The Standard Review

Pace Disorder and Accommodation Intolerance

The most important and the most difficult work for disability advocates is defining the attitudes that support oppression.

Attitudes that destroy trust and encourage envy,greed,and bitterness are similar to a parasitic mold. It only grows within a particular environment, and it consumes the vital essence of its host.

In order to starve an attitude parasite you have to examine the environment that is encouraging its growth.

People think of protection and focus more narrowly on their own needs when they are believing in scarcity. If there's not enough of something they need, they will be less interested in providing for others.

Scarcity is often taught by people with the means to advertise for keeping the masses dependent on them and encouraging them not to be organized and work together.

What disability right advocates would like to encourage in their community is that accommodations will encourage the healthy attitudes that will in turn produce more provisions for everyone. This would create attitudes of generosity and sharing rather than dependence greed and fear.

When a government, community or even a family doesn't stay focused on the advantages of working together they are instead compelled to struggle with each other for dominance. When provisions are made for someone's weakness and vulnerability people who don't feel secure with their ability to get what they need will compete for those provisions.

Of course the title is misleading in that intolerance of other people accommodations or the pace of their lifestyle would never be considered a disorder. However, it can be and often is quite debilitating. When those who are exposed to teachings of intolerance, they are there by prone to impatience with others being accommodated. They see a common purpose in the masses of people and a common pace that the majority of people keep and can begin to believe that this standard is somehow divinely ordained and diversity is therefore, sinful.

Unfortunately, like with most disabilities, no one has any idea what the majority of autistic people could do if we were accommodated. The first step to accommodation would of course be to better understand how we as humans might view the world in a different way and how some very basic and very common standards are actually discriminatory expectations when our differences aren't understood and respected.

One area that my skills are inadequate for what some consider the standard is shown by my inability to drive. Not being equipped with standard driving skills, I wonder sometimes how many drivers are aware how few people have the skills they have. It's not that the majority of people can or do drive a car but that driving is considered a standard skill for the people in the world who are honored as valuable contributors.

My visual difficulties are very evident when I'm in a moving vehicle. The movement of the vehicle along with the visual sense that the environment I see out the window is constantly moving at unpredictable speeds makes me feel very awkward and on guard. I have little if any sense of the perimeter of the vehicle I'm in. I can't tell from the inside just what size the vehicle I'm in is, so I can't tell how close it's coming to oncoming traffic. I have no sense of direction and can't read a map. I also can't do two things at the same time so even as a passenger I get very nervous trying to read a road sign when the driver of the car dealing with traffic.

The more I have to contend with several things happening at the same time the more difficult it is for me to make decisions and the longer I am presented with a chaotic stimulation the more nervous, awkward, and on guard I become.

The sensory difficulty can also present itself with issues regarding human relations. Not everyone in any given conversation is going to always agree on the pace but I generally can't follow the agreed upon pace for more than a minute. After that what seems to me as a chaotic exchange of misunderstood expressions begins to increase my anxiety more every minute.

In a conversation with one person, I have a great deal of difficulty with changing subjects. I also have difficulty with people moving around the room while they're talking. If someone changes the subject or ends a conversation in a way that seems abrupt to me my sensory awareness is raised and my chaotic energy level may be seen by others as emotionally charged. There is an emotion involved, but I find that it's a different type of emotion that others may presume it is due to the emotions that cause them to react.

With me the emotion is always fear but it isn't necessarily on how I feel about the other people in the situation beyond their control over the environment that demands a response from me that I'm having difficulty making. They may believe that my verbal skills are such that my responses are more unrehearsed than they are, that my ability to sort through current information that I'm receiving is better than it is, that I am more able to change direction in a conversation than I am, and that sorting through all the emotions that others are feeling within a conversation is something I can do more easily than I actually can. The way I see others doing this is similar to the way that I watch them be able to weave through traffic and change a barrage of images into static symbols they can negotiate.

This difficulty is not the same with other autistics though it may be similar with some. However, it can be something that causes people difficulty, which isn't readily noticeable by others. These difficulties and the issues they present aren't something that many people will understand even after spending lots of time with me. They will have no doubt that there's a problem but won't know what it is.

As long as everyone is seen as competing for the same thing in life and accommodations are seen as some type of advantage in that competition people will be less able to understand each other and be encouraging and empowering.

The truth is there is no scarcity of the compassion that produces encouragement and empowerment anywhere in the human species. Accommodations don't need to be seen as either an undue advantage or an excuse for irresponsibility. There are many more possibilities than just these two. People have many different motivations and many different goals and their expressions of creativity and inspiration are severely impaired when others believe that any aid that someone else gets will somehow reduce the aid that they themselves get. Indeed, the opposite is true. Encouragement and accommodation create more of the same for everyone in the same way that greed and theft do.

