, how else would this work?

If it were aggression that were proscribed, then you’d know that the passive were in charge, in the majority.

The Allistic type is aggressive. If the passive were in charge, the aggressive would be singled out for treatment instead, but that’s not the way it is because the majority neurotype is aggressive and so the boys that fight look good and normal to them and the boys that don’t appear to be a problem. This is why in the past, girls and women have been under diagnosed with ASD compared to boys and men, because passivity is less pathological in girls in this society at this time. Own it, this is you. Strength is essential for life, right? This is obvious.

To you.

The opposite has always been true for me, strength has always looked like life’s greatest threat to me. Obvious – but I never knew I had a neurotype, I did not appreciate the purpose built limitations of my own reasoning. Neurotype is a meta concept, it’s not easy, and until I learned about Autism and neurotypes I could not see the way different things can be built-in obvious to different people. I’m saying, I’m certain that most Allistics haven’t imagined this strength orientation to be anything but obvious to every possible mind, it just appears as a universal truth to them, it’s throughout their science, Nature, rough in tooth and claw and all that – again, as my view of strength as a world destroying scourge did and does to me.

The Neurodivergent, we Autistics, the ADHD, the BPD, etc., we are forced to learn a theory of more than one mind, of neurotype, and this information is vital to our navigating the world, we must learn our type and how it differs from “the rest of the world’s,” but the rest of the world never does, they are aggressive and so conformist. They’re in charge and they don’t have to know themselves if they don’t feel like it, and they don’t. But science must move on, with or without them. There is a structure to all this whether they know it or not. The science and the answers are sitting right in front of us all, in plain view, depending on the brain behind your eyes.

Warrior mode explains a lot. Honestly, you (I’m addressing this rant to the Allistic, or more properly to all who share the Allistic view) just call it Human Nature, but the world is not Plato’s metaphor and Natures, essences of things are not how anything works; the “Nature,” doesn’t exist – but the idea, “Human Nature,” this very much does exist, as a rule in the Allistic mind. The fact of this idea’s ubiquity is a hard truth with disastrous consequences for the world. It is a rule that insures we stay in warrior mode, because it is part of warrior mode to get stuck in warrior mode. A warrior with a short attention span or a queasy stomach for it is not effective, a warrior must be stubborn about it, right to the end. So you don’t call it a mode, and you don’t imagine ways that it could anything but the way it is. Warrior mode is all in.

But it is.

There are other modes, the divergent demonstrate this, and they who have ears to hear may infer what they like, draw the connections they see.

Human Nature is not a “Nature,” those aren’t real – so “Human Nature,” is a neurotype, or the concept is part of a neurotype, I want to say an early, basic part of the thinking of the type, that sets the mode: if you believe in a static “Nature,” then you bring a different attitude into life than if you worried that everything you did pushed the people around you in some direction or other. In warrior mode, you don’t worry about personal development, you are dealing in existential matters, and if people changed, you wouldn’t need to be here. In warrior mode, there is only today and tomorrow, there isn’t room for any seven generations.

“Not worrying about personal development,” manifests in half of Allistic speech, here are popular examples:

What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

I hit them, but it doesn’t hurt them.

They need to learn about the real world.

People don’t change.

You are not what happened to you, you are your reaction to what happened to you.

If I don’t do it, somebody else will.

You’ll see that many of them are simply direct references to “Human Nature,” or simply rewordings of it, it really does encapsulate the entire suite of thought, even better than Christian Original Sin did, I mean it doesn’t leave anyone out, atheists and scientists can all share it too. It encapsulates and codifies not only the absence of actuarial logic but repeats endlessly that there can be no such thing as actuarial logic. People don’t change.

I have liked to say that it’s when we are, “spanked,” and told that it is not, “bad,” that it does not, “hurt,” us but makes us, “better,” that “we,” must believe or it doesn’t stop, but now I think the ground must be prepared for such basic logic, that indeed I heard it too and remained unconvinced, so that it is perhaps not that “we” are told and convinced, but that we were told and many of you were pre-wired to be convinced. Certainly, I would be surprised to hear of anyone who remembers having a different thought before and changing it.

I mean, I think my actuarial ideas are the same ones I was born with, no-one changed my mind from a previous thought – I’m painting myself into a corner here, I still think the spanking forces a change – just not from as clear a stance as I have, I think maybe the Allistic brain doesn’t have to make the complete one eighty from actuarial operation to Human Nature, I suspect it is born somewhere between and spanking alters the path forward in development, it doesn’t reverse things completely.

