The Standard Review

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.

Improved Behaviorism and Worse Behavior

Policy makers and their supporters claim that people's behaviors are becoming worse. More specifically they claim that children's behavior is becoming worse. However, these same policy makers and supporters are claiming that behavioral products, and the techniques are advancing.
 
For the purpose of my focus here; whether their evaluation of behavior is correct doesn't really matter. My point is the claim behavioral conditioning is advancing or that the products are become more sophisticated and humane doesn't fit how the attitude toward the people receiving them is becoming more desperate. This desperation is causing more severe and dangerous methods of control along with those who implement them often becoming less empathetic toward those receiving them.

The behaviorists in the U.S. are involved in turf wars, which include how Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) is marketed. The kinder and gentler Positive Behavioral Support (PBS) is being marketed by some as the answer to outdated and no-longer-appropriate "old school" ABA. However, the foundational principals set by earlier behaviorists who found ways to market the application of this new science provide the newest products their legitimacy. Now that it's been established that people don't possess what their treatment harms, there are fewer objections.

You of course can't read much about how the entire approach of behaviorism is inappropriate at best and very dangerous at worst because there is no market for such criticism. In the same way that the mental health industry is designed to improve the lives of everyone but the one who receives treatment, behavior modification is evaluated by those who live with, educate, and implement the treatment rather than those who receive it. This means that professionals and other authorities are prohibited from knowing the harmful effects as well as prohibited from sharing views that would harm the marketing potential of the product.

It's important to understand how those who receive behavior modification are trained to be compliant. Therefore, it's likely that someone who would otherwise tell how abusive the treatment has been will be concerned about the likely punishment that results from doing so.

The work of behaviorists could not become more humane during the same time that the lists of types of people who are seen to need the service is growing, the behaviors being treated are seen to be more severe, and the laws which provide protection for the treated are increasingly aiding the treatment providers with protection instead.

There are reports that advocacy efforts have increased during this time. However, this has not been nearly sufficient to meet the demand  for the protection needed. While institutions over the years have added carpet and air conditioning, this has been disguised as and substituted for the needed protection against abuse. Furthermore, protection agencies which have been developed during this time have primarily provided more power to a specific subset of parents of children with disabilities while providing the disabled with powerful sounding names like consumer as a substitute.

More people are being incarcerated now than ever before and there are a broader set of laws for which they can be punished. Behaviorists work toward providing children with particular grades and labels, which will determine their path at earlier ages. Their goal is to have more rules (and have only a single set) and have them be applied to a broader set of people. It's ideal to believe that morality and ability won't be lumped together, but it's not practical.

The same type of marketing specialists who promote Fruit Loops and Apple Jacks by using fruit names and describing how including oats will benefit your heart will use positive names and the endorsement of well compensated scientists to sell behavior modification. Until or unless those who receive the treatment begin to be consulted and continually monitored and questioned as to its effectiveness and potential for abuse, you can be sure that along with better behaviorism you are buying sugar-coated law enforcement at the expense of the heart, mind, and soul of the most vulnerable people.

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.

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.

Obsolete

In the past half-century, technological advances have become an increasingly dominant aspect of the global economy. As technological manufacturers have taught us it is impractical to repair our networking devices, we have adopted the belief that humans are composite of efficient or defective independent parts, and that we can be evaluated accordingly as valid or invalid.

Now that the majority of people are serving the enterprise known as science, in one way or another, the corporations which dominate this field have become a political force that works together with government to control as many aspects of our behavior as possible.

We are taught the central nervous system which is most active within the space between our ears is an end unto itself, and that we must submit to the scholastic theories of psychologist and psychiatrist so that our thought processes will be adjusted properly. We've learned to hyper-critically micro manage each other and quickly devalue any diverse expression that deviates from what the current leadership has determined to be the norm.

Medical models are dependent on behavioral treatments that propose to chemically alter the brain structure. These are researched by using the least valued public as expendable products (human lab rats) so that valued workers are more easily manipulated, and the elite are provided with more comforts.

In addition, many among the labeled community aren't exposed to the way that all these specific labels of a learning disability, developmental disorder, psychiatric condition, or psychobiological disorder practically vanishes for most people who are among the class which is least valued once they are institutionalized. In such environments the abuses of control are justified either by the person in care being considered unable to control their actions or unwilling to submit to authority.

Most of what we are taught are cures to the incorrect configuration of our brains or the maladjusted way we respond to our environment doesn't exist in any other way than how close our expressions come to a standard that was set to glorify the characteristics which are most comfortable to the people in positions of leadership. All sorts of atrocities are committed and justified by the claim that it is done in the name of science, progress, and the common good.