This environment of encouragement is readily accessible to everyone and will provide us all with the necessary resources to survive. If the environment is instead infected with parasitic attitudes where no one feels like they are receiving their due, everyone will indulge in the luxury of seeing every standard they can meet as their divine inheritance and every substandard expression as a sinful act meant to rob them of the reward they deserve.

The Mainstream is Directed not Chosen (autism awareness politics)

This is a follow up to my last post: Unchallenged Political Behavior ( autism awareness myths are protected)


As I said in that post:


"In that politics is the behavior that influences government, when that behavior is unregulated and unchallenged by others, it is corrupt. The biggest threat to United States citizens has never been the lack of democracy, but instead it has been the belief in the myth that the political system in some way resembles democracy. In fact, it does no such thing. If more people had this regularly brought to their attention, there would be a public outcry for things to change. As long as industry is opposed to this type of public awareness, and they control the airwaves as well as the elections, many who would challenge traditional corruption are provided an environment which allows and encourages them to ignore it."

The political arena in the United States has not allowed the disabled population to have a say in the laws that affect them. This has been much worse for disabled people who are considered that way as the result of brain dysfunction, intellectual impairment, or psychological maladjustment. Because this group is seen to not have the ability to reason our liberties continue to be prevented.

The way this is openly done by political groups who claim to be championing our cause is that they only listen to the smallest elite part of the population who presents them with the types of difficulties that can be conveniently dealt with so that they as a group can compromise the rights of the majority in the name of political expediency and make their name and their mark as a valid and important group.

The continued lack of respect and rights for autistic people has nothing to do with mainstream advocates not working hard enough to champion our cause nor is that respect an overly simplistic ideal that is changing incrementally. Instead it is the result of all advocates either going along with the mainstream or feeling they must compromise in traditional ways and be nothing more than better than the worst.

Anyone coming to this blog looking for the writing of an authority on anything or an ideology they can follow won't find that here. My goal has always been to advocate for autistic people being allowed to do the things I have found to be what we need to do in order to have more respect and rights in society. If I ever spoke for anyone else or spoke with the claim that I had some kind of specialized knowledge I would need to begin qualifying everything I say in terms, such as "I think" and "I believe" and "it is my perception that" etc. I would also need to speak in terms that are politically accepted in the mainstream so that I would not be excluded from it and be more respecting of personalities with significant titles and positions than of others. I have no intention or motive to make such compromises.

There are plenty of other places to go on the Internet for such information and such politicking. Here I advocate for thinking and listening to people who haven't been trained by the mainstream so that ideas rather than what gets arbitrarily declared as "truth" can be better evaluated. The declaration of truth is the biggest threat to knowledge and understanding.

I advocate for people on the Internet, who are asked support ASAN as well as everyone they claim to be representing to have an opportunity to question them. At this point, that questioning has been strongly discouraged.

The idea that an advocacy group should be supported because it is better than another has been behind how advocacy efforts go unchallenged and our rights continue to be unrecognized.

As I said in my last post:

"It's not necessary to speculate about what opportunities the mainstream political groups is interested in providing the majority of people. The way to judge their motives about such things can be done by watching the way they treat questions from the elite minority who are privileged to have an opportunity to question them. If this population is treated badly and informed discussion is discouraged it seems logical that the broader population who is traditionally and systematically prevented from entering these discussions are thought to be insignificant and burdensome. Encouraging others to be more respectful and give more rights and opportunities to a population (which is how political advocacy is defined) that you yourselves find insignificant and burdensome would indeed be a difficult task. Hiding the fact that you're doing this is politically expedient, but it's the type of politics that needs to be guarded against the most."

One of the ways to understand American politics is to see how our decisions are guided by the mainstream media and how democracy and free speech are discouraged. Those who are in the elite group who have an opportunity to question those decisions are prohibited from doing so by the industries who control the mainstream media. Since these people are prohibited, it's reasonable to believe that the restrictions on the majority are even more strictly enforced. Being a part of the group who is seen as insignificant and burdensome won't change by learning to compromise and continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils. It will only change when people commit to values that are against evil.

In the same way that the autism community is but one community, the United States is governed by a one-party political system rather than two.

