The Standard Review

The Paper Factory

Originally posted on Eds autism page May 19, 2008

Sometimes agencies are developed and maintained for no other reason than to allow a certain part of the population or advocacy groups that represent that population to feel secure that what they are seeking help with is being worked on.

I have heard these agencies referred to as paper factories. The idea is that as long as they produce enough paper that contains the right words they can postpone (too often what seems like forever) doing anything about what they were assigned to do.

In order for a paper factory to really work some people's needs must be met. Politicians and political groups that create these paper factories try to appease a part of the population that will provide them with support and they in turn will assure them that some parts of their population that the agency is supposed to serve (and by that I mean the most visible and loudest part of that population) are given all they need and sometimes all they want as well.

This creates security for not only the politicians who create these agencies, but also for the agencies themselves to survive as an agency. Then the "one hand washing the other" and "political backscratching" creates a situation where the majority of unwashed hands and unscratched backs are ignored, blamed, and sometimes descibed as the casuties of a necessary evil.

I remember hearing Bill Clinton speak extensively about how many student loans go unclaimed every year. By saying that, the point that he was trying to get across was that the government was doing their part but that people were not making the effort to get these loans. What he failed to explain was how many other reasons there were for these loans and even similar grants not being applied for. The reasons are many and there are many barriers that the US government knowingly creates to prevent these kinds of programs from being accessed by the majority of the population. As is the case with agencies, the way to secure the false claims of unlimited access to these programs is by parading the few who have been successful at using these programs in front of everyone else and have those people tell everyone else how great these programs are and how anyone can access them the way they did.

The way such things work (or rather don't work) for those claiming to be promoting education are very similar to the ways things are tried with in these agencies or paper factories that I'm describing. Unfortunately they have been successful at preventing real progress by promoting the illusion of success for too long.

This illusion is also very prevalent in how many public agencies are claiming to attempt to serve the disabled. Acknowledging neurological difference is one of the biggest threats to hiding the failures of agencies claiming to serve the disability community in the United States and hiding how the old system that has not worked for so many for so long.

If the US government truly accepted that disability was, in most (if not all) cases, an issue based on a lack of an appropriate job being offered to a person who is capable in ways that were not being acknowledged by the government and the public at large, they would need to change the core of their belief system and how they do things.

I don't believe that the US government is organized enough to create the massive conspiracies that many people claim. I do however think that it is safe to say that somebody somewhere who is making major decisions about government policy knows that such things such as glamorizing mood disorders and blaming hyperactive kids while feeding them amphetamines will reduce the population of those they see as unwanted without being blamed for it.

But how can autistics who are known to have a neurological difference be contained and maintained by the old-fashioned governmental paper shuffling rules and rulers? There will need to be a strategy to train the next generation of autistics to accept what the rulers (so to speak) describe as being their defects before the older autistics get the word out and spread their ideals that describe an "autistic culture".

Of course behaviors have to be given pathological reasons and treated with behavioral therapies. Some of those therapies will be brutal but can be justified by claiming that they prevent self injury if enough influencial people describe them that way.

The claims of outside sources such as vaccinations and inappropriate foods causing autism will allow for the growth of the industry described as "therapies" along with marketing more of the lethargy and confusion causing toxic drugs that promote the pharmaceutical industry.

The one thing that will make traditional methods of isolation and exclusion look bad and ultimately less effective is allowing people to believe that differences can actually be accommodated. Tradition is protected by describing things as dis ease so that ease can be marketed based on the claim that this ease (or answer to the dis ease) will come in the form of fixing, curing, and possibly eliminating differences that we find it to be uncomfortable and/or inconvenient to support or encourage.

The accommodations that have been provided for people with all types of disabilities within the United States to be more productive has increased in an alarming slow rate in comparison to the rate of expansion and development of the products and services that we as a nation offers. Our traditional paper shuffling and ignoring people who are seen as inconvenient has created nothing but an enormous debt and a larger part of the population than ever who is seen as unproductive. While it may be difficult for some people to recognize, these kinds of inappropriate and irresponsible management practices have a way of catching up with everyone.

Medicine for Social Anxiety

In order to market a product a desire for the product needs to be developed. Business today is much more about either establishing that desire or following the already established trend. Marketing practical products by appealing to people's need to have basic security is more difficult and less profitable.

The market driven unhealthy competition encouraged in most social situations creates anxiety that can be very advantageous to the industry that provides the products to help with that anxiety but most people are ultimately hurt by these enterprises. Their welfare is of little concern to these businesses because they worry about money now rather than long term security. What they have now gives them leverage for creating a future and marketing trends are difficult to anticipate.

A commercial on television for psychiatric drugs so clearly describes to me the creation of social anxiety, which then provides the product for the relief. The commercial targets people who are alone and yet not wanting to be by showing the pleasant social interaction in contrast. The voice at some point during the advertisement becomes more monotone as they describe the side effects of these drugs. They of course say nothing about the population of people using the drugs having a 25 year less life expectancy, the lack of research and efforts to make the drugs safer, nor do they mention how the drugs are tested first on the people who are least able afford them.