Obviously, war is a social matter, an extreme social environment, where in-group and out-group disparities couldn’t be more stark. Social discretion is part of warrior mode.

Ah. I suppose I have assumed that lesson to be part of the spanking too, that when your own brain registers “Ow! That hurts!” and then we are in the scenario at the top of two paragraphs up, trying to make the spanking stop, but our parent is telling us, “This is not bad, this is good, this will make you better,”  then the lesson is to ignore the obvious self-preservation logic of your own brain, ignore the obvious reality that point of hitting is to hurt and instead focus on the social reality of this human telling you that their words are more important than all that reality.

The spanking and the lesson shift you from rationality towards social thinking, away from your own processor towards others – what “Allistic,” means, right.

Theory-wise, it makes some sense for a type to have this capability, and it would seem like a magic power if we could simply turn it on and off by spanking or not, like if we knew that was how it worked, we could turn it on when the aliens attack and turn it off again after, it’s a brilliant genetic option . . . again, assuming war is ever “necessary,” except because of your own selves’ aggression. But as the Davids said, we seem stuck. The soldiers have taken control of the government, so to speak, and they only know one sort of project.

There is indeed an off switch, but you are smarter than Vader’s engineers, you left it off the plans, but this is hope, it is not an ubiquitous Nature that you are this way, and you are only born half so bad, suggesting that within you, long dormant, may yet be that other wolf, the good one.

But this is what Allistic means, warrior mode, which is a sort of hyper ability for conflict / something of a disability to worry about the living, and a hyper sense for social discretion / diminished sense of external realities. It’s not “Human Nature,” these problems, not every “Human,” has them, some have more actuarial sense and less aggression, some see real problems in the world beyond the competitive success of their group – the existence of Autistics and other sensitive sorts proves that everything about the “Human Nature,” in which the Allistic finds us lacking and themselves lamentable but inevitable is really only one neurotype, and one with an off switch at that!

OK, the actuarial disability, the hyper sociality, those are the big two . . . ah. Not the same level of importance maybe, but the language stuff, the empathy and the eye contact, non-verbal “communication.” Here I want to depart sounding smart and scientific, if I ever achieved it, and just say, “non-verbal communication,” is authority, you are simply to obey, what feedback is necessary?

Generally, what was unsaid was only that, “shut up and effing do it.” But also, besides authority, it is otherwise warrior stuff, ninja, green beret stuff, silent running, so no-one knows what you’re up to. Weird to think of the whole population thinking that way, but if you’re all one neurotype, which let’s face it, means mostly common superpowers, but it means that you’re all disabled mostly the same way too.

I mean, sure there’s non-verbal communication, but it’s not non-verbal because that’s the most efficient sort of communication or the sort with the most resolution, I mean it’s not non-verbal, “to communicate,” that you could do out loud. Obviously it’s non-verbal to leave listeners out of the conversation, limit the sharing of the information.

Loose lips sink ships, don’t you know, knowledge is power, because life is war for the warrior.

Jeff

Oct. 5^th., 2023

My mindset, my understanding, Antisocialization Theory, my apparently innate actuarial sense, all these I cannot separate from my life’s path, from what in arithmetic or math would be the Order of Operations, meaning which parts of a complex problem we solve first. The OOO is a standard, so that math is the same every time you do it, and of course the metaphor doesn’t extend that far, only in that with the order in which I learned anything and made my solutions, I have indeed found a different, non-standard answer from most people’s answer.

Of course, in theory there is no official OOO standard for human life, but from where I have found myself, it sure looks like there must be, rather it is so ubiquitous there has been no need to document it, like most people never read a walking or a breathing how-to book.

Stubborn Autistic child, little Aspie supremacist that I must have been, my own developmental issues never suggested to me that maybe my sense of outrage over the “spanking,”  around me – anyone would grant that as euphemism – was part of my . . . I’m going to generically say, backwardness. No matter what a classical idiot I may have been, this was obvious, what this violence was doing to the kids around me and they weren’t “learning right from wrong,” at least they weren’t being pushed to the “right,” side.

And that’s where we leave each other, the world and I, you and I almost certainly.

All those beaten kids joined that world, near as I can see, learned their lessons, joined the mass error and everything is wrong in the world from when we were all children, you and the world have proceeded from this wrong turn forever and I cannot even talk to you. In your world, deterrents are real things that are supposed to change the world for the better while the actual abuse of the punishments are written off as unintended consequences and are not supposed to change the world.

