Some people think and act in ways that are just different.
In order to promote fairness, standard evaluations and treatments need continual exploration and modification to meet our growing awareness of diverse individuals and diverse populations. This is a team blog. Authors posting are; Ed and Wayward.
The people who are worst hurt by public policies in the United States are increasingly less able to affect those policies. This is especially a problem with the policies that affect autistics.
One general way to encourage misrepresented people to participate in their own liberation is to discourage society's dependence on specialists. The more we depend on specialists to solve the common problems of the least resourceful people, the less resourceful and therefore, the less responsible those people will become.
The authority given to people who are specializing in particular areas of service often prevent the specialists as well as the non-specialists (or less specializing) public from seeing the bigger picture of how things are actually run.
When people aren't thinking in terms of the broader implications of policies and laws they become more vulnerable to having decisions made for them that affect their lives.
In the same ways that an industry will create a dependence on their product by controlling the rate at which improvements to their product are made, politicians are often similarly pragmatic in trying to create a subservient following to their policies.
A school system (which designs voters) that can make all moral issues relative and all practical issues a matter of selfish competition, can encourage students to play a vulnerable role in the agendas of corrupt politicians, which makes the politicians less responsible and therefore, more corrupt.
Industries and the public officials who are paid to act in their best interest are often very pragmatic in their use of public behavior modification techniques. Allowing for and creating independent thinkers would give people a sense of dignity and self-respect, which would encourage selfless compassion for others. However, the predatory nature of our political system is more prone to pragmatically prey on negative emotions such a shame and providing fame to their compliant followers is one way of encouraging such shame in others. This helps to provide them a more dominant role in their relationship with the public they label as unimportant and unworthy of dignity and respect.
Shame prevents a person from knowing who they are, or what they think. When government policies demand that people accept how they are mistreated as a necessary evil that ultimately empowers those who oppress them.They thereby learn within their environment of shame to distrust themselves as well as others in their class who were considered to be lazy and ignorant by government standards. When they feel they are helpless to affect their conditions, they become conditioned to be distrustful and bitter. This then makes them even more disenfranchised and even less acceptable by the standards of specialists whom they are dependent on.
Voting in the United States is a very elite practice. The majority of people are conditioned by the mainstream media whose corporate sponsors are more interested in teaching the public to be consumers rather than independent thinking citizens. Too many contributors to the design of public policies endanger the public's dependence on the industries products and services. Thoughtless compliance is an attitude they want to encourage.
I would hope that anyone who is involved in influencing public policies that have the potential to either help or hurt autistic people will not over emphasize solidarity and the division of functioning labels in the same way that the mainstream media and mainstream politicians (who have the same goals) are doing that. We can't continue to expect a change in the public attitudes that influence the portion of the public who are voters if we continue to display the same attitudes of division and oppression we are trying to change.
Everyone sees things and people in different ways. Our perceptive reality is what makes us individuals who can think and make decisions independently. This allows us to think freely and explore possibilities beyond the realm of documentation that has been declared as "truth" by authorities who are threatened by our imagination.
When a nation is at a point in history where the governing influences are encouraging control at the expense of creativity it is on a road to its own demise.
The United States not only shows its dependency on a control mentality by expanding military forces into more parts of the world and building the military with private contracts, but also it shows this in the ways that certain industries are shown to be more important than the citizen's welfare.
The example of such industries and their dependent relationship to government are the food industry and the drug industry.
The reason that it now cost more money to eat healthy in America is at least partially due to certain foods and food additives being subsidized by our government. This food leads to more health problems and an even greater dependence on the medical industry as it describes all illnesses as something within our body that must be purged or removed.
The regulatory board for food and drugs known as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has shown its willingness to suppress evidence of harmful foods and medical treatments as well as possible cures to diseases in order to protect the nation's economy that is reliant on the contributions from these industries. The drug industry alone creates more dependence on their product every year by employing doctors to make psychological evaluations of disorders that cannot be proven or cured. These psychological diagnosis's are now one of the main influences on public education.
The education department in the US continues to stretch its boundaries to include more private contracts, and it has shown that it is unwilling to acknowledge the inappropriate path it has chosen.
In any group dynamic, abusive methods of control are encouraged by the lack of introspection. Like any corrupt industry, the US government as a consolidation of many industries or an industry itself uses legal consultants to look for how a single project like public education can be unregulated by creating confusion of what laws they need to follow (often that includes private versus public). Contracting private industries to work within public services is a way to deregulate that service and enable those who run it to have unlimited authority.
The chaotic nature of classrooms has now been decided by the US Department of Education to be the result of pathologies within students that the government must control.
The moral character of the student is thereby molded by the state according to its own narrow set of what it considers virtues. When a nation is showing empirical aspirations by increasing military force around the world along with hiring paramilitary forces, which can be called to serve in any situation that the president considers potentially threatening (Blackwater's presence in the wake of Katrina is when this executive privilege was created) that nation will be most interested in encouraging virtues that support a military mindset in all institutions including the public schools.
The attitude of nationalism from the public further allows the military industry and all government programs to be less responsible and less introspective, of how they are contributing to the demise of the public. The model for our current educational system in the US was originally created in Prussia when nationalism was vital to building their military forces.
"Social Darwinism: The phrase "Social Darwinism" dates from the 1930's, but as an intellectual movement, it dates from 1859, the year Darwins Origin was published. The concept embraces all efforts to apply Darwinian biology and evolution to human society. Given the fact that Darwinism rapidly became the orthodox biology and evolutionary science, Social Darwinism underlies virtually all of the social sciences. One key premise is that "the masses are unprincipled, dangerous to themselves, society and the planet."
There are two basic schools of thought regarding an "appropriate" response to this condition: (1) Laissez faire,--do nothing for the masses except that which will accelerate their self-destruction; and (2) exercise complete control over the masses, and at the same time refine the scientific means to "handle the problem of the masses" at a fundamental level, e.g., the genetic level. Historically, laissez-faire did not work. The masses proved "far more cunning" than the elites supposed. Thus, option (2) became the standard policy; in political terms, this option translates into "state socialism." State socialism is not the bright-eyed optimistic socialism of those who invented socialism, the "utopian scientists" according to Marx. State socialism is a direct political expression of Social Darwinism."
At this point, the US educational department is seeking to gain control over the misbehavior of disabled students by training all teachers in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). The type of ABA being encouraged is called Positive Behavioral Support(PBS). The current legislation claiming to reduce restraints and seclusion is encouraging a government contract whereby all school teachers will be trained in how to use restraint and seclusion.
Interestingly, the increasing dependence on private contracts with paramilitary agencies is also encouraged by advertising how such forces will maintain control and reduce the occurrence of abuse.
This article describes a conversation with some men employed by Blackwater:
"In an hourlong conversation I had with four Blackwater men, they characterized their work in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals."
Again the abusive control is protected and encouraged by being advertised as a way to prevent abuse.
