The Standard Review

Autistic Prohibition

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Being able to participate in public discussions regarding autism, for autistics, is a privilege, and it shouldn't be. Most are still prohibited. Those who aren't prohibited, often have little opportunity to do more than support tradition while having to accept the accompanying degradation. This so-called privilege is similar to that of being allowed to walk on a well-manicured lawn while carrying someone's golf clubs and occasionally telling them how well they are playing.

It's convenient for consumers to accept that our system of finance and industry is corrupt or for those revered as taxpayers to accept that the government is catering to elite business owners. However, it is much less comfortable for people who aren't diagnosed and treated by the support system to accept that it was never designed to be supportive, and that it is instead oppressive.

Describing what someone needs in our society as a special need is a way of defining what they have to contribute as insignificant and therefore, labeling them as burdens. The people who support such oppression have investments in which jobs become available and how standardized tests are designed. They lobby for laws that provide more opportunities for privatised prisons, which provide the biggest corporations with slave labor, more opportunities for the pharmaceutical companies that sell more compliance drugs than any other product, and they support forced institutionalization of the mentally ill.

It is wrongly taught that competency laws are provided for the protection of the accused. Instead, these laws are oppressive and work together with culturally biased intelligent quotient (I.Q.) tests in order that certain people remain disadvantaged.

The behavioral standards which are used to diagnose behavioral disorders are not only made unreasonably strict and fund a large behavioral modification industry; they help to support the entire oppressive system which I have described. In order for this oppression to continue people who are considered to have special needs must be prohibited from public discussions that help determine public perception and policy that determine how they are treated. If the public wants support for people that need it in so-called special ways, they will begin providing them the right to participate in empowering discussions.

The Freedom to Express What You're Told

Whenever there is a discussion regarding the rights of people with neurological and psychiatric disorders, I hope to hear about the people who are prohibited from the conversation and how this prohibition is preventing the needed progress.

Unfortunately, this is rarely if ever mentioned.Again recently after a widely publicized violent act was committed by someone with a diagnosis, many described how support services needed to be improved. However, the voice of the people who need the services was not heard.

Part of the problem is that there is no recognized language for people who are hurt by the system to use which explains their experience. The system is designed for the convenience of the valued public which they are not part of and in order to be educated enough for your opinion to be considered valid you must learn a way of describing your experience which invalidates it.

It's terribly convenient for a support system which sets standards for morality and competence supposedly for the purpose of encouraging these to be able to use the standards to prohibit the recipients of that support from reporting abuse whenever the language they use is considered substandard.

It's outrageous to hear politicians suggest that the system discourage bullying, encourage diversity, and work to become more empowering. In such an oppressive system, bullying must be encouraged, new ideas and the people who have them must be punished, and only the staff can be empowered. In this way compliance becomes the main thing that is taught and abusing compliant people is considered justifiable.

In order to be heard, the talking heads must claim that progress is continuing to be made. Challenging what gets called progress is seen as a threat to the people who must be appeased in order to secure your status. In order for real progress to begin, everything about the current system must be challenged in a radical way and the people who are being ignored need to instead be heard and allowed to have an influence.

The Consequences of Counting Sheep

Knowledge may be power but in this information age, the race for such power is as corruptible as any other and bullies involved in this competition are just as likely to describe degradation as the way to encourage toughness. I often see examples on the Internet where those who are seen as highly suggestible or who lack sophistication or savvy are defined as cattle or sheep.

On the playground, this is similar to calling someone a sissy or highlighting someone's weakness in an attempt to show how someone else is strong or tough by contrast. Of course, this is encouraged in the classroom as a way to coerce people to comply with standard evaluations. This is why psychology became so heavily influenced by the philosophy of behaviorism and why compulsory education focuses more of encouraging the standards of behavior than anything else.

The name of this blog is The Standard Review. What I have attempted to describe is the way that cultural standards influence public policy and how unrealistic expectations can negatively influence our relationship with individuals as well as with our community. Almost every post here is tagged "social Darwinism." Herbert Spencer helped to make this particular cultural standard so popular. This is how Wikipedia explains Herbert Spencer's contribution to the theory described as social Darwinism:

"For many, the name of Herbert Spencer would be virtually synonymous with Social Darwinism, a social theory that applies the law of the survival of the fittest to society; humanitarian impulses had to be resisted as nothing should be allowed to interfere with nature's laws, including the social struggle for existence. Spencer desired the elimination of the unfit through their failure to reproduce, rather than state intervention to secure their physical annihilation.[26]

Spencer's association with Social Darwinism might have its origin in a specific interpretation of his support for competition. Whereas in biology the competition of various organisms can result in the death of a species or organism, the kind of competition Spencer advocated is closer to the one used by economists, where competing individuals or firms improve the well being of the rest of society. Spencer viewed private charity positively so long as it did not encourage the procreation of the unworthy, as he believed in voluntary association and informal care as opposed to using government machinery.[27]"

Spencer suggested that exclusionary and harsh standards would make the valued class stronger, but aside from how the less privileged are treated by it; I don't believe it strengthens anyone at all. Cultural standards can be used to discourage murder, rape, and other abusive acts, but they can also be used to define someone who isn't as skilled or capable as less worthy of respect and dignity. As someone diagnosed with autism who has been punished by the educational/training/rehabilitation/disability system for nearly a half-century, I see the values encouraged by the system to be mainly exclusionary and abusive in that way.