I had two ideas, one, that human minds simply have this mad bias, part of the warrior mentality, the majority human mindset is often, if in other conversations, spoken of as geared to primate group conflict, and two, that the abuse makes fighters of us, an epigenetic effect – this is Antisocialization Theory, which I imagined to explain humanity in general, when I thought I was a one-off freak about it.

Part of my OOO is that I had forty years to ponder it before I ever heard of Autism, AST was supposed to explain us all. Well, except, me, with my saviour complex about it. Things are quite different for the undiagnosed aspie. I say this as a slur, not as an out of date diagnostic term, but to describe an undiagnosed Autist with the processing to mask and pass themself off as “smart and weird and arrogant.” It is easy to see that it would be difficult to keep up the arrogance of the classic disliked aspie person if you had grown up with any sort of a diagnosis, with doctors around trying to repair you all your life, but I had no such support.

I’m sure I was a well known R-word as a child in the sixties, but once I went to school and found my IQ, I forgot all of that. Since I won a few awards in grade one, I’ve basically been an undiagnosed arrogant aspie prick with a better idea about everything you ever thought or did. Apparently Dad used to get fired on the regular for knowing how to do it better than every boss too, or thinking he did.

The point of all that is just to say, I never believed the ball busting, never believed all the adults or anybody else that “I” was the problem, like, I never spent a minute of my life thinking “normal people good,” and me bad, or normal people good and Autistics bad. I have a low self image against some abstract absolute in my mind, but against humans, no, no, sorry, not so much. I don’t believe in your mad cult of punishment and, maybe because, I don’t have that low self image we’re all supposed to have, like we all deserve it. So I don’t see the world the same way up as you do, I don’t think the group knows better than I do.

That means Mom, teachers, doctors. I learned my school lessons, I take doctors seriously regarding medicine – but I give them all a nasty aspie supremacist snort if they try to tell me about children or authority or power or life.

I always felt normal and logical within myself, and it was always “everyone else,” who didn’t, and so still, I don’t see Autism as a medical problem, certainly not as any sort of a poisoning – I don’t even think “Autism,” is the salient collection of traits that needs a word, well everything needs a word, but not as much as the majority collection of traits needs a word, well it has a word, Allistic, but it needs a definition.

I am getting further from my goal here, perhaps it’s time to stop infodumping, cut my losses and run to the end, see how far I’ve missed by.

I have yet to detect any minds that seem to echo mine in a year and some online, the Autists speak the language of the punishment cult same as regular folks do, I mean of course all the usual limits of knowledge apply, no-one can learn what is always hidden, what is beyond the deconstructionist horizon, what is outside of the present episteme. Raised in it, heard it all day long forever and naught else, no blame, Geezuz. Gaslit to death about it, we all are.

But they think “Autism,” is a thing, and sort of accept the normal as normal, as not needing to be nailed down and defined, and they talk about psychology, which for me, it’s all just Allistic psychology to me now, warrior society psychology, written to keep you strong and with nothing to say about a little parental discipline. They speak, like all marginalized groups, of their specific persecution, as though they have an enemy that only persecutes them, as if the persecution is about them.

Of course that’s what the persecutors say, “Autism,” is a problem – but they do say that to everybody, don’t they? Of course it is persecutors in general that are the problem, but again, you all speak their language, not mine.

Don’t you.

This arrogant prick is alone in all the world, pretty much always has been, and it’s getting old. Just get it, humanity.

Yes, the reference is Mendosa, on South Park.

Jeff

Aug. 31^st., 2023

It’s a term I thought I stopped hearing for years, but it’s back, ‘theory of mind,’ for a few reasons, mostly to do with neurotypes and Autism in particular.

I’ve read that in the bad, black and white days of yesterday and still in the hospitals of today, that they accuse us of lacking one altogether, and this is another way of saying that they lack or refuse the concept of neurotype, that their, “theory,” explains and predicts only a single mind, or a single type, in all the universe.

It is clearly ensconced in the sort of creationist thinking that doesn’t allow that rats and cats and elephants have “minds,” either, again, a “theory,” of a unique phenomenon lacks the usefulness that we associate with our better theories. This is an aspect of arrested development, this theory struggles to be born, right, a “theory,” of mind would need to be a theory of minds, plural, wouldn’t it? This one doesn’t travel, doesn’t carry. It lacks other useful applications.

The concept of neurotypes means a theory of minds, plural. That’s what is required. The theory of mind, in some hands, as it stands is something of a two edged sword.