This article describes the law that was created pursuant to the New Orleans disaster (where the government agency FEMA failed in their duties) in the following way.:
NSPD-51/HSPD-20 on April 4, 2007--National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive
"Crucial to understand is that this combined directive gives the President and DHS unprecendented powers free from constitutional constraints. Under NSPD-51, the President can declare a "national emergency" and declare martial law without congressional approval. It allows him to create a de facto militarized police state with him as dictator and DHS as a national Gestapo to an even greater degree than it is already."
One of the more recent public emergencies that the government has declared is the increasing prevalence of diagnosis of autism. The most encouraged "treatment"for autism is Applied Behavioral Analysis.
Applied Behavioral Analysis is based on behaviorism. This way of analyzing human behavior is based on the study of how animals respond to their environment. Behaviorism is an approach to psychology, but it is not psychology itself. In the The Definition of "Psychology" by Gene Zimmer it says this:
""The word "psychology" is the combination of two terms - study (ology) and soul (psyche), or mind. The derivation of the word from Latin gives it this clear and obvious meaning:
The study of the soul or mind.
First, this invisible world is totally real. It is not imaginary or a hallucination. My invisible world isn't directly real to you, and your invisible world isn't directly real to me, but they are each real nonetheless."
"Part of any theory of behavior modification, values clarification or outcome-based education involves the idea of "what do we want the future to be like?" To decide on how to modify values, beliefs, or behavior, one must first decide what "outcomes" they want to exist in the future, then what behaviors are necessary to bring the outcomes about, and finally what values, beliefs and convictions are necessary to enable or support these. All these social engineers first establish a very clear idea and model of what they want the future to be like.
Then, starting with the concept of what they desire the future to be, they work backwards and determine what beliefs, convictions and attitudes are necessary to support such a future. Once they have established these beliefs, attitudes and convictions, they then examine the current beliefs, attitudes and convictions, and work out a plan of how to get from here, in the present, to there, in the future. Millions of dollars have been spent on studies related to this idea of controlling the change of beliefs, attitudes and behavior. It’s been going on for almost 50 years, although usually well hidden from public view. Public education gives them an almost "closed system", free from external influences, where they can work their plans and methods. The public schools are very much an experimental psychology laboratory, and your children are the guinea pigs. Realize most of what they do is based on theories, and the theories get tested upon your children in the public schools. They don't know if their ideas are "right" or "will work", but that won't stop them from trying."
Skinner believed that behaviorism could be used to condition and control the majority of the population. He described that free will was something that was unnecessary to consider because it allowed for subjective opinions and unscientific views (such as that of the mind) that would impede the progress of behavior modification.
~ Teaching isn't one-tenth as effective as training. ~ send an e card Horace Mann (father of the American public school.)
An industry must be able to depend on repeat business. If a nation is dependent on the industry, they must encourage people to consistently buy the product or service of the industry in order to maintain governmental control. The more the decision makers within government believe that control is imperative the more they will encourage this type of dependence and in such an environment of dependence disenfranchisement becomes a status offense seen as the worst sin and the most dreaded plague on society.
Control works best when free will is discouraged and dependence is encouraged. In such an environment abuse is not only allowed, but it is encouraged. In any relationship when trust begins to fail the options are either to enforce more control and be less introspective or to encourage and trust each other to have our own individual mind, our own subjective opinions, and trust that we each bring something to the relationship that is both independent and creative. This encouragement is how a nation promotes freedom and democracy.
The social model of disability focuses on accommodations that promote inclusion for a broader group of people. Seeing disability in this way fosters an understanding of people having worth and therefore, human rights, which is not recognized in mainstream society.
Neurodiversity is an aspect of human rights, which defines neurology in a broader context so that more expressions which are often simply parallel to social norms and traditions are validated and the people who make them are treated more respectfully.
It's completely backwards to claim that the encouragement of human rights for diverse populations is extreme or purist. Broadening the understanding and therefore, the rights or populations who have traditionally not been included or accepted in society is the countering of a societal tradition being overly narrow and purist.
It would seem natural to me that any time a person or group is in a responsible position to influence the lives of others, the more assumptions they make about them will lead to more inappropriate treatment of them. Methods of education that assume fewer motives for the students would therefore, seem to be trying to contain them rather than empower them.
It would be nice to trust that the US government labels people as being disabled in order to include them more in society by providing more accommodations. Unfortunately, not only do I see them making unreasonable assumptions (and adopting public programs that do so) in order to show that accommodations can't be made for this group, I also see those assumptions leading to more prejudice and even more inappropriate stereotypes and therefore, abusive treatment by the rest of society.
In the United States, there are more people than ever before being seen as impaired in their thinking and behavior.Too often I think people claim that a healthy mistrust in government is believed to be a conspiracy theory rather than accepting that it is the government that has little trust (and therefore little encouragement) for us. We make up the majority and our independence and creativity must be very threatening to those who have learned to wield power only through the encouragement of bureaucracy and the submission of the public to industrial goals.
Our dependence on building a bigger government or supporting giant industries (which have similar if not the same goals) is essential for those who need to control and manipulate our behavior.It's important to them that we believe that nothing other than looking to these sources for answers will solve any problem.
Of course a lot the power that captains of industry or government have is based on the capitol they raise from our choices as consumers and tax payers, so we as a combined force would have the most power if we were ever organized. It's important to them though that we stay confused. Otherwise the flaws in their designs would require them to give up part of their power in order to fix them.
Along with the recognition of autism that has grown in the last several years, there is a stronger push than ever for our government to compartmentalize people with atypical thinking traits so that society will better be able to manage what they have been able to label. This has also encouraged industries to find a way to profit from this particular herd once it's been established.
The United States is ruled by corporations. (Some describe the United States as more of a corporation itself then it is a nation.) Our education, medical treatment, and educational opportunities are all dependent on and influenced by the corporations who have the biggest financial investment in how we are treated in each of these areas of our life.
Whether impaired thinking and behavior are attributed to injury, hereditary, due to exposure of poisons in our environment, or societal influence, it has always typically been seen as a weakness or an inferior aspect of our species, which needs to be managed until it can be eliminated. While the methods for this range from life-threatening chemical restraints and institutionalization to eugenics, there is little if any acceptance that the people who are labeled as having these traits have anything to offer future generations.
While the medical establishment has an interest in cleansing the blood of autistic people ultimately and restraining us until we can be eliminated from the gene pool, the public educational department is now merging with political forces in order to contract the services of psychological engineers trained in the psychology of behaviorism.
These engineers are already using their acquired skills in other institutions such as hospitals, group homes, and residential treatment facilities on behaviorally disabled people and most recently their goal is to control them in schools this way as well. The state government is no longer seen as sufficient to control the behaviors in schools so the federal government is willing to "help out".
