“All at once Evered charged forward, leapt up to seize one of the hanging vines, and swung out over the stream in the spray-drenched wind.  A moment later Freud joined him.  The two leapt from one liana to the next, swinging into space, until it seemed the slender stems must snap or be torn from their lofty moorings.  Frodo charged along the edge of the stream, hurling rock after rock now ahead, now to the side, his coat glistening with spray.  For ten minutes the three performed their wild displays while Fifi and her younger offspring watched from one of the tall fig trees by the stream.  Were the chimpanzees expressing feelings of awe such as those which, in early man, surely gave rise to primitive religions, worship of the elements?”  (Jane Goodall Through a Window (Boston:  Houghlin Mifflin, 1990) pp. 241-242.)

I found Bill’s page within the janegoodall.org site while searching Google for evidence that chimpanzee or bonobo babies or children respond to music with movement or proto dance.  Although I’ve hypothesized in several places on this blog that dance emerged after the chimpanzee/human lineage split, probably during homo erectus as brains grew at lightning speed, yesterday’s entry has me thinking that if music/dance is a postbirth manifestation of womb ontogenetic epigenetic processes, then perhaps there is evidence of a response to music in chimpanzee and bonobo youth.  With bonobo exhibiting more neoteny than chimpanzees, bonobo babies and children would more likely exhibit an attraction to what we could interpret as proto music.

Evidently experiments have been conducted on human embryos in the womb to determine if brain waves suggested an integration of surrounding music and sound.  It seemed that was the case.  Click here.  Do bonobo exhibit the same predilection?  What other animals might reveal these trends?  What might be common among different animals that do show a tendency to be sensitive to rhythm?

I am fascinated by the relationship the autistic have with music and rhythm.  There is evidence that when language is tied to melody, it is easier for many with autism to absorb the words.  The autistic have been observed to retain perfect pitch in higher percentages than the nonautistic.  Several of those with autism that I have known personally felt a close affinity to music and dance.  One autistic boy I worked with almost never spoke, yet occasionally he would break out into dance.  In a subtle and interesting way, performance may be tied to the autistic experience.  There are rhythmic features to chimpanzee displays, particularly with the aggressive repetition of loud noise.  Perhaps the obsessive repetition associated with physical and aural exclamations in autism can be viewed as a combination of, or transition between, display and performance.  Autistic communication often feels to me to be a performance of information featuring a repetition of remembered or rehearsed songs, jokes and snatches of conversation.

I am reminded of Baron-Cohen’s exploration of Savage-Rumbaugh’s chimpanzee explorations regarding theory of mind.  If a chimpanzee demonstration can remind us so closely of a human performance, then perhaps certain autistic behaviors can be seen as a bridge between the two.

If obsessive repetition, rhythm or music are often integral to the autistic experience, and on occasion seem to behave as bridges that provide access to words and what words represent, then would an early and deep immersion in rhythm perhaps provide the autistic with an environment through which they could establish firm connections?

Clearly, if this experiment were conducted on the very young, it would more likely have a positive effect than when they are older.  I don’t estimate there would be negative repercussions.  If we surmise that autistic attraction to repetition, rhythm and performance suggests a need for an environment that reflects those features, perhaps a rhythm-and-performance-infused environment of the type experienced by humans just before or during the transition to culture and split consciousness will encourage a making of connections.

There was a time, perhaps as recently as 100,000 years ago, when we did not trade in symbols.  We were still steeped in primary consciousness (one time, one place, no negatives) but were likely dancing up a storm.  Waterfalls and thunderstorms no doubt moved us, but there is a good chance we often moved each other, performing movement to rhythm and sound.

The autistic may be a mere 4,000 generations from us, a couple neurological anomalies away.  Perhaps all that is needed to bridge this distance is an ability for moderns to evolve a feeling for wordless, rhythmic performance, a feeling for living in the autistic now.

I’d been studying Asperger’s and autism in connection to human evolution for maybe ten years before it dawned on me, after reading Michael Fitzgerald’s Autism and Creativity, that Asperger’s was a feature of my childhood.  As I was growing up, people seemed opaque to me.  I was in speech therapy almost all those years.  I had a strange sense of humor.  I was astonishingly gullible.  My closest friend was a boy that I later realized had Asperger’s.  He was also a math genius and a musician.  I was a collector and an artist.

Over time, it grew clearer to me what other people were thinking and feeling, particularly regarding how they were relating to me.  My obsessions grew integrated with my goals.  I became far less split or self conflicted.

The split that I experienced had perhaps less to do with my Asperger’s tendencies than with a childhood characterized by extreme stress.  But, I’m not sure.

People with autism aren’t generally understood to display classic personality splits featuring conflicts with self, self deprecation or a deep feeling of personal responsibility for what is wrong.  That split would suggest a developed theory of mind, with a mind in conflict, assigning responsibility for difficulties to a self that feels separate.  Nevertheless, there are degrees of split depending on where one sits on the autism-Asperger’s spectrum.  I’ve observed those with Asperger’s feeling deeply divided, assigning to self responsibility for a life characterized by distress.

It was often, if not usually, the case that children with Asperger’s were isolated from most social groups and often were targeted with teasing.  I was teased when others discovered that I would believe most anything I was told.  This occasionally would make me a center of attention when a joke could be constructed around my believing whatever had been imagined.  I often felt humiliated, furious and alone.  I would assign blame to myself for my feeling of isolation.  I expect that this is a common experience for those with Asperger’s.

One way I would adjust was to recoil from those that the class shunned, boys with Asperger’s.  I felt like I could blend in with the “normal” side, and mostly I did.  Yet, I often maintained a feeling I’d be “discovered.”

I was terrified of being singled out for torment.  At the same time, I felt powerfully attracted to people on an individual basis or while playing sports.  I spent no small amount of my childhood collecting boys to play baseball and football.  I proactively sought out playmates.  Yet, I only liked groups when we were playing games.  Mostly, I engaged in various collecting hobbies with another boy.  I introduced many friends to new hobbies such as collecting stamps, coins, rocks, miscellaneous stuff and comics.  I was obsessed with comics.  This was the 1950s and 1960s.

The idea I’m trying to tease out right now is that autism theory suggests that neurodiverse individuals maintain an experience characterized by the “other” as often absent or inscrutable.  Yet, as children, experience is often characterized by uniquely high degrees of stress in social situations because those with autism and Asperger’s are often singled out as different and worthy of receiving negative attention.  This tends to engender self reflection as possible sources for the distress, and malaise is explored and evaluated.  I’ve observed in myself and folks with Asperger’s a tendency to assign to the self blame for being “different” and blame of self for the experience of ongoing distress.  In other words, in some ways Asperger’s individuals have a heightened theory of mind as they experience a deeply personal divide.  They may not be able to easily intuit what is happening in others, but they often engage in a struggle characterized by two sides, and they take both sides in the conflict.

I say such an individual is able to take both sides in the conflict because the person evidently participates in both the placating and blaming polarity in the struggle, identifying with both sides, taking turns.

This begs a question.  Perhaps theory of mind is not an ability to experience both sides of a polarity but an ability to have that experience, to some degree, simultaneously.  Do neurotypicals have an ability to experience simultaneous identification with another while being with self, while the neurodiverse, even while in relationship with self, are only able to identify with one at one time?

Clearly, the neurotypicals are often just as split within themselves as any person with Asperger’s.  A question is:  Do neurotypicals have some brain-structure advantage when it comes to identifying simultaneously with both aspects of the split?

I am suggesting that theory of mind is not just an estimation of what goes on within another person.  It is also an ability to identify with what is going on within the self.

In short, however broadly or narrowly one might define that spectrum, the fact is that people are moving across it, around it, onto it, and off of it continually.  Whether or not one “is” autistic at any given moment is dependent on environment, situation, context; that is how the spectrum is experienced by those who occupy it—yet we’ve collectively agreed to speak about autism in language that is contrary to that experience.

This collective agreement, in the newspeak of George Orwell’s 1984, is something that is “doubleplusungood” for autistic people.

One theme of that novel was that if the language people use in order to describe and reflect on their world can be reduced and impoverished down to the minimum vocabulary necessary for carrying on labor and consumerism—down to a vocabulary that is not adequate to fully describe or communicate their situation—then they will be infinitely more helpless, docile, and easily manipulated than if they’re able to use a vocabulary that is equal to their situation.  For a generation which has grown up with no knowledge that adjectives such as horrific, appalling, or unconscionable even exist, the worst any situation can be is doubleplusungood.  It’s kind of funny, yes, and once you grasp the truth of it also kind of chilling.

Much as you might be able to turn on the television “news” and point to any number examples of this dynamic at work, I’m not so sure that the autism world—as viewed from the perspective of autistics—doesn’t provide a far more advanced and complete example.  At the very least, we are using a two-dimensional model, “spectrum,” to describe a four-dimensional experience that spans time and location.  And how many people haven’t felt the fear, if only vicariously, of being reduced by a diagnosis to a mere point, a one-dimensional specimen impaled on a pin in some clinic’s collection.

One direction to go from here is away from behavior-based diagnosis and toward a strict reliance on quantifiable measurements such as brain scans.  If and when such scans become available though, does that mean scanning equipment will be “available” in the midst of the bustling, noisy, highly social work environment that brings an employee’s autism into full bloom … or only in the quiet comfort of a clinic where they are able to behave “normally.”  I’m told of mothers who deliberately stress out their kid right before an evaluation, to make sure of getting the diagnosis and the school services that follow.  Given the situation as it stands, this seems regrettable but justifiable; here too though what’s lacking is a language and a common understanding that takes into account the role that environment, situation, and context play in autism.