Using drugs, which lighten the physical and mental distress of social situations that are not directly controlled the FDA are considered by psychologists to be self-medicating drugs. Psychology is an industry who works together with the pharmaceutical industry to define normal vs. abnormal and then treats the deficits they define.

The drug industry, however, is showing no responsibility in association with this control.

This is a very interesting article: The Truth About the Drug Companies

Concerning US health care it says:

Drugs are the fastest-growing part of the health care bill—which itself is rising at an alarming rate. The increase in drug spending reflects, in almost equal parts, the facts that people are taking a lot more drugs than they used to, that those drugs are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older, cheaper ones, and that the prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year.

AND later it says this:


Furthermore, in one of the more perverse of the pharmaceutical industry's practices, prices are much higher for precisely the people who most need the drugs and can least afford them. The industry charges Medicare recipients without supplementary insurance much more than it does favored customers, such as large HMOs or the Veterans Affairs (VA) system. Because the latter buy in bulk, they can bargain for steep discounts or rebates. People without insurance have no bargaining power; and so they pay the highest prices.

AND:

But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind "mining, crude oil production," and "commercial banks.") The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D.

Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The great majority of "new" drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called "me-too" drugs. The idea is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something very similar to a top-selling drug. For instance, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the newest, Crestor) on the market to lower cholesterol, all variants of the first. As Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, put it,

   


             "If I'm a manufacturer and I can change one molecule and get           another twenty years of patent rights, and convince physicians to prescribe and consumers to demand the next form of Prilosec, or weekly Prozac instead of daily Prozac, just as my patent expires, then why would I be spending money on a lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand-new drugs?[4] "





The me-too market would collapse virtually overnight if the FDA made approval of new drugs contingent on their being better in some important way than older drugs already on the market. Probably very few new drugs could meet that test. By default, then, drug companies would have to concentrate on finding truly innovative drugs, and we would finally find out whether this much-vaunted industry is turning out better drugs. A welcome by-product of this reform is that it would also reduce the incessant and enormously expensive marketing necessary to jockey for position in the me-too market. Genuinely important new drugs do not need much promotion (imagine having to advertise a cure for cancer).

A second important reform would be to require drug companies to open their books. Drug companies reveal very little about the most crucial aspects of their business. We know next to nothing about how much they spend to bring each drug to market or what they spend it on. (We know that it is not $802 million, as some industry apologists have recently claimed.) Nor do we know what their gigantic "marketing and administration" budgets cover. We don't even know the prices they charge their various customers. Perhaps most important, we do not know the results of the clinical trials they sponsor—only those they choose to make public, which tend to be the most favorable findings. (The FDA is not allowed to reveal the results it has.) The industry claims all of this is "proprietary" information. Yet, unlike other businesses, drug companies are dependent on the public for a host of special favors—including the rights to NIH-funded research, long periods of market monopoly, and multiple tax breaks that almost guarantee a profit. Because of these special favors and the importance of its products to public health, as well as the fact that the government is a major purchaser of its products, the pharmaceutical industry should be regarded much as a public utility.

Autism Speaks is an excellent example of how industry is making decisions about autistics without autistics. The charity Autism Speak's demands are consistent with how the drug industry creates profits. However, with what I am reminded of in this article, the drug industry that is tied to psychology industry is not only deciding who we are and how we should act (along with how we are acting wrong), but they are designing what and how we think in ways that serve the industry's welfare.

Of course allowing industry to design and implement a behavioral modification program such as ABA/PBS in public schools and other institutions where people have been diagnosed as behaviorally unfit would give a great deal of authority to that industry. People need to be very careful before allowing that industry to assume such authority.

We all aren't going to be politicians and political policy is decided by industry profits in ways that will lesson our rights. Autistic people aren't being heard and our exclusion is based on the same standards that have always excluded us. It's impossible to judge each other by mainstream standards that ultimately exclude us and rise above those standards at the same time. Either we change the standards, or we won't fit. The compromises aren't practical.

Incomplete Assignment

The judgment of how people think as in good vs. bad and smart vs. not smart is how the terms high vs. low functioning are justified.

When it comes to types of thinking (in three divisions of intelligence, pathology, and neurology) all labels are assigned in terms of severity by the amount which is determined that someone's thinking deviates from the norm.There is no diversity but instead only hierarchy.

People who are with the least resources will ultimately have all these divisions disappear and will be classified as simply having their thinking to be wrong and bad. The only reason the divisions exist in the first place is so that supposedly there will be therapy and/or accommodations but once someone has reached a level of convenient isolation from the public, they are all placed in one group who are simply seen as bad and a drain on public resources.

Sometimes that includes warehousing with walls and sometimes the warehousing that is isolating and abusive by the same institutional methods is without the walls.

Advocates often dismiss this population in the same way as public programs do. People who have attempted to create advocacy movements or a culture who speaks on a behalf of a group that includes this population have been every bit as exclusive.