When it’s a good thing, it helps us connect, when our minds do work in parallel, and that’s how it’s good and why everyone needs it, but when it’s bad, when your theory of mind obscures the obvious workings of a different sort of mind as simply not working –

Functioning zoos do not enforce human standards of thought upon the animals, they couldn’t work, they would simply be the abuse parades of the recent past when the animals withered and died. Modern zookeepers and normal people the world over have theories of multiple minds for their animals – only in institutions for humans is a “theory of mind,” the very opposite, a theory of violent conformism.

One theory of one mind, and some awful mandate to make this obvious lie happen and today it is people that wither and die.

I would decertify the entire medical industry for their refusal to prosecute human sciences and the sciences of the mind with any seriousness, but in particular, no-one without a multiple theory of minds would be involved in any of it, or education either. They are officially not giving humans the credit and respect they automatically and unconsciously give their dogs.

Jeff

Aug. 6^th., 2023

Written on Twitter:

I seem to have had a non-standard experience. I didn’t know, didn’t know to mask, I just got high and went into the breach numbed and otherwise as my weird self. It’s true there wasn’t any social success.

I suppose there were times when small talk seemed easier. Hyperlexic, if I couldn’t produce any small talk, I sometimes said so, talked about that: I’m sorry, I wish I had some small talk for you. I’m here. ❤️

I suppose I’m always wishing I could STFU.

It’s either this or I am just still brutally unaware.

I’m trying to find it, that’s why I’m talking: you know the NT version of “the mask?” That’s the one my people were talking about the whole time, what is not “the shadow,” is “the mask,” the mask is what people allow themselves to see about themselves, our FB selves, while the shadow is our dark side, the things we will not acknowledge, and everyone has one, they say, it is filled with Freud’s dark drives and the seven deadly sins, and aspects of ourselves that we use as insults for others. Basically, your shadow is that bad penny, evil Human Nature’s bad side. Your (NT psychological) mask, is your cherry-picked personality – OMG, hey, it is so good to think in text! #ActuallyAutistic , everyone come in, check this.

NTs have one theory of masking as part of their theory of mind, and Autists have an entirely different one as part of ours, wait for it – so we see them masking, conforming, our theory of mind says: “there’s something more going on underneath, surely they understand more than they’re saying they do.”

But when THEY detect an Autistic  masking, what does THEIR theory of mind tell them?

What is behind a mask in their minds?

THE SHADOW.

Oh my gawd, this is the DEP, they see us masking, and what is behind our mask in their theories is everything they have already decided they hate about themselves.

For real, y’all. This has truthiness from here to Timbuktu, I believe it already. Ouch. (I can bounce this off of someone IRL, one who was and is very into shadow work and such.

I’ll get back. ❤️ )

“Empathy,” was close, that’s part of it, what is buried in our shadow we lack empathy for (repression, per Alice Miller); the shadow is all that is repressed in us, the blind spot.

But these are not two individual versions of the same phenomenon, these masks.

In theory, Autistics have a psychological mask also, of course, repressed things – but it’s not that mask we get caught out at, NT people don’t bust each other or anyone for the shadow’s mask. It is not two psychological masks passing in the night, not a different bunch of micro-empathies from otherwise identical systems like a language problem, but a two theories of what an Autist’s mask is covering problem. The NT only knows the shadow and projects and assumes the worst.

I got Autistic therapists here, right? Surely they know the shadow and the whole world is here before me? The big takeaway, I guess, Autists, get yourself a counsellor that has done their shadow work, one that has the chops to understand their own reactions to people, I’d want to know they had the idea.

Jeff May 4^th., 2023

I’m so used to being misunderstood, to being the intellectual black sheep, Jeff against the world, that post hatching and having found a type for myself, I find myself rejecting it and its assumptions like I always have with NT world’s; it’s a habit and a survival mechanism and maybe a whole neurotype and it’s not likely to change anytime soon.

All my life I have been battling a broken neurotype, not mine.

It stresses me out, it’s got me pacing and even hand flapping a little, when I hear the charlatans’ noise about “curing” Autists, but our responses also do not satisfy me, I feel that while we are putting up an argument, that we get dragged into accepting some portion of their premise, and I want to lead you in, but you know what, let’s go straight to it, I’ll name it. More than that Autists are not a thing to repair or to prevent, I need to go further, nothing falls into place for me if “Autism” is a thing, at all. It’s not the monster I have identified and wrestled all my life, that was . . . the other thing.

Here’s my premise.

