The Standard Review

The Politician's Perspective of Autism

When I'm around people a lot that perceive the world in a particular way, and when I take that same perspective, I see myself as worthless; it's important for me to remember that is only their perspective, and that I'm better than that. The particular perspective I'm referring to here is that of a politician. I don't believe that it honors anyone else either, but it certainly attempts to at the expense of myself and many others.

I was recently reminded just how narrow the vision of politicians really is. It’s easy to forget sometimes when the volume of their voice drowns out reason and compassion. It reminds me, of how I can look at the sky when I’m in the city and forget that the reason it’s blue is because most of the earth is covered by ocean. While we as humans may depend on the ocean to survive, it doesn’t require our involvement. Most of what people do in relation to the ocean does more to hurt than help it and most of the ways that people get involved in policy making hurt rather than help those who are claimed to be the beneficiaries.

Autism is something that affects people’s lives but once people begin discussing policies regarding those with the diagnosis; their minds travel into a strange and brutal realm where people, and their needs must be ignored so that politicians can participate in their sport.

People cease being people when what policy which will serve some group of people is decided in something resembling an athletic event. Money and rank are what makes someone less vulnerable, and these are the tools which are used to decide what policies are best for those who are most vulnerable due to their not having money and rank. Therefore, the best anyone can do in a political arena without the proper equipment (the money and the rank) is to find a way to side with the least exploitive team or accept the type of exploitation that is the least objectionable.

A politician will define themselves as pragmatic and describe anyone who challenges the traditions of politics as overly idealist and naïve. This protects their position at your expense. Unfortunately, it also protects the traditions which are harming the majority of people and instead of encouraging dialogue, which could lead to a better understanding of needs, the politicians become more aggressive toward anyone with a unique perspective when their own mistakes become more apparent.

Unique perspectives will also be defined by politicians as selfish. Solidarity is all that preserves their position so anything that is different must be defined in terms of the way it ranks accordingly. The only thing anyone can be seen as is someone competing with leadership in order to lead people in a different direction. By default, this direction represents to them a threat so it must be described as dangerous and the person, of course, must be defined as a villain.

Sometimes politics is nothing more than a fashion show. No one can survive the whims of political fashion without either becoming a bully or a victim of bullies. It's usually a combination of the two.

In this arena, the needs of the autistic person are decided by people who will assume a political position whatever that position may be. They will claim that nothing important occurs from outside the political arena. This ultimately defines those who are outside as also being outside the group that is important. If you are not important, you will not be seen as worthy of having your needs met. Politicians who claim otherwise are often trapped in a maze. Their own exploitation is foreign to them so the way they exploit others escapes their vision as well.
 
"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house " ~ Audre Lorde

We can either try to understand and accommodate people and find more ways to include them, or we can find ways that we can out rank them and show that they are insignificant. The ranking will always exclude those who are fashionably less popular, but fashions change. The more practical alternative choice is also the most compassionate.

People are more important than their tools. That includes the tools used to liberate them. If the realm where people are supposedly being liberated isn’t involved in listening to them, learning what they think and what they need because they are seen as worthy of thinking and deciding for themselves, the perspective this realm promotes will most likely cause them to be ranked as also not being worthy of having their needs met.

Acceptance and Murder

Recently, the mainstream media has once again depicted murders of disabled people in a completely irresponsible way. Both George Hodgins, an autistic man, and Daniel Corby an autistic boy, were killed within the past month. Rather than only suggest how unfair the decision of those who ended their lives was similarly to the way other murders are reported; the focus was instead on how these people’s burdensome disability must have contributed to their killer's choice.

It is wrongly assumed too often that our culture is sophisticated enough to demonize the disability without doing the same to the person with the disability similar to the way some describe hating the sin but loving the sinner. Despite each individual’s spirit, we as a culture cannot safely assume that the way we depict particular disabilities will not encourage abuse and even murder. For we who are targeted in this way, the correlation between the two is obvious.

Despite the popular impression of how our justice system operates, people with disability and inconvenient cultural diversity aren't treated very differently than criminals. In fact, there continues to be many opportunities to the people with the power and inclination to do so, to criminalize the ways the people of these categories are different.

Convenience is the most valued commodity for many people, and therefore, it is often also the most exploited. Unless the category of people you are defined as fitting is seen to help create more power (or at least the illusion of more power) for the most powerful people; those people are probably working to create laws that will encourage the belief that you are a burden on society.

