Archive for June, 2010

your dreams will be reduced down to breathing, and you will be grateful

The thing about not-being-a-person is: They will say those people and the price of being a person is to nod and agree that yes, those people aren’t people at all. They will have no idea who they are talking to. You yourself will start to forget, too. They will say a million small things that sow the seeds for violence done against you, and you will smile and let them. You will do math, constantly. How much do I want to be a person today? How much do I want this project to succeed? How much honesty can I afford? How much dishonesty will kill me? What is the cost of coming out? Is there a way to delay, soften, transmute? How long can I survive as half a person? Ever since the world ended ... I don't go out as much. People that I once befriended, just don't bother to stay in touch. Things that used to seem so splendid, don't really matter today. It's just as well the world ended -- it wasn't working anyway. Your dreams will be reduced down to breathing. [Read More]

on 03/5/12 | 2 Comments | Read More

Seeking Familiar Comforts

My teenage daughter, who likes to plan ahead, has decided to pick out my next new car.  She insists that a GMC Terrain would be just right for me because it has plenty of space like an SUV, but it ge...[Read More]

on 06/30/10 | No Comments | Read More

Theorem of Compassion

The old trope that autistic people are so withdrawn that they cannot connect to the world, and thus they are inherently selfish and disconnected from people ... they cannot empathize with people ... t...[Read More]

on 06/28/10 | No Comments | Read More

The Unbroken Spectrum: Stockholm Syndrome

This series of entries on the“unbroken spectrum” began as an effort to outline just a couple mechanisms which work to obscure the demographic where paler shades of the autistic spectrum shade over...[Read More]

on 06/25/10 | 5 Comments | Read More

Telling Ourselves New Stories

Tattoos, like other forms of art within our society, are a way of making connections with others and statements about personal identity.  When gang members go straight, they often have one or more ...[Read More]

on 06/23/10 | No Comments | Read More

Independence and Supports

I am not interested, in this particular post, in explaining why assistance technology and supported daily lives do not detract from independence, or why independence is not necessarily a goal, or why ...[Read More]

on 06/21/10 | No Comments | Read More

Children of Lilith (autism contemplated from a silent and considerable height)

“Longevity, like intelligence or good looks, is largely a matter of heredity,” writer Edward Abbey noted, adding, “Choose your parents with care.”  Our parents also pass on to us their storie...[Read More]

on 06/18/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

Monks, Mystics, and Mindfulness

Before the modern era, an autistic child born into a family of peasants would have been put to work on the farm, where there was no need to develop fluent speech or to understand complex patterns of s...[Read More]

on 06/16/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

On Brain Transplants

Usually I can go a long and happy time without needing to think about the hypothetical “cure” question.  But I’ve had a few disparate thoughts lately, probably because I’ve been taking a cl...[Read More]

on 06/14/10 | No Comments | Read More

Autism and the Enlightenment: Sleeping Dogs And Sleeping Giants

I don’t expect that Shift Journal is unique in pursuing this line of thought, but it strikes me that three contributors have now seen fit to comment on the relationship of autistics and “belief.�...[Read More]

on 06/11/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

Robots for Therapy and the Lack of Empathy Myth

"Empathy is one of those skills autistic children typically lack; this boy wasn’t supposed to be aware of his teachers’ frustration." --"The New Face of Autism Therapy" The idea that autistics la...[Read More]

on 06/10/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Knowing the Mind of God

Theory of mind, which is a social reasoning process that involves drawing conclusions about the thoughts underlying others' acts, includes the tendency of many people to attribute intent and purpose t...[Read More]

on 06/9/10 | 7 Comments | Read More

A Neat Verbal Write-Off

So we’re reading The Speed Of Dark in my sci-fi class next week, and I’m going to be sharing some information about autism.  Yays.  I’m still scripting various things out, but right now I�...[Read More]

on 06/7/10 | No Comments | Read More

The Unbroken Spectrum: Self-Hatred

A couple weeks ago I sat down to sketch out two mechanisms which serve to obscure the reality that there is no clear dividing line between autistic people and the larger population.  What was to be a...[Read More]

on 06/4/10 | 8 Comments | Read More

More Doing, Less Empathizing

Today's college students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of empathy than students a generation ago, according to a review study that was presented last week at the annual meeting of the Associat...[Read More]

on 06/2/10 | 1 Comment | Read More