Autistics Anonymous

Hi group, my name is Nerdy Harry, and I'm a High Functioning Autistic.  That's DSM-V speak for Aspie.

Well, group, I'm here to admit to my innermost self, and anyone who happens to be listening, that I'm an Aspie.  I came to this new insight into myself courtesy of our oldest daughter, who at age 14, was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, or HFA.  After a long run of emotional, academic, and more recently, social issues, and a protracted outpatient course that was not leading anywhere productive,we had reached an impasse.  We were vexed, perplexed, and most of all worried.  Yet we were clear where her life path was leading her: trouble.  She hadn't found much of it yet, but there's one thing her recovering alkie parents know for sure, it's that you don't have to ride the train all the way to the end of the line if you know where it's going, and it was clearly the Express Train to Nowhere Good.

What we found in our quest for help, with the aid of an educational specialist, was Aspiro wilderness therapy, which had a group for troubled girls who hadn't yet found hardcore trouble (drugs, crime, etc.).  Outpatient therapy was too soft.  Rehab was too hard.  But this one was just right.  At Aspiro, they picked up right away what the common thread of her issues was.  Hiding behind the residual fig leaf of familial mind-blindness not yet pruned by the successive revelations of the 12-Step lifestyle was perhaps the most significant and overarching truth about her, about me, about several members of my family past and present: We're Aspies.  High Functioning Autistics.  Spazzy, awkward, smarty-pantses who couldn't buy a social clue in a dime store with a stack of Benjamins.  We're Non-Neurotypical, or in modern softball-speak, "Neuro-diverse."

Someday, I'll devote a whole post to why I despise that last term.

But as soon as I heard the phrase "Neurotypical," I knew exactly what it was, or more pointedly, what it wasn't: Neurotypical is what I was not; what I am not; and will never be.  It's what I've tried to be; what I've alternatingly coveted and hated in others; what I've faked and still fake to some extent for the sake of functioning in the larger society: Normalcy.  Fitting in.  Relatively effortless comfort in a group, in society.

There has never been anything typical about my neurology, in both good and bad ways.  Hyperactive, shy, smart, sometimes too loud, depressive, prone to dysfunctional relationships with mind altering chemicals.  This is my fate, and it was sealed some time in August 1966, on a sultry night in Laurel, Maryland, when a loud, dweeby Boston Irish sperm met a quiet, reserved Boston Irish egg.  My best efforts have not changed it.  The "blue pill" of excessive boozing couldn't make it go away.  And after 27 years of meetings and programs, my feelings of terminal uniqueness had not quite subsided.  Until now.

It has been both a relief and a condemnation.  But mostly a relief.  And I know from experience that more will be revealed.


So thanks for listening.  But since this is Autistics Anonymous, it doesn't really matter if anyone's listening.  Because as the saying goes, anytime one of us gets together in the name of recovery, you can call it a meeting.  Or I can.

You probably don't think that's funny unless you have some rudimentary knowledge of autism, and you've either been to 12 Step programs, or you've read Matthew 18:20.  But I really just cracked myself right the heck up, and hopefully you, too.

So what was I talking about? Oh yeah, autism.  That's all for now.  Thanks for letting me share.

BLOG REPURPOSING, AND THE HIDDEN SELF

re·pur·pose

rēˈpərpəs/

verb

gerund or present participle: repurposing

1. 1.

   adapt for use in a different purpose.

Anyonymous blogging hasn't appealed to me in awhile, but I'm beginning to recognize a use for it: a possible means of addressing a subjective sense of alienation based on factors that, for one reason or another, can't be discussed with my name attached to them.  Plus, I could always use a venue for speaking the socially unacceptable truths which seem so obvious to me. . .

I assume most if not all of us have private selves, unshared with others, or to some extent, unmet or apparently not understood by others.  So it is with me, unfortunately, to a significant extent.  It haunts family relationships, on rare occasions our marriage, but mostly, it completely dominates my would-be social existence.