Debates are held within a realm that discounts every statement made by them and demeans them as much and sometimes more than those who were considered their oppressors.

One of the ways people in the United States declare a democracy is by those who have the power to do so assigning a false label of power to oppress populations so that they will seem justified in further oppressing them.

It's sort of like planting a weapon on someone after they've been killed by someone else with a weapon. The weapon really never did them any good, but now it can be seen as though the killers aggression was justified by needing to protect themselves.

This is the largest group of people and yet those who claim to be helping them never encourage them to have independent thoughts or to share what they have learned from their experience.

For whatever reason they have become isolated, they are now seen as the craziest, the dumbest, or those with the greatest impairment in thinking for whatever reason in order to justify the original false hierarchy of judgments that divided them in the first place. My experience is that these judgments are due only to their circumstances and resources and serve only to "protect" the public from having to acknowledge their existence by conveniently making them invisible.

The moral justification for excluding this group has no basis in fact. Yet they are further labeled as having rights and being empowered in places where they are not. The claim is that the standards are the same for everyone, but it is not factored in how most people who have no way of determining our fate do not have anything like the level of resources as those who speak on our behalf.

The claims I have seen of creating an autistic community have not accepted any responsibility for avoiding this injustice as they move forward. Instead I see political pragmatism as being a guide for all decisions made on behalf of the autistic population. I sincerely hope this will change.

I have never seen a political effort to liberate this group. I have never seen a culture who aspired to include them. Many who are part of this group at this point will tell you that they don't care. Many are also accepting of the value judgments of others who see them as unworthy of encouragement. For this group to be encouraged the standards that exclude them need to be reviewed. The walls created by privileged peoples attitudes need to be torn down and then people will see this otherwise invisible group and hear from them as to what they want and need for true inclusion to occur.

Ghosts Matter; Autistic Inclusion

There are many reasons that so many people in our society are silent or are hidden. As I have written about in previous posts one of the reasons for this is that forms of media, which are considered mainstream encourage a narrow set of unattainable elite standards, which encourages people to want to achieve what they can't and are reminded of how they are seen as unimportant until they do. However, the main reason for this group's exclusion (which most other reasons can be attributed to) is the lack of encouragement.

It's not just that this population is fed a constant stream of images, which reminds them of what it takes to be considered important but everyone else in their environment is fed the same. This is how people draw conclusions about themselves as well as how they judge and often discount others. Oppression is most easily achieved when the oppressed accept standards that can be used to discount each other.

I'm glad that something I say on the internet sometimes seems to be important to others. If I was required to say these things by being directly in front of someone rather than writing them (even if I could string words together) many things about my appearance and my presentation would remind people of how unimportant my thoughts were. I have found though that there is enough lacking in how I present myself on the Internet also which reinforces the same standards.

I have heard that even the Internet may become much more exclusive soon. It seems to me that it would of course become that way. This means that more of a financial investment would be required to have a website that the general public can access. This means that this medium (the Internet) will become more exclusive, more commercial, and the commercial interests of those who run the websites will demand the same typical unattainable and exclusionary standards of those who present their message.

I don't believe that anyone ever thought that the Internet would be used much as a tool for liberating oppressed minorities. To whatever degree it has been used in this way I imagine this window of opportunity is quite limited by time.

I'm very appreciative of others who have spoken up on the internet before me about the things that I feel are important and those who continue to do so. I especially appreciate when they've done so in an environment where it wasn't popular.

What is considered truth and even the so-called facts that we use to determine what is logical are tainted by a set of values, which excludes the worth of most people.

At times when I was hospitalized, I would see someone who was being treated badly by a staff member fighting back in a quite unfashionable manner. I look back at that now, and I consider that to be advocacy. The only place that advocacy may have really changed things is in the mind and heart of the person who is being abused by helping them to realize that they didn't deserve to be treated that way. However, now for those who read what I write I can tell you that you also benefit from what those patients did because what I saw ultimately affects what I write. It also affects why I write.

Too often I hear people speaking of solutions to oppression by means, which are less-than-radical when they aren't considering how unreasonable that it is to expect in some places and by some people based on how they have been treated, and what they have been taught about their personal worth. If we wait until everyone meets the typical standards for expressing themselves before they are listened to those standards will continue to become narrower as will our version of the truth.

Whatever I have felt I needed to do to get heard is something that I hope others won't need to do. All the abilities I have, which are the result of extreme pressure and abuse (which pretty much includes all of them) are worth very little to me except for how I'm able to protect myself and others.

I appreciate hearing comments on blogs from people who are speaking up and speaking out more than I do from what is otherwise considered a formally educated opinion.

The autistic people that aren't being heard right now are most likely not formally educated nor do they most likely appear fashionable. Sometimes they are people who have put up the worst shit and told more often and more strongly than anyone, of how they are viewed by society as worthless. Typical standards are not likely to encourage these people and adhering to those standards is not likely to encourage them to begin to feel empowered and to speak out.