A better model than spectrum for autism then would not conceive of it as a discrete phenomenon, separable from when and where it takes place.  Maybe you’ve heard about native tribes who have one word for caribou and wolves together, recognizing them as a single, interdependent entity.  Minus the suggestion of predator and prey, something like this is needed for autism.  The word ought to connote an interdependence of situation and person, a dynamic to be managed rather than a pathology (or a predator) to be excised and banished.  Autism is not to be plotted on a spectrum; it’s something that happens in the midst of an energized field, surrounded by movement.  All appearances aside, it’s never happening in isolation, and is no more of a condition than it is a dance.

When we have clinical language which reflects that reality of interdependence, we’ll be on our way toward having a vocabulary that is adequate to describe the experience of being autistic. And maybe then I’ll be able to write the piece I’d intended for today.

I know I have readers who, quite frankly, read me to get their mad on, to get primed, to keep an eye on what that neurodiverse blogger is up to.  So, I’m asking you to let all those divisions, that pissiness go for a second.  And for those who read me to see what nugget of nonsense I can pull up at AoA, let’s forget them for a moment, too. They’re saying the same old thing again, nothing new there, nothing of interest to report.  Blah.

Let’s focus, all of us, those on my “side” and those against it, on kids, on schools, on disabled kids and their place in the school system.  Let’s pretend that curebies and NDs don’t exist to snipe at each other.  Let’s pretend that we actually put kids first, because it turns out there are a whole bunch of folks on facebook doing just that.  And we actually stretch the gamut from thinking vaccines cause autism and autism ought to be cured to the other extreme of vaccines don’t and autism ought to be accommodated.  Even more fundamentally profound is that we’re all getting along as we advocate for children who have been physically restrained, harmed, and arrested for resisting that restraint.  Oh my gods, can you believe that?  We’re working together to help kids and other parents.  We’re not worrying about the ideology.  We’re also crossing political and religious divides.  Wow.

Does it mean we agree on all the other things?  No, and we could probably argue about those things except we’re focused on shit that matters tremendously to ALL of us.  The school system is failing all of our children, from the neurotypical to the severely disabled.  And it’s failing our children because society collectively is failing our children.

How many disabled children are physically restrained by the very people we entrust to care for and educate them?  If it happens in the public school system, picture the potential abuses, the actual abuses that unfortunately do happen in institutions.  There are good people in all these places and they are working hard to do good jobs, and they should be recognized, but even good people do bad things, make bad decisions, make flat out dumbass decisions.  And there are folks working with the disabled who have no business anywhere near the vulnerable.

Let me ask you, readers who stretch across all ideologies, all religions, all politics, what exactly are the big autism organizations doing to make sure that physical restraints are not used on the disabled?  What is Autism Speaks doing to advocate for the disabled?  For their treatment?  For their protection?

What is SafeMinds?  TACA?  Generation Rescue?  The forums many of you read and post at, what level of focus does the safety of our children in the school system play?

It isn’t just disabled children who are at risk for adults making poor decisions regarding their care.  How many stories have we heard of school systems gone amok and law enforcement departments foolishly handcuffing and arresting students for bringing Motrin, for doodling on a desk?

It isn’t just the schools that have folks making dumbass decisions, though.  A parent decides to teach her child a lesson when he forgets to pack his lunch into his bag and tells the teacher to let him go without lunch; the principal makes the appropriate decision and feeds the child and the parent blows a gasket.  Withholding food as a teaching tool is not acceptable.

By falling into woo, by failing to critically examine the potential consequences of our actions with our children, with other people’s children, we fail our children, ourselves, and society.  And it’s so damn easy to fall for all manner of woo.

Raising kids and teaching them is often a serious pain in the ass and a cramp to one’s style.  Let’s not pretend it’s not.  And we often want to do the least amount of work possible; it’s human nature.  Well, the least amount isn’t enough.  And it’s time we admitted that as a society.

You want the school system to value your children, treat them with respect, make the schools safe places for them, then it really doesn’t serve you well to go out bitching about what hell autism is for you as a parent and think those teachers and aides aren’t going to think the same thing.  You wanna view your kids as damaged goods to be recovered at all costs, treat them as objects, what the hell do you think is going to happen in the schools?

We don’t fund our schools adequately.  We don’t train our teachers sufficiently.  The training for classroom management is almost nonexistent.  Most teachers have no training in learning disabilities.  They get one developmental psychology course.  As I prepare to teach lifespan this summer, I have to tell you, I can get a lot of information out to the future nurses and teachers who will take me, but I can not adequately arm them. They both need classes in behavioral management, as well.  A class period in general psychology on classical and operant conditioning and another on social cognitive learning is woefully inadequate for knowing how to manage a classroom of kids, many of whom will have behavioral issues, some of whom will have disabilities, and others who are fricking kids and being asked to sit for hours in desks doing rote work for which no application, no use, is taught.

We are failing our kids.  And it isn’t because we lack dedicated, loving professionals.  Many of us are blessed to have wonderful instructors for our children, but they’ve got 20 plus kids, deadlines, curriculum objectives to meet, shitloads of papers to grade, and a woeful lack of assistance to make it all happen.  And inclusion comes with a price.  It is laudable, it is desirable and it should be.  I want it to be.  But I want it with the proper supports, so that what students see is not another autistic child being restrained, or acting out and being met with a lack of understanding and an escalation of behaviors.

We are failing ourselves when we do not demand more of ourselves as advocates for our children.  And when we do not demand better resources for our school system, lower staff-to-student ratios, mandatory special education classes for all instructors as part of their licensing requirements.

We fail society when we do not move heaven and earth to make this world a better place for all of our children, for ourselves.

And yet, I take hope. I take hope in the fact that my girlies are in a wonderful school that sees them as people first.  I don’t take it for granted, though.  I take hope in the banding together of disparate members of the online autism community who decided to focus on things that matter right now, and their willingness to fight for the underdogs.

I take hope because, while yes, there are people out there with less than admirable intentions, there are so many who are willing to do more, to work harder, to make a difference, and we’re finding each other.  I take hope because as we do so, we build on the respect for infinite diversity, we work towards inclusion, and we change ourselves and society in the process.

Diversity and Inclusion: How Society Fails Us All, How We Fail Ourselves first appeared at Countering Age of Autism, and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

The applicable internet slang here, I suggest, is “wtf?”

I believe there’s an unacknowledged cost accounting which can explain how this works.  I want to begin to lay that accounting bare here, because I believe that the hidden costs are staggering, and have long been unfairly externalized by society onto a wide swath of the autistic spectrum represented by people such as Clay as well as by those such as myself who never have received a diagnosis but have paid costs nonetheless.  There’s a danger here for me then of swerving off into personal complaint or pity-party; the reader will have to be the judge of how well I avoid those pitfalls.  My aim here though is to illustrate through personal experience something that applies to countless others besides me.

Coincidentally, Clay has also recently made mention of Liane Holliday Willey’s Pretending to be Normal, an obligingly temporizing tome erected on the foundation of Asperger’s Syndrome.  He and I both read it when it came out a decade ago, but I’ve never had my own reaction to that book summed up so succinctly as when Clay wrote, “… it bored the hell out of me.”  Which is a shame, because the title has always deserved to be put to better use than Willey put it to.  The costs I’m talking about, the costs which Willey so obligingly painted over and swept under the rug, are the costs of pretending to be normal.

There are many things I do not regret about how I spent my twenties; I spent them doing something I loved and was good at, playing music.  I lived a lot of dreams, even if mostly on a shoestring budget, and gained a reputation for being quite the individualist iconoclast.  It can take an outsider to see through such a reputation, and my outsider came in the form of a fearless young woman maybe six or seven years my junior who if she hadn’t been born an old soul, had recently been made one.  I met her just as she began to blaze back from a years-long, agonizing course of Guillain-Barré syndrome.  A beauty and a promising dancer before that, she was still a beauty but as women will do when struggling to hold the attention of autistically clueless men, one day she decided to go for the jugular.

“For someone who’s supposed to be such a renegade, you sure do worry a lot about what other people think of you.”  Touché.  Point, game and match to the young woman fresh back from the Gates of Hell.

That was the thing.  And it wasn’t that my “act” was an act at all; I had gravitated naturally enough into a line of work where obsessions and eccentricity were given a wide berth, those bona fides I had.  What had me terrified was that I was pretending nonetheless, pretending to be comfortable around people, pretending I wasn’t profoundly uncomfortable in social situations—pretending in that sense to be normal, and constantly worried someone would notice, that someone would find out.  This was on the one hand only and exactly how I had grown up, but here I was an adult, free to choose my milieu, and still as ill at ease among misfits and artists as among business people, academics, and working folks.  And in music as with other types of freelancing, one lives and dies by one’s networking skills.  Mine would still have been my biggest limitation even if I’d had a fraction of the musical skill or talent I had.

A year or so later then, following a gloriously incandescent several months of manic genius, burnt bridges, and worried friends, I put down my horn and walked away from it all with no goodbyes.  Clay might recognize this reduction in stress as something like “retirement,” although lighthouse keeper and fire tower lookout positions being hard to come by, I took the next closest thing I could find, a cross-country driving job.  For almost five years no one but my parents, my sister, and my dispatchers ever knew my whereabouts.  And slowly, slowly, I came back to myself, in some ways for the first time ever.  One Halloween, I staged my reappearance as a tongue-in-cheek “return from the dead,” and wound up having dinner with the woman I married and her daughter who would introduce us both to autism.  Things have been pretty, ah, normal since then, now that I’ve learned the value, uses, and necessity of solitude.