Sen. Dodd explains in this video that the problem is not due to teachers being unjustified in their handling of disobedient disabled students but that the problem is the lack of laws and trained professionals to deal with the inclusion of disabled students in the classroom. This of course protects and maintains old attitudes and traditions of our established government.
What is being suggested here is that the discipline of these students in public school classrooms be entrusted to more monitoring and control at the federal level by including the discipline and traditions of behavior modification.The program being proposed is Positive Behavioral Support based on the psychology know as behaviorism.
Behaviorism is the philosophical position that says that psychology, to be a science, must focus its attentions on what is observable -- the environment and behavior -- rather than what is only available to the individual -- perceptions, thoughts, images, feelings.... The latter are subjective and immune to measurement, and therefore can never lead to an objective science.
The first behaviorists were Russian. The very first was Ivan M. Sechenov (1829 to 1905). He was a physiologist who had studied at the University of Berlin with famous people like Müller, DuBois-Reymond, and Helmholtz. Devoted to a rigorous blend of associationism and materialism, he concluded that all behavior is caused by stimulation.
Dr. C. George Boeree also shows this about Skinner's views and ideals:
The bad do bad because the bad is rewarded. The good do good because the good is rewarded. There is no true freedom or dignity. Right now, our reinforcers for good and bad behavior are chaotic and out of our control -- it’s a matter of having good or bad luck with your “choice” of parents, teachers, peers, and other influences. Let’s instead take control, as a society, and design our culture in such a way that good gets rewarded and bad gets extinguished! With the right behavioral technology, we can design culture.
Behavior modification -- often referred to as b-mod -- is the therapy technique based on Skinner’s work. It is very straight-forward: Extinguish an undesirable behavior (by removing the reinforcer) and replace it with a desirable behavior by reinforcement. It has been used on all sorts of psychological problems -- addictions, neuroses, shyness, autism, even schizophrenia -- and works particularly well with children. There are examples of back-ward psychotics who haven’t communicated with others for years who have been conditioning to behave themselves in fairly normal ways, such as eating with a knife and fork, taking care of their own hygiene needs, dressing themselves, and so on. There is an offshoot of b-mod called the token economy. This is used primarily in institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, juvenile halls, and prisons. Certain rules are made explicit in the institution, and behaving yourself appropriately is rewarded with tokens -- poker chips, tickets, funny money, recorded notes, etc. Certain poor behavior is also often followed by a withdrawal of these tokens. The tokens can be traded in for desirable things such as candy, cigarettes, games, movies, time out of the institution, and so on. This has been found to be very effective in maintaining order in these often difficult institutions.
There is a drawback to token economy: When an “inmate” of one of these institutions leaves, they return to an environment that reinforces the kinds of behaviors that got them into the institution in the first place. The psychotic’s family may be thoroughly dysfunctional. The juvenile offender may go right back to “the ‘hood.” No one is giving them tokens for eating politely. The only reinforcements may be attention for “acting out,” or some gang glory for robbing a Seven-Eleven. In other words, the environment doesn’t travel well!
The development of simple experimental methods for studying learning and memory—first in humans by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 and a few years later in experimental animals by Ivan Pavlov and Edgar Thorndike— led to a rigorous empirical school of psychology called behaviorism. Behaviorists, notably James B. Watson and Burrhus F. Skinner, argued that behavior could be studied with the precision achieved in the physical sciences, but only if students of behavior abandoned speculation about what goes on in the mind (the brain) and focused instead on observable aspects of behavior. For behaviorists, unobservable mental processes, especially abstractions like perception, selective attention, and memory, were deemed inaccessible to scientific study.
Throughout the 20th century in the United States, our political systems and public policies have reflected and been mainly influenced by the intellectual notions that get tossed about in elitist universities. If universities were designed to teach the students how to encourage and empower the masses of people who will never attend them our industry and therefore, our economy would look very different than it does.
The ideals of inclusive education are not meant to empower more students but to contain them within a predictable environment in a way protects the interest of the elite. Psychology as an intellectual explanation of human behavior or an industry designed for public reform is not meant to empower the common man. Behaviorism is now being reintroduced into our culture as a kinder gentler way of providing a predictable environment where children will be better enabled to learn. However, very little has been shown to indicate that the goals of learning in a public educational environment are meant to empower the students rather than contain them. If the goal of education isn't to empower the students then giving more power to educators isn't a good idea.
Because "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."(Audre Lorde)our choices for better education and training cannot come from inside the corrupt system. There is no way to reform the educational system because it is functioning successfully in what it was designed to do. The reformation needs to come in how we view ourselves and our neighbors, so we can have the clearest view of our government, and what we do and don't need from them.
In posting this video, I'm encouraging people to consider the effects of a statewide behavioral program such as Positive Behavioral Support being used in all public school systems. As I wrote in my last post "Improper Use of Restraints" about the new legislation concerning child abuse in the school system, the new legislation to correct this problem is designed to make teachers more prepared to combat the disobedience of students labeled with behavioral disabilities (which is what behaviorists consider autism) by using their training in Applied Behavioral Analysis. Expanding the control of state institutions in this way is what I see as the biggest threat to neurodiversity.
This video deals with the concept of "colonizing the mind" and what has mainly influenced the school system we now have in the United States.
John Taylor Gatto - State Controlled Consciousness
When civil rights advocacy groups began organizing in the US and began getting recognized for affecting governmental policy, the legitimacy of their concerns was not so dependent on the political policy maker's descriptions of who they (the advocates) were and what their role was as it today.
Especially recently when advocates for mental health began demanding change, the government quickly took steps to fund their efforts and organize the advocates in large groups. This way the advocates could be taught how the policy makers would allow them to see the policies they make in a strict way in order to limit individual and independent views.
This especially discourages people who are abused the most in public programs from using their voice in order to influence the needed changes in the public policies that affect them more than anyone else. These policy makers demand that personal experience must only be validated when it comes from someone who can meet their high standards that include being articulate, personable, and approved by a community that is judged to be important.
Fewer people are being employed and the quality of education along with the number of people who have an opportunity to be educated is lowering. The population who is given fewer opportunities pursuant to this are the most vulnerable to economic fluctuation and therefore more likely to be placed in public programs.
The diagnoses based on the DSM are increasing at an alarmingly faster rate than the accommodations needed for this group are being provided. While there can be benefits to the increasing number of diagnoses, if the accommodations don't accompany the diagnosis at a similar rate, the diagnosis becomes more of a hindrance to people based on the negative connotations people associate with it .
The increased dominance of the psychology industry has greatly influenced our culture. Unfortunately, it is still an industry that is designed to serve the general public rather than those whom they label.
Autism advocacy that doesn't reflect the importance of these issues can't be trusted any more than the untrustworthy policy makers that they claim to be trying to influence.
The policy makers know very well the cycle of misbehavior that is caused by the lack of radical changes in policy, and yet they still insist on the validity of small and incremental policy changes.
"To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states are actually basing part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests."