The following is a video that describes our mainstream political party and how it is disguised as accepting a much broader range of views than it actually does:

Unchallenged Political Behavior ( autism awareness myths are protected)

The degree to which a government has the interest of the majority as its primary concern is shown by how much opportunity they attempt to provide everyone to influence government decisions. If it doesn't aspire to provide everyone (or at least the majority) that opportunity it is by its very nature attempting to encourage oppression, avoid ethics, and misbehave. By never committing to a single set of standard behaviors that they as the government will continually be required to follow, might is always the declaration of right.

In that politics is the behavior that influences government, when that behavior is unregulated and unchallenged by others, it is corrupt. The biggest threat to United States citizens has never been the lack of democracy, but instead it has been the belief in the myth that the political system in some way resembles democracy. In fact, it does no such thing. If more people had this regularly brought to their attention, there would be a public outcry for things to change. As long as industry is opposed to this type of public awareness, and they control the airwaves as well as the elections, many who would challenge traditional corruption are provided an environment which allows and encourages them to ignore it.

Recently, I attempted on this blog to discuss how ASAN (a political advocacy group in the United States promoting the rights of autistics) might affect the laws concerning autistics and weather autistics and others invested in our welfare should have more freedom to question them without the threat of consequences for doing so. The typical political demands of this group have included limiting that conversation to where their leaders discourage any questioning of how the group operates. It is typical for too many political advocacy groups to aggressively discourage independent expression.

Autism Awareness is a political campaign which has sought to raise funding for genetic research to prevent the birth of autistic children, funding that encourages the fight against the vaccine industry for crimes they have not committed, and has allowed for unethical treatments that harm autistics to continue.

Unfortunately, there is now the myth that everyone involved in autism politics in the US are not working towards the same goal. However, for that to be true, ASAN (being the source of that supposed alternative) would not only need to state their goals in formal political terms, they would also need to open a discussion in the places they seek support (Internet locations). They would need to be willing to discuss political decisions in nonpolitical ways for people (which makes up the majority of people they claim to be representing) who don't speak that language.

I have never seen anywhere on the Internet another political group countering the goals of ASAN and yet the leaders have promoted the claim that those who question them are part of a countering group that opposes their own. This is done in order to promote the perception that questioning what they (ASAN) do in the name of promoting autistics rights is an enemy tactic that deserves their punishment.

As I have often described on this blog, most people in the United States are not educated and are often punished based on the claim that educational opportunities are provided to them. Falsely describing everyone as being in the same category as wanting the same things and having the same opportunities to attain them is the oldest form of political oppression as well as (unfortunately) the most effective.


It's not necessary to speculate about what opportunities the mainstream political groups is interested in providing the majority of people. The way to judge their motives about such things can be done by watching the way they treat questions from the elite minority who are privileged to have an opportunity to question them. If this population is treated badly and informed discussion is discouraged it seems logical that the broader population who is traditionally and systematically prevented from entering these discussions are thought to be insignificant and burdensome. Encouraging others to be more respectful and give more rights and opportunities to a population (which is how political advocacy is defined) that you yourselves find insignificant and burdensome would indeed be a difficult task. Hiding the fact that you're doing this is politically expedient, but it's the type of politics that needs to be guarded against the most.

Dinah Murry Questions the Practices of ASAN

A letter was posted here  by Dinah Murray in response to an earlier post on that site (this one).

Thank you Dinah

The letter is written very well and expresses what I feel needs to be said. It deserves to be treated respectfully so I am copying it to this blog in appreciation of what she has written.

The practices of ASAN are not being allowed to be questioned. They as a group seem unaware of the political mistakes they are making by attacking people who question them. This is unfortunate as well as unjust.

I am but one person and I have but one vote. I would like to protect that vote (which sometimes becomes just self protection) and wish that those who are now the silenced majority would be encouraged to voice their opinion in the matters that affect their lives.

There are too few representatives speaking on behalf of too many and it's even worse that they are attempting to reduce the number of voices that are now speaking, which will send a message to others that there are consequences for getting involved.

This is what I have always seen as the biggest threat to peoples self-esteem, and ultimately it has the worst effect on the number of opportunities they have to better their life's circumstances and become more respected members of society. It is that goal on which I focus my advocacy efforts.

Here's the letter:

"Victims of bullying are often blamed for what they have suffered.  People on the receiving end of defensive behaviour from the victim forget the power imbalance which led to it.

Power imbalances arise either when people are functioning as a gang/clique or when they have power for other reasons - or both; in this case, both.  In this case also some innocent by-standers and would-be supporters have been caught in the turmoil and seen as on the other side, in a way that has been hurtful for them.