I gave up a lot to learn all that though, more than I’ve taken time to detail here.  It would’ve been nice to have arrived into a world which honored that necessity, rather than setting me at war with myself over it for three decades—and others for their entire lifetimes.  My sister once related undiagnosed autism to “the swan syndrome,” an image of absolutely serene motion on the surface, with frantic, panicked paddling going on below and out of sight.  It’s not an image she invented, and probably not one that was first imagined in relation to autism.  It works well enough though, and it belongs in any cost accounting of society’s expectations for autistic people, or really let’s just say society’s expectations for people, period—never mind the diagnosis here; those things come in all too handy whenever there’s dividing and conquering to be done.

That’s still more of an understatement than I’d expected to close with, but it will do for now.  Keep in mind that when I characterize the costs of pretending to be normal as staggering, I’m speaking about those costs in the aggregate, taking into account millions of swans’ feet paddling madly away in order to fend off needless, manufactured fears, and to coddle the pretensions of resolutely “normal” enforcers of pointlessly conventional, mindlessly social behavior.  There are far better uses for such energy.  It’s long past time for it to pass back into the hands of those who produce it.

In the same way, we find it easier to think things that we’ve already thought.

We set up familiar thought patterns; we already know what we think about politics, religion, civil rights, disability, autism.  We have already cleared our own particular paths on those subjects, and arrived at the destinations we intended.  The fact that we’ve been influenced by information mainly from one “side” of the discussion escapes our notice.  We feel that we have adequately researched the subject, and have reached a conclusion that seems reasonable and desirable to us, and are satisfied.  A peculiar failure of mankind is that, in our desire for a particular outcome, we seek information from sources that we pretty much already know we’ll agree with, so as to avoid any cognitive dissonance.  We don’t like unanswered questions, we refuse to believe that to some questions … there is no answer.

When faced with such a situation, it feels as though we were standing in an interminable field of weeds, taller than we are, and we see no way out, no path to follow, and we need a machete to cut our way through.  I suppose that’s what it feels like when parents learn that their child has autism.  “Autism?  What’s that?  Isn’t that where a kid is lost in their own world, unable to speak, hear, think, do anything a regular child does?”  Their pediatrician has no answers for them, can offer no hope, and they find themselves stuck in that field of weeds.  It’s human nature, I suppose, to seek someone, or something to blame, but what?  All too often, the first source of information comes from some charlatan who says he “has the answer”, and promises a cure.

Oh, they gussy it up, come up with a theory that sounds all plausible and scientific, write pages and pages of fancy words designed to impress, show off their credentials, and make promises.  But you never see any “money-back guarantees.”  If it doesn’t work, they’ll claim that you didn’t follow the program correctly, it’s not their fault if your child didn’t become cured, and by the time that you realize that their system isn’t “the answer,” you’ve already spent thousands and thousands of dollars, but your child is the same as s/he would have been without the expensive effort or treatment.

Most likely, your child has improved, because autistic children will learn and grow anyway, just as other children learn and grow, though on their own schedule.  You might even credit the treatment you’ve chosen, and write a glowing testimonial to persuade other parents.  This will give you the satisfaction of having found “the answer”, and assuage the sinking feeling in the back of your mind that you’ve just been played for a sucker.  I wouldn’t blame you, because nobody, and I mean nobody ever wants to feel that way.  It’s human nature.  We all do it, to some extent anyway.

Uncharted Territory of Autism first appeared at Comet’s Corner, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Light moves at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.  Speed as a concept is also integral to biology.  I hypothesize that the speed with which information passes between the two cerebral hemispheres impacts consciousness, behavior and personality.  And, whereas the basic unit of speed in physics is the kilometer or mile, in biology that unit is a generation.  Though maybe not.

Bernard Crespi has written a paper, Psychosis and Autism as Diametrical Disorders of the Social Brain, which focuses on several neurological features as influential in the etiology of particular diseases and conditions.  Corpus callosum size (the corpus callosum is the primary brain bridge between the two cerebral hemispheres) and anomalous dominance (differing cerebral hemisphere sizes) are two of those features, aspects of cerebral lateralization.  I would consider that corpus callosum size not only influences the ease and speed of information transfer, but that corpus callosum size influences the experience of self awareness or split consciousness.

There are correlations between degrees of cerebral lateralization, how much the two cerebral hemispheres vary, and conditions characterized by maturational delay (autism, Asperger’s, stuttering).  Degrees of handedness are influenced by this variable.  Other diseases and conditions are associated with right cerebral hemispheres not pruned by early childhood testosterone surges, leaving a larger overall brain with two hemispheres the same size.  Ally these features with changes in corpus callosum sizes (and corpus callosums can vary in size in several ways depending on which of several zones are varying), and I would suggest you have a template for estimating degrees of self awareness (split consciousness), behavior, specific diseases, various conditions and personality structure.

My point in this piece is that in the context of two cerebral hemispheres with varying sizes, corpus callosum sizes are influential in the speed of information transfer, and information transfer between the cerebral hemispheres is integral to our experience of self awareness.  The more inhibited information transfer, the more self aware we become.  I mean self aware in the context of split consciousness or a person struggling with himself or herself.  There is a spectrum featuring at one side a non-self-aware, primary-process person with an experience characterized by not being able to be two places at once, two times at once, nor being able to imagine something’s opposite.  This is animal consciousness, the kind of consciousness we experience while dreaming.  This is the consciousness of small children.  This is the consciousness of the autistic.

At the other side of the spectrum are those humans with an experience characterized by a split.  These individuals are two people.  The unconscious feels like a different person.  The world often seems very black and white.  Imagination is often exercised as different times and places, and things’ opposites are juggled and compared, and conclusions are drawn.

The split, modern consciousness is encouraged by a small corpus callosum size with an inhibition of hemispheric communication, along with a right cerebral hemisphere reduced in size.  Light moves at 186,000 miles per second.  The speed of information transfer between cerebral hemispheres varies depending on the structure of the bridge.  The smaller the bridge, the more inclined that individual is to experience himself or herself as split, self aware, surrounded by a community of ideas.  That is my hypothesis.

Whereas the speed with which information passes between the hemispheres influences the emergence of a separate self, there is a second level of information transfer that deeply influences physiology, personality and behavior.  This is the passing of information between generations.  That this seems slow may be a result of our focusing on an individual as the primary unit in evolution.  Assuming that evolution unfolds as part of a process characterized by environmental influences on those that are genetically predisposed to modify ontogeny in response to those environmental influences, then we might consider that examining evolution from any specific level of experience, including the individual, makes little sense.

In just the way that information passes back and forth between the cerebral hemispheres, informing the whole person, a person whose experience may be characterized by a split, information passes back and forth between individuals within the larger community, influencing individual ontogeny, compelling different physical features and behaviors.

In other words, though it looks like the unit of change in evolution is a generation, that generation adjustment may come as a result of an almost infinite number of pieces of information transferring throughout the larger community, a community not unlike a massive brain with countless hemispheres.

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second.  The speed of nature information transfer might be measurable, but we don’t know even a fraction of all those variables that influence ontogeny.  One question to consider is this:  If in a human a split brain can lead to the emergence of self awareness, even if that awareness is characterized by no small amount of anguish, confusion and isolation, then might this multiple-brain, massive-information transfer characterized by nature suggest self awareness?  And, consider that humans are part of that production.

There is this thesis that I’ve been playing with.  Like the experience physics theorists have described, it seems too beautiful to not be true.  Nevertheless, Stephen J. Gould has described the trap biologists sometimes get themselves into, the dogged pursuit of a beautiful thesis that turns out to be false.

The thesis I am now exploring has been developing since late 1997.  It has grown deeper with time.  Earlier immersion in works by William Irwin Thompson and Riane Eisler prepared me for what followed.  It started out as an exploration of how Darwin’s theory of sexual selection juxtaposed with Chris Knight’s explanation of matrifocal human evolution.  This insight was joined by Gould’s description of heterochronic processes, associated with Norman Geschwind’s studies of cerebral lateralization and Annett’s discoveries regarding handedness distributions.

Darwin, Knight, Gould, Geschwind and Annett each offered pieces that suggested an integrated whole.  Sexualselection.org describes the thesis, introduced in 1998.

I struggled to write a larger, cogent overview of the thesis but a combination of deep disappointment around failed attempts to start conversations with academics (many polite responses, little enthusiasm) and the need to make a living (my former business took a dive) propelled me to put my theorizing on hold.  I started a website design firm in 1999.  From the start, I focused on achieving high rankings for my clients’ websites and my theory site.  I discovered I had a talent for the kind of obsessive, focused puzzle-solving that search engine optimization entailed.  Search engine ranking is now a sizable portion of my living.  My four theory sites have received over a million unique visitors.

Last fall, I was diagnosed with a cerebral aneurysm.  I’d been writing every day since the previous January 1, with daily postings slowly turning back toward evolutionary theory after a hiatus of several years.  Over the course of the spring and summer, I kept finding societal applications of heterochronic theory with implications that felt profound.  Biology and society began to merge as I observed identical processes impacting both disciplines in predictable ways.  Changing maturation rates and timing (the foundation of heterochronic theory) had both biological and societal implications.

Discovery of the aneurysm seemed to concentrate my attentions.  The existence of the aneurysm is not life threatening, unless it ruptures.  Still, the chance of a rupture in a given year is 2.5 percent to 10 percent, depending on the surgeon being interviewed.  Life feels more precious.

The original thesis that came together in 1997 and 1998 offered a host of insights and one major anomaly.  The anomaly was that Asian patrifocal social structures produce neotenous features.  I rejected the “random” answer that different ethnicities produce different features based on unpredictable tendencies to focus on particular sexually selected traits.  In the back of my mind for almost ten years was the feeling that an answer to this riddle would lead to useful new directions.