Public systems in the US are very motivated to resist change, and they work very hard at narrowing the focus of the public so the people who seem to them to be least important don't speak up about by how they are mistreated.
Current Barriers in Federal Law, Policy and Programs That Limit Community Integration:
"Today, there are more than four times the number of people with severe mental illness residing in our nation's jails and prisons as in psychiatric hospitals. In most major cities, people with severe mental illnesses comprise as much as 40% of the homeless population. These are tragic outgrowths of deinstitutionalization without adequate community services and supports."
AND:
"In NAMI's view, the social experiment of deinstitutionalization of people with severe and persistent mental illness, while well intentioned, failed hundreds of thousands of consumers and their families over the last four decades. The reasons for this failure are complex. However, in NAMI's view some of the factors have led to the breakdown of public mental systems in many states include: *failure to properly invest in community-based housing and services, *lack of accountability in ensuring that public mental health agencies focused limited resources on people with the most severe illnesses *inability of states and communities to follow and adopt best evidence-based practices in their public mental health systems, and
bullet legal barriers that prevent the most severely ill individuals from accessing needed treatment."
However,unfortunately, society treats atypical behavior with punishment. The illusion that normal behavior can be defined and achieved is a way of stimulating economy and protecting government decisions from being suspected of corruption.
While ABA treatments are sold as a way to protect autistics from self-injury,the goals of ABA programs are geared toward encouraging and protecting standards of appropriate social behavior.
Not only is bogus science being used to describe autistics as monsters, which lead to them being treated with all kinds of dangerous drugs but the penal system and the public education system are holding autistics hostage to meet their political goals of more governmental control.To gain this control the autism spectrum is defined as a spectrum of people whose behavior ranges from bad to worst.
A society that demands typical behavior for the benefit of their economy and the control of misfits cannot define a spectrum of bad behavior without treating the people who are categorized in this way as morally unfit and attacking those people's characters. Once the government labels people with having a bad character, they can justify all sorts of punishment.
One product that the US government is proposing in order to attain this type of control is Applied Behavioral Analysis. They need to be able to sell the idea that their product is safe and effective, but they have no way of hiding the fact that it will further malign the character of autistic people as well as many others diagnosed by the DSM.
It is very dangerous to have a commercial product that is designed to enforce a standard of behavior, which defines social misfits as dangerous. There is no proof that autistics are more violent than anyone else but once there is a standard behavioral treatment which is widely accepted for autism, it will be very difficult to prove otherwise whether it's. true or not.
Professional politicians have learned that advocacy groups often pose a threat to their agenda. In order for those groups to gain acceptance into the political arena which the professional politicians control, they will demand compromise from those groups.
The mental Health system has always been mainly a method used to protect the public rather than serve the client. However, as public mental health programs have expanded their services to include more treatment for drug addiction and rehabilitation for criminals more people than ever with a diagnosis of mental illness are treated with the same moral assumptions that have traditionally been attributed to addicts and criminals.
NAMI is primarily a parent run organization for family members of the mentally ill who had recently been shown to have 75% of their funding coming from the pharmaceutical industry. They have declared their political ambitions and defined their organization by supporting Kendra's Law.
"According to OMH’s Final Report on Kendra’s Law, 63% of people being court-mandated under Kendra’s Law are identified as Black and Hispanic (OMH Final Report on Kendra’s Law 3/1/05). The OMH Report opens up with the following introduction: “Kendra’s Law was named in memory of Kendra Webdale, a young woman who died in January, 1999 after being pushed in front of a New York City subway train by Andrew Goldstein, a man with a history of mental illness and hospitalizations.”
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!!
"The implication here is obvious. The question of violence and mental illness is as old as psychiatry itself. What most people don’t know is that Kendra’s Law is merely the culmination of old policies and old laws, which have been re-packaged under a new name. (None Dare Call it Treason, John A. Stormer, Chapter IX, Mental Health, 1964; the Tragedy of Sane People Who Get Put Away, Albert Q. Maisel, Reader’s Digest, February 1962)
At one time these laws were passed - allegedly - to protect “the mentally-ill” from themselves, today they are passed - allegedly - to protect society from “the mentally-ill.” All of which, by the way, have never worked. Which is why we are sitting here today!
The reason why these laws had to be repackaged was because the constitutional rights of the person made it difficult to apply them. So in order to eliminate this roadblock, the advocates of forced treatment latched onto Kendra Webdale’s tragedy to convince the public that this was not an isolated incident, but the beginning of a terrifying new wave of crime - knowing full well that fear and emotion all too often override reason and rationale."
Also:
"Ironically, in 1999 - the very same year Kendra’s Law was passed - the Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health concluded that minorities: • have less access to, and availability of, mental health services • and are less likely to receive mental health services when needed"
irony?
Also there's this:
"In fact, in August of 2003, Nicholas Regush, former producer of ABC's Nightline and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, queried in his online column, Second Opinion: "Where is the science that supports the need to use coercion so often when it comes to the treatment of patients, as opposed to, say, offering a wide range of community-based services? In all my research on violence for a book published several years ago, I had not seen one credible study showing that society has more to fear from patients labeled "mentally ill" than other people in the community. For example, there has never been any appropriate follow-up of patients that has determined whether the absence of treatment leads to violence. The very foundation of forced treatment is ideology and fear-mongering and not science."
AND NAMI openly admits:
"Interestingly enough, nowhere throughout their 23-page report on Kendra’s Law does NAMI quote any independent research. They openly admit that their research is based solely on discussions with a selected group of 20 families and 40 local NAMI leaders. They make no attempt to conceal their bias and their report is full of lead-in statements such as “OUR research found… and “WE found overwhelming evidence…"
Sound familiar? It does to me!
This argument that is made for the encourage Kendra's law is very similar to the arguments to encourage statewide PBS.
"Train school professionals in effective and research-based teaching methods and behavioral interventions, including positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS – as described at www.pbis.org)."
"Sadly, these abuses are merely the tail end of psychiatry's long history of patient abuse and failure. A large book could easily be written on the continual state hospital abuses committed, investigated, prosecuted and documented. Here are just a few from the last 60 years to show that, psychiatrically speaking, times have not changed:
*
In the early part of last century, both public and government concern over deteriorating conditions inside U.S. mental institutions caused the American Medical Association to act. In 1931, the AMA hired a physician named John Grimes to conduct an investigation. He came back with an unexpectedly disturbing portrait of overcrowding and woefully inadequate patient diet. Facility attendants were found to conduct themselves like prison guards rather than facilitators of rehabilitation. Dr. Grimes concluded that the primary purpose of state hospitals was not medical but "legal."8 *
In 1944, an Ohio grand jury investigating conditions at Cleveland State Hospital, where several patients had died after being beaten with belts, key rings, and metal-plated shoes, summed up the state of affairs: "The atmosphere reeks with the false notion that the mentally ill are criminals and subhumans who should be denied all human rights…"9 *
In May 1969, then-Illinois State Attorney Edward Hanrahan issued a report at the request of then-Governor Richard Ogilvie, on conditions at the Chicago State Hospital and the Tinley Park Mental Health Facility that found that “All varieties of crime were discovered at both institutions…. Patients were assaulted, murdered and raped by fellow inmates and employees.”10 *
In April 1987, Pennsylvania State Public Welfare Secretary John F. White, Jr. formed a special task force to investigate Byberry State Hospital, a now-closed state institution with one of the most horrifying records of patient death and abuse. In September of that year, the group issued their report in which it said that patients were being neglected, beaten and sexually abused. The report called for “immediate and drastic action to reverse the history of neglect, poor management, absence of treatment and rampant abuse.”