The most outrageous and harmful treatments and attempted cures are justified through the sophisticated fear-based advertising campaigns that describe cases of severity. The biggest deception of these campaigns is the exploitation of severe problems. While people with the most severe cases are shown as the reason for more research into cures and treatments, they are not the ones who benefit from scientific discovery.

Instead, in addition to the exploitation, they typically get described as beyond repair, aberrant and unwilling, too old, or that the main problem is due to poor character.

The way severe neurological disorders may contribute to a violent response has never been advertised in order to provide a better understanding or treatment for the people who have them. Instead, in a very few cases it gets accepted in the judicial system as an excuse (which then gets little if any attention or aid) and the belief that these disorders are associated with violence mainly provides justification for incarceration and harmful treatments based on the presumption of guilt for the undesirable and inconvenient public.

If our attitudes about people don't change so that we accept more diverse expressions as valid and important the sophistication of our technology and scientific research will go to provide worse treatment and even more widespread abuse. This is the current trend despite claims that science is leading us away from our barbaric ways.

The design for the cure attitude exhibited in the way it's advertised was never meant to provide more people with aid or understanding and eliminating competition certainly won't make the already accepted any stronger. Unless we focus on acceptance first and gear scientific research toward helping people whom we are already willing to accept as valid regardless, the result will be more expressions, which are shown to be inappropriate and more people who are thereby defined as obsolete.

Compulsive People Fixing Disorder

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There could never be an official diagnosis for Compulsive People Fixing Disorder (CPFD). It just wouldn't be appropriate for this disgraceful behavior to be focused on in an open and honest way. To do so would challenge too many established authorities and too many traditions that preserve their power. If it was officially recognized as inappropriate or morally wrong, how could boundaries be set for the diagnostic criteria and how could the treatment specialist prove that the application of their technique didn't reflect their own symptoms?

People without the disorder would be healthy but so out of step with others that whatever  inconsistencies could be identified from their conduct would be heavily scrutinised, magnified, and micro-managed. Over comers of the disorder would quickly relapse when they tried to help others overcome using traditional therapeutic persuasion.

People who consistently operate only within the realm of control won't recognize healthier options because to see and understand that requires trust. Trust and control are exclusive behaviors.

This is a serious disorder (unofficially of course) and affects more people than any other. Our cultural expectations in personal and business relationships have become dependent on controlling and fixing due to how we have established this thinking as a societal norm for the sake of convenience. This encourages people to be cunning, manipulative, and harshly aggressive in their relationships and the convenience ultimately demands a very high price.

http://diversityrules.typepad.com/.a/6a01053625d752970c0133f2271c80970b-320wi

The exploitation of people with disabilities and supposed weakness plays a vital role in how our society operates and there is not much effort made to challenge tradition. Too often people want things to change without the discomfort and conflict that accompany challenging the core issues and attitudes that support the harmful policies. We are taught that to attempt such things show us to be uncompromising, noncompliant, and unreasonable. It's more convenient that we show the established authorities, that we are ashamed of what they call our weakness and grateful we have been spared an even worse treatment.

As long as we as a society depend so heavily on control to solve everything, we will have less trust, which makes control something people are even more dependent on in an unhealthy way and there will need to be harsher and stricter methods.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Go9AIfGp7lw/SncKjS4UCaI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/9pcp2tHPn5I/s400/800px-SalemWitchcraftTrial.jpg

Trust may resolve many confusing and ineffective relationship patterns but depenance/control just leaves people feeling betrayed, which encourages contempt and bitterness in the treated person who then won't be committed to the process.... Besides diagnosis, treatment, and therapy for social inappropriateness isn't designed to empower the one who receives it. It's designed to give better control to established authority and to upset, confuse, exploit, and exclude people with inconvenient expressions of diversity, so that the abuse they receive will appear justified to the valued/voting public.

The Protected Community

Learning different perspectives of American history reminds me that much of the leadership problem in the past century resulted from a distorted view of community. The philosophy involved seems to liken a community to a chain and the metaphor that describes the philosophy is: "a chain is only as strong as the weakest link."

Such thought designs are contrary to creative and innovative thinking. In a chain, each link serves the same purpose and can therefor be appropriately judged by the standardized test for strength and ranked accordingly. However, it's not natural for people to provide this convenience, and it's dangerous to attempt to demand it.

Unfortunately, many aspects of society are influenced by this type of thinking.

When the goal of a community is for individuals to have no other value than the way they serve it, it will either seek to be efficient, which leads to extreme and unreasonable methods of exclusion, or it will seek to be inclusive in convienient/pitiful-based charity ways, which ultimately lead to the same conclusion.