In addition, I was aware that my theory focused almost exclusively on testosterone as a driving force in human evolution, with testosterone controlling rates of maturation.  It seemed to me that estrogen probably had an integral part to play, but it had not become obvious what that part was.  For ten years, that thought about estrogen bounced around in the back of my mind.

Then, last fall, shortly after the discovery of the aneurysm, I began to play with the possibility that estrogen worked in close cooperation with testosterone in a complementary opposite fashion.  This possibility could both explain the paradox of Asian neoteny and provide a balanced explanation of how maturation rates are adjusted by estrogen in the womb and in society.

That felt major.  The piece, “Introduction to the Theory of Waves,” described the dynamic.  What I had called “Shift Theory” in 1998 I now called “The Theory of Waves” to accommodate the integration of estrogen into the equation.

Last spring, a series of additional revelations regarding estrogen emerged.  The whole theory began to lean in the direction of an estrogen dynamic when it occurred to me that there was a relationship between my stepdaughter’s difficulty with entering puberty (her diabetes wouldn’t let her put on fat) and estrogen as a possible force that controlled the timing of maturation.  This implied that heterochronic theory, already deeply integrated into the thesis, might offer further illumination by interpreting testosterone as controlling the rate of maturation while estrogen controlled the timing.

A one-sentence explanation of evolution.

An immediate implication was that autism was impacted by the mother’s testosterone and estrogen level.  In addition, the child’s hormone levels would impact maturation rates once out of the womb, particularly as regards estrogen levels.  Synapse pruning results in a reduced left hemisphere in most normal right-handed people.  This may be managed by estrogen levels, just as fat levels in adolescents determine the timing of the testosterone surges that occur at puberty.  Autistic brains are often characterized by having had no pruning of synapses as young children.

I wrote Simon Baron-Cohen.  On 6/25/09 he replied that I ask a bunch of great questions but that he doesn’t think researchers have the answers yet.  Baron-Cohen said he’d discuss my conjectures with his colleagues.  Dr.  Baron-Cohen had responded positively to an emailed introduction to my work in autumn of 08, providing me permission to quote his positive response.

In the meantime, having been in the middle of the slow accumulation of a number of ideas that have suddenly snapped together into an integrated whole, I continue to wonder how something so beautiful might not be profoundly useful.  And, if not so useful, are there portions of the theory that might be useful?

A major hurdle is that heterochronic theory is not applied to human diseases and disorders.  It is a rather arcane, evolutionary biological backwater.  Getting theorists to pay attention to the rate and timing of maturation as regards evolution, ontogeny, epigenesis and endocrinology is a challenge.

A second problem is that autism is not looked at as an evolutionary condition.  With Darwin’s theory of natural selection still the default frame of reference, it’s very difficult for people to note the potential usefulness of alternative, complementing evolution theories.  Looking at autism as a heterochronic condition is a foreign concept to literally every academic or theorist I have proposed this idea to.

One last thing.  Sensitivity to the preciousness of life seems to encourage a lifting of veils.  If some of these conjectures turn out to be useful, if the central thesis offers physics-like leverage to open doors to additional useful theories in the future, then perhaps specific forms of spirituality might be useful when it comes to science.  If, instead of rejecting mythology as a prerequisite to engaging in science, what if we instead embraced an eastern inclination to live in the present, with no mythology?  Awareness of our own mortality may be integral to understanding that which transcends individual identity.  Feeling our not existing may offer insight into that part of us that transcends individual self.

Sensitivity to mortality may offer leverage when exploring the structure of interconnection.  Experiencing self and Self may allow us to experience evolution over time, and in the now.

What’s needed here in fact is not so much a scientific breakthrough as a perceptual one.  If geeks and nerds can be seen as autism’s proxy warriors, there is another group which slipped unnoticed into this same theater of operations, scouting out the territory and bidding for hearts and minds while by nature drawing as little attention to themselves as possible—save of course for the occasional article or blog post.

I am something of a packrat when it comes to bookmarks, and an item this week at BoingBoing reminded me that I had several similar articles I could call up with just a one-word search.  Rather than tip you off right away, I’m going to quote from those articles here while substituting “autistic” for the word originally used.

Before my bookmarks on this subject became a collection, I had just this single item dating from March of 2003, in The Atlantic:

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is “too serious,” or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an autistic on your hands—and that you aren’t caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of autistics. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that autistics process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Autistics may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world.

As it happened, that article got a tremendous response, taking on a life of its own at The Atlantic; it was revived four years later as well, when it was voted up to prominence by Digg.com users.  Looking over these pieces I realize many came to me via Digg.  This undated newspaper clipping which appeared there last September echoes many of the things I remember first learning to do with my stepdaughter in 1998 after she came back from a clinic with a preliminary diagnosis of “borderline autistic.”  Some examples from How to Care for Autistics:

• Let them observe first in new situations.

• Give them advanced notice of expected change in their lives.

• Give them 15 minute warnings to finish whatever they are doing before calling them to dinner or moving on to the next activity.

I have mentioned before and hope to write more about the autistic sensibility that is apparent at Digg; the site’s landing page for the above clipping included a note from the member who submitted it:  “ouch. that’s like a list about me.”

From 2007’s Top 5 Things Every Non-Autistic Should Know About Autistics, voted up to Digg’s front page the day after it was published:

The qualities and characteristics of autistics are often held in a negative light in today’s world, so it’s only natural that the majority of people seem to think that there’s something wrong with them.

The reason why the majority of people think that there’s something wrong with autistics is because the majority of people aren’t very knowledgeable when it comes to autistics, in terms of why they are the way they are and why they do the things they do.

Autistics have a lot to bring to the table. They have an amazing ability to discover new thoughts, an uncanny ability to focus, to concentrate, to connect the dots, to observe and note things that most people miss, to listen extremely well and are often found having a rich and vivid imagination too.

The more non-autistics become knowledgeable about autistics, the less tension and misunderstanding there will be among the two.

From Autistics and Non-Autistics, Can’t We Just Get Along, again made popular at Digg the day after its first appearance in 2008:

Being an autistic is a bad thing, right? Well, a lot of people seem to think so, judging by the number of articles I’ve read about how to “cure” autism. In response to these articles, I wrote The Autistics Strike Back, in which I argued that (1) autistics can’t become non-autistics, and (2) they shouldn’t particularly want to.

And from the blog recently mentioned at BoingBoing, I can do no better than to repeat the pull quote used there:

A woman who read one of my essays on autism said that when she explained her autism to her family, her brother said, “We didn’t know you were autistic. We thought you were just a bitch.”

Yeah, a lot of people don’t get it. How do we help them to understand?

The secret word of course is introvert.  Every quoted passage or title above was originally written with the word introvert rather than autistic.  And yet if you click through and explore what’s being said in each of those pieces, what you’ll find is society coming to terms with autism, and unsuspecting autistics explaining themselves to the non-autistic world with a heartening degree of mutual respect, goodwill, and understanding—all without the unhelpful baggage and extremes of emotion that have come to accompany the word “autism.”

I can hear the protests already, believe me.  The autistics taking umbrage at autism’s very real disabilities being discounted or made invisible, dismissed as mere introversion; and the introverts offended at being lumped in with “disabled” people after all the effort that’s gone into explaining so engagingly that there’s nothing wrong with introversion.

All of which suggests that while the phrase “autistic spectrum” trips easily enough off our tongues, we are not so comfortable with the implications of a metaphor which should make clear to all that there is no sharp or meaningful dividing line between disability and difference—or between autistic and non-autistic.  I’ll admit I’m a little put off at the frequency with which the phrase “care for your introvert” pops up in the above articles and others like them; even when used with tongue in cheek and in good fun, it still feels patronizing to me. That those articles were written at all though—from a stance that differs for the most part by only one word from that of the emerging autistic self-advocacy movement—is evidence that that movement has been underway and in fairly good hands for some time already.

I’m still trying to grasp the concept that testosterone and estrogen and their associated hormones are together managing ontological, social and biological evolution by adjusting to changes in the environment by moderating the rate and timing of ontogeny.

We always knew that sex governed our lives.  There is now the possibility that we can understand how exactly this is done.

In both sexes, entering puberty is characterized by a surge in testosterone that, among other things, halts most synaptic growth.  According to some studies, if  fat levels are not high enough, puberty is delayed.  Certain levels of estrogen are required for testosterone surges to occur. There are other studies that suggest that higher fat levels delay male puberty, accelerate female puberty.

Over ten years ago I hypothesized that a mother’s uterine testosterone levels would influence the likelihood of her child exhibiting autism.  I estimated that the rate of maturation would be determined by the amount of testosterone.  A mother with high testosterone would feature maturationally delayed sons and maturationally accelerated daughters, both vulnerable to autism.

This last season I’ve been applying the pattern of how estrogen controls the timing of testosterone surges at puberty to early childhood when testosterone surges prune the right hemispheres of most normal right-handed individuals.  Might estrogen levels in these infants, toddlers and children be determining the timing of these testosterone surges?  What if estrogen levels were so low in boys that testosterone surges did not occur?  The result would be an unpruned right hemisphere, a larger brain with two cerebral lobes that are the same size.  This is a common feature of autism.

If a mother has both high testosterone and high estrogen, what I estimate to be an archetype of one of two forms of matrifocal social structure, then, according to the principles that I’ve been playing with, she would birth a low-testosterone, low-estrogen son; high-testosterone, high-estrogen daughter.