As a result, some (as seen here) have turned nasty on Michelle, who consistently continues to defend her position regardless of anyone's feelings, though she is never abusive.   This not about her ego (as has been suggested) it's about correctness and justice and not letting go: traits often associated with autism (along with the tendency to disregard others' feelings), IMO.


Imagine watching someone constructing a wooden table and seeing they are making it non rectangular at a leg join - you would surely want to tell them so they wouldn't waste labour creating a wobbly structure?   I would want someone to tell me if I was the inaccurate carpenter.

That is the impulse behind a good argument: create solid reliable structures in a joint enterprise which can then be leaned on by anyone.   It is a matter of getting it right so future actions are soundly based.  I submit that is what Michelle repeatedly tries to do.  Accuracy and justice on this occasion have a personal bearing: that is hardly her fault!

Misunderstandings happen, and are more likely to happen when one is feeling upset. There's been a lot of upset about and I reckon we should all 'cut each other some slack'.    But there is no misunderstanding that Ari Ne'eman is capable of being a bit of a bully, and he was certainly using rhetoric to build up and disseminate an inaccurate, harmful and negative picture of Michelle, as a result of her unwillingness to adjust her views or her statements to what he saw as essential long-term aims.

I have a bit of personal experience of being put under some pressure by him.  In the circumstances it was a warning signal to me that this is someone who may put political expediency first, at the expense of constructive action to benefit the people he purports to represent and help them truly represent themselves - however admirable his organisation's long-term goals are.

Ari is also charming, a good speaker who knows how to talk the talk, and a brilliant networker.  In addition, he and others appear to have done a certain amount of "smoke and mirrors" stuff to make his outfit appear bigger and more representative and popular than it really is: this has been highly effective.

You may well say that all the above are essential qualities of effective political activity, and perhaps they are.  But part of the responsibility of a leader of a political organisation in a democracy must be to truly represent a genuine constituency.

In my view, ASAN needs to work harder at widening its base and becoming more genuinely representative of more autistic people.  This is a problem faced by people trying to make local autistic rights movements effective all over the world, including here in the UK. - In a way they have to start with "smoke and mirrors" in order to get any attention at-all in the political arena.

This is a regrettable but also a seductive process, and it behooves all political organisations to avoid its allure to the maximum, and work on connecting with their 'grassroots' instead so as to be truly representative.

Neurodiversity' activists everywhere should take these matters of democracy and participation very seriously indeed in my view, and actively begin processes that will enfranchise the inarticulate and excluded.

This is a key reason why many of us over here and elsewhere prioritise getting information and communication technology to people who don't speak effectively to meet their needs (www.autreach.it).

Dinah"

Never Normal Enough

I was recently reminded of why I blog about neurodiversity and what that word means to me.

The word neurodiversity now becoming a word to symbolize a political movement reminds me of how the worst abuse of psychology is described as psycho surgery.

Psych means mind and surgery is for the removal or fixing of something in the body. Since psychiatry was the natural evolution of the intended goal of psychology it began to use stronger methods of physical restraint. The brain is the focus of mental illness. This allows for a narrower focus on standardized behavior.

This along with urging everyone to specialize in a particular field and have them then only getting anything outside their profession done by someone in that particular field of specialization to do it puts the ultimate squeeze on diverse thinking and diverse types of thinking. Fewer people can understand the recipe if they are only adding a single ingredient.

Add standardized academic test that sends misfits to prison along with emergency room politics and then there will be fertile ground for oppressive leaders to commit evil.

Emergency room politics in the United States refers is the acceptance of a hierarchy similar that of the hospital emergency room. In that emergency room, the doctors do the least amount of work and their word is always the ultimate deciding factor. Of course the big corporations who run the insurance companies have the ultimate authority but they stay even more hidden than the doctors.

Everyone else in an emergency room is left deciding who deserves the earliest and best attention and the patients are left in an anxious and chaotic state of thinking in terms of how they are the more deserving based on having the greater need than those who are treated earlier and better.

Emergency room politics also fits well with identity politics and how people who should be working together isolate themselves and compete with one another, which ultimately serves the oppressive treatment they claim to be fighting against. MLK tried to warn against that but he nor anyone since could persuade the Democratic party to let go of this deceitful and oppressive tactic.

Surgery in the U.S. became popular with the invention of anesthesia that made it possible. This also allowed for the widespread misleading claims of western medicine, which claimed a disease like cancer was cured by extracting it from a specific location from the body. In the same way that research hospitals such as National Institute of Health has financial interest that prevents it from looking at alternative approaches, The National Institute of Mental Health has been a leader in researching methods of behavioral modification.