The categories encourage a place, and a duty for every individual based mainly on how they are seen to add value or the lack of it to the collective. The leaders of industry have the power and opportunity to set these laws which determine your place and therefore, your supposed value. Having a disability means that your ability is completely inconvenient for them. It means that you are seen as needing care and therefore, the care giver (and similarly, the rest of society) will be seen as deserving sympathy for having to tolerate you.

One example of how cultural exclusion was made legal in early America is the way that physician Samuel A. Cartwright defined the desire of a slave to be free as the psychiatric disorder called drapetomania. Black slaves were defined by law as only partially human, and it was claimed that their skin color indicated less sensitivity to pain. This, of course, made their physical punishment appear less cruel so it could then be applied more severely.

The harmful ways the reputation of the medical establishment lent credibility to the descriptions of slaves in order to protect the financial interest of plantation owners is similar to how people with disabilities are cruelly defined by the main-stream media in order to only promote the value of care givers rather than those described as their burdens.

Today slavery in America is mainly only described in terms of our history. However, although the ways that utilitarian attitudes are encouraged may appear more subtle now to most, we still have some extreme ways of discriminating and punishing inconvenient people that our mainstream media refuses to accept responsibility for. Our industry leaders demand that the media continue spreading propaganda, which shows people whom the leaders find inconvenient to have no value at all.

Despite the promises of finding causes and cures for autism, there is little proof. The fear of having to deal with the burden of the autistic person encourages people to treat autistics in the worst possible ways. The spread of lies about our lack of empathy, contributing to financial burdens, and divorce of our parents is what has truly reached epidemic proportion.

The people who can’t understand and appreciate people’s value beyond the strict utilitarian view that industrialists encourage through the mainstream media shouldn’t be involved in promoting societal values. I hope that everyone who does appreciate people's value and can avoid these unfair judgements will work to end the harmful lies being told.

Ability isn't more important than happiness. Besides, emotional stability is an essential foundation to learning. Therefore, nothing is more important than how disability is viewed. If someone's value isn't understood; it's the result of an oversight. To view it otherwise ensures that we as a culture soon won't have enough compassion (which is our greatest resource) for our species to continue.

Disclaimer :I give my permission for this post to be reprinted in order to raise awareness of this issue.

What They Don't Say About Us

The most important thing I've learned from newspapers, television, and the Internet is that only a few people are being discussed. Most are thereby defined by this discussion as insignificant. Of course, the standard for a persons significance is constantly changing because the people which have the distinction of being important need to maintain the illusion by exclusive means.

In the discussion regarding diagnosis such as autism, I believe that nothing is more important than finding more ways to include the voices of people who have been disenfranchised. As I see the leadership in the United States has recently voted to launch more powerful weapons in the war against the poor, I'm reminded that nothing defines the economic poverty more than disenfranchisement, and a behavioral diagnosis is similar to a box that allows others to place you on a shelf where you can be more easily criticized and ignored.

The most critical problem I see with this exclusion is that when people begin to advocate against it, they tend to set up a similar standard. This becomes even worse when the methods of exclusion are copied from those who are described as opponents of their goal. Political agendas often become more important than the people the agenda's leaders claim they are aiming to help.

So much of our culture influences the belief that success is always earned.The way this is taught tends not to include the details of how our standards of success are based on commercial branding.Too often the belief leads to the humiliation and distrust of people who fall below the standard. Most are even ignored altogether as a result. Unfortunately, the standard is rarely explored and criticized, and therefore, many myths are maintained and used as weapons.

This makes learning how to encourage each other very difficult. We tend to imagine a commercial price tag on every human attribute and expression and rank each other accordingly. Many expressions which could be accepted and even celebrated as eccentricities are instead judged as substandard. This encourages recovery and overcoming of too many aspects of the human experience. It even happens to such a degree that it can lead to us forgetting how to enjoy life and appreciate each other.

Our guidebook of standards is like a product catalog that ranks our worth similarly to the way price tags are used. We then can't appreciate each other appropriately and because the value is seen in such a narrow context, our communication is very limited. Therefore, since we tend not to trust what we don't understand, we become unnecessarily defensive rather than empathetic and compassionate.

The cultural divide many of us experience is very real. It's important to recognize how these divisions occur so that realistic solutions can be found. To avoid acknowledging this often encourages simply another political agenda that widens the gap even further and excludes those who are in the biggest need of inclusion. The problem with identity politics isn't identity, it's the politics.