The implication is that we might predict that autism would be relatively common in cases where the rate of maturation and the timing of maturation combine to engender brains, mostly male brains, which are maturing slowly with little variation is hemispheric size.

Regarding female infants and children with high estrogen encouraging pruning still drifting in an autistic direction, click here.  That is a little more complicated.

Right now, I’m wondering if breast milk vs. infant formula might be an influence on this process.  If a mother’s body is able to modify her embryo’s maturation rate and timing based upon the various environmental influences that impact testosterone and estrogen levels, then does a mother’s milk also adjust to environmental influences in ways that her child’s ontogenetic timing is modified?

Does what a new mother eats, for instance, a high-fat diet, influence her breast milk to increase the estrogen levels in her sons and daughters?  Could a high-fat diet increase the chance of an autistic child?

I’ve heard that soy products, soy milk for example, can result in developmental delay in small children. A recent study suggested that wealthier families had higher percentages of autism. Soy milk is relatively expensive. Is there a connection?

High-fat diets increase testosterone and estrogen levels.

How much influence does what we eat have upon our children?

“The highest concern of all the mythologies, ceremonials, ethical systems, and social organizations of the agriculturally based societies has been that of suppressing the manifestations of individualism; and this has been generally achieved by compelling or persuading people to identify themselves not with their own interests, intuitions, or modes of experience, but with the archetypes of behavior and systems of sentiment developed and maintained in the public domain.”  (Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God:  Primitive Mythology (New York:  Penguin Books, 1959), p. 240.)

I know nothing about, yet am fascinated by, the differences in child-rearing practices of matrifocal aboriginal societies and modern parents.  Some matrifocal aboriginal societies are hunters, some herders, some agriculturally based.  Campbell notes agricultural communities with a focus on raising children with a social emphasis.  Hrdy describes how in matrilineal/matrilocal hunter gatherer societies children are taught to exhibit theory of mind.  I’m wondering what the nuances are between those societies and herder and later societies, and the differences between emphasis on social mind vs. individualism in matrifocal and patrifocal contexts.

Just as there is an evolution of society, beginning with hunter/gatherers moving toward agriculture around 10,000 B.C., followed by the emergence of towns and cities, I’m estimating, as Campbell suggests, that there is an evolution in emphasis on individualism accompanied by changes in child-rearing practices.  If we go back 2,000 to 4,000 generations, were parents using techniques that did more than just socialize the children and integrate them into the band or tribe?  Did they also individuate them enough to be independent social beings capable of theory of mind, or an ability to exercise compassion, and at the same time teach them to be more focused on the group than on the individual?

There is a paradox I’m trying to tease out here having to do with raising a child when we as a species were still largely lodged in primary process, the way an unconscious or dream self thinks, featuring one time, one place and difficulty imagining something’s opposite without focusing on the thing itself.  I’ve hypothesized that contemporary autistics are revealing forebear features, particularly brains not yet lateralized for speech.  I’m figuring that our evolutionary forebears, raising children naturally inclined toward primary process, were engaged in specific relational interventions that would propel them into a shared reality.

Animals across our planet successfully relate to each other while in primary process.  How exactly did we relate to each other during our primary process, prelateralized-brain evolution?  How did we prevent our children from careening off into autistic spaces featuring primary process but little ability to socialize?  How did we socialize our children before the development of postagricultural encouragement of individualism?

An answer to this question, I believe, offers guidance on how we can raise children with autistic tendencies, children of mothers with high testosterone, and possibly high estrogen.  This is the hypothetical prototypical matrifocal mother’s hormonal constellation.

I suspect this has something to do with band or tribal creation of constant access to shared tribal consciousness space featuring dance, song, performance and joint experience.  This may have something to do with Campbell’s observation of how agricultural societies raise their children to ally with shared priorities.

Modern times manifest an obsession with individuality.  Perhaps the increase in the numbers of those with autism is a direct response to a diminution in shared consciousness activities.

The variation is more like if you put a few drops of blue food dye into a completely still backyard swimming pool.  For awhile, you’d be able to see it, mostly hanging together but slowly becoming diffused with the surrounding water.  Eventually, it would seem to disappear, but in fact, it would have a slight effect on the entire pool.  It could be that in a hundred (or a thousand) generations, no one will appear to be autistic, or “aspie”, but the entire population would be different in some way than how they are now.

I have no pretensions of being “scientific”, and no credentials whatsoever, but I have an intense interest in the subject of evolution.  I devour the stuff. I will state that I believe that human evolution is still occurring, and maybe at an ever-increasing rate.  If anyone believes that the present state of mankind is the pinnacle of possible human intellect and achievement, I suggest they take another look around.  Some species don’t seem to have the capacity to evolve, as I understand that the lobster and some sharks have remained essentially the same for like, 100 million years.  It could be that they just didn’t have the motivation to evolve, as their environment has remained unchanged.

I saw another documentary show last night, on the History channel, “How The Earth Was Made”.  It showed how they took deep ocean drillings and determined that the Sahara Desert first developed 3 million years ago, because the wind-driven sand that blew into the Atlantic first appeared at that depth.  Then they showed how, because of the wobble of the Earth, there were 20 thousand year cycles of wet and dry in Northern Africa.  They found fresh-water shells and whale bones, remnants of ancient human habitation in the desert, and determined that the end of the last wet period was only 5,500 years ago.  When the huge lakes and grasslands dried up, the inhabitants migrated to the east, where they found a generous river – and Egyptian Civilization was born!

Man is a highly adaptive creature, and our environment is constantly changing.  We even change it ourselves.  It could be that a major impetus for change is just around the corner.  I expect to see it.

If anyone wants to argue anything, please, at least watch the show in the link first.

Gotta give a link here to an excellent blog post, But you LOOK “normal!!”

What Darwin Never Knew first appeared at Comet’s Corner, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

"Note," she said, "that the Rolling Pin is on top."

I’ve never been able to take in the big picture at family reunions.  Between the carnival of overstimulation that comes with all that social interaction, and being the unacknowledged odd neurology out as an adopted child in my family, simply remaining socially appropriate has always been enough to keep my CPU usage running above eighty percent, uncomfortably close—sometimes terrifyingly close—to locking up like an underpowered computer.  As much of a people-watcher as I’ve always been, at reunions I’ve never been able to read or enjoy the tiny dramas of people’s interactions the way I can on say a city street or in a restaurant, or even with a smaller, more intimate group.  The expectation that I might be called on to participate at any moment from any number of directions keeps me in a reactive mode and prevents me from gaining much perspective on what’s going on, or even speaking my own intentions.  I’ve noticed though that there’s a curious inversion of that experience going on from my perch here at Shift.

Late last summer I posted an entry which laid out what I intended to accomplish by jumping into the fray of public discussion about autism’s place in society.  It was an ambitious declaration, describing a task which if carried to completion will take more years than I will live.  The cue I took came from a phrase out of the American South used to describe what is done when there is important family business which concerns an entire extended family.  When a matriarch or patriarch dies or some other watershed event occurs, word goes out to whatever far corners of the world where family members might be, word that there is to be a meeting at which decisions will be made, power perhaps passed, and ancestors honored.

This of course sounds not so different from what happens anywhere else, but the above is only the literal description.  The phrase I used was also used by an early jazz trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, described here by fellow musician Kid Ory:

I used to hear Bolden play every chance I got. I’d go out to the park where he was playing, and there wouldn’t be a soul around. Then, when it was time to start the dance, he’d say, “Let’s call the children home.” And he’d put his horn out the window and blow, and everyone would come running.

The overtone there is tribal then, and not even of one tribe, but of a nation of tribes who were asserting their national character against all odds, an ocean away from where they’d started.  Outlandish and presumptuous as it may seem to compare autistics to African-Americans, it may well be that the crossing autism has made in order to arrive in its present form has been every bit as long, wide, and brutal as the one across the Atlantic. And for what it’s worth, in terms of maintaining a sense of culture and identity, in terms of calling their children home and having everyone come running, I’d say that to date African-Americans have done a considerably better job than we autistics.

That’s what I’m out to remedy.  Autism in my view is a nation, a tribe, or if you prefer, an extended and far-flung family—and calling our children home is the task at hand.

So.  Strip away all the metaphors but one, and what we are looking at is a family reunion.  And what happens at really big, first-ever family reunions?  You meet all kinds of unlikely people who nonetheless are in fact your kin.  Maybe you don’t get along.  Maybe there are long-running feuds.  People who pretend this or that branch of the family doesn’t exist.  Stigmatized crazy aunts and “bachelor” uncles who happen to be the true gems of the family whom you are poorer for not having appreciated years ago.  Domineering great-aunts, and wrongheaded great-uncles the likes of whom you or your children have never in your life encountered, and hope to never again.  Family gossips and quiet ones who see all but say nothing.  Chronically poor relatives with class issues.  Wealthy, successful relatives with class issues.  Middle-class relatives ruthlessly enforcing the taboo on discussing class issues.  Relatives who decline to attend, ever, or only if certain others are sure to be present.  The holy-roller side of the family, and the heathen side.  On and on.

This is what I’m beginning to see here, in the discussions sparked and spun off from this site, and I think it’s great.  This site is a big-picture endeavor; it portrays a wider and deeper spectrum of autism, and a more encompassing family of autistics, than you are likely to find in any other place at this time.  There are bound to be conflicts.

Save for one example, out of regard for the privacy of those involved I’ll not offer any identifying details, but Shift’s referral logs provide breadcrumb trails that lead back to blog posts and forum conversations which have linked to items on this site.  The long and short of it is that you people are not happy about each other; there are territory and turf issues galore—but you are talking about each other, sometimes even to one another.  And not that these conversations haven’t gone on for a long time in various places, but they are something I want to encourage, something for which I would like to see Shift Journal become even more a center of gravity.