“Autism,” isn’t a thing, I mean it’s a thing, everything is a word, everything is a thing, a vacuum is a thing, but it’s also nothing: space is a “thing,” that is also nothing, whereas matter, now that’s a thing, a thing that isn’t just the absence of another thing. Autism is a thing like space is a thing; whereas . . . I need a better word, for it, please work with me that these are close, whereas Neurotypicality, Allism, being “normal,” – now these are things. Like matter is a thing.

Being normal is a thing, and it is not also just “nothing,” like the word suggests. That’s just the consensus fallacy, if it’s everywhere, it’s nothing – this is backwards, NTs, if it’s everywhere, that’s more like everything than “nothing,” isn’t it? Not asking, or not asking NTs: it is more like everything. Like we’re having the discussion about air again: if it displaces something else, it’s matter, it’s not “nothing,” even if it is everywhere. Even if it is invisible to you.

When the charlatans go to environmental causes, Tylenol, that’s horrible and stupid, Autists haven’t been poisoned, and poisons don’t create neurotypes, but that’s not my area, plenty of good folks are fighting those folks, thank goodness (and also I have had a run at them recently already). What I think I need to answer today is when they start talking about genes. That’s close to a logic I am already looking at, and I have already been developing a genetic theory about that other thing. “Autism,” “has a genetic component,” they say, and . . . duh?

Doesn’t everything alive and all of behaviour “have a genetic component?”

Of course it does, and to say it about “Autism,” is as obvious as it would be to say it about anything, and to say there is “more than one gene involved,” is also true of everything and equally obvious, and I predict that they cannot even say it is associated with any “group of genes,” not yet, they will say, and none of those statements suggest that “Autism” is a genetic . . . unit of any sort. A single gene might, as in some diseases, a group of them might, I think there are things associated with more than one gene, but these have not been identified for “Autism,” and so they have not ‘yet,’ shown the genes to say that “Autism,” is a genetic . . . phenomenon.

OK – I have seen this idea, a group of genes, and I think they will argue, I think they will say they have identified a “number of genes,” now – I don’t think I’m out of date, I think I’m arguing, I’m saying I don’t believe them. This blog is about how I don’t think “Autism” is thing in itself and that there is no such logical grouping. It’s a dispute, not my ignorance – I think. It does get a little circular, both their argument and mine, and I’m not sure there’s any way around all of that with these sorts of constructs. My point is, that it is less circular when we see it the other way around: I am predicting that we can indeed find a “group of genes,” but for NTness, not Autism. Such puzzles always carry an extra level of difficulty when you’re looking at them upside down, trying to prove the negative rather than the positive in the situation.

Their language is doomed to vagueness and complexity, we see it progress: a gene, no, a group of genes, well, a variable number of genes, along with environmental things (like Tylenol) also, well, environment (like Tylenol) and a variable number of genes and also life history (like a lack of “discipline”) . . .

You know what, here, let me flip that over for you. That’s what we’re here for.

Of course, I can’t show you any genes for anything, so, while proof is lacking for “Autistic genes,” at this date, let’s look at some theory, shall we?

What does a genetic . . . entity look like? How do we recognize genes, what sort of attributes do genetic things have?

I’ve thought of four things that we associate with a genetic . . . effect, and they are, in no particular order,

One, heritability: genes explain heritability, our children inherit our genes and our lives, to some degree. It has been dramatically explained how genetic behaviours appear in separated families, most poisonously in the twin studies. Heritability that survives family and cultural disruption, we know this is a genetic matter.

Two, epigenetics: an epigenetic effect is a sure positive sign, if not not always present, but when we see differences in development with the same genes in different environments, we know some gene is taking a cue from the environment and choosing an option.

Three, sameness: when we share a gene, we share a trait, not one for one necessarily, but species share a whole lot of their genes while all of life share a few, almost. “Species,” means a high level of shared genes, and when we see shared attributes, especially across diverse environments, we know we are seeing shared genes. Accordingly, the more uniform a given group is, a given species, the less variability it displays, this indicates a higher percentage of shared genes than perhaps another, highly variable “species,” has, and the more variable species has more genes that they don’t all share – think perhaps species with mountain and lowland versions – but the more they are all the same, the more we know their genes are too.

To phrase it for use here, I want to say that the more uniform a group is, the more “genetic,” it is, that is to say the more it would be accurately defined by defining the gene, or as I’ve been saying, the genetic . . . something. Genetic overall effect, I suppose. I mean, I don’t only want to say it. I think it’s a fair example of how we use the soft term, “genetic,” in conversation, and I try not to want to say untrue things, of course don’t we all. We will judge for ourselves, I guess, but if you don’t agree, things will look more circular later, I’m afraid. I’m trying to set it up, but with a change of viewpoint, not by dispensing with the truth, I hope.