Human communication always includes labeling and ranking. Although the writers of the DSM and the industry that supports them cannot be trusted to do what is in the best interest of the people who are diagnosed based on their suggestion, I can't think of any system of labeling and ranking, which deserves unreserved and unregulated loyalty and trust. We can, however, use any label far beyond the intentions of those who have formed standards, which create harm.

Too often, people who are caught by the predominant labeling and ranking systems get ranked as insignificant and are therefore ignored by people with an anti-labeling political agenda. This is very unfortunate as well as unnecessary. Advocates can instead use what others meant for harm (or what became harm due to negligence) to empower an otherwise disenfranchised (and unrepresented) group.

Being involved in a society that is so driven by consumerism and bombarded with commercial images has a way of teaching us as individuals that we are also products. What is implied indirectly is that our cultural standard for significance defines most people as less valuable than the food and water we consume. If we as a culture don't begin to recognize the standard and the subtle ways it's taught, we can't begin to combat it.

Viewing things in a different way shouldn't lead to being excluded from discussions. In order to have a more inclusive society, we need to encourage more people to express themselves in diverse ways and thoughtfully consider a broader set of options. In this way, we can begin to introduce new ideas and show less interest in standards, which are designed to empower only an elite few. What these few would like to hide about the rest of us is important to understand, and we are important to everyone's future.

Activists Compromising Everything

 

Every time activists in the U.S. have sought to reform the mental health/developmental disabilities/ mental retardation/etc. system, their efforts (which always became compromises) ultimately strengthened the system and made it more difficult to stop.

Dorothea Dix came along when a change was obviously needed and set a president for how reform was to take place. Mainly, this reformation put the determination of rights for those mainly affected by the system in the hands of political opportunists.

 The response to the public recognition of the abuses in places like Willowbrook included the creation the Protection and Advocacy agency which protected the system from being independently investigated.

In the same way, that sterilization was originally sold as a right, forceable institutionalization law are sold as the way to ensure that those who were in the most need of care could be assured adequate support.

Today it's obvious to those who are treated the worst by this system that it was never designed for their benefit but is instead an unfair weapon in the class war for allowing the judicial system to incarcerate misfits and promote the careers of politicians.

There is no mystery in why such low standards are used to evaluate science regarding autism or why the pharmaceutical companies have  started a new propaganda campaign to promote their new products due to the ritalin campaign getting old.

Of course the behaviorists are getting away with more abuse than ever (including murder) and the solution is described as impossible due to the severity of the behavior problems. The abuse is being exposed mainly by those who are advocating more formal integration of standard behaviorism in schools by using laws that claim that children will be safer.

A class war is determined by hierarchy. The people at the bottom of the ladder know very well how the system works and are listened to the least. If you don't yet see that compromise is not an option it's mainly because you aren't at the bottom yet. However, if you review the history of the system and analyze how quickly the system is expanding to include you, you'll understand that either you or someone very close to you soon will be.

MacNeil and the Unawareness of Autism in 20011

 

During Autism Awareness month of April 2011, Robert MacNeil promoted his perspective of autism on television. I'm sure Mr. MacNeil's views on autism will be popular and well received but unfortunately there will be little if any nuance added to this mainstream view that traditionally prevents the educational and vocational opportunities for autistics and promotes the fear campaigns that encourage the worst stereotypes.

In the same way that the views of groups like Autism Speaks and the funding campaign efforts of the Jerry Lewis marathon are exploitive and disabling, the oppressive nature of the psychiatric industry and other medical abuses will go practically unchallenged due to the influence of commercial advertising. Anyone presenting rational alternatives and attempting to discuss practical ideas in a non-threatening environment will be either attacked or co-opted so that the issues which are important remain polarized.

Politics, political agendas, and bullies (and the politics and political agendas of bullies) consistently discourage rational views from being expressed on the internet whenever issues that concern disability are discussed.

This is a tradition that has always provided an ample opportunity for greedy politicians and corporate executives with an insatiable apatite for power to determine the policy that affects people with disabilities and encourages exclusion and negative stereo types.

My impression of online discussions is that we as a society are losing our ability to trust our neighbor, and we often tend to objectify and stereotype each person we meet. This begins by polarizing every discussion and seeing alternative viewpoints (however slight) as a threat to our self-esteem. It's difficult to know what we really believe because our thinking is so attached to the image we display and who we are that an objective view of our expressions is impossible.