So, short story long: Since adolescence, I've felt as if a lifelong wall between me and others.  Not uncommon, but usually the sort of thing that goes away when one grows up.  It seemingly cannot be willed, therapized, prayed, discussed, or ignored into nonexistence.   There are a few things about me that really drive this home.  

There's a shadow just behind me,
shrouding every step I take, 
making every promise empty, 
pointing every finger at me. 
Waiting like a stalking butler 
who upon the finger rests.--Tool, "Sober"

#1: I am, by no fault of my own, smart.  My IQ is 154.  Sorry.

So what's the problem?  Most would say.  People dream of having that sort of ability.

That's because they don't know what it is.  They can see the scores, grades, the interest in things scientific, but cannot intuit their way into an experience foreign to them and imagine the downsides.  Special is special, and I mean that in the pejorative sense.  To be above the norm is to be away from it, is to feel, at least for me, disconnected from it. 

For purposes of connection, and pointedly not for snobbery's sake, I belong to an above-MENSA High IQ group.  Recently, a member of this group, Martin Manley, who was a fairly well-known sports statistician, committed suicide while publishing a posthumous blog explaining it.  Unsurprisingly, this blog, and Mr. Manley himself, were the subject of a fair amount of discussion, and presumably reflection, within the group.

A quick interlude to answer the obvious question--there is no risk, none, zip, nada, zero point zero zero zero ad infinitum, that I'm following in his footsteps.  Life is far too precious, and enjoyable in a generally sweet but not infrequently bitter way.  Most notably, the lives of the little ones that my wife and I have made are precious.  And I want to live to 105, 125, or even 155, and be active and involved all the way.

Back to perhaps morbid contemplation: A group member who had met Mr. Manley had the impression that he thought Mr. Manley ended his life in no small part because he was "slowly dying of loneliness."  This description, whether accurate or not, struck a chord with me.  I have no conscious desire to die (merely to retire early).  But the social side of me, small at it may be, feels as if it has been asphyxiating for close to 50 years now.  Sometimes I am mercifully distracted by life's rich panoply and I don't know the part of me that suffers is there.  Other times, I feel it acutely, and think it can't die soon enough. 

But it hasn't.  And it won't.

#2: What is it to grow up living a life of long-term abstinence from alcohol and all mood-altering drugs, when all "normal" people around me do not? Isolating.  Virtually anywhere you find people having fun together or socializing, you find drinking as a bonding ritual.  This make it hard to truly feel as if I belong to any group outside of an AA meeting. 

Jealous of that large-ish number that follows the letters "I" and "Q" above? Don't be.  Truly, I'd give those last 30 points to you if I could.  This was part of the mirage of alcohol that I chased: the blessed relief of temporary stupidity; the "blue pill" of forgetfulness from The Matrix.  You see, once that number is more than a couple standard deviations above the mean, the fraction of people in the world with whom one can relate intellectually starts to drop off precipitously, and without much more of the imagined benefits of intelligence.  Your would-be friends won't get you.  Or very few of them, and not all of you.  Tell them why, and they'll be jealous.  The richest and most powerful people in the world are not the smartest.  Nor are the happiest people necessarily the smartest.  It's no accident that high IQ groups like MENSA start at an IQ of 135, above which the external advantages of higher intelligence either plateau, or, believe it or not, fall off.

So there's most of the human race right there.  Add some historical social pain to an already sensitive psyche, and the deal seems like it has been pretty much sealed for me.  I stand, like Tantalus, knee deep in water that I cannot drink, fruit that I cannot pick within arm's reach.

Perhaps tossing my thoughts out into the great, amorphous realm of human semi-connectedness, aka the internet, might help.  No reason it would, but no reason it wouldn't, either.

As long as I keep potentially damaging revelations, ruminations, or opinions unattached to my "real world" existence, it can't hurt.

More later.

"Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves."--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Compensation"

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

Women like cats, men like dogs. So goes the stereotype. In case nobody's told you, here's why:

Cats by and large are useless, prissy, self-important fluffballs who think they should be given food, shelter, love, and adoration merely because they exist. Cat loving women think this is admirable, because they wish the same for themselves. It's that simple.