Without what I am suggesting autistic people will have a few (or only one) political groups with very narrow views who speak on our behalf and those groups will not be required to accept much if any alternative opinions.  Like most political groups the objective will be pragmatic and momentum will be protected at any costs to the population being advocated for. Autistic people will continue to be divided between the high functioning token performers and the low functioning who are considered to deserve pity and treatment by whatever means necessary.We will have one monopolizing commercial method of control used by schools (sometimes referred to as  educational supports) and all other public institutions which will define us as behaviorally challenged and will set and change the rules at will by which we are restrained and punished.  We will need to qualify our every statement and refer to how it qualifies as valid based on the statements of celebrities whose accomplishments set the standards by which we are judged.

This is the future I want to avoid. Autistics just like all minorities need to speak out with whatever means they have available. Even more importantly I hope those who can see how these voices have been suppressed will be encouraged to find more ways to include them. The standards and values we show appreciation for are what will determine our future and the typical standards we have now were not created with these voices in mind.Our inclusion won't be created without work, and if we want a society that includes more people we need to include those who are now excluded in the decision of what the society we hope for will look like.

How and Why Junk is Sold

A society which focuses on the buying and selling of any product with little regard for its value to the purchaser and the effect the purchase has on the rest of society is encouraging false hopes and the insecurity that accompanies those hopes.

Education in the United States is a product that often does not liberate, encourage, or empower the masses in the way that is sometimes described. When education is used as a tool to create the illusion of dominance by people who have been included and gained authority by this structured hierarchical system it often instead discourages and further enslaves the masses who are excluded.

There are classrooms that teach of differences in beliefs and cultures from all around the world but very few that teach about the most prevalent culture in the U.S. Instead this culture is discouraged even from existing as a culture at all and independent thoughts and ideas are either ignored or even punished. This group is considered ignorant, lazy,and for the most part, unworthy of respect. They are certainly not encouraged to think and their views are given little validity whatsoever.

Personal Note: (and I really hate to do this )

      As I have said before (apparently not often enough lately) this blog is for the promotion of thinking and the encouragement of people to express themselves even when their views are rarely accepted as valid in mainstream society.

All I think about is stuff that I learned from experience and from casually observing what others say. I have never studied anything, and I don't really read (or at least not very well). My documented education level would be the equivalent to that of graduating elementary school (7th grade) although I haven't been to school even nearly that much. I have always wanted to go to school and have worked very hard to get the opportunity.

After a complicated birth and weeks spent on a respirator, the doctors informed my parents that if I survived, I would have CP or be otherwise be mentally retarded. I was diagnosed with learning disabilities as a child (although not much was specific), mental illness as an adult (again often unspecific and usually incorrect), and was considered disabled when I became an adult. As an adult I have been diagnosed with autism. Furthermore, as an adult I've spent my time either in mental institutions or government run programs. . (which make up the experiences I draw from to write my blog) Now I avoid any and all evaluations whenever possible. Also, I don't read very well and typically use voice recognition and text-to speech on the internet along with programs that correct my spelling and grammar.I have not accomplished anything that would show me to be someone with abilities, knowledge, or skill.

As far as how my education relates to this blog, I know nothing about history, psychology, or any other subject I refer to on this blog. I have no authority nor have I ever wanted it. I don't want to be an iconic figure or even to influence anyone beyond the idea of encouraging and validating more ideas and expressions. (and BTW this really isn't an invitation for others to "educate" me on this blog. Please consider I may have had enough of that by now.) (end note)

Those who are in positions of power in the US evaluate most people as non-contributors. Most of what is said to be "the way things are" is based on statistics that a large majority of people is not included in.

Ranking the validity of one person's experiences over another (for how typical standards evaluate those experiences) as the basis of truth for anything is every bit as arbitrary and speculative as ranking the validity of information or what may be considered "truth". The only thing that a subject which is taught in school or anywhere else can depend on is how history has recorded events. History is very exclusive. Things that are recorded and change how society does things are recorded in a way that our societal values have taught us of who we need to watch and what types of actions we need to look for.

I personally attempt to give more of my attention to the voices who are not otherwise heard. This is not to level the playing field because that will never be done. I simply choose this way because I believe it is the best thing that I can do with my time and energy. It's not a reflection on how others do things as much as it is based on how what my experiences and the values I have learned as a result have taught me that this is the best place to focus my attention.

The reason I advocate for this is because typical standards of evaluation are already given plenty of validation, and I am privileged to have been given the ability and the experiences that enable me to see things differently.

It's good when we don't associate so much of our self-worth with how valid society sees what we think and do. It's even better when we can look beyond how typical values have validated some people at the expense of making the thoughts and experiences of someone else less valid. Every person has the right as well as the responsibility to acknowledge and show respect for as broad a spectrum of diverse abilities that they can personally see. I think that's important.

The Allure of the Dragon

One of the most important ways to empower yourself and others who are categorized in the same way as you is to avoid being defined by people in authority who are not looking out for your best interest.