"Research and advertising sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry led to the widespread belief that the newer medications were indisputably safer, more effective and well worth additional billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Pharmaceutical profits soared.
Since the n, the life expectancy of those treated in community mental health centers has plunged to an appalling 25 years less than average.(1) Life expectancy may have fallen by as much as 15 years since 1986.(2) Indications are that the death rate continues to accelerate (3) in what must be ranked as one of the worst public health disasters in U.S. history."
My question is this; How much do you think changes to the system will occur in the next 60 years if radical demands are not made?
Look at all the other advances we've made in so many areas in the last 60 years. Now we have so many more people being diagnosed with mental and psychological problems than before. Can we really trust the government that has done nothing more than this for the past 60 years to make decisions about the welfare of this population without radically challenging their motives? "
So, who are the Protection and Advovacy and what role do they play in protecting the traditional typical standards for how this population is treated?
"Whenever we open a newspaper, turn on the television, or go on the Internet these days, we hear about another child dying or being injured in school while being restrained or secluded. Some may think these are isolated incidents, but, when Protection and Advocacy (P&A) agencies across this country report that school children have been killed, confined, tied up, pinned down, and battered, this is clearly more than an isolated issue - it is one of national concern.
P&As have been advocating for students and their families on education issues for over thirty years, a period of unprecedented change and opportunity for children with disabilities as fewer and fewer are relegated to institutions or special facilities. After years of struggle by parents and advocates, the educational rights of children with disabilities was, at least by law, firm established in 1978 with implementation of the Education for the Handicapped Act (EHA), the precursor to the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This promise of a free, appropriate, and public education has expanded the opportunities for full inclusion of students with disabilities. Yet today, many parents still face major challenges in obtaining full access to the education system their children are entitled to."
AND:
In
2001, 31 State P&A systems reported 1250 deaths, of which 410 were
investigated. In 2002, 27 State P&A systems reported 1,777 deaths,
of which 972 were investigated. P&A systems efforts to investigate
these incidents were affected by such factors as challenges by public
and private facilities to P&A access to clients, facilities, and
records, which had to be resolved by the court; inadequate information
from the reporting facility; and lag time between the fatality and the
notice to the P&A systems. Investigations conducted by State
P&A systems included highly publicized deaths, often brought to
their attention by the media (many States had no mandatory death
reporting requirements to cover residential care and treatment
facilities in effect). Findings substantiated that residential facility
staff either used excessive physical restraint or provided inadequate
medical care.
P&A Programs • PADD (Protection and Advocacy for People with Developmental Disabilities) • CAP (Client Assistance Program) • PAIMI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness) • PAIR (Protection and Advocacy for Individual Rights) • PAAT (Protection and Advocacy for Assistive Technology) • PABSS (Protection and Advocacy for Beneficiaries of Social Security) • PATBI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury) • PAVA (Protection and Advocacy for Voting Accessibility)
"Going to trial is not the only tool P&As use to enforce disability rights against abuse and neglect. A public report may be made giving findings and recommending action, they may work with facilities for cooperative monitoring, or they may provide training and technical assistance to people with disabilities and institutions.
P&A Funding Federal monies provide the base of financial support for the programs, most of which are non-profits with typical board management. Funds are allotted based on population, although the smallest states are guaranteed a minimum amount for most programs. While some P&As operate on these federal funds alone, others supplement with other federal or state resources, or even conduct private fundraising.
The number of inconsistancies in the goals of all these agencies that are alloted funding under this same umbrella are too vast to comprehend. To have any real power they must employ independant investigators who report their findings to the public."
As an agency that takes the place of a regulatory agency, P&A perpetuates government standards that require all abuse cases to be resolved through litigation. Just as any law firm will do, they will tell you which agencies that are supposedly within their jurisdiction that they, in reality have no influence with at all. For the few people who even make it to their office whom they aren't able to ignore, they have a multitude of methods for discouraging their clients. One common method (which is of course used by all bureaucratic agencies) is endless discussions and letter writing filled with useless bureaucratic speech.
"The program primarily supports SAMHSA's Capacity goal by expanding the availability of protection and advocacy services. The program directly supports the Mental Health System Transformation priority area and the Seclusion and Restraint priority area."
Today the group TASH is following in the footstep's of NAMI by claiming that "better" restraints and seclusion performed by ABA specialists are the answer to how restraints and seclusion are being abused by people who are untrained by PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports)
"The TA Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports has been established by the Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of Education to give schools capacity-building information and technical assistance for identifying, adapting, and sustaining effective school-wide disciplinary practices."
While P&A was established in 1986 to provide the public with more independent investigations, today it is not only inadequate and mischaracterized as a method for independent investigations but it is also preventing the radical changes that are needed by the corruptive influence they receive from government funding.
Those who are able or even feel empowered enough to apply for their services are typically those with the most education and ability to meet their high standards. Those who are in the most need are typically not a part of this population. This is how the status quo is protected and the radical changes that are needed are not heard by the general public.
Those who are classified as having high risk behavior by the behavioral specialists (which of course would include autistics since autism is seen by ABA specialists to be a behavior disorder) includes the need for emergency restraints and police officers if deemed necessary by the staff. This is how some who use Florida's PBS project describe at risk behavior (5 % of this 20 % are considered high risk and are treated more severely than the others).
At risk students (estimated 20%):
At Risk: Disruptive Talks out Unprepared Talks back to teacher Uses inappropriate language Tardy Defiant Refuses to do work Difficulty taking turns Refuses to share Out of seat Aggressive Not dangerous or violent(my note: they estimate that only 5% of this top 20% will be determined dangerous or violent) May have low academic achievement
This says also:
Generally these students
Poor peer relations Low academic achievement Difficulty adjusting to school environment Chaotic home environment
Low self-esteem
There is no way to constantly emphasize to the rest of the world that typical eye contact is synonymous with honesty and at the same time not relay the message to those who respond atypically that they are dishonest. People being put in a behavioral program will reach that negative conclusion about themselves, especially when they are reminded consistently that typical responses are imperative.
The same is true for typical methods of showing empathy and the ways that theory of mind declares their responses to mean that they are empathetic.
