imagine

27 july 2010
part two

imagine

being able to suddenly (and I mean in a leap from one generation to the next, not meaning within one’s own lifetime) process data and information at much higher speeds than others around you?

Autism. I’m convinced that it’s a feature, not a bug, but people can’t see it because most of them aren’t as smart as the autistics.

[Massive disclaimer:
Please note: I have never been diagnosed with autism or anything resembling it. I find myself consistently fascinated by autism and what I've *read* about it, but have no direct experience whatsoever either working with, living with or interacting with, in any significant way, folks who have been labeled as being along the autism spectrum. All my thoughts here are purely SPECULATIVE, from my own head, not backed by any research (that I know of). If anyone who actually has been diagnosed as along the autistic spectrum reads something here and finds it offensive or objectionable, please feel free to comment and straighten me out and/or educate me if you're so inclined. I use the words 'autism' and 'autist' here based on my own, very limited understanding. I am using this language as a way to try to understand whether there are, in fact, real parallels and/or connections between some of the things I personally experience and the stories I've read from people who self-identify as being on the autism spectrum. I resonate quite strongly with the writings of several of these people, and have been drawn to autism as a concept for a number of years. Hope that clarifies things.]

Now, this cannot be a broad sweeping categorization. But:

imagine a person whose sensory capacity is – say – twice? that of her parents’. And in addition to that, her raw processing capability is – some order of magnitude – in other words, significantly – higher than that of her parents.

It may actually be a natural growth stage that hasn’t been achievable for many generations because of sub-optimal conditions for growth? Perhaps humans in the past were just this ‘smart’, but the Machine Age, the Industrial Revolution and the ‘Age of Reason’ have caused us to lose so much of our pure, raw, animal intelligence (that’s what I loved about Mo: His raw, animal intelligence was always in full evidence.)

Culture blocks it, including so-called ‘education’, which is really just a way of herding the unwashed masses into a big pen and dumbing them down enough so that they won’t fight it too much when you make them a meaningless cog in the big machine.

Thoughts are all over the place, trying to get enough of them down to not lose any, will maybe ‘corral’ them later?

***
So, whether it’s a return to an old thing lost and now found again? Or something new, the ‘autistic’ suddenly has access to brain parts that either didn’t exist or fell into disuse for many generations past.

It’s the intuitive part of the brain that I’m talking about here – that ability to make a massive mental leap, from a standing start, compiling (want a different word?) a whole HUGE series of small bits of data and experience into an instantaneous ‘grokking’ (Robert A. Heinlein coinage, means, roughly, a grasping of the gestalt, or whole picture view, of a situation).

It’s the cognitive dissonance bit that gets us by the short hairs: The ‘sheeple’, who’ve been successfully brainwashed and/or dumbed down by culture to accept unquestioningly what’s fed them, have very – simplistic? and/or limited? comprehension of the interactions between humans. The subtler nuances of feeling are not communicated to or by them - they seem to miss out on most of what is communicated non-verbally.

Whereas the autist is exquisitely, almost painfully attuned to every slightest interactional nuance, and the so-called ‘normals’ ability to ignore any- and everything that they don’t find applicable to their own immediate, personal ‘goal’ (whatever it may be) drives us absolutely fucking nuts. It’s like being able to see the full spectrum of colors and trying to communicate with beings that can only perceive (whether willfully or by training [aka brainwashing]), say, red and blue. Or something.

The autist is left not knowing whether the so-called ‘normal’ literally can’t perceive those subtler cues of body language, tone of voice and facial expression, or is simply ignoring them for reasons that are incomprehensible to the ‘autist’.

The one-eyed woman in the land of the blind, or something?

***
Perhaps being raised by unattuned, distracted parents has become so common that the resulting ‘dissociated’ humans are now considered the norm? Scary.

And those of us whose ability to process the information has somehow remained intact, despite our upbringing? What do *we* do?

***
The ‘normals’ have the same kind of hubris, the unthinking assumption of superiority, that the whites did when they encountered ‘savages’ (such as the Incas, who’d developed astrology while the white races were still running around in short pants, or some such thing). Or when humans study non-human species: There’s the immediate assumption of superiority, of having something to ‘teach’ the Other (but rarely ever is there the humility to recognize that they might have something to learn.