As much as people work towards creating better supports for people with mental illness and intellectual disability, they should also recognize that most people due to class status and disenfranchisement are simply just classified by the system as crazy and stupid and there's hardly a distinction between the two. It's convenient to claim that someone is inferior in the department of sanity or intellectuality due to moral reasons (for example, someone is described as willfully ignorant and/or choosing to be lazy), but it must be understood that the system which is supposedly providing them support uses those same moral standards which are based on nothing more than propaganda as an excuse to treat them as a subhuman species. Although this is deceptively advertised as support, it provides nothing but more unnecessary obstacles for those who are diagnosed.

The encouragement of overcoming is in no way separate from the fear which creates pity in terms of the treatment in this part of the population. The standard is not set so that no one will be left behind as it is advertised to be. Instead, it is set so that competition can be glorified and the abuse of those who are determined losers will appear justified.

It's important to recognize that anything and everything which criticizes someone classified as mentally ill, intellectually inferior, autistic, or with any variation or vernacular, can and will be used to further degrade everyone with such a diagnosis. Most everything we do is criticized and most anything that anyone of us does which society frowns upon is used to degrade the rest of us as well.

As an autistic, I wonder how anyone can believe that encouraging any type of cultural skill standards (standard of so-called appropriate or normal behavior, standard of communication, standard of so-called appropriate or normal response, etc.) can be seen as anything other than a way to encourage fear and degradation for what autistics do, which causes us so much harm.

Maybe people aren't smart or skilled in traditional ways, and maybe we go along and are naïvely accepting in a way that the savvy and sophisticated (otherwise known as the sane and smart) part of the population describes in the same way they describe the ways of cattle or sheep. However, it doesn't help anyone to show how others are less valuable based on their lack of ability. Furthermore, as I said earlier, lack of skill, naivete, and/or lack of emotional or mental stability is described as a lack of morality by the system which defines what skills are valued and which ones aren't.

It's important for everyone to use the skills which they have to perform their best weather that fits within traditional boundaries or whether the expression is completely unique. Doing your best is self-supporting as well as encouraging the strength of others. When instead, someone else must be degraded in order for others to appear better, the standard of degradation and unreasonable expectations is reinforced at the expense of everyone becoming weaker and everyone's contribution becoming less valuable.

Peaceful Discussions about Autism

In recent years, progress has been made due to people with disabilities becoming more influential in policies, which affect their lives. The Internet has allowed more autistic people to follow this example by becoming involved in discussions, which influence how many people see autism. Of course such progress does not come without a struggle.

Recently, I've heard people suggest that too many autistics have become involved in these discussions, and that either they are too capable of expressing themselves to have the right express how the public's view of autism, and the resulting policies affect their lives, or they are not polite in the way they do this. This is very unfortunate.

In general, the majority of news sources which influence public opinion are only providing a voice for a very few powerful people. Most people who are influenced by policies and by public opinions have very little opportunity to describe what they think and feel. Unfortunately, when they do they must express themselves in a very polite manner and what they say must fit within prescribed guidelines of political groups. This is how oppression and oppressive leaders are protected and how the needed changes are prevented.

There are plenty of billboards, news stories, and blogs written by fearful and worried parents, which describe autistics as a burden to be pitied and ignored. Of course, this objective isn't described overtly in what is said, but this is the result. However, no one but the people who are hurt by this description is truly in a position to explain the consequences of this dominant attitude. When such people who are hurt attempt to add their necessary voice to discussions in a way, which influences public opinion, they are blamed for being antagonistic.

Discussions remaining peaceful and quiet and the requirement that everyone who attempts to assert any degree of influence they may have, be too incapable of expressing themselves and too polite and naïve to have a valid opinion of what others describe as reality, will allow the traditional abuse and neglect to continue.

More autistics need to become involved in these discussions yet I mainly hear why the ones who are involved shouldn't be. The people who will become active and explain more of how the traditions have been harmful will not likely be able to express themselves in the required manner. The current expectations of peaceful discussions to them would seem like a demand that they accept the current problems and remain silent.

If people are interested in autistics having more opportunities and better lives, the requirements for becoming involved in discussions need to radically change in order to include more people. Otherwise those who have always made the decisions will continue to do so, and no improvements will be made.