Societal norms that declare a short attention span as the sign for a person who is undisciplined, aberrant, and lazy, is not going to make an exception because someone has a diagnosis that describes them as having difficulty due to executive functioning deficits.
ABA and Positive Behavioral Supports will not distinguish someone's behavior due to a diagnosis as separate or different than someone else with similar behavior who is instead seen as lazy and aberrant. The assessment and the treatment will both be the same.
There has never been anything accomplished resembling the goals that are expressed by statewide PBS programs. The claim that such a program will reduce restraints and seclusion is very misleading at best. All similar ways that human rights has been sought in the past have not only failed but have reinforced old, harmful, and unjust public control that has always led to more abuse rather than less.
The demands of industry define intelligence and competency and therefore, the public programs and schools where intelligence and competency are evaluated often use their power and control to determine people's character. This determination of people's character becomes more arbitrary as the demands of industry need to remain fleeting in order for them to maintain power and control.
This leads to the corruption of power and control so that arbitrary rules can be used to justify exclusion and abuse. We can't be expected to trust behavior modification standards until or, unless the modificationists show that their own behavior is subject to modification when what they do is inappropriate for serving our needs.
Instead of reducing the abuses of restraint and seclusion in the way that it is being advertised, the goal of this legislation is to demand that the ABA/PBS industry be contracted to create more control within public educational systems, which are already too often seen as daycare centers, which more closely resemble a penal system than somewhere the majority of the public can attain an education.
If this industry secures such an all-inclusive contract to assert their brand of control,more people who are already disenfranchised will become even more that way and be subjected to even more abuse.
This turns teachers into stock brokers that only invest time and energy in the ones they believe to be the most likely to succeed. This creates an even stricter policy where assumptions are even more encouraged simply for the sake of convenience and expediency.
If a government is already known for only seeking incremental and temporary solutions to problems that are obviously the result of a larger problem that they don't want to admit responsibility for, what do you think will happen when they find more diversity in those within their behavioral based public programs that don't respond in the ways they predict? Will they expand their understanding and become more inclusive of the more motivations they had not understood?
Any radical change would require them to admit the first plan they had was a bad one. I think they would be more likely to narrow their standards and tighten their control. In turn they would ultimately label even more people as trouble makers and in turn limit their options for being more productive. This would make their solutions seem even more necessary and the cycle of dependence and shame would be perpetuated.
When behavior is demanded in overly strict ways, mainly for the purpose of control the chances of that causing a negative reaction are greatly increased. The potential for such demands to cause a worse situation rather than a better one is increased if the person receiving the demands can't trust the one making them.
If a government gets overly demanding of a strict set of standards, which includes too many innocent behaviors that can just as easily be seen as different, more behaviors will need to be classified in fewer ways and more motivations for those misunderstood behaviors must be assumed. This means that more people will be seen as threats, more people get punished, and we become an even more violent society and even more prone to fewer liberties for everyone.
Money and political power must remain the determining factors for a person's acceptance into society in order for those who have the most to continue to dominate. Competence outside of what the people who have these decide is a threat to their security. The public security is designed to depend on their leaders ability to make decisions for them so alternative thinking and diverse thinkers must be discouraged to keep things in order.
Enough money will turn the political winds of change so that anyone or any marginalized group can then be validated. The reason political power is allowed to be bought is because people don't feel empowered enough to exercise the freedoms they have in order to protect them. Anything that discourages that empowerment will help to prevent the changes that are needed.
The few people who are now controlling the currency exchange, the food industry, the industry that provides mind altering drugs, and even the judicial system that determines who will be institutionalized are using this control to design people and encourage a set of values.
Claiming that political policies won't teach people to be respectful are responding to a question that is misleading. The political policies are designed to show the public who should not be respected. Once everyone is included into a marginalized group the policies are tools to demand conformity. ( I wrote about that here in my post about identity politics)
Each marginalized group demanding that they are treated worse than another or encouraging the multi-labeled and severity-is-more-deserving-of-aid approaches to gaining security keeps everyone fighting and secures the well-established power structure.
Unregulated industry has allowed greedy people to desensitize and ultimately dehumanize the public. For an industry to be successful they will often stress the importance of uniformity in their product even more than the quality of their product. Once they have established a market for their product and a method for production, so they can demand a narrow uniform type of behavior for their employees to follow, the employees are as disposable as the inanimate object they are producing.
Unfortunately, this industrial thinking is encouraged in the industry of psychology and psychological labels are used to show how nonconformist are less worthy of dignity and respect. Psychological labels are too often the product that encourages those who received the labels to also be nothing more than products.
The more production oriented the thinking of consumers of products and producers of products becomes the more creative thinking is discouraged and people who are prone to think in diverse ways are declared incompetent.If neurodiversity isn't challenging the way that conformity is shown to be competence and the lack of this competence is made to be a disability then it is just a meaningless word.
This meaningless word is then used to encourage the presence of an ideological agenda that serves only a few select autistics and their families. Not only will this not provide more support for the autistic population but advocating for it in this way will support the ideals of the larger political agenda that is preventing us from being heard and our needs from being met.
If autism is going to be seen as a diversity in thinking rather how the medical industry presents autism with their medical model, we will need to show the contrast between the two.
As Kowalski has shown very well in this post some blogs that show how autistics are denied the advantages of unbiased scientific research are encouraging how that research remains biased. The bias is based on how autistics and other diverse thinkers are judged by narrow typical standards and demeaned for our nonconformity.The conforming nature of slurs against intellectual disability is contradictory to empowering people who are marginalized and discriminated against because they are different.
In order to truly encourage the rights for diverse thinkers and other marginalized categories of people, it's important to keep the broader picture in mind of what types of standardizedjudgments we've been taught that cause the oppression to begin with.
Too often I hear people simply discussing whether government should play more of a role in our lives or less. Unfortunately, this can distract people from focusing on how to deal with the problems within the government.
The United States has often chosen to institutionalize people for the sake of convenience and profit, since they began as a nation. The Indian's and Africans were among the first populations to be used and abused by Europeans, who "settled" this land by the institution of slavery.
The problems this institutional mindset has caused throughout the years need to be addressed but since it isn't, choices often have to be made to justify institutionalization which in turn promotes that type of thinking.
I think eugenic ideals are promoted when people allow government decision-makers to conveniently and expediently encourage institutional thinking among those who are considered society's misfits.
Behaviorism is one type of psychology (or mental discipline) which has been used to categorize and herd the masses in systematically oppressive ways. The United States is further allowing this system to infiltrate our culture by teaching it in public schools to young children.
Right now the industry of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) is attempting to have the US government train teachers in public schools to teach their brand of discipline to children. They have made their product seem more user-friendly with a type of ABA called Positive Behavioral Support (PBS).
The way to sell behavioral programs for residential and/or educational institutions are by first showing how the current behavior is bad and needs to be controlled, then showing how those who are untrained by their program are abusive due to being untrained, and finally by showing how comprehensive and detailed their approach will be for solving the problem. This is how PBS is now being sold for creating laws, which will demand public schools to purchase their product.