Of course there will always be a mainstream view of what autism is ( MacNeil is just one celebrity who will present this narrow view) and due to unregulated commercial advertising and the impact it has on the views of people who want to "make a difference", nuances that are more accepting of diversity will be practically absent from the discussions where that view is presented. However, commercialism and mainstream politics is not what determines the truth. If we truly are interested in becoming a more accepting culture that is promoting diversity, we will find more ways to encourage the voices of individuals without regarding their category or status to determine the value of their expressions, and we will find value in what we hear them say.

Important People

 

In order to create and/or maintain a closed society the people in command must control the information AND the entertainment. The messages that get regularly reinforced will teach people to believe that there are limited resources which more important than many of the people who use them. In other words, that some people are worth more dead than alive.

One group need to believe that they are entitled and therefore become active in their community and in politics so that what they see as their rights will be preserved.  The other group needs to be shamed into believing they are unworthy and taught shame-based behavior. This confirms the beliefs of the first group and keeps the second fighting among each other rather than uniting and working for change.

If exclusion was just the result of flaws in the system, the plans for change would be practical and possible and more of them would be implemented. Until more people who aren't being favored are allowed to make unique contributions to society  so that they believe they are worthy of inclusion and the rewards that follow, they won't honor and respect any of their so-called provisions. Even worse, they won't feel that way about themselves or anyone else.

Closing a Community

 

The main reason for the problems related to inclusion, and supportive environments are due to people seeking answers from community builders rather than from the disenfranchised. Myths and presumptions about people who don't fit in are too convenient and are rarely challenged.

I can tell you from what I've witnessed and experienced that this problem is epidemic and leads to some of the worst of what is consistently dismissed as "societal ills." I don't know more about this than anyone else does, but I know more about it than I do about anything else.
 
People are so concerned with being part of a group or designing one that appeals to them that they never concern themselves with how exclusive they are or how badly people are hurt by it. It all just blamed on peoples unwillingness to conform. Diversity is too often a commercial brand that does little more than encourage identity politics and the very attacks (the bullying) which is claimed to be what people are attempting to prevent.

The People's Choice

 

Of course bussiness as usual in the U.S. must be disrupted because it's corrupted and the stagnation that has resulted is stinking.

The folks at Pennsylvania Ave. don't need to hear more from U.S. citizens or from more of U.S. citizens in order for needed change to happen. We can't make them care. Our society is trapped by some kind of pathological belief that we can and should change politicians, and that is accompanied by a co-dependent slave mentality that makes us fear challenging the status quo.

This combination glorifies bullies and gang wars, which are politely described in terms of identity politics. It encourages everyone to micro manage each other based on standards dictated to us by corporations (mainly the psychiatric industry which coordinates efforts with our judicial system) and be disgusted by the diversity we're taught is a weakness while apathetically awaiting a miraculous savior to grace the oval office.

The method of operation in our current government is such that the corporations in command of our political system have a responsibility to their stock holders to  oppose caring when it interferes with profits.

The people who care are the people who can change things, and they don't have those financial and political limitations. They are the ones that need to hear our voice and the disenfranchised need to be empowered with something as old-fashioned and trite as kindness at every opportunity. That kind of change doesn't come from Washington.

If you don't see how you've been held hostage, pimped out, or otherwise exploited by the Democratic party based on Republicans being worse then you are either part of the problem, or you aren't paying close attention.

Change happens in the minds and hearts of people. When people are empowered to think they change what they believe, how they feel, and ultimately how they act. When enough of that happens the government will have no choice  but listen but until then they have nothing to listen to.

Liberation is Never Free or Easy

Liberation is never free or easy and often only a few people need to get a little of it for them to declare everyone's battle won.

The most dangerous threats aren't advertised as opposition but are instead disguised as solutions.

What threatens democracy most isn't the opposite but something that gets accepted as that when it isn't that at all.

Often the term personal responsibility is used as a weapon of shame against the disenfranchised in order that the advantaged networks can avoid being responsible.

Those who encourage unity as being optimistic and hopeful typically have the least to lose if a radical change isn't demanded.

Very few people actually have, what is often referred to cavalierly as, the "right of free speech". If those of us who have the privilege to whatever  small degree don't use it to provide more people with it, we will be providing the people with the most, the opportunity to take it away from us all.

Autism and Imagination Deficits

 

When evaluating how well people are able to perform, behave, or learn it would be practical to include an evaluation of the teachers and those who are available to provide an example. These factors are typically not included in the evaluation as much as they need to be and the cycle of burdening those who are most convenient continues to harm everyone's future.