Puzzling People

 
Using a puzzle piece as a symbol for autism awareness encourages the idea that our society is interested in support for autistics. Not only is this not helpful but the way the campaigners are falling short of the supposed goal is only the beginning how this causes problems.

Disability rights activists have done much to encourage a better view of disability but bigoted traditions are deeply rooted in our culture. The ways that pity is not only hurtful but dangerous is not something society's leaders have been willing to accept. If you describe a problem in order to provide a solution but then don’t provide one, you have instead defined the people with the problem as needing to be eliminated. This is what promotes autism awareness, and the abuse and neglect of autistics has been encouraged as a result of the campaign.

The puzzle piece symbol encourages people to believe that autistics are mysterious, and that we have some strange disorder. It's believed that there is an epidemic of autism similar to an alien invasion. The way our society deal with an alien invasion is similar to what is taught in science fiction movies. We attack with the goal of eliminating the aliens. Some would claim the goal is to eliminate the source, but this is not the way our culture deals with these issues.

Empowerment is such an obvious concept to people who need it most. It's similar to how someone who is dehydrated in the desert can envision water when there is none. In order to encourage inclusion, we must first accept that our society is not geared to include more people at all. The dominate goal is exclusion and disenfranchisement. When we are willing to accept that we are exclusive and that our traditions encourage presumption and bigotry; we will be in a position to work on changing it.

Similar to the way activists within the disability community have attempted to alter the ablism our society encourages, some autistics have attempted to use the Internet to alter the view of autism. The message has been ignored, politicized, and otherwise exploited in all the traditional ways. This is not only harmful to autistics but it's a sign our society is more willing to choose the convenience of hatred for any uncomfortable differences than to support people who exhibit the difference.

The more fashion conscious politicians would like to change our name, eliminate all labels, or only look at autism in a medical/professional way or for how policies are created. Unfortunately, all these ways of dealing with the how people are being exploited due to something that is disguised as support are following the same tradition of exclusion. Mainly, the people who are leading the way in what is described as a revolution are the professional politicians, educators, and mental health workers.

In this way, every attempt at supporting people’s rights have failed and there is no movement or attempt at revolution that we can follow. It’s wonderful that there are a few people now working to support  inclusion for autistics but there are many traps. We don’t need better advocates, and we don’t only need more. We certainly don’t need to show how some can pass the exclusion test or how autism is just a bad part of an otherwise acceptable exclusionary system. What we need is for more people who are advocating to embrace a type of advocacy that is truly revolutionary and one that unlike any other such attempt begins to create real inclusion. Otherwise, we will continue to be objectified as puzzle pieces and attacked as aliens. Any attempt at inclusion that gets co-opted by any group with a more important agenda will instead promote exclusion.

The Convenient Awareness of Autism

The Autism Awareness Campaign continues to mislead the public about the supposed beneficiaries in a way that is very harmful. There isn't much good that can come from making people aware that a specific group is in need of particular support or accommodation, unless there is also an attempt to provide it. Aspiring to make people aware of a vague goal (which is how I see these campaigns) without also providing the needed support will teach why the acceptance is instead harmful to the supposed important segment of the population.

I often hear people describe a better life which includes some types of people being seen as inferior and the wishes of these types are shown to be insignificant in many different ways. This is indirectly a way to define those who are the most vulnerable as having little or no value. Of course, these standards are always originally set by the least vulnerable people, and their justification is based on the claim that they earned the right to set them.

Overt exclusion is based on the view of limited resources but vague pity, and the subtle way that people are deprived of determining how they are treated also results from that type of view. The people encouraging the myth of limited resources aren’t doing so in order for them to have enough. They can’t comprehend the meaning of enough. They just want more. However, they can’t acquire more unless the rest of us adopts their values. We must engage in the same ranking system in order for their agenda to be realized. We are too many to conquer externally. This must be accomplished by each of us adopting an exclusionary attitude which ultimately serves our oppressor.

Too often the best effort is made only trying to show why yet another group should be accepted. This doesn’t address the more subtle ways that exclusion is accomplished and blatant exclusion is easier to challenge. Understanding and mutual respect are the resources we have plenty of and is the easiest to renew. This is unfortunately the type of resource that our culture sees as the most limited. Once something is seen to be occupying the supposed limit to the amount of time and energy for our limited supply of compassion; people won't seek to do more. 

We can't simply support the existing campaigns or hope that the acceptable people getting involved can alter the agenda. The approach that will make things different doesn't fit with the present one. The people who need to be getting involved continue to be seen as insignificant objects, which provide society with the sense their charity obligations are being fulfilled. Once people who need support are also seen as worthy of dignity and respect, we will begin striving for an inclusive society based on equality and respect. Until then, what gets labeled charity is serving the agenda of a few whose ultimate goal isn't charitable at all.