Good on y’all, then.  Please keep it up.  “Strife is the father of all,” said Heraclitus, and there’s our family patriarch if you want one—there’s no denying Strife has been with autistics from any beginning still in living memory.

That one example I can share?  Of family members coming to look one another in the eye for the first time, face-to-face with the startling notion that there’s kinship going on here?  I’ve yet to post explicitly on autism awareness—or autistic self-awareness—in the online/tech/gadget community, but it’s something I monitor closely. Simply tracking the incidence of stories containing the words autism or autistic submitted to Digg.com over the last four years suggests there’s a slowly waking giant there; Digg is not a community with a comparable interest in any other mental condition.

Last week at any rate I posted an open letter to tech writer Joel Johnson, who had written a sharply pointed, laugh-out-loud funny piece for the gadget blog Gizmodo in which he made an offhand slur against the word “autistic.”  I also dropped him an email and we’ve had a cordial exchange, finding much in common, but before that even happened he posted a link to my piece on his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

This was last Saturday morning, and the vast majority of hits on that open letter that day came from Joel’s followers, hardcore tech folks, over 4.500 strong on Twitter alone.  By midnight, 224 of them had spent an average of 3 minutes and 17 seconds reading a no-name blogger make a big kerfuffle over Joel’s use of the word “autistic.”  The number to focus on there is 3:17, as that’s serious attention for such a short essay.  I suggest that didn’t happen because of Joel or because of me; it happened because tech people know their world has something to do with autism—they’re just not yet sure what it is.

So like I say, it’s nice at this family reunion to be able to take in interactions like that, to watch family members slowly awakening to their connection to the family.  I’m looking forward to more of this.

“We have now surveyed a wide range of creole structures across a number of unrelated creole languages.  We have seen that even taking into account the, in some cases, several centuries of time that have elapsed since creolization, and the heavy pressures undergone by those creoles (a large majority) that are still in contact with their superstrates, these languages show similarities which go far beyond the possibility of coincidental resemblance, and which are not explicable in terms of conventional transmission processes such as diffusion or substratum influence (the ad hoc nature of the latter should be adequately demonstrated by the opportunism of those who attribute a structure to Yoruba when it appears in the Caribbean and to Chinese when it appears in Hawaii).  Moreover, we find that the more we strip creoles of their more recent developments, the more we factor out superficial and accidental features, the greater are the similarities that reveal themselves.  Indeed, it would seem reasonable to suppose that the only differences among creoles at creolization were those due to differences in the nature of the antecedent pidgin, in particular to the extent to which superstrate features had been absorbed by that pidgin and were therefore directly accessible to the first creole generation in the outputs of their pidgin-speaking parents.  Finally, the overall pattern of similarity which emerges from this chapter is entirely consonant with the process of building a language from the simplest constituents — in many cases, no more than S, N, and V, the minimal constituents necessary for a pidgin.”  (Bickerton, D. (1981) Roots of Language.  Karoma Publishers:  Ann Arbor.  P. 132)

Consider that there may be a biological basis to the evident fact that creoles across the world exhibit similar features.  If the societies that are being intermingled are from across the world, as is often the case, with people mating with no lineage in common for over a thousand generations, then the same dynamic in play that creates hybrid vigor may be bringing into contemporary times features of their last common forebear.

This would suggest that creole peoples would exhibit other features characteristic of their ancestors, not just ancient language structures.  If the merging peoples were separated by perhaps 2,000 generations, we might expect to observe an increase in conditions characterized by maturational delay, such as autism, stuttering, Asperger’s and left-handedness.  We might also see a talent for dance, gesture and performance.  In some creoles, only the languages blend.  In others, there is a blending of ethnicities as peoples half a planet away meet and form families.  When genetics separated by many generations blend, according to Darwin, common ancestor characteristics emerge.

Might creole societies display features that we would associate with primary process (one time, one place, no negatives)?  In other words, might there be a cognitive withdrawal to an earlier societal evolutionary time?

There are other variables in play.  In the piece Aboriginal Primary Process and Contemporary Autism, I noted the possible effects of specific child rearing practices that could encourage children not to maturationally delay but to stay engaged.  Specific tribal child rearing conventions may have been necessary to create the shared identity characteristic of ancient tribal culture.  The work of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in Mothers and Others suggests a number of matrilineal/matrilocal hunter gatherer society child rearing conventions that encourage theory of mind.  If those conventions were not used, it may have not been a question of the child acquiring individuality, but of the child withdrawing to a place of nonidentity, not unlike autism.

So, there are not two new themes I am exploring in this thread.  Creoles may evidence the biological principle observed by Darwin whereby divergent lineages when combined display features of the last common ancestor.  Regarding creoles, such a feature may be the language grammar and structure.

Second, the hypothetical aspects of primary process displayed by some aboriginal societies may be evidencing an alternative identity formation, one that requires specific child rearing practices to encourage participation by young minds.  I might suggest that particularly ancient aboriginal societies, matrifocal cultures, for example, might display earlier stages of biological/neurological/hormonal evolution.  If those particular child rearing practices are not engaged, then the repercussions might be withdrawal or a form of autism.  The new thing to consider is that some aboriginal societies may be exhibiting group identity, which is far from the cult of individuality that characterizes the contemporary United States.  I’ve never explored this, though I have a vague memory of studies exploring the differences in personal identity between aboriginal and modern individuals.

In the back of my mind is the question of whether contemporary autistic children are hard wired for the kind of group identity characteristic of the biological/neurological/hormonal constellation of ancient aboriginal societies and whether they need the specific child rearing practice necessary for that biological/neurological/hormonal type?

This piece started by positing that creole language structure peculiarities might signify evidence of a biological process.  This led to the conjecture that group identity characteristic of some aboriginal societies might be connected to primary process, which suggests connections to autism.  In some ways, it seems to come down to identity.

Autism has been described as a condition characterized by a lack of theory of mind.  Perhaps another way to view the condition is that children with autism are displaying difficulties acquiring identity.  Different societies offer different ways to display identity.  Maybe we need to examine whether modern society should explore alternative group identity options as it relates to children with a nonconventional neurology.

On page 575 of the May 1 issue of Science there is an article, “Africans’ Deep Genetic roots Reveal Their Evolutionary Story.” Examining the blood of 3,194 Africans from 113 populations, researchers looked for patterns in inheritance. “In many cases, the team found that ethnic, cultural, and linguistic differences reflected real genetic differences…” For example, the three hunter gatherer click language cultures (Sandawe, Hadza and Khoisan) were all genetically connected.

They ran comparisons to 98 African Americans. “…71% of their DNA from ancestors who came from all over western Africa, 8% from other parts of Africa, and 13% from Europeans.”

A premise of my work is that there are several causes of autism that are related to changes in a mother’s sexual hormone levels as this relates to changes in testosterone and estrogen levels over the course of our recent (3,000 generations) evolution. We’ve transformed from a matrifocal, matrilineal/matrilocal aboriginal hunter gatherer, high-testosterone/high-estrogen female, low-testosterone/low-estrogen male to the reverse, a high-testosterone/high-estrogen male, low-testosterone/low-estrogen female. Various environmental and social effects propel our children backward hundreds, sometimes thousands, of generations. When sent too far back, their world becomes again one characterized by primary process (one time, one place, no negatives) that in modern times manifests as autism because there are no longer the ancient aboriginal social conventions that serve to bind individuals together within a group. This might be constant rhythm, constant touch, low-fat diets, nonstop dance, gestural language and several alloparents providing an enhanced ability to intuit theory of mind.

In Darwin’s 1859 On The Origin of Species, he described the result of mating two lineages of pigeons separated by 2,000 years of separate breeding. In Europe and China the birds were bred for different traits, and the two populations showed few of the features they displayed when last aligned. When the birds were mated by Darwin’s contemporaries, Darwin observed a proliferation of features in the hybrids that looked like the 2,000-year-old progenitor, the roc pigeon. There had been a slip backward of hundreds of generations to an ancestor last held in common by the parents.

Breeders of horses, dogs and other domestic species find that with careful interbreeding of disparate lineages, hybrid vigor can be encouraged by the carrying forward of useful characteristics of common ancestors into the present day.

Consider the following. Humans mating with other humans separated by two thousand generations or more since last connected are encouraging the emergence of features in their children that were extremely useful back when spoken language was brand new, or perhaps still mostly gesture. I would estimate that the children of these marriages would be left-handed a far higher percentage of the time, right-handedness hypothetically emerging with spoken language and hemispheric differentiation.

Some individuals would have difficulty adjusting to contemporary child rearing practices, tending to withdraw and to be lost in primary process. Hybrids may not easily integrate into a domestic context. Other individuals offer an astonishing array of useful features that seem to seamlessly align themselves with us moderns. There are those that are a combination of the two.

We are more than our genetics. What our parents provided is but part of the package. Also there is what we learned while in the womb, epigenetic understandings. Then there are the decisions we made while growing older. Genetics, environment and personal decisions combine to make us what we are and what we become. Nevertheless, how our parents’ contributions combine have a powerful effect upon what comes after.

Barack Obama is a hybrid child, a left-hander, a charmer and a deft performer. How much of Obama’s skill set comes from characteristics vital to our ancient forebears? In a matrifocal society, these are features that are deeply respected and particularly useful in procreation. Why are some children provided a set of skills that fit perfectly for our times while others have so much difficulty adjusting?