If you give people something to do that is seen as having no particular value, that value judgment will ultimately extend to how people themselves are seen and societies exclusion and elimination of them, which will simply be more covert and nuanced. When the community doesn't recognize this exercise in futility it can be much worse than if they did, and were seeing the need to address it.

This thinking is particularly detrimental to the respect and dignity of persons with disabilities, and it lends itself very conveniently to unnecessary behavioral standards and their strict enforcement.

The absurdity is never so clear as when this affects advocacy related to autism. Some have even suggested that there is an autism community which of course is impossible. The way to ensure that negative stereotypes about autistics continue and that the political system remains unchallenged so that educational and vocational opportunities are unattainable to the majority is by keeping advocates involved in club activities and meaningless personality-based debates.

When one person exploits their advantage for deciding public policy by using the claim that whatever a publicly recognized authority presumes is someone's severity of symptoms (or lack of them) is the way to distinguish their right to voice their view rather than evaluate what the view is, and someone else argues, the environment is effectively stagnant and progress is impossible.

It's the same with someone who describes causation and another who refutes the scientific evidence or someone who suggests that regulating an abuse of persons with disabilities in jails, mental institutions, and schools with federally mandated behavioral programs is an appropriate compromise. There's no way to judge scientific evidence or the sincere concern for individual welfare of the people involved in policymaking if people are aware of the corruption that tends to rule how these systems operate. Even so, these personality/popularity contests are what often pass for Internet autism discussions.

I can't imagine how anyone could trust the compromises and incremental alterations that are made by policymakers with regard to the rights of persons with a disability when the negotiation chambers for policymakers are patterned identically to the way of our judicial system.

The two party system defines much of how people debate issues. It presupposes that compromise is imperative and limits our choices. As long as each idea can only be ranked by the narrow context of how it compares with another, which can be influenced in an unlimited number of unfair advantages which we're forbidden to discuss, we are hostage to the stagnation and exclusion that the leadership defines as progressive.

The idea that the United States operates with three separate branches of government is misleading. Our judicial system in all its forms is a futile exercise in a political debate, and it's rare that an idea which isn't presented by someone who has been identified as a player/compromiser within the system is ever considered.

Of course intelligence is judged by standardized test, which was designed by people who were mainly interested in population control/eugenics. Of course there is a streamlining of the labeled schoolchildren to expedite class divisions, institutionalization and disenfranchisement and prevent challenges to the top-down elitist control. Of course the US medical system is completely chaotic and harmful to most of the public. Of course that medical system is primarily funded by the sale and distribution of mind altering drugs that are introduced  to schoolchildren at an early age to provide teachers with more control.... we aren't taught that we can trust the average public citizen like we do the policymakers. Therefore, if we can't trust the public they will have to be controlled rather than risk any challenges to the status quo (which were taught is progressive).

We can't make all our decisions with convenience being the top priority and expect to maintain any type of security. People act more chaotically when they have less encouragement to think and when thinking is suppressed through intimidation, exclusion, and a constant barrage of images that encourage immediate gratification and hopelessness for the sake of community and solidarity, there will of course less trust and more attempts to regain a sense of control through violence.

People can't keep feeding the monster they want to destroy. Effective change requires that we radically broaden our acceptance of diversity in order to strengthen the community rather than continuing to be unfairly exclusive for the sake of protection and security. It's important that more people understand how few people are actually represented in the policy decisions that are made, which govern their lives and how wide the realm of disenfranchisement extends.

If people are thinking, they will find more ways to be compassionate and inclusive but if convenience and distrust are more important we will recognize more types of uselessness, and the only creative thinking will be used to find methods for exterminating the excess. These danger affects everyone and thinking for solutions is imperative.

Competency on Trial

 

 

Societal arrogance, prejudice, and exploitation are never more evident than when a formal court trial is used to declare a person's competency. Judges who preside over these trials are in no way believing that the sentence they issue has anything whatsoever to do with the persons ability or lack of it, to act appropriately or provide for themselves. This process is strictly an extension of the psychiatric industry and the institutional mentality. It reflects how the corporations/insurance companies have been able to trade what is still described as the service they provide in exchange for these customer referrals.

It is practically impossible to dispute the corporate ties to governmental agency in these matters but no one directly involved ever tries. The way that society strictly enforces competency judgments in the informal ways dictates to the judicial system as well as the industry that there is no reason to be concerned that their deceit and miscarriage of justice will ever be challenged.