For several decades a community established by and for persons with disabilities has attempted to raise awareness that disability is natural. The alternative view has been the standard and continues to stifle the growth of our communities as well as the broader society.

It would be helpful if labels that describe deficits or a stage of someone's learning was used to provide more support and accommodation. Unfortunately, however, instead the growing industry of psychology(which encourages the psychiatric industry and adds to their corporate earnings) does more to isolate, disenfranchise, and prevent opportunities for the people who are labeled.

This article " Social skills in autism 'improved when patients choose own activities" indicates that research shows the child with autism benefits from choosing their own recreational activities. As simple and obvious as this sounds, the fact that it is even researched and reported is a reminder of how the public is unaware of the dehumanization mainstream commercial autism campaigns are encouraging.

Psychology is a product of the glorification of societies scholastic achievement process and is used to rank people accordingly so that the people who are already powerful pursuant to the advantages this system has provided can be portrayed to the public as having earned this elevated status.

People are not ranked as having a disability, deficit, or less than the standard rate of learning so that society can be altered to provide them with more opportunities. Instead the ranking (whether expressed as pity for their inferiority, disgust for their character flaws, or it's used to blame someone or something for making people appear less valuable or more by the contrast) of people by psychologist and school officials is a method of exclusion.

 
 

Much of the inappropriate behavioral treatment for autistics is not understood as being that due to false impressions pursuant to fear campaigns that justify teacher abuse and advocate their less severe forms of punishment and restraint rather than to abolish them.

This accompanies claims that most treatment deemed inappropriate is excessive rather than unnecessary. This prevents people from looking very closely at the core issues which need radical alteration and encourage them to make the unnecessary political compromises as though that's their only choice.

As a society, we seem to overlook the futility and often destructive results from our constant commercial based ranking of everything  and every person as well as every aspect of them.

The majority of people compete for a small fraction of the world's resources based on claims that we are either more deserving of privilege or accommodation due to our superiority or the severity of our need while allowing a greater percentage of resources to be hoarded and wasted by an elite few who then use their advantage to exploit us.

Insults, bullying, and most of the unnecessary fighting that results from our futile system of ranking is not due to any one being superior or even believing themselves to be. It is instead due to the fear of our own inability and weakness that we have been fooled into believing we can hide from.

We're taught to avoid the competition that causes us shame by making someone else look worse so we don't have to risk the defeat which is possible with attempting to become better. This is similar to accusing others of something that appears worse than what we've done in order to avoid appearing guilty. This is completely unimaginative as well as counterproductive.

Weakness and vulnerability in others are not what stagnates human progress. It is also not the weakness and vulnerability in ourselves. It is instead the needless fear and shame we associate with having to face our weakness and the risks involved with trying to do better.

Of course autistics do better when provided with choices and opportunities. Everyone does.

Others may claim they choose someone's (child, student, disabled, elderly, etc.) activities because that someone needs it and isn't wise enough to make their own choices, but it's often just more convenient to do so. Being given an opportunity to make choices lead to better understanding, more confidence, empowerment, and ultimately better choices.

Furthermore, when people use clinical evaluations to describe a behavior without considering how the language is insulting it alters the direction of future research as well as shape public opinion, and the group being researched is less empowered as a result. No one is helped by that.

The claims that autistics are less imaginative have been associated with similar claims that we lack a theory of mind and even empathy. Rather than seeing how different sensory experience might make people even more sensitive (although expressed differently) to the emotions of others, society's commitment to ranking has instead encouraged negative stereotypes. This has led to unnecessary blame in relationships and even unjust suspicion of violence when statistics don't support the claims.

The survival of our species is dependent on the acceptance of diversity, which includes weaknesses in others as well as ourselves. People are weaker or stronger, younger or older, and have a variety of different symptoms and deficits that range in severity. We as humans are perfectly capable of making decisions as to how we can accommodate and empower each other (and protect ourselves if necessary) by evaluating any given situation with any number of diverse human expressions that are present at any given time. Too often our judgement is impaired by attempting to apply a fatally flawed system of ranking to a situation rather than accepting what intuition would otherwise make clear.

When we choose to face our weakness, we are better able to appreciate all the good and bad that life has to offer and by accepting life on life's terms, we can enjoy living, laughing, and loving a lot more. Fear and doubt are what inhibit an imagination and circumstances are not what decide those things. We can all do better by making better choices.