That is where we differ substantially from opinion. I don't believe autism= the person. It is a psychiatric disorder that afflicts a person. See DSM V.
And this brings me to post an addendum here, that may clarify my core views on autism.
I have often compared Autism to Downs on the one hand and homosexuality on the other. It's not chromosomal and it's more than an orientation. So it cannot be compared.
I agree, hating gets us nowhere. That was me just venting. But I do find autism incredibly damaging to those around the autistic.
It is the opinion of psychiatrics and I agree with them on this account, if elsewhere I seldom do, that it is a mistake to call somebody an autist. Arguably, we shouldn’t be calling anybody gay or African-American either. Where shall we stop? At woman v man? The point is, though, that it does those with autism a favour.
It is different when people are in denial of their autism.
High-functioning autistic individuals who operate normaly (in high positions, surgeons, politicians etc) would hate to be considered autistic, because of the stigma of “handicap”or “abnormal”. Yet, it is merely stating a fact. (But which fact?) Do not confuse this with a negative judgement. Knowing about the autism disorder prepares their spouses, family and friends and colleagues to look harder for the person behind their oftentimes incredibly irritating or violently hurtful autism.
There is a fine line between calling a duck a duck and pasting on a label of rejection.
Beware of provoking more discrimination by identifying yourself with the signatures of autism. It can become very onerous to those with autism to realise that to “us” it may seem that you use autism as an excuse to be cruel and insensitive. Consider this. How is anybody to know you are "typically" autistic? I had to look you up to find a good reason to be forbearing with your poor reading of my self-expression (that was no statement on autism in itself) that resulted in a rather fierce and rude reply. Normally, I would have ignored you as a volatile person with a bad-hair day.
If I didn't know you were autistic I would have judged you extremely negative. By the same taken I would have to call my sister a bitch and be resentful for how she spoiled our family dynamics. Of course, it would be better for everybody to call her nothing at all! But what then? Let it slide. Let the autism rule?
She stopped at nothing to ruin our mother. But I know better. She didn’t know what she was doing. She needed help to understand herself. But such help is hard to find, because who understands autism in its full spectrum? And on the other hand understanding yourself is mostly a private affair.
Autism has you trapped between a rock and a hard place. The devil and the deep blue sea.
I remain adamant that we must avoid always the label the autist. We don't want to make deviants out of you. It's also only a disorder on top of your infinitely pristine order (of a spiritual nature). Autism describes anomalies that are socially undesirable, or do not fit into the greater good for mankind. Would we design our babies with autism?
I agree with you that autism colours everything like a red sock in a white wash.
It may be best caught under the nomer of disposition. This innate disposition sets into an ego, that working mind which uses honed executive skills. This is why the autism only really shows up for most high-functioning, well-educated, well-mannered people at a later date. Behaviours can be modified, thoughts can be programmed, skills applied. All this masks the real problem which is that of over-thinking. It is neurology in overdrive, which short-circuits altogether in extreme cases (full coccooning).
I liken the cause and effect of autism to the problem with thoroughbred dogs. Man has selected preferences (for man it’s the cerebreal-neural activities for dogs other attractive features) and in doing so the wolf becomes weaker. Along with this is lost the instinctive social codes of communication; they don’t know how to greet with the usual sniff-and-bow deference anymore, and appear aggressive for it.
Autism, in this allegorical comparison, is pushing the higher organs of spiritual perception out of alignment with our physical being. It fails to allow the mind to lay the necessary channels between heart and willing and head.
From this we can learn, I believe, that our more subtle modus of communication has no origin in the brain or our neuro-sensitive network exclusively. If it did, we would be robots. Severe autism, indeed, makes a human being resemble the automaton. I believe we have 12 senses designed to understand a spiritual reality behind our physical manifestation and autism is an impairment of alignment to all these senses in a harmoniously interconnecting way.
On a highly positive note, I take autism as potentially a soul-saving sign to man that we are in fear of losing our connection to our spiritual faculties altogether through the (necessary) use of reason and technology, if we don't balance it out with love. That is why I lament how, as time moves on, fewer children are being diagnosed.