I don’t know. But it does seem reasonable to me that we explore the conditions that might feel most familiar to those emerging among us now and revealing features characteristic of long ago. A place to begin looking is where our matrifocal, aboriginal peoples are still alive today. Some of those people are still speaking in click languages, on the continent where we were born.

Perhaps the oldest peoples of the world can offer us insight into contemporary conditions and diseases that we are wrestling to understand.

I’ve waited twelve years now to see the word “autistic” begin to come out of the closet in the tech world, but your otherwise dead-on post the other day about “iPad Snivelers” was not exactly the coming-out party I’d had in mind.  I’ll get to the why of that.  First of all though, I’m a fan, a longtime daily reader going back well beyond the infamous TV-B-Gone prank of 2008 that made one of your colleagues persona non grata at the Consumer Electronics Show.  So I recognized the camaraderie and nodded in approval last month when Gizmodo went out of its way to offer coverage to companies who’d been kicked out of hotel rooms by CES officials at this year’s show.  I do get it; you guys are the rebel outsiders of gadget journalism, snarky prankster Robin Hoods, and not afraid to push limits.  While that’s part of why I’m a fan, it doesn’t mean you get to throw the word “autistic” around like it’s some sort of insightful insult and not hear about it in return.

I thought your piece—iPad Snivelers: put up or shut up—was on the whole exactly what needed to be said.  Gawd knows I love your way with sarcasm, and for all that you were out to kick ass and take names you also seemed to be trying hard to breathe life into a world we both care about deeply.

Two weeks ago I posted an entry which took as its starting point a PC Magazine article on the prospects for fans of Nokia’s N900 cell phone, the “ultimate hacker phone” which is in many ways the opposite of any gadget ever produced by Apple.  I did this, yes, on a site which concerns itself pretty much entirely with autism and social change.  The title of that post was Autism and The Hacker Manifesto; in it I invited readers to consider Lloyd Blankenship’s The Conscience of a Hacker as a reference point for the experience of being autistic.

Fact is, I am as sick of autistics and others reacting to autism (both the cognitive style and the official diagnosis) as if it were nothing but a kick in the teeth as you are of developers and tinkerers reacting to Apple products as if they were nothing but a kick in the teeth.  And the thing is, as you are right to imply, the overlap between these two worlds is significant.  You wrote:

But Apple is not the government. There’s no mandate to buy an Apple product except the call of excellence. And if you think the average persona on the street doesn’t recognize both the ups and downs of buying into an Apple ecosystem, you’re eyeing them with the typical nerd myopia, looking down your nose with the same autistic disdain you cultivated in high school. Turns out the internet you helped build as a sanctuary ended up a great place for normal folk, too.

Let me explain a few things here.

If myopia and misplaced disdain are ill-advised reactions, if they’re bad ways to react, then that’s all they are.  They’re just bad.  Bad for you, bad for me, bad for autistics and non-autistics alike.  There’s nothing special about autistic disdain and nothing typically nerdy about myopia; both are equal-opportunity shortcomings.  Since they are things we cultivate or engage in though, they’re fair game for criticism.  We can choose not to be myopic or disdainful.  We can’t choose not to be autistic, though many use up far more energy than most anyone ever realizes, working far harder than they should in order to hide, deny, and cover up their autism—because thanks to attitudes like yours, they feel they have no other choice.

So if there’s an autistic community in tech—or if tech itself is an autistic community—and that community feels threatened by the invasion of other-than-autistic folks into the first sanctuary they’ve been able to build in all of recorded history, then what that means is that they, we, are human.  It means we have normal fears and insecurities.  It means we are normal folk, Joel.

Just like you.

And maybe that’s only what you were trying to say.

So why do so in a way that delivers an actual kick in the teeth to autistics from inside the closing paragraphs of an otherwise sharp, hilarious, and much-needed piece?  Why say it in a way that scapegoats what you call “autistic” when autism may well be what makes tech the magical realm it is—in closed ecosystems like Apple’s and in open ones like linux—in the first place?  Why undercut the people you claim you’re trying to encourage by bringing up our neurology as a tag for our all-too-normal shortcomings?  Whose favor and good will are you courting, really, and what inspiration for “coming generations of tinkerers and engineers” do you leave behind with a mixed message like that?

What kills me is that the useful parts of the message you’re putting across—that it’s self-defeating to simply accept and bemoan what we are handed, and that the rules of the game aren’t going to be changed by anybody but us—are exactly what I’ve been trying to get across on this site.  I’ve been writing for just a few months but as I said it’s been over a decade since I started looking to tech as the context in which autism was going to first join the mainstream.  And simply by being a tech journalist, you’re reaching far more people whose cognitive style is identifiably autistic than I likely ever will from here.

But here we both are.  And to the extent that autism is what got us to this party, Joel, I say we dance with the one what brung us.

Rich Shull writes with an intensity that befits a man struggling to whittle a rapid-fire slide show of thousand-word pictures down to a sentence or two at a time. Mr. Shull is part of a longstanding online community of picture-thinkers who see Picture Thought as the underlying basis for all thought; he is concerned also at the learned helplessness he sees being taught to younger generations of autistics. In communicating this he uses shorthand, typically a capitalized word or three (Einstein, Rain Man Era, Old Working Autism, and even the already-abbreviated MR/DD) to signify concepts which themselves could be expanded into a thousand words or more. Reading Rich can sometimes lead to the feeling that

Big Time Autism—Generation Rescue—has managed to shoot the cause of autism in the foot once again.  This HBO special (airing Saturday, February 6th) is just short of a Rain Man movie event and can’t possibly promote more than the “helpless version” of contemporary autism.  When contemporary Autism was born via Rain Man, suddenly—and upon “expert” advice—most of the successful things we did as autistic people that unknowingly made us successful, instead became taboo.  Our Splinter Skills and Obsessions were stripped from us as quality caring doctors that KNEW of our pain tolerance, Picture Thoughts, genius side and odd social skills were all banished from Autism as it reached its new fame-driven heights.

The late Dr. Rimland, father of the movie Rain Man, seemed to know of our success and at one time he was keen on old autistic people like me that missed Rain Man’s Curse but alas, admitting to us would have kept the new era Autism and the impending fame-driven epidemic of stars to support the cause from ever happening to start with.  The movie Rain Man would have been a flop, if Old Autism facts were not ignored and “misplaced,” allowing for a watered-down autism epidemic to take root.  Dr. Rimland would not have been able to ride the fame train and become “top dog.”  Hundreds of other professionals would have never gotten their moment of fame or their chance at autism’s newest cure or diet.  Obviously if the Old Autism diagnostic standards were restored and quality professionals were allowed to work with us, we could now tell of our journey that BUILDS on the work of Temple Grandin and takes her picture thoughts all the way to the threshold of normal thoughts.  This thought process has never been in a book before and it is Autism 101. Autism spans from MR/DD as we know to Einstein and current era autism is just filled with too many people, mostly narcissistic parents and professionals, more worried about their next fame fix than their poor kid who’s going to a group home anyway, no matter what they do or how many times they appear on television.  I mean really, what better way to gain fame if your a professional of some type than preying on kids that are “too stupid” to be trusted or listened to—again they are going to a group home anyway, so who cares?

I’m sorry to rain on the parade, but Autism was once pretty well figured out before it was fame- and star-struck.  Before Rain Man we were so close to figuring out the Picture Thoughts that made us work and connect to normal thoughts that if Rain Man hadn’t happened we could have added another 1000 chapters to the psychology books by now as older people missing Rain Man’s Curse united and compared notes to discover we did a double blind human thought experiment that exposed the building blocks of the mind:  yes, they are Picture Thoughts that once learned yield normal thoughts.  Too bad none of what we figured out has been in a text book yet, or peer review would have listened to us and Contemporary Autism would not be forced to ignore us to save their empire and epidemic.  Just how can they admit to Old Working Autism without knocking out the foundation from under the Monster we know as Autism?  It would be akin to a Wall Street collapse of Autism.

The above is a substantially revised version of a draft which originally included the following two paragraphs, published here by editorial fiat:

None of the rest of these picture thoughts has ever been in a text book before.  Autism thoughts are building blocks of the mind and most normal people use autism thoughts all the time unknowingly but, being normal you never know or “see” the internal thoughts that make you think.  Those thoughts we learned by trial and error are indeed the one by one thoughts that make all human minds work.  Since none of this has been in a textbook before it will never pass the muster of experts of any type.  Since the thought process we figured out is all new news to mankind it is suspect on those grounds alone.  Even worse, the answers it presents are not very glamorous or impressive as man was rather hoping his mind was divine but sadly, it is more like a photo album.

I predict when all is said and done these Picture Thoughts will be the next 1000 chapters in psychology, as they link everything from stuttering to dyslexia to genius to MR/DD and even borderline personalities together in one simple explanation that fits everything.  I hope someday Kindergartens will be teaching the Picture Thoughts, the sublevel thoughts—thoughts we need to know before the normal ones really work.  I hope some day this knowledge of the internal thoughts can help reprogram a stroke victim or others with a brain injury.  Please keep in mind your normal thoughts are indeed shortcut thoughts and thus they present as advanced, and when you connect them to their roots the human mind is not quite the marvel we had hoped for.  On the bright side however all humans have the Einstein ability in them!

Both versions of HBO Temple Grandin Special first appeared at Pre Rain Man Autism.