When someone you don't know does not appreciate you because of your style or lack of it, and you change in order to impress them, they have often taught you to appreciate a standard that makes them look better at your expense rather than encouraging mutual respect. When they then decide to change their style based on what is considered the new trend, and you again change yours to show yourself worthy of their pointless attention you have reinforced a standard of trend chasing where any relationship (however casual) of mutual respect and honor are ultimately impossible.

When someone says you are not as valuable as this other person who does or has something (which is a relative and fleeting standard designed only for exclusionary purposes), and you respond by attempting to show that you are more valuable because you do or do have that something, you are reinforcing that standard and aiding in the oppression of all those who will never be able to meet it.

When people fight viciously about an issue that they really aren't too concerned about they reinforce the standards of unattainable debating success which associates peoples worth so closely with what they think that it will ultimately consume and break everyone involved. Also, the back-stabbing, innuendo, and undefinable subtle attacks associated with many debates will never promote fairness or empowerment. These methods can only be used to tear people down.

All this is not just how people lose their individuality and their right to be individuals but this is how exclusive standards are praised and oppressive methods are reinforced for entire categories of people.

The people who wrote the criteria for the DSM-IV which defines autism had little or no experience in diagnosing people for better educational opportunities and more inclusion in their community. They are closely associated with the treatment industry. The dominant current standards this industry adheres to discourage products and services that are attainable and promote security along with a sense self-worth because they are seen as the enemy of economic stimulation. It is thought that we have to keep chasing the carrot and therefore, the carrot cannot ever become too attainable.

Based on the credit that is given to the typical ways of stimulating the economy, what do you think would happen if autistic people were empowered and given more educational and training opportunities? What if the dominant view that autistics need to be put in normalizing programs and classrooms was accepted as false and degrading.? Some very large financial investors would no longer be able to define autistics so that we can be exploited. They would have to find someone new to exploit. People need to be careful of how their views are influenced by elaborate ad campaigns.

It would be good for autistics and those who advocate on our behalf to be careful of personality entanglements that show the principles we believe in to be less worthy of respect. It's important to be careful of exclusive standards that alienate some autistic people for the glorification of other autistic people. In whatever ways we need to get involved politically, it's important to (as individuals or as a group) be careful of blind loyalty to political predators who will chew us up and spit us out.It's good to encourage diverse forms of involvement among ourselves and protect our right to question what is done in our name above all else.

Impulsively chasing dragons is how people who deserve respect lose their human rights. People who think they won't get burned are underestimating the beast and its fury along with the abundant resources it can afford to use against us.

Just Like Everyone

Claiming that everyone is unique has always been a bit troubling to me. This is probably due to the way the claim is presented and for what reasons it is presented.

If the statement is expressed with the goal of encouraging people not to claim that their particular abilities which glorify normality rank them as more worthy of respect then certainly the expression serves a worthy cause.

Unfortunately, equalizers are too often used as methods of oppression rather than tools of empowerment. Inclusion is often used as a way to highlight what are judged as inappropriate motivations of misfits when the standardized tests of intelligence and ability have failed to exclude them.

Solidarity to promote inclusion when inclusive standards don't change often promotes exclusion instead. When everyone's abilities and circumstances are falsely described as being given the same consideration it opens the door for misinterpreted attitudes, (which are considered poor) to be the deciding factor for a misfit's exclusion.

People whose abilities are most respected and who attain the luxuries which that affords them aren't really doing as much to promote elitism as many others who don't have the same resources. For example, driving a Mercedes doesn't promote elitism nearly as much as choosing to drive a Mazda simply because it is designed to look like a Mercedes.

                          

Also, failure to do your best by popular standards of what's best rather than showing how best and worst is unfairly evaluated doesn't empower others who can't do as well at all. What that does is reinforce the standard by which those others are oppressed. Unnecessarily exhibiting failure and weakness in the ways they are unfairly defined doesn't align you with the struggle of those who are less capable so that you can help with that struggle as much as it does ultimately put you in a position to compete with them for resources in oppressive ways. This is how a chaotic rebellion of oppression too often ultimately supports the goals of oppression. Only supporting fairer evaluations will truly empower people.

There are a number of ways (both subtle and not-so-subtle) which we unfairly judge people without knowing much if anything about their background, their abilities, or their circumstances. Unfortunately there are many ways (both subtle and not-so-subtle) we are culturally taught to do this. This causes many of our evaluations of people to lead to life being seen as a privilege rather than a right.

In the US, the special Olympics displays how exclusion is accomplished by encouraging many people who may not otherwise have any athletic aspirations into athletic competition. The competitors are divided based on what the organizers see as their apparent handicap and their level of handicap, and then they compete in events that glorify physical ability. This leads to people who are disabled (and seen as dependent) actually supporting hierarchical judgments that encourage those resources to be exclusively given to differently-abled others.