Society has become fed up with the epidemic that it became around the turn of the millenium. A bit of understanding of the autism as separate from the individual helps us to support the child with the difficulties, anomalies, and retardations. Nobody wants to help a narcissist much, but a troubled child with autism stands a chance.
Nobody much sees what autism really is. It’s near impossible to explain if you can’t see man as a whole and spiritual being. With a rational-materialist mind and a physical science nobody will ever get to the bottom of autism and a trillion other mysteries. I hope autism teaches us that.
This is how I come to the conclusion:
Autism seems to be the extreme side-effect of the individualisation process, only spiritual science is comfortable to explain. We don’t exactly create it genetically but it also isn’t imposed upon us by our nurture or environment. It is innate and pervasive (that’s the word I think you are looking for, if you want to feel it dominates your demeanour but want to let go of identifying with the disorder).
Left undiagnosed children's destructive attitudes and problem behaviours will cause them to slip without any sympathy into the destitute fringes of society. A failure to recognise autism leads to outcasts later in life. I am on your team in that! I will be the first to point the finger at you and explain your ideosyncracies away as autism. I infer that you stand fairly alone in your point of view. As do I. Our joint points of view have a massive overlap. We could draw a beautiful ven-diagram of correspondences.
I am not teaching hatred, let alone about erasing anyone. I mean to raise awareness for autism from a non-autistic point of view. I am not in the business of helping people with autism. I am here for those surviving a life with the autistic. If in your eyes, I am basically running a big pity-party, my sister would agree.
Know, I am expressing personal feelings and sharing some more off the cuff inspirations. These will remain hard for anyone with autism to grasp. But no less so for those without….
I hope you can gather from my efforts, if not my text, that I don't mean to insult you as a person. I am served by your reminder to be less hateful, and I am grateful for you helping me to clarify my own thoughts.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
You write wonderfully and with great perception, no doubt from hard won experience, about a subject that most people either don't want to know about or don't care about. That is, the life of someone who has to deal with autism everyday. I will never understand truly what that life is like because I'm only on the extreme outer edges, I have friends and family who have autistic children. I see the daily battles they have to face and see how society usually only allows them to be one of two things. When the observer doesn't know the child has autism then they are the bad-parent, allowing behaviours that are at odds with what is considered "good behaviour". If the observer knows the child is autistic then they invariably see the martyr-parent. Often they'll remark on how great they are to be dealing with the behaviours of the child everyday. The reality, from what I've seen, is that most of the time the parents are just being what they are and that is, parents! The same as any other parent! They'll have good days and bad days. Days they love being a parent and days they hate being a parent. It is true that there are a lot more difficulties and stress to being a parent of a child with autism but there are also highs that they say they've never encountered with their non autistic children. I just wanted to say thanks for being honest and helping me to expand my knowledge. :)
You are very welcome. It remains a highly complex subject. After many (far more nuanced) technical investigations into autism, I am a little tired of the "subject" myself, having to mainly just get on with it every day (son, father, sister). There is a lot of cliché nonsense about autism which is told to both the person with autism themselves and those who take care of them or counsel/support them. This becomes very problematic when it prooves to be counter-productive. Our understanding of autism must come from a different place than where it is coming currently. All I can try to do, for now, is keep pushing the boundaries with personal experience, and proposing what it most certainly is not.
With regard to the subequent disagreement that unfolded in response to my emotion, it was a bit ironic that I never much addressed autism as a parent - being first and foremost a daughter and a sister (and ex-partner) in realtion to autism. Having a child with the same dysfunction was actually my opportunity to put into practice what I know works and avoid what I know cannot. I had a head start to most parents around me, which was sorely misunderstood (I managed too well! which dug my own "grave" with regards to appropriate resources for my son, who is remarkably well adjusted. A tiny pat for mummy, then...).
Again, thank you very much for your insightful contribution.
More than a 'pat', if you have raised a son, well adjusted or not! :). I think it's only through speaking about autism and the realities of it that we can come to a better understanding of it. Like I said I know next to nothing about it but I'm glad I got to read about your experiences. :)