It really won't matter much if people who are more widely recognized  refrain from using terms such as retarded or even retard if we continue to recklessly toss about ridiculous and unfounded allegations of incompetence the way we do with terms such as idiot, moron, stupid, and uneducated. All of these terms were created to support the glorification of a very narrow standardized scholastic achievement test. This is a system of ranking and the goal of those who benefit from this is for people to take their focus away from what they are learning and what they don't know, and ignore the discouragement they get from trying to understand their environment in order to instead remain hostage to the social games for cutting each other down and tearing apart each other.


The earliest recorded use of the north American continent being used by Europeans for institutionalization date back to shortly after the invasion of 1492, which is flatteringly referred to as when the "settlers" first arrived. The plantations were set up to use slave labor, and the slaves were brought or natives were captured for that purpose. This was the beginning of a political and judicial system that depended on an institutional mentality.

One example of how this is continuing is by laws, which are made for status offense.

"Status offenses may include consumption of alcohol, tobacco smoking, truancy, and running away from home.

These acts may be illegal for persons under a certain age, while remaining legal for all others, which makes them status offenses.

Status offense may also apply to other classes, including laws forbidding ownership of firearms by felons, where such ownership is otherwise legal.

Laws that prohibit certain actions to certain persons based on their sex, race, nationality, religion, etc., are also status offenses. A law that prohibits men from using public toilets intended for women, or a law that prohibits the use of a drinking fountain by people of a given race, or a law that sets a curfew for people below a certain age, are examples of status offenses, although they are not always thought of as such."

In similar fashion:



"During the mid-1600's, the colonies began to pass laws called slave codes. In general, these codes prohibited slaves from owning weapons, receiving an education, meeting one another or moving about without the permission of their masters, and testifying against white people in court. Slaves received harsher punishments for some crimes than white people. A master usually received less punishment for killing a slave than for killing a free person for the same reason. Slaves on small farms probably had more freedom than plantation slaves, and slaves in urban areas had fewer restrictions in many cases than slaves in rural areas."

 

I see no indication that the laws in the United States are ever relaxed so that any person with any class distinction can be judged more fairly. Instead when there are nuances in the laws it typically indicates a contradiction and provides more authority to the law enforcement which supports oppression.

It says here of a formal competency evaluation:


"In the United States criminal justice system, a competency evaluation is an assessment of the ability of a defendant to understand and rationally participate in a court process.

Competency was originally established by the Supreme Court of the United States as the evaluation of a defendant's competence to proceed to trial.[1]

In a subsequent ruling, the Court held that that an prisoner facing the death penalty must be evaluated as competent to be executed, meaning that he must be
capable of understanding why he has received the death penalty and the effect that the penalty will have.[2] In further rulings, competence was also enlarged to include evaluation of the defendant's competence to plead guilty and competence to waive the right to counsel.[3]"

AND

"The American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Mental Health Standards stated in 1994 that the issue of a defendant's current mental incompetence is the single most important issue in the criminal mental health field, noting that an estimated 24,000 to 60,000 forensic evaluations of a criminal defendant's competency to stand trial were performed every year in the United States.[4] Although estimates vary, a 1973 estimate put the number of competence evaluations at 25,000 to 36,000 each year. There are indications that the number of evaluations of criminal defendants is rising. One comparison of estimates between 1983 and 2004 suggest the annual number rose from 50,000 to 60,000 criminal competency evaluations respectively.[5]" "

Mental health agencies in the United States worked very closely with drug enforcement agencies in order to justify the class war falsely labeled "the war on drugs". The newest agency being used to confuse the distinction between recreational drug use which is not sponsored by a government approved and subsidized pharmaceutical company and criminal activity is SAMHSA (The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration).


This agency has been used to promote the recovery model which blurs the line between self-improvement and the responsibility that accompanies being an individual and that of mandated responsibility from a judicial agency which is used to permit corporate irresponsibility. Although several recent court hearings have found compulsory attendance for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as a condition of parole to be unconstitutional, this continues to be a typical practice for judges.

In the same way that Henry Ford used publications for spreading anti-Semitic propaganda and socialist values that aided his company, Randolph Hearst used similar means for settling labor issues by publishing false information about the dangers of marijuana use and its relation to racial minorities and crime.

That's described in this article:

A highly disproportionate number of black and Hispanic people in the United States are tried, convicted, and sentenced for drug charges and are similarly abused by the psychiatric system. The scholars in Europe such as Sir Francis Galton encouraged this miscarriage of justice.  Galton defined race purification and population control as eugenics based on the work of his cousin Charles Darwin. Drapetomania is the name of the psychological disorder which shows the intentions of the most revered American doctors such as Benjamin Rush. Samuel Cartwright, a student of Rush, established psychiatric label, Drapetomania:


"Cartwright described the disorder — which, he said, was "unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers"[4] — in a paper delivered before the Medical Association of Louisiana[5] that was widely reprinted.