The myth of an epidemic of autism is being used to aid their promotion of this product being bought by public educational systems.. Their claim is that autistics are typically violent, the teachers are unprepared and become abusive based on their unpreparedness, and that their comprehensive and detailed discipline will provide the answer for this chaos.
In a nation which is known for institutionalizing (residential institutions) more of their population than any other, introducing such a product for controlling the behavior of children is dangerous to even consider.
Behavior modification is used to determine how we behave as consumers. For stimulating our economy being taught to be consumers is the most important goal of our capitalist government. Institutional thinking promotes and is supported by the pharmaceutical industry as well as many other commercial interests that the U.S. economy is heavily dependent on.
PBS is also being used as a behavioral modification program for dealing with the population of misfits (who would otherwise be disenfranchised) known as the disabled including disabled adults.
This industry is not without controversy, however. Disability rights' organizations, such as the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, oppose placement in such programs and call into question the appropriateness and efficacy of such group placements, the failure of such programs to address problems in the child’s home and community environment, the limited or no mental health services offered and substandard educational programs. Concerns specifically related to private therapeutic boarding schools include:
* inappropriate discipline techniques, * medical neglect, * restricted communication such as lack access to child protection and advocacy hotlines, and
* lack of monitoring and regulation.
Behavioral psychology is known for its expedience in the way that goals are achieved. This lends itself to be seen as most appropriate in institutional settings where convenience and expediency are most important. However, the goals that are mainly achieved in public residential institutions are those of the staff and what the institutions consider their main function, which is to separate and contain people for what they see is the safety of the public. Such expediency has always produced terrible long term consequences.
Behavior modification is used in jails to teach institutional living as a way of life to those who are institutionalized. The only way to justify the claim that this is being used in jails instead for rehabilitation is to show how people returning from jail into society are less likely to misbehave and commit crimes. The statistics don't support that claim.
There is also no support for the claim that autistics are typically violent and yet the goal or the marketing campaign of PBS is to show how teachers who are unprepared to deal with autistics being violent need to be trained in their discipline in order to restrain and seclude this population in a more "civil" manner.
"Criminals are treated better than mental patients," Levine says.
and:
"The public is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in a system that's flawed and violates the civil rights of those who must use it," he says. "We must put an end to the state institutional system."
Unfortunately, while there are goals to shut down more state funded mental institutions, the focus on this goal has often prevented people from looking at the underlying more pressing problems with how institutional thinking is being promoted in so many other ways.
I don't see the goal of closing more institutions as a first step to changing the attitudes which are encouraging institutionalization the way it is being described. This being described as the first step has too often been used to distract people from the broader more important goal of changing the attitude which continues to affect this population when they leave this residential environment.
The walls of institutions are providing for abuse to go unnoticed. Unfortunately, many of the mental disciplines (such as behaviorism as it is used as a method for control) are either allowing or even promoting abuse to the degree that much of the general public is desensitized to even abuse that everyone can see.
Even much of what is described as inclusion only promotes institutional thinking in a way that it is traditionally used in inappropriate ways.
The answer to the disenfranchisement of people is not herding them into public programs where they can be controlled more efficiently. We need to find ways to encourage independence and success among those who are now being considered misfits. Attempting to control and normalize people's behavior is a contradiction to that encouragement.
In our modern sophisticated world learning a lot about how people think in different ways and why they do is seen as impractical and not cost-effective. It makes more economic sense to demand conformity rather than understand and accommodate diversity. This
mind-set encourages the practice of treating people who do think differently
with very little unbiased exploration into the reasons for it.
When people look for the answers as to why some people act in different ways they too often set a standard which makes one type of behavior better than another by simply making the other look worse. This is ultimately impractical and self-defeating because this motivation will cause the boundaries to shift when ever the observer begins to look too much like the one that is being observed.
Of course people learn to behave based on what they see in their environment. This is taught in formal education as the study of sociology. Of course people adapt in ineffective ways to their environment, which can also be defined as morally wrong in order to preserve a peaceful culture. This is taught formally as the study of psychology.
It is often also ignored how our aspirations for certain types of behavior are defined and promoted in ways that serve commercial products.
There are no treatments that I know of which are described as treatments that have an understanding of autism beyond what is described with the medical model of autism. This means that an autistic person who needs any type of help from a public program (or most any other program, for that matter) must begin by having the way they are seen be based on all the misunderstood views and the ugly stereotypes which accompany the medical model of autism.
These options provided for autistic people to get any type of aid will continue to be limited by the medical community until people promoting the social model are willing to be more bold in broadening the understanding of autism, encouraging autistics to have more say about who they are, and what they do, and not allowing autistic people to be pawns in the commercial and political games marketing agents play.
In order to market a product in a commercially driven society that need for the product being seen is essential before the aid will appear to have value. I don't see any way to promote a product otherwise. Marketing a particular formal conforming behavior does more borrow on society's conformist attitudes to sell a particular brand. It often also further advances the view that conformity is essential to survival.
What this means for marketing psychological answers is that a paradigm must be encouraged where something or someone looks good at the expense of something or someone else looking bad. A social model of autism that doesn't take into account that this is the part of the medical model that we have to contend with is doomed to make no positive changes at all.
Encouraging education and helping people to become productive is sold with a punishment vs. reward view of behavior and the most efficient way to sell punishment is by teaching people that the behavior which needs treatment is morally bad. Being ineffective does not create the emotion with which people have learned to base their buying habits. Emotion comes from seeing something as bad and something else as good.
There isn't a lot of reasoning used in evaluating treatments for autistics because reasoning doesn't create the emotion for people to buy something.
The problem is that with such emotion and allowing marketing campaigns to create and dictate that emotion to their potential customers will not allow them to do much reasoning outside of what becomes an emotional trap. The emotion causes chaos for parents of autistic people, autistic people themselves, and people who treat autistics. Ultimately, this encourages chaos in the environment where autistic people are treated.
Behavioral interventions for autistics like ABA and ABA/PBS depend on chaos for the emotional environment that aids in their marketing efforts. This environment not only allows for assumptions, but it depends on the assumptions which are necessary to encourage the product they offer.
Identity politics teaches us that we need to fight for our rights based on the category we identify with. Being identified like this also then allows for a marketing campaign to target people with this identification. Marketing campaigns are likely to use an unethical means for promoting their product and are likely to create tension, lack of trust, and fighting among autistics who have trouble seeing their worth or others apart from the standards we have been shown.
This environment teaches us that there is high functioning autistics versus low functioning autistics in such a way so that the most profits can be made for treatment companies. It teaches us how to look at autistics as poor unfortunates who need pity and salvation (which also leads some people to believe that we need to be eradicated).