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.

Because We are Different than Them

My goal as a disability advocate is to challenge the current standards which are unfair. The need for this is shown in how both the words ableism and disabilism are used interchangeably.  Both are sides of the same coin (so to speak). It is because we live in an ablest society with unfair standards that we have people who are limited due to their inability to meet those standards.

Within what is referred to as the online autism community, the response of some advocates to unfair standards is not helpful. It can discriminate against autistics for no other reason than attempting to validate a few.

When people use the term autistic, it can refer to a diagnosis given by a professional. That can be extended to include more people and can be used constructively when it refers to a social rather than the medical model. However, once autism becomes Autism, a new set of standards are set in place so that once again some will be excluded and discriminated against.

The same is true for the word neurodiversity. It has so much to offer in the concept it can be used to represent but when it becomes Neurodiversity, lines are drawn and decisions are made as to who is and isn’t included.

When I hear people referred to as “my people” or “one of us," I’m reminded that the person using the term is no longer simply looking to include some people where they have instead been excluded or challenge the current standards; their goal is then to show how they can meet the standard and exclude others. This not only contradicts the moral reasons I believe that advocacy is necessary and important; it is impractical and won’t work.

Politics (the environment public policy is decided) is an extension of the law which demands more attention be paid to subtlety and nuance. There must be a method of differentiating between what roles, we who are in need of support need to assume, and ones we need to either delegate or make exchanges in order to obtain. Without recognizing this, autism politicians (both the autistic variety and the guardian) have built a wall (metaphorically speaking) around the arena where policy is decided, which excludes mainly those who are claimed as being the benefactors.

 "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."  ~Audre Lorde

I wish that the guardian portion of the online autistic community (the parent, professionals, presumed supporters, etc.) would realize that by following the medical model tradition of separating autistics into categories of levels of functioning and adhering to age appropriate standards, they create more unnecessary pressure on everyone. These standards were never meant to help the majority of people succeed, and they do more to demand unreasonable level of performance by a particular age and have people ignored or accused of abhorrence or laziness if they don't meet the standard. It also supports needless labels of high or low functioning in order to dismiss people so that they are conveniently considered unable or too disobedient to be taken seriously.

When a child is born with four limbs and twenty digits everyone will claim they are a blessing. Some mistakenly also believe that we as a culture can look at someone who doesn't as something other than a curse. I appreciate that many don't see things this way as individuals but as a culture, I don't believe we are so sophisticated.

As children grow the age-appropriate  standards begin to take their toll and fortunate children receive support while the less fortunate have their abilities categorized in terms of unable (which NEVER completely escapes moral judgments) and moral choices such as lazy and unwilling to be responsible. However, these standards were set by industry leaders who lobby for laws that ensure profits for their investments, and they influence mainstream publications that teach attitudes, which encourage bitterness toward each other among the less fortunate class.

The only reason most of us has any rights at all is because someone before us won that right in court. If your ability isn't one that automatically serves the industrial objectives, by default, your value becomes to them (and then our culture adopts this view) is the same as if you are disabled. These are the standards that determine disability.

Furthermore, being diagnosed with an ailment which is categorized as a physical may be the beginning of the support you need. On the other hand, being diagnosed with any abnormality, which is associated with behavior may instead be the beginning of how people other than your family are provided the right to mistreat you, detain you with less sufficient cause, and subject you to therapy, which has little scientific support.

Furthermore, in the same way as a church will dismiss and/or exclude those whom they find inconvenient as being in possession of bad spirits, medical professionals and therefore, other supports available to the general public will demonize a person who is considered to have behaviors that result from exposure to environmental toxins. Because people with a diagnosis that includes inconvenient behaviors are devalued in society, claims of disorders being caused by environmental toxins are publicized though they have little or no scientific support. Again, this also leads to more people being labeled as either high or low functioning and either will be used interchangeably in different circumstances to justify ways your rights are denied.

All this indicates to me that autistics need (based in part to the label and in part the behavioral differences that our culture will recognize as inappropriate) to have exclusive standards challenged. This does not mean that we need to make a place for ourselves (metaphorically speaking) at an already established exclusionary table. As long as we are working toward equality, there is a morality involved in our efforts, which will provide us with rights. However, if instead we create exclusive clubs and follow similar exclusionary practices at the expense of others in similar ways as what was done to us; I see little value in our efforts.

 First they came…

“"First they came…" is a famous statement attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.”

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Many during this were too willing to allow neighbors and even family to be persecuted because they were among those who initially passed the acceptance test. Unfortunately, when a category that defined them was also included as one which was seen as unacceptable, all those who would have been there to protect them had already gone. I hope this can serve as a reminder of how fragile our privileges are and how important it is not take them for granted. It’s important not to do things, which provide for what are considered our own rights, which ultimately come at the expense of someone else’s.

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.