HBO presents “Temple Grandin” on February 6th at 8 PM (ET/PT)

“I have found the midsagittal area of the corpus callosum to be larger in mixed and left handers, referred to as non-consistent-right-handers (nonCRH), than among CRH subjects (Witelson, 1985).  Hand preference is a rough index of the pattern of brain organization.  Left handers (by various definitions) have a higher prevalence of atypical right-hemisphere representation of speech and language functions than do right handers and, in general, show a greater degree of bihemispheric representation of verbal and spatial skills (for review, see Bryden, 1988).”  (Witelson, S. F. (1991) Neural sexual mosaicism:  Sexual differentiation of the human temporo-parietal region for functional asymmetry.  Psychoneuroendocrinology 16: 139)

There seems to me to be tantalizing answers to riddles in human evolution in the various papers discussing corpus callosum structure in different kinds of human beings.  There are papers that support the conclusion that larger corpus callosums, or corpus callosums with larger sections, appear in left-handed people, women, those with two cerebral hemispheres that are the same size, musicians, the autistic and those that stutter.

“Theoretical speculation in humans (S. F Witelson,  Psychoneuroendocrinology 16 (1991) 131-153) and empirical findings in animals (R. H. Fitch, P. E. Cowell, L. M. Schrott, V. H. Denenberg, Int. J. Dev. Neurosci. 9 (1991) 35-38) suggest that testosterone (T) may play a significant role in the development of the corpus callosum (CC).  However, there are currently no empirical studies directly relating T concentrations to callosal morphology in humans.  The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between free T concentrations as determined by radioimmunoassay, and the mid-sagittal area of the corpus callosum, as determined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).  Subjects were 68 young adult (20-35 years), neurologically normal, right-handed males.  All subjects underwent MRI and provided two samples of saliva for radioimmunoassay of T and cortisol.  Anatomical regions of interest included total brain volume, left and right hemisphere volume and regional areas of the CC.  CC regions were defined using two different measurement techniques, each dividing the CC into six sub-sections.  Anatomical measurements were performed blind with respect to the hormone levels of subjects.  A significant positive correlation between T concentration and cross-sectional area of the posterior body of the CC was found.  This finding was consistent across the two measurement techniques and was not attributable to individual differences in total brain volume.  All correlations between cortisol and CC sub-regions were non-significant.  The results of this study are consistent with the notion that T, at an earlier stage in development, may play a significant role in modulating cortical/callosal architecture in humans.”  (Moffat, S. D, Hampson, E., Wickett, J. C., Vernon, P. A., Lee, D. H. (1997) Testosterone is correlated with regional morphology of the human corpus callosum.  Brain Res 767 (2):297)

I would be curious to know whether there is a difference in corpus callosum size between modern humans and matrifocal aboriginals, if musicians and artists have larger corpus callosums and if there is a general trend in growing corpus callosum size that would correlate with matrifocal trends in contemporary society.

“The size of the midsagittal area of the human corpus callosum obtained from postmortem measurement varied with tested hand preference.  The corpus callosum, the main fiber tract connecting the two cerebral hemispheres, was larger by about 0.75 square centimeters, or 11 percent, in left-handed and ambidextrous people than in those with consistent right-hand preference.  The difference was present in both the anterior and posterior halves, but not in the region of the splenium itself.  This callosal morphology, which varied with hand preference, may also be related to individual differences in the pattern of hemispheric functional specialization.  The greater bihemispheric representation of cognitive functions in left- and mixed-handers may be associated with greater anatomical connection between the hemispheres.  The naturally occurring regressive events in neurogenesis, such as neuronal cell death and axonal elimination, may be factors in the individual differences in brain morphology and in functional lateralization.  Specifically, right-handers may be those with more extensive early elimination of neural components.”  (Witelson, S.F. (1985) The brain connection:  the corpus callosum is larger in left-handers.  Science 229: p. 665)

I have a vague memory of a paper that suggested that after sampling several groups of children immersed in music, researchers found that those children playing and composing the most exhibited thicker corpus callosums.  It was implied that this brain structure could grow thicker through lives lived in specific ways.  I’m not sure I remember that right; it seems such a radical conclusion.  This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin notes studies concluding that musicians have larger corpus callosums (Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum#cite_note-Levitin-5).

“Mixed-handers showed significantly larger callosal areas for all measures except for posterior fifth…” (Witelson, S. F. (1985)  The brain connection:  the corpus callosum is larger in left-handers.  Science 229: p. 666)

Regarding autism, I’ve hypothesized that the autistic brain is an ancient brain primed for aesthetic manipulation/appreciation with a larger brain size and larger hemispheric bridge having evolved as a sexually selected device for wowing potential mates.  This is closely related to the Geoffrey Miller thesis, see The Mating Mind.  Lately I’ve been playing with the idea that in addition to a mother’s testosterone levels informing the maturation rates of her children, her estrogen levels in combination with her children’s estrogen levels may be informing the timing of testosterone surges that prune right hemispheric growth in infants and small children.  Not unlike how fat levels in a preteen girl can influence the timing of pubertal onset, perhaps similar factors are affecting the timing of infant cerebral lateralization.  I ask myself what might be influencing the size of corpus callosum development.  Assuming it is a combination of degrees of cerebral lateralization (with left and right hemispheres differing in size) and corpus callosum size that together are influenced by changes in maturation rates and timing, then what exactly are the levers of change that are responsible for their moderated forms?  How might the rate and timing of testosterone and estrogen be involved?

I have a related question.  Let’s assume an autistic brain is a healthy brain, a brain anachronistically located in modern times with perhaps inappropriate environmental conditions making it difficult to operate as it naturally would.  Would modulating the environment to nudge the autistic brain to acquire the features of the modern asymmetrical modern brain with a smaller corpus callosum be an appropriate intervention, if it worked?  This might be, for example, an intervention that lowers a mother’s testosterone levels while increasing the male infant’s estrogen levels, hypothetically accelerating his maturation rate while encouraging the beginning of synapse pruning.

Personally, this idea gives me the creeps.  We need to find out what the autistic brain demands and provide the appropriate environment.

Still, is the size of the corpus callosum influenced by estrogen levels?  Is the timing of its growth triggered by body fat or estrogen?

Does music or rhythm influence corpus callosum size, and if so, might music and rhythm prove integral to the autistic brain?

One more thing.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy in Mothers and Others has hypothesized the current hunter gatherer societies exhibit several features that together heavily encourage theory of mind. She also suggests that without several of these features, particularly a mother having several female allies that are close intimates of her children, humans would never have evolved. Consider that current autistics require the kind of attentions we received while we evolved, attentions still utilized in matrilineal/matrifocal hunter gather societies today.

Music and rhythm are integral and ubiquitous in these hunter gatherer societies.

In the first place, no one is attempting to “speak for” any 10 year old child who can’t speak for himself.  What we would like to do is to help that father understand his child, because he doesn’t seem to have a clue, and we do have a clue, because we’ve lived it.  I would tell that father, “You don’t know what we were like when we were children, what we were able or unable to do.  You also have no idea what things we still have difficulty with, because you only know what you see here online, and that just isn’t enough to know anybody.”

Now, you might think to ask us, “Why would you even care?”  Answer: Because we know what it’s like to grow up entirely alone, not understood, misunderstood, not invited to other kids’ birthday parties, left to watch TV alone because you don’t know how to talk with us, picked on and abused by family, close relatives, kids at school, teachers, everybody one comes in contact with who has a chip on his shoulder and wants to make himself feel better.  We’d like to help you to have a better relationship with your son, because you’re the one he depends on, the one who can help him the most, and you (and your wife) are all he has.

And you sit there moaning, “Why Me?“  You spend a fortune on ABA “therapists” who are only too glad to take your place in teaching him, their profession is well-paid, and they’ve sold you a bill of goods.  You’ve already missed out on a lot of good things you could have shared with him.

As for those who think they know all about autism, that it’s a terrible thing that leaves a child without any sense, smearing his feces about, never learning anything of value, and that’s all there is to autism, they don’t know a damned thing.  They refuse to recognize that Asperger’s has anything at all to do with it, think that we’re all “fakers” who have glommed onto a popular Dx, as I suppose “Indigo Child” was at one time.  (It was never a serious diagnosis, just a crazy fad.)  Some have even suggested that autistic advocates are actually shills for the pharmaceutical companies, who’ve paid us to “glorify” Asperger’s, confuse everyone about autism, all to cover up their continuing misdeeds, (which may or may not be a Commie plot to overthrow the US).  Trust me, there is at least one mad hater and a few online groups who tend to think that way.

As for the relationship of autism to Asperger’s, that’s where the relativity part of my story comes in.

Statement: In essence, they are the same.  I just can’t say it any clearer than that. I’ll offer an allegorical representation of their relationship.  Go open a can of Campbell’s chicken broth.  Put it in a sauce pan and heat, and then taste it.  Now fill the can with water, and pour it in the pan.  Let it heat up again, and now take a taste.  Did it change?  No, I dare say that if you gave a spoonful of each to a blind-folded person, s/he wouldn’t be able to tell any difference.  That’s because they’re made of the same stuff! Does that mean that I’m saying that Asperger’s is watered down autism? Not at all, and anyway, the broth was already mostly water to begin with.  What I’m saying is that the essence of Asperger’s is the same as the essence of autism, whatever can cause the one can cause the other, and though it’s all the same, it manifests differently in each of us, because – because we’re all different anyway.  There never was anyone exactly like you, and there never will be.  Sometimes I think that genetics is an exercise in statistics, with endless permutations.

Alright, call it “The Theory of Relativity of Autism and Chicken Broth”.  I don’t care.

Disclaimer: I’m not a Doctor in real life, and don’t even play one on TV. 

Note: It’s rerun season, and the preceding was a rerun originally scheduled on 20 Sept 2009. Hopefully, new readers will find it interesting. Andy Warhol would be pleased.

Autism, Asperger’s, and chicken broth first appeared at Comet’s Corner, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.