Inasmuch as ninety-some percent of shared genes makes a species and a hundred percent makes you an identical twin or a clone, more similar means more “genetic,” – ah, there it is. It means more of the “genetic component.”

That ought to do it! It just takes me a bit sometimes.

Four, evolution: when a trait or an effect is growing or shrinking, being selected or deselected over time, when evolution is happening, it happens in your genes, if we see polar bears fading to tan, we know there are grizzly genes, they are converging. When we see species getting bigger or smaller or changing how they use the environment, we know their genes are changing too.

OK. Caveats.

Some of my reasoning will rest upon reasoning that as far as I can see, is only mine; I will be expecting you to accept AST, Antisocialization Theory, my idea that humanity drives itself to more and more antisocial behaviours by way of its attempts at social control, my idea that no-one traumatizes humans except humans, that we are horrible and destroying the world because we treat ourselves horribly and for no other reason. It’s the materialistic ideological opposite of “Human Nature.” It’s all I ever talk about, see the blog.

I will attempt to give you a way around it where possible, but I’m nothing if not holistic, and it won’t really work without it. Nothing works with the Human Nature myth gumming up the science, and cynic that I am, you know I think that’s the point of it.

Alright let’s apply these criteria and find out who’s a genetic . . . whatever and who isn’t, shall we?

One, heritability.

“It runs in families,” sure it does, of course it does, wait – what does? “Autism?” So, “Autism,” “runs in my family?” Again, yes, sure it does – but it’s not the only thing that does. I’m pretty sure my family has a non-Autistic streak too. The rest of them aren’t blank molds, waiting to be coloured in, they’re not “nothing,” if they’re not Autistic, are they? More like everything, if you count them. If we don’t just leave them out of our equations. Hmm.

I’m afraid I’ve just talked myself out of “Allism,” as my term, I’ll go back to my generic, “NTness,” again, because my point is it’s the concrete thing – and Allism is defined as simply “not Autistic,” that’s not a definition for my thesis, obviously they can’t just define each other that way, and I’m going the other direction, where it is “Autism,” whose definition will simply be “not NT.” With a better word some day, I hope. My apologies to the community, that word is not going to work out anymore when I’m finished revamping the entire movement and the world. To say, “Allism runs in families,” instead is merely a grammatical tautology, not my point at all. We should find a way to say NT to mean something more specific, but that’s a bridge too far just now.

NTness it is.

The point of this is that this is not a grammatical tautology, but a real one, there is some real, heritable thing being passed along that isn’t Autism, some genetic . . . structure that is its own thing, and again, isn’t “nothing,” or “Human Nature,” or any sort of a functional default that is necessarily good or “natural,” or just the way God planned it. But either way – if it’s only grammar to you, it’s still clear that both neurotypes “run in families, Autistic and not Autistic.” If it’s only grammar to begin with, it’s still grammatically true. Logically, if “Autism runs in families,” so does the other thing, or there would be nothing but “Autism.” Right?

For me, there are two possible genetic things in this conversation, both possibly actual, heritable things in the world, and perhaps it’s one or the other, or perhaps it’s both. So, that’s One Point each. Both things look genetic, based on their heritability, to me, “Autism,” and “NTness.”

It’s a One-All tie at this point. They could both be genetic . . . forms of order by the first test.

Two, epigenetics.

Now, this is all overview, I am not a biologist, and when I say “genes,” or “alleles,” or even if I name one as I’m about to do, know that the names and the details don’t mean much to me, that this is all theory and someday your details will catch up. I won’t be held to some genetic detail from 2020, this is all made from macro observations, no minutiae is going to invalidate it for me.

This seems to be a feature of some genes, or some genetic effects, that they have options, depending on what they detect about the environment, that affect an organism’s development. I believe some genetic diseases or conditions come on during development as genetic options are settled, isn’t that right? Classic epigenetic effects are things like . . .wow, Google seems useless, nothing but cancer, and it seems confused with mutation. Things like a foetus sensing its mother’s malnutrition and adjusting how the person processes proteins for their life, this is an example, the Dutch Winter Babies – I’m not sure anyone’s proved that this extends beyond the womb, but wouldn’t it?

If a one year-old senses its own famine and had any developing left to do, can we assume some things are adjustable well into development? I would think so, I mean I do think so, I’m quite certain this is the case but that I am not in that business and am having a little trouble finding the proof for you. The idea is central to AST, I must have seen it somewhere. Oh, there it is – identical twins have the same genes to start, and epigenetics, response to environment, is understood to be responsible for any differences between identical twins at all, which clearly exist.