Behavior models are very similar when treating people in public institutions such as school, mental institutions and group homes, as well as jails. Promoting these programs will make our behavior (which is described by the program as inappropriate) seem more similar to amoral and unethical behavior so that ultimately autistics will be treated more like criminals.
Unless advocates are very clear in describing how the social model is not like the medical model, the medical model (along with all the commercial and political demands which that model creates) will define too much of our future and dictate how we are all seen. How we are evaluated as behaving will too often be based on the relationship we have to the standard that has shown our behavior to be invalid if not reprehensible.
I had a speaking role in a video not long ago which was presented at a conference where Bob Wright of Autism Speaks was also presenting. I was told that Mr.Wright spoke directly following the video and mentioned something about wishing that all people with autism could speak as well as those of us in the film.
I wish I could have told him how many times during my lifetime, I have sat in meetings where decisions were made regarding where I would go, and what I would do when I was unable to advocate for myself. Many of those times, especially when I was younger, were due to my inability.
However, what I would most like to convey to Mr. Wright and others like him is what I have learned from such meetings, from a lifetime of being a disabled autistic and being considered that way, often being declared incompetent, and also from being in institutions where it was made clear what the public saw as my place in society.
What I have learned from my experience is that not only was my ability or lack of it often influenced by how I was being treated but also the treatment was ultimately much more of an influential factor in my silence than my skill for forming understandable sentences.
This has, and still does, influence every aspect of my life. As I have posted to my blog many times, there are very few opportunities for people who have not been given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf to overcome the obstacles so that they will be able to do that.
This is not a mistake that society has made so campaigning against it has rarely if ever produced any positive results. This is clearly representative of an attitude that is meant to give more advantages to those who already have them. When people ignore the root of why oppression exists, they automatically contribute to the problem.
I wish that groups like Autism Speaks were not only seen as the problem but that more people would understand why such groups are able to become so popular in the first place. Autism Speaks didn't create the problem, they are just using what works which also makes the problem worse.
Once it is understood how widespread the problem is people will be less likely to promote commercial and political agendas that only make the problem worse in the long run. There is no merit in most efforts claimed to be politically expedient because the attitudes that create such political agendas and the public policies as they are now are too firmly established for any simple restructuring.
The way to create real change is to get more people involved who are now being excluded due to exclusive standards. This is not that difficult and won't take that much time. It's just a matter of discontinuing what is now being done to prevent the inclusion of this population. Nothing else will affect needed change nearly as much.
The people who have been in similar situations as myself and whom I have been associated with will not join a political movement where the attitude has not changed. It is more important that this population be included than for any small changes in public policy being made. Once this population is included there will be a better understanding of what needs to be changed. However, many of us know all too well what it feels like to be objectified for the objective which someone else has decided will be best for us.
"Nothing About Us Without Us" has too often been used as a slogan used by Disability advocates, which promotes exclusivity. If there was a way to get the best and the brightest included so that misfits would be able to follow, we would have seen the progress made by that approach already.
In places where this destructive attitude is so ingrained in public policy, those who see how they have been victimized by that attitude will not be able to follow until how they think, and what they have to offer is legitimized.
Whatever agendas aren't already supporting eugenics will eventually become that way, unless the attitudes that support a narrow group of people at the expense of everyone else don't radically change. When people don't acknowledge the extent of the problem, they are buying the expediency they claim will solve small problems at the expense of those who are most affected by the larger more general problem. In the long run, no one will be served by this approach.
Note: I'm reposting a request from Stephanie Lynn Keil which I think is important. I hope my readers will support this:
Finally, a productive advocacy group, NOEWAIT.
I recommend everyone go visit the site, print out the documents and
mail them to your congress people. I am definitely doing this. Today.
I'm on the waiting list.
Do something productive.
The most basic human right I can think of is being treated with dignity. If humans are simply, by the act of being human, seen as deserving of dignity, then most other basic human rights will follow.
Due to psychology being mass marketed the way it is, it doesn't matter so much that a particular psychological theory (or treatment that results from a theory) is meant to encourage dignified treatment or not. If those who implement the treatment are only interested in using the theory as a means for control, whatever dignity was intended gets lost in the translation.
I don't see enough acceptance in the implementation of psychology that most people being treated have rarely if ever been treated with dignity. If this population isn't who psychology is meant to serve then it is by default a means of oppression.
When this lack of being treated with dignity is due to their social class, and they are being asked to trust a treatment which is obviously being used for social reform, they are likely to ask, "If the class system is unfair (which it is) then how can a reform that accepts and promotes that class system be fair?" Without trust there is no environment for people to be helped.
Once the purposed treatment or therapy has been seen by them as part of the problem and the goal of that treatment or therapy is to achieve something, which seems to them to be based on the same type of objectification they are accustomed to, there are few chances to establish trust.
This is what I see as the biggest threat to autistic rights.
When self-actualization/awareness/humaness is a goal, people who are behaving in ways that don't appear to have reached that goal have their behavior (and what society has taught them is who they are by association) seen as an object to be fixed.
If the first step to turning that around is to teach them how to achieve dignity rather than be objectified, then the first message you have reinforced to them is that they are nothing but objects to begin with. It doesn't matter if individual therapists don't see them that way or, even if the therapeutic goal is more sophisticated than that. They will judge what they see based on what they have been taught is a threat. This will automatically be seen to them as a threat.
Too often people want to separate autistic kid's needs from those of autistic adults rather than looking at the similarities of how autistics are wrongly treated in public programs at all ages. It doesn't matter how old someone is, they won't be accepting much other learning or a lot of responsibility to change (including how to behave "properly") until, or, unless they are able to accept being treated with dignity. They must be taught that they and everyone else deserves it. People know this instinctively but yet are constantly taught otherwise.
It's not so much a matter of the government instilling dignity, but at this point they are too often stealing it (or at least discouraging it).
In public schools, at a certain age, they decide that the welfare of the mainstream is what's most important and that those who don't fit are either seen as not trying or not interested in education. This leads to the population who doesn't fit having their needs become secondary if not ignored altogether. Again their self-esteem, based on the dignity they are shown, suffers.
As they get older they are likely to be even more objectified by public programs and put in even more situations where they are warehoused without any goals for their betterment whatsoever. The cycle that teaches them that they don't deserve dignity also reinforces how they in turn objectify others. If schools accept the responsibility in the beginning and teach dignity before anything along with not trying to force any other teaching until that goal is met, we wouldn't need the systematized objectifying boxes.
If advocacy for human rights isn't willing to look at the system that teaches the denial of human rights, advocates will by default exclude and objectify people in the same way as the system they are trying to change. Ultimately, with this happening no changes are made.
That public systems that needs to be changed rewards the best and brightest and the most popular because to do otherwise would indicate that the system which evaluated and assigned them the distinction as that way in the first place was broken. Advocates that follow that system are ultimately sacrificing peoples human rights and their dignity for very little progress. In the long run, it will be worse than no progress at all.
Recent Comments