For neurodiversity to be discouraged the ideal of normal must serve commercial interest and be backed by political agents. Industry and politics cannot afford for the ideal of normal to include very many people. Therefore, normal must be unattainable only given to a minority of people.

When Hitler was trying to promote the superiority of the Aryan race he made the best argument for the claim of race never truly existing. He claimed that human features which were best able to achieve greatness could be measured by science. Then he also claimed that these features were predominantly among Aryans. The problem with this is that as time goes on fewer Aryans can be factored into the average so that superiority is a never-ending competition and the winners will ultimately become suspicious and attack those whom they had originally considered their equal.

The slave trade was justified in the United States by claiming that a particular race was less evolved and therefore, only partially human and more prone to violence and disabled people are judged in a similar way.

The ideal of the best is really behind what is considered normal and therefore, normal can only be as valid as superiority or inferiority is validly  judged. When people are trying to promote a narrow view of success they are faced with the limitations of what humans can actually do. To inflate the illusion, they must promote a wider description of failure.

This makes it so that anyone questioning the ideal that everyone is encouraged to strive for is judged by whether or not they should be a leader. A thought-provoking question is discouraged because people are encouraged to be followers. Therefore, anyone challenging normal must either be the new leader (Aspie supremacy comes to mind) or cut down to the ranks of submissive followers. Once everyone is a follower someone who questions anything official can be seen as a disobedient follower and therefore, be punished accordingly. If someone's motivations are not to become a leader the claim is projected onto them anyway. This sets an example to discourage people from accepting themselves as they are or believing that anyone but standards setters have the right to judge them.

Our society is now so prone to being unable to identify with the objects and virtual images we praise as what we need to strive for that the majority creates its own neurosis and shame based on the focus of a mythical creature they can never become.

The video found in the following link is an example of the objectification of women for commercial advertising. This teaches people to be bitter, angry, and resentful about what they can never attain. The myths of progressive engineering are aided by technology that teaches people to focus on the illusions that enslave them. Normality is not only the praise of something that is unattainable, normal isn't normal (as in average or representative of the majority) at all.

Every Girl Should see this

Autism Awareness is a Myth

I hope that the Autism Awareness campaigns will not continue. There is really nothing good that comes from them. While the campaign has been successful in raising funds for scientific experiments to try and cure autism and for promoting specific treatments, there are commercial interest with political support behind this, which does more to create the negative stereotypes which are the biggest cause of abuse.

There are people with original ideas and creative encouragement for autistics and certainly there are autistics living healthy productive lives and average lives worthy of respect but mainstream politicians aren't interested in that. Commercial and political interest is based on need so advertising achievement of anything positive is often contrary to the goals of people wanting to promote those interests.

There were people on the internet promoting alternatives to the mainstream view but many of the websites I felt were helpful are now only encouraging ASAN and their political agenda. They are involved in typical politics without regard for honesty or integrity. The people who promote these advocacy groups are mainly interested in the sport of politics and power-based networking rather than in creating better opportunities for people.

It is good for people to get involved in trying to change things, and I think blogging is a good way to do that, but I hope that people will be careful of a widespread myth that there is an autism community on the Internet but that it is divided.

Actually there is only one autism community but is not divided. The one that is represented on the Internet is truly representative of the entire community. This is very exclusive and elitist in the same way that the disability community is. Very few people are represented and most people who are affected by what the community does are never heard from.

A blog such as this one is irrelevant to the autistic community. To be relevant to that community people have to only describe the current political system as progressively working to make things better and enter that system by avoiding issues that are important to the majority of people. Instead they must in true political fashion berate peoples character and encourage sensationalism and backstabbing while discouraging any type of independent thinking that questions mainstream beliefs. This is how people show their true commitment to politics, which is the basis of the autism community.

Mainstream politics is oppressive in a similar way to the behavioral programs I have written about. They both create narrow definitions of human behavior so that all people can be considered to be motivated by the same things. That leads to everyone being judged in the same way so that diversity is discouraged. Each person is defined by how close they come to the official definition of normal. This hierarchy keeps the elite leadership from being challenged.

Actually, the idea of denial is based on a myth as well. What is considered denial is actually a very important part of everyone's mind and popularity is mainly the deciding factor for what anyone believes. I'm reminded of this every time I hear the term awareness associated with a concept which is used to exclude and oppress people who are vulnerable to the abusive rules and regulations which are created in the name of truth.

Autism awareness is worse than insignificant because it is masquerading as being used for promoting truth when it's really nothing more than a campaign for promoting psychology and politics by using traditional psychological and political oppression.