Dogs by and large are slopppy, ill-kept spazzes that think that the depth of their affection should compensate for their lack of presentation and the fact that they lay around all day licking their private parts. Dog loving men think this is admirable, because they wish the same for themselves. It's that simple.

Cat loving men and dog loving women present another wrinkle, but not an unfathomable one.

Cat loving men, by implication, let their wives and girlfriends, or prospective wives and girlfriends, know that they are "in touch with their sensitive side," which is to say that buy into the idea that prissy, self-important fluffballs deserve love merely because they exist. Cat loving women, of course, love this, and the men get laid. End of story.

Dog loving women "admire the loyalty" of the sloppy, ill-kept spaz. Coming from a heterosexual woman, what this really means is that she knows she can't do any better. More than likely, though, said woman is a lesbian, who thinks that all the stereotypically feminine fluff and vanity is just that.

End of story.

One Big Party

The notion of an effective one party system in this country is one I've been contemplating for several years. All one has to do is watch our political process with this hypothesis in mind, and evidence for it continues to accumulate in droves, while evidence against it looks more and more like a facade. One does not need to invoke secret societies like the Trilateral Commision or the Bilderbergers to see the pattern. As John Perkins, Author of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," pointed out, most so-called conspiracies are not hidden from view; they take place in plain sight.

Since the government in all significant ways is effectively owned by those who "contribute" to it--ie, big business, the members of the plutocracy, I think it's most appropriate to call it the Party of Power, as power in this country is apparently not divided between two warring factions, but contained in one monolithic, two headed beast that hisses and spits at itself around issues that are not central while advancing an agenda of agreed upon goals that serve to enhance its control.

Neither faction, despite the rhetoric, really defends our civil rights--Republicans want to build up the police state "for our own good," and most recently justify invasions of privacy and Soviet-Style National ID on the basis of National Security. Democrats believe in “rights”—the supposed rights to food, shelter, health care, and generally a risk and effort free life at the expense of others. (Psst—it’s called Socialism, and it's Communism's capital-driven little brother). They want to tax away our earnings and take away our ability to resist the will of the government "for our own good." In truth it is for their own good. The real motivation is to keep would-be revolutionaries fat, happy, lazy, and ill-equipped. The most obvious and dangerous example is the recent fervor over gun control.

There is no major political party that really supports smaller government and advocates decentralization or increased individual rights. Democrats are utterly deluded about the beneficial effects of a larger state, but at least are at least honest about their desire to increase its size and decrease our personal power at our own expense. Republicans preach decentralization but instead practice militarization. Democrats grow the beaurocracy; Republicans grow the military. Both succeed to some extent; laws are passed with far more frequency than they are repealed. Inevitably we have less freedom than our parents did. There's no reason to think the trend will stop.

Hot button issues like abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, and many other may make for good theater, but they really don't matter to the PoP. (But make no mistake, gun control does. More on this some other time.) I doubt they really care who we're screwing or what we're doing with the products of conception, so long as the products of conception grow up to be obedient little work drones who love Big Brother.

These issues do make for great distraction from more relevant issues, like who's really in charge and how they're doing a better and better job of taking control. The resulting debate is useful in creating the perception of a free society as embodied by the two party system engaged in open discourse on marginally relevant issues.

I think it's more telling to look at what both "parties" agree on then what they don't. I further think it’s telling when "Democratic" candidates enact policies that serve the "Republican" agenda and vice-versa. The most egregious example of this is NAFTA, a pro-corporate, anti-worker globalist coup signed into law by a member of the alleged Party of the People.

The differences between George Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 election were less significant than the fact that both were both hereditary oligarchs—children of wealthy, powerful, political families who did little on their own merit to earn the right to compete for the title of "Leader of the Free (sic) world." This seemed to speak quite clearly to the true nature of power here in the Land of the Free.