The limitations of many current public policies demand that they be evaluated as either the support of a competitive market or socialism. There is little room for changing these policies so that they encourage a fairer distribution of resources. If more people were recognized for having diverse types of abilities, those resources would be an agent for empowering them. A hierarchical system that glorifies only a strict few types of abilities will naturally encourage public policies to be seen as either the encouragement of a free market or giving something away.The reformation of the national healthcare plan in the United States won't produce lasting positive results until this problem is addressed.

There isn't enough encouragement of free speech for unique expressions to have much direct effect on political decisions. At this point, so many of our evaluations of each other are taught to us by the government and the corporate enterprises the government encourages. Our commonalities along with our individual uniqueness CAN both be honored when we start thinking and caring in ways that are independent and empowering.

The terms of politics demand answers to questions that are strictly defined by the people asking them. This is encouraging us to not think outside the box and ultimately to have our worth determined by unfair categorizations. This method of categorizing ultimately only empowers a few people. If we want this to change, we need to be careful of our prejudices and think more creatively.

Where Everybody Knows their Place

One of the themes I often write about is how the U.S. mental health care system is too often misinterpreted. This system was designed to protect the public rather than aid the recipient of the care.

The attitude that has been developed from this original design still compliments the goals of many of the enterprises that provide this care and that continues to greatly influence how that care is given.

Many modern Americans who got involved in attempting to change the government at one time or another were misled (or rather betrayed) because they were raised to believe in an unattainable status of middle class citizenship that they hoped to secure. In such a world of unattainable ideals there will be chaos, which demands uncreative minds to seek better methods of control. The more chaos they see the stricter they make their methods of control.

A corrupted system causes people to feel betrayed. Feeling betrayed leads to more erratic emotions and chaotic situations, which can again lead to the lack of inspiration and creative thinking where people again seek inappropriate methods of control. Of course inappropriate methods of control are how people again feel betrayed and how systems are further corrupted.

Psychiatric medications are advancing at a much slower rate than other medications with the same high level of demand due to how the population of people who take these medications are respected (or rather disrespected) in society.

The number of people receiving these medications is increasing and the age at which they begin taking these medications is decreasing.

The health problems these medications causes which are described as side effects are revealed in how the lifespan is shortened (this study says by 25 years) in mental health patients.

You will also find many school systems now describing a type of restraint known as chemical restraints. This is of course psychiatric medication.

One of the safety measures that is used for these medications is known as a "therapeutic dose." While such a therapeutic dose is written on the labels of medication bottles these standards do not apply when authorized by a physician in a mental health facility as a type of restraint.

Furthermore, in a mental institution a patient is given more privileges due to their lack of what is considered by the staff to be misbehavior. Of course not only are these privileges taken away when someone is seen to be misbehaving but force that is justified by the claim of needing to restrain is often nothing more than physical punishment.

With more children being diagnosed with psychological problems at earlier ages, more police officers being used in classrooms, and children being tried as adults at earlier ages, the public school systems are merging with mental health systems and corrective institutions.

As I said earlier in this post, the mental health system in the United States was designed for the safety of the public rather than the aid of the client/patient. (the term mental health consumer which is often used indicates choice where there isn't any) In addition to this influence today more than ever we have industries that are dependent on the misbehavior of children as well as adults.

Practically all commercial developments related to autism depends on the mainstream media negative stereotype of autistic people. A public institution will grow to rely on the demand for the services they provide and corporations align themselves with public institutions so that both entities are strengthened. With such alliances all programs involved are given even fewer incentives to change their policies that don't work.

No revisions to the medicare and medicaid programs will be made until the abuses are correctly attributed to the medical profession rather than continuing with the false accusation that the problem is due to the recipients.

Placing the blame on those who don't obtain an education or vocational training justifies a lack of new standards set for the public systems that claim to be providing that.

The reasons mental institutions provide control rather than aid for the patients is because that's what they are designed for.

NAMI (National Alliance for Mentally Ill) describes itself as:

For three decades, NAMI has established itself as the most formidable grassroots mental health advocacy organization in the country.

Over half (56%) of the funding for NAMI comes from the pharmaceutical industry who of course expects them in return to promote their political agenda.

NAMI supports Kendra's Law, which provides more power to parents as well as state and federal authorities to force someone into a mental institution against their will.

They also support this:


A major concern is forced outpatient drugging, which is legal today in 37 states.  Last summer, a similar bill in California, AB1800, was defeated through the help and work of a coalition of human rights organizations and people against forced psychiatry.   Under these laws, a person can be court-ordered to take psychiatric medications, and in fact in 6 of these states it is enforced through dose drop-in visits to verify that the person takes his meds.   This program, named the Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT), has been supported by NAMI, something that many local NAMI groups, and this reporter, object to. The National Empowerment Center has put together a program called PACE to promote the recovery model and provide an alternative to PACT.  The approach of forced drugging has also been introduced in prisons, where the prisoner can be both physically and chemically restrained, creating a chemical prison.


Their reasons for not supporting deinstitutionalization are described here:

*    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
*    legal barriers that prevent the most severely ill individuals from accessing needed treatment.