AST has it that the so called warrior alleles operate that way, and I think that’s my example, everyone thinks that – it’s just a poor example because it’s exactly my thesis, AST’s premise that some genetic effect like the warrior alleles happens for people, and that no-one makes the environment one to activate those alleles, I mean set the worse option, but us. This environment is called, “spanking.” It has a special name, it’s not just “hitting,” or “beating,” and it’s only called that when we do it to humans in childhood, during development, because it is epigenetics.

We see the effect, as I said in a recent blog, when children, born sweet and helpless become hard and aggressive as they age to “maturity.” Spanking sets the options of your warrior alleles to “war.” At least it does for most people. I have been trying to make this case for years; if I haven’t convinced anyone yet, it must be impossible. For me, this is the epigenetic effect that rules human life.

We must pause to admit that the “warrior alleles,” have suffered the same process as “Autistic genes,” that at first it was “the psychopath gene,” then the name change and the caveats, depending on other factors, then only in extreme abusive environments, along with or without many other genes, etc., etc., it is difficult to say anything with any power in this complex business. But the less extreme function seems clear and independent of microscopic detail, how people grow up to “be strong,” more reliably than that they grow up getting more sensitive. If you don’t see it, you probably think nothing and no-one is strong enough, which makes my point in an even more powerful way.

To some of us, at least.

It seems that perhaps it fails for some? For many Autists in particular? Can we not be counted upon to get “strong?” This is my AST view, that this is the DEPT, this is what is so wrong with us, we cannot be trusted because we are apparently no damned good in a fight.

Not sure I can continue. This is a controversial point, I’m not sure anyone is going to follow me so far. There is a lot of talk online about Autistic sense of fairness and justice and on the other hand the ones who would “cure” us are quick to say we resist the training. Look, I guess I can’t speak for all Autists, maybe any of them, I am pretty new, and as I said at the start, I’m not a very good follower – but it never changed me. I am as opposed to spanking today as I was when I was one year old.

I don’t think I have that warrior allele thing in nearly the same measure as normal people do, and I suspect a lot of us Autists are like this. Can you see where I’m going? I think NTness displays the epigenetic effect of people growing up strong and mean, and I’m not so sure “Autism,” has that.

I think we’re at Two to One now. In this sense, NTness is a genetic . . . function, and “Autism,” lacking this attribute, may not be, at least is not proved to be by this logic.

Three, sameness.

Which has diversity, which conforms?

Am I done? It’s tempting. More than tempting, why insult you? Maybe in the LSD halcyon days of the sixties I would have had to but . . . you have media, right? Enough said.

Three to One. Next!

Four, evolution.

AST again: I think we’re getting worse, I mean something is. I don’t agree with the existing conversation, I don’t think we’re “better,” than the chimpanzees because I think we have a chance to know better and we never take it. We don’t rule and kill the whole world because we are “better,” than any damn thing, try this – the chimpanzees probably don’t kill as many chimpanzees as we do anyway. We are worse, and getting worse all the time, and we don’t take any responsibility for our horrible selves and talk about “Human Nature,” insisting, promising, to never change. For hundreds of years now, maybe thousands of years, wars keep getting bigger. Standing still in the river of life changes you, and trying not to change only means you are choosing the worse option when the world changes, and suffering a reduction in your viability and quality of life.

It’s not just me and AST that thinks so, it’s the same meme that we are Fallen, that we have gotten worse, perhaps the biologists have a slightly less negative view, they say that we retain the nastiness of the chimpanzee and have only extended their destructive capabilities, not that we are getting worse within ourselves, only that we are not getting better. That’s better, huh.

This is my long held, and long considered from every side that I can imagine worldview, AST, that we keep making ourselves worse, in an act of misguided self-directed evolution, and it’s about the species in general, but:

 . . . but I didn’t know about “Autism,” that my mindset may not be a one-off, but a type, and I wasn’t aware of the Indigenous Critique either. It is amazing to learn that my self-taught understanding of the world that few of my white friends understand or agree with happens to line up with a common Autistic set of traits, but far more amazing that it does with the pre-European North American way of life.

I have been thinking and speaking about an “NT gene suite” for some time now, as opposed to at least my Autistic genes, and honestly, Wengrow’s talk about the Indigenous Critique is an evidence I never dreamed of, too bloody good to be true! You mean there are modern people, whole civilizations, practically within living memory, compared to the long story of evolution I thought I was telling, that didn’t have this problem, at all?!?!?