But most people are too busy blaming the other party to note the true source of the problem, or are too distracted by bread-and-circuses to care. My additional hypothesis is that this is no accident, and that every single institution in our society contributes to the creation of dutiful, unquestioning subjects as opposed to free thinking upstarts. One could at this point call me paranoid, but one could also consider, and examine the evidence for, a third hypothesis--that a government/society run largely by entrenched power and ivy league law school graduates is quite capable of this degree of deception and manipulation, and given the incentives and motivations, it is almost inevitable.

If you follow these trends to their logical conclusion, there is only one destination. Arguably we are already there. I personally cannot find a historical example where a government growing more powerful and centralized has led to better conditions for its citizens in the long run. It always seems to lead to tyranny, and "both" parties seem to be leading us inexorably in that direction.

Please prove to me that I'm wrong. I'd feel a whole lot better.

To Bail Out Or Not to Be

Yikes! Another catastrophe. Mortgage lenders are up to their eyeballs in bad debt, and the sky is falling. Some conservatives say it's due to to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, some libs say it's due to a lack of government regulation.

Truth is, it's both. On one hand, liberals felt it necessary to tell mortgage lenders how to run their business and to compel them to give mortgages to people who were poor risks. This is the sort of rhetoric modern socialists use to justify their wealth redistribution schemes, since bald-faced communist rhetoric--"we're going to take it away from working people to give to others"--doesn't fly in this country. (Modern Socialists = "Liberals," even though they are only liberal in promoting promiscuity, drug use, and decadence, and otherwise tend towards totalitarian government control) Liberal mouthpieces have justified this by stating that some non-CRA lenders made more bad loans, and hypothesizing that making risky loans actually encouraged responsible lending. Well, sorry, it was either a good idea or a bad one. The evidence on this one is in. It is as if Liberals are saying that someone who used only half as much crack cocaine is responsible, whereas his more indulgent neighbor is not.

Forcing companies to make bad judgments is disastrous. Left to their own devices, they will do plenty of it all by themselves. Greed rules the financial world; one could argue it defines it. These apparent fits of misjudgment come to light every so often, with predictable results:

The house of cards which our current financial system appears to be is shaken when the inevitable corporate misbehavior comes to light. Investors panic, mutual funds plummet. 401ks and 403bs get pounded (But Warren Buffett, et. al. never seem to . . .) People demand accountability. They demand regulation, as if the two are the same thing.

What we get, courtesy of Repbulicans, is a slap on the wrist for some corporate offender with or without time at Club Fed, a redirection of middle class tax dollars to prop up some greedy corporation that knowingly made bad decisions, and from Democrats, some new bureaucracy to supposedly oversee big business and keep this sort of thing from happening in the future. Supposedly these things will be "good for us." The implication is that "us" equals the average working American. You decide if that's the case.

What really happens? The corporations get richer, government gets bigger, and the middle class loses money via three mechanisms--the bailout, the poorly managed mutual fund, and the increase in taxes to pay for the soon to be useless new bureaucracy. Someone is always making money in the stock market--when your 401k just went down 50%, it's likely to be a hedge fund manager or a career investor selling stocks short. Not Joe Middle Class, to be sure.

And more importantly, power is taken from the middle class and given to the government, in the form of regulation and tax dollars, and irresponsible swindlers who, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, "commit crimes against which no laws have been passed."

None of this makes sense, of course, unless one understands that our government and Big Business are devices to make the rich and powerful richer and more powerful at the expense of everyone else. And at this point I have to marvel at how the rich and powerful twist their self-generated calamities into opportunties.

So what do we do? And if one really has any belief in the notion of personal responsibility, big mortgage lenders are about as deserving of a financial bailout as a hard partying college kid who's maxed out his credit cards. Do you really think they're going to do anything but enrich themselves with the bailout money?

And anyone who took out a mortgage has personal responsibility to pay it.

Any reason mortgage lenders, and borrowers, can't experience the consequences of their actions?

Grownups, please?