He stated that the malady was a consequence of masters who "made themselves too familiar with [slaves], treating them as equals."[6]

    "If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away." [7]


Psychiatry evaluates the degree to which someone is behaving normally based on statistics from people who accept a list of character flaws that comes with a psychological label and enables them to receive medication and therapy.

This says of the classification of mental disorders:


"The widely used DSM and ICD classifications employ operational definitions.[1] There is a significant scientific debate about the relative validity of a "categorical" versus a "dimensional" system of classification, as well as significant controversy about the role of science and values in classification schemes and the professional, legal and social uses to which they are put."

To whatever degree, any of this is discussed within an academic environment, it does not change how the labeling of the persons intelligence quotient, psychological profile, and heritage are used to determine a person's human rights as well as their potential liberties.

Judge Rotenberg had a behavioral treatment research facility named after him based on his ability to use his position of court judge to show how autistics would seek aversive treatment to cure their malady if only they were competent enough to do so.

It says here:

"While this litigation was taking place, in late 1985 and early 1986, JRC brought one of its seriously self-abusive, autistic students before the Bristol County Probate Court for a substituted judgment hearing that was held by Chief Judge Ernest Rotenberg. After hearing testimony on both sides of the issue, Judge Rotenberg determined: (1) that the student was incompetent to make her own medical treatment decisions; and (2) that the child, if competent, would have chosen treatment that included the use of the aversives that JRC had been employing, prior to the decision by the administrative judge. This substituted judgment hearing was the same type of hearing that was required in Massachusetts for individuals for whom agencies wished to employ psychotropic medication (or other intrusive medical procedures) and who were incompetent to make their own treatment decisions."

What had to happen is that in order to sustain the belief that children are born broken and need fixing by state-sponsored institutions psychological labels need to be used in the same way that they had previously been used on slaves based on the claim that the means for their treatment was justified by the end result and that they were not competent enough to choose what was best for their own welfare.


When people today think of combating autism it would be helpful to remember that:

"In 1961, President John F. Kennedy created the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation and called upon America to address the significant needs of people with intellectual disabilities and their desire to be a part of everyday life in America. The Panel submitted its first report, “Combating Mental Retardation,” which led to Congressional action to establish new programs for people with intellectual disabilities, including hospital improvement programs."

This article decribes very well a trend that has occured since then:

New Down syndrome test could increase ‘eugenic’ abortions


"Studies in the United States and the United Kingdom have claimed that as many as 9 in 10 unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.

Carol Boys, chief executive of the Down’s Syndrome Association in Great Britain, recently told the BBC that the less invasive blood test will make pre-natal testing safer and more common."

AND

“In the 1960s, we were told that legal abortion would be a rare tragic act in cases of exceptional hardship. In the ‘70s abortion began to be both decried and accepted as birth control. In the ‘80s respected geneticists pointed out that it was cheaper to hunt for and abort Down’s babies than to raise them. By the ‘90s that observation had been widely put into action. Now we are refining and extending our eugenic vision, with new tests and abortion as our central tools.”

Surveys of primary care physicians indicate that very few doctors encourage women whose unborn babies are diagnosed with Down syndrome to continue their pregnancies."

When describing Autism Speaks Eugenic Agenda, ABFH wrote this:

"But for the most part, they've managed to put up a somewhat plausible pretense of being a mainstream charity that just wants to prevent suffering, and so forth. Most of the material on their website is carefully designed to keep the public unaware of their close ideological affinity with the white supremacist agenda of creating a master race through eugenics. A casual reader might not notice a page featuring the views of Dr. James Watson, with whom Bob and Suzanne Wright had a friendly chat regarding autism genetic research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory:


autismspeaks.org/inthenews/wrights_cold_spring_harbor.php"

The Rottenburg center has aided other school's in providing them with the authority which encourages an atmosphere of abuse by being examples this kind of regulation manipulation:


"The Department of Education has the authority to approve private school programs for the purpose of providing special education to publicly funded school age students with disabilities.  Under this authority, the Department reviews the program’s educational components as well as its compliance with general health and safety standards.  Judge Rotenberg Education Center (“the program” or “JRC”) operates a program for students with significant disabilities in which it utilizes a behavioral modification program of rewards (positive reinforcers) and punishments (aversives).  The aversives used by JRC include restraint, electric skin shock (“GED”), and the delaying or withholding of food in order to decelerate problematic behaviors. 

Although JRC is licensed by two state agencies, the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) and the Department of Mental Retardation (DMR), it is under DMR’s authority that JRC’s use of aversives is