The Indigenous Critique of “Europeans and their culture,” and my complaints about my life’s difficulties communicating with NT people, they are identical. The Indigenous life the Dawn of Everything describes is exactly the life I pine for, exactly what I would have designed for us all – the life I bloody need. I’m trying not to tell you what it is, this is getting long and I’ve barely begun the book myself, everyone should read that book. And it existed, this life?

Really? Bloody Hell.

Is it really too much to assume some previous state, as those enlightenment pundits did, before all of this? Having watched this toxic thing take over North America, and likely other places, can we not assume it began somewhere and took us over at some point, maybe not so far back as caves and fire? Again, again, if it’s “nothing,” because it’s everywhere or will be soon, you’d say no, but that’s crazy, it’s everywhere, or almost, so it’s something, very, very something. I had been talking about an aggressive gene and genetic drift, and good Lord, if the European Age of Expansion isn’t just that.

Drift counts as “evolution,” doesn’t it? One of evolution’s most powerful vectors, isn’t it? You’re free to disagree, of course, but I think the main thrust of humanity is evolving, not in a positive way, it is adapting to an environment that it makes worse and then it adapts to that – this is a positive feedback loop, thermal runaway, and it is all going to burn. AST suggests that the 21^st. century looks exactly like the 20^th. century and that this cycle of meltdowns may be the final stage, to be repeated until we do adapt in a different direction, or for as many cycles as this planet can survive it.

Of course I’d love to be wrong about that.

But the other side of the question, this factor – are Autists evolving?

It will be Four to One by me, if not. What do we know?

Not much, to be sure. We’ve only had the word for a hundred years, and we’re still fighting about the definition; I don’t have a lot to work with. We exist, so we are being selected for, somehow, someone is breeding with us, although I expect that nobody knows yet if we are on the wax or the wane or holding steady, and nobody can say we are getting more or less Autistic, for the same reasons. We lack data for evolutionary change happening among Autists at the moment, of course, we haven’t got much of a snapshot yet, but is there anything?

I think maybe I’ll touch genetic similarity after all, not having to make the case for NTness, but just to talk about its relative absence in “Autism.” I won’t be using quotation marks going forward in my life for that, it just helps make the particular point in this blog, that we’re analysing that term.

But there is something about the other health issues, “morbidities” associated with us. There is a word, for illnesses that occur together, “comorbidities,” and technically it’s fine if you have more than one, but I’m seeing an argument that says to use such a term around “Autism,” sounds like “Autism,” is one of them, like “people with EDS often have the comorbidity of being “Autistic,” might pass too, so we’re looking for other terms, less negative, “co-occurrences,” like that.

But, terminology aside for the moment, it’s like, uh . . . it’s a little like “Autism” is a prophylaxis for disorders and problems that at least from an NT, bro-science evo point of view, “should” get people selected out. Again, some talk about “curing,” us for these issues, but somehow we are here, still getting laid and breeding, despite them. No? I mean, on the theory that we aren’t a new thing in the world, and I don’t think any but the most hardline creationist sorts think that.

What I’m suggesting is that the “number of genes along with environmental factors, etc.,” associated with “Autism” seem to be shared with a lot of problem genes, and no force is taking advantage, the leopards aren’t eating us, we are still here despite some liabilities. I have this sense that somehow, our side of the gene pool is un-curated, we are either too small to worry about or too big to fail or something. All this, is my only tiny stab in the dark evidence that perhaps “Autism,” is not presently evolving, that it is not showing that trait that some genetic . . . things do.

With that ephemeral bit of reasoning, and no evidence either for or against to speak of, it seems equally right or wrong to declare one way or the other – but well. This is my blog, and that is the declaration I am here to make: go forth, prove me right, prove me wrong, get us that data, this is science, Laddie, that’s the whole idea.

So, argue, criticize, of course, but I’m at Four to One now, and I expect readers are at Two, Two and a half, maybe Three to One, and I would call that a win.

Conclusion: at this point, I will say that “Autism,” could be something along the lines of a genetic “disorder,” but the data is not in to say so, and it could very well not be a genetic . . . occurrence, while NTness absolutely is one, meeting all the basic criteria.

I will re-iterate, I end most of my stuff with this point, I think, that it is not some small minority of weirdos or their disabilities that are forever at war and driving this planet off three different cliffs simultaneously. That is some typical disability, clearly. Which again, is not “nothing.”

Oh, hey, midnight, so it’s Sunday. Let’s post.

Jeff.

March 19^th., 2023

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. 26^th., 2023