Each of these reasons is the result of pushing for other agenda's. The wording doesn't clearly state what those agendas are at all. The needs that are expressed for this population can't be based on a broad set of ideals. Instead laws must reflect the acceptance of the type of system that is already in place in order to be passed.

Of course NAMI also endorses statewide PBS (Positive Behavioral Supports) in public schools.

Ten Best Practices for Mental Health and Schools by NAMI states this for #2

2. Training school professionals in effective research-based teaching methods and behavioral interventions including positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS).

The need for this PBS in schools is based on the misbehavior of students that is now out of control. Someone who is seen to be misbehaving is labeled as having a behavioral disorder. Once labeled a person is in a category where misbehavior is suspected.

Public institutions want stricter authority on a wider group of people with a staff trained to control behavior. They would claim that this is in the best interest of education. However, in cases where such programs have been implemented an increase in the participants becoming more educated and better trained for vocations has not been shown.

What the US government does not want to admit is that it uses public institutions to label and warehouse misfits. Whenever training is seen as a priority the type of thinking that goes with typical labeling and warehousing becomes a method of exclusion rather than inclusion.

If the United States was truly interested in including a broader majority of the people into the society that is respected, the employment rates would go up, the population of educated people would increase, and the public systems that are already in place would show how they are empowering more people.

Since all the indications are that this is not a government priority it must be understood that government officials will not favor any program that radically shows that any previous inappropriate motivations.

At this point, it is too important for the government to show that the fault with the programs is in those who were receiving them rather than in the providers. This is why when you see the support of government officials for more training in public programs you will see how that training provides more control rather than more motivation and empowerment for a broader group of people.

If it were just a matter of people not doing enough to alter the systems that are already in place you would already see a majority of people benefiting from them. If the majority of people aren't benefiting (which is now the case) you can expect that the public who is being served are those within the minority who have the most influence on public policies and laws.

If a policy or program is introduced to make the system better and doesn't demand a radical change in the attitude that created the faulty system in the first place, you can expect that the goal is to hang on to the old system in a way that the unsuspecting public still views what's happening as improvement.

The Public Disdain

How the public sees a person has a lot to do with how they see themselves. Unfortunately, once someone acquires a negative label the reinforcement of that label often comes from their family, their peers, and the general public. With enough reinforcement from others that person labeled acts in the way they are expected.

There are no oppressed groups that I know of who as a group doesn't use many of the same hierarchical public standards to judge each other. It is very distressing indeed that the oppressed minorities use the same methods of oppression that they are taught because they believe it will put them in better standings with the public.

When they are betrayed by public standards. they too often internalize their grief and take out their frustration on the other more vulnerable members of their group rather than working with them to change the public standards. This cycle is quite discouraging.

One of the aspects of this cycle that I often write about (which I think about a lot) is that what is made public information is what mostly concerns the people who are writing it.

Based on the people who are most negatively affected by the public view feeling vulnerable, dismissed, and disempowered they follow the expectations that go along with their negative label. They are not allowed to have a voice in public matters and public policies that affect them and by not knowing how to use their voice in a way that is publicly accepted, they continue to be taught not to speak up at all.

The concerns and needs of the most oppressed populations are of course not being discussed anywhere. They have no public representation.

There was a video made a while back when a woman described choosing to not murder her children and commit suicide because of respecting the welfare of her children who were not autistic and the video showed her saying this with her autistic child in the room. This is a good reminder to me that the public's perception of who autistic people are and how our emotions are incorrectly evaluated is mainly due to people not listening or conveniently ignoring us more than it is due to our not being able to communicate.

One of the difficulties that is attributed to autistic people is that of executive functioning. Aside from the neurological deficit, there are many ways that society trains marginalized groups to think in less individualized and creative ways. This of course tends to encourage autistic people to be followers (and often followers of unreasonable standards that further marginalize us) rather than helping us realize our potential. Planning requires the belief that you have some degree of control. If you don't think you do your brain is less likely to create patterns. The social expectations can limit a person's executive functioning skills even more than their neurology.

The ability to form words is not nearly as limiting to autistic people as the public's negative perception of us and the unwillingness of those concerned with public policies that affect us to hear from us.

The issue regarding the claim that vaccines cause autism is a problem for autistic people not only because the claim is false and Because there is an extreme danger in people not being vaccinated. The disrespect and marginalization of autistic people are encouraged by the public's willingness to accept an unproven claim which shows autistic people to be diseased and/or in need of a cure.

The demand for ABA training is similar in that the evidence that it works is not being demanded, the cases of trauma that it causes isn't being reported, and the claim that it is needed further negatively stigmatizes autistic people as misbehaving whether they are or not.

At this point, due partially to the political push to get ABA/PBS involved in all public schools, a parent has even less opportunity of having the abuse cases of their child heard than they would usually have with reporting abuse.

The reports of abuse that are directly associated with PBS will be systematically ignored by public officials who favor the program more than the welfare of the child.

The campaign to have ABA specialists apply restraints is furthering the objective of having the government issue strict guidelines of behavior that reflect the ways the public marginalizes autistic people and makes them more prone to abuse.

If you haven't read my previous post Restraint by Any Other Name, do so as well as reading the excellent information posted there by Hj in the comments.

At this point in time, treatments for autistic people are heavily influenced by the mainstream public perception of what autism is. This is a commercial perception that needs to suppress the voice of autistic people and promote a view of us that is contrary to our well-being. Even medical professionals are limited in what they can provide for autistic people based on an unsubstantiated public opinion.

In such an environment, it is unreasonable to not be skeptical about any treatment or form of aid that is proposed for autistic people. Showing respect and dignity to autistic people at this point is unconventional and is usually met with resistance.

Just as I described in my last post the campaign to have every public school institute a program of statewide PBS was falsely promoted by the claim that their goal was to reduce restraints and seclusion. The goal was instead to have ABA trainers who consider autism to be a behavioral disorder instruct schoolteachers on how and when to perform restraints based on their code of discipline.

The people who promote commercial products and services must be critically evaluated. Otherwise we will live in a society where the ability to finance and execute a campaign determines what people believe no matter how deceptive they are allowed to be.

The marginalization and oppression of particular groups are heavily influenced by the few people with the most resources who want to promote whatever will secure those resources for them. The inclusion of diversity contradicts their goal. No matter what long-term benefits there are to encouraging more people with different skills, this is not the path they have chosen.

The public disdain for autistic people is reflected by how we are treated. If those of us who have the most to lose are given a voice in our own future, there will be a completely different political landscape and investments of resources will be made toward giving us better lives. Until that happens, please be aware of how the absence of our voice negatively affects what people claim is for our benefit.

Autism's Highest Bidder

Neurodiversity as a concept and an ideal has always meant to me something that challenged the commercial/political designs that are objectifying a population of people and keeping those people and their family hostages to a school of thought that demeans their existence. The rational in-depth understanding of human nature as it relates to and is born from neurodiversity is a view that is challenged as much as it is coveted. Those who go along with selling humanity to the most current and fashionable method of objectifying who we are by the deficits that don't adhere to convention have a mind that is easily swayed and requires little convincing. It's more difficult to re orient a rational view.

The acceptance of diversity is what naturally sustains and promotes the human race but convenience rules the business world so that what is natural gets packaged in a way that it can best be sold. It's only when nature can be commercialized that the mainstream whose lives adhere to commercialism can see it as valuable.

In a world where commerce rules, we believe such things as we need to bleach flour and add preservatives to our food so that people can afford to eat. At the same time, a government that finds more immediate profit from a factory that preserves and stretches food are less inclined to provide incentives for farmers who grow the food.

What journalists are allowed to print has more to do with what advertisers support than what the public needs to know. In the same way, a commercial program that gains a monopoly over school systems will eventually not adhere to public standards or government standards. Instead they will create their own.

In psychology, the majorities' brand of choice was not decided by the public's needs or desires. Instead that brand was first introduced within the public systems such as schools and "re"habilitation for the nonconformists. The reason that quicker and more convenient types of psychological profiling that can be used to "reform" a larger public is widely accepted is because it was first introduced as a public normalizer.

Of course neurodiversity advocates are not against therapy. However, the real acceptance of diversity would naturally take a close critical look at what the broader goal might be for all therapies that relate to mental health and behavior. Overcrowded and under funded schools, lack of moral guidance in the home, and a society less concerned about ethics ha not been the main sources that have created worse behavioral problems in schools any more than such things are the main cause of misbehaving adults. Instead the main source is the broader societal claim that societal ills are caused by individual choices, which must be discouraged by controlling therapies and broadly accepted (even mandated) therapeutic programs.

The commercial product known as Behaviorism (ABA, PBS, etc.) has taught people what they supposedly need. Behavior doesn't need to be changed so that academics have an opportunity. With enough true academic opportunity there won't be time or need to misbehave and therefore, no need for fixing a perceived problem. Any public program without ample opportunities is involved in this cycle of an inappropriate focus on behavior. It's not a coincidence that most people in the United States (the country with the highest rate of human warehousing) has always had more than enough money to educate and employ its citizens and yet most are denied this opportunity.

The claim that we have an epidemic of autistic or any other design of maladjusted people we consider aliens entering our society can and ultimately will be easily disputed and as a result society will eventually assume its rightful role in making the necessary adjustments to include this diverse population. However, the real threat to neurodiversity is the claim that these diverse groups are misbehaving and need a structured program to "save" them from punishment.

Forced normalization is what truly contradicts diversity rather than bogus claims about unnatural ways that people got that way and why research is needed to find out how to prevent diversity from occurring .People without opportunities are prone to misbehave, just as people who are not providing opportunities are more interested in controlling behavior (which is the door to warehousing) then they are of creating opportunities. The answer to providing opportunities for people who are considered disabled will come by understanding more about who they are and creating pathways for them to grow and prosper. All that labeling, diagnosing, and treating behavior has ever done is lead to worse stereotypes, institutionalization, and more opportunity for abusers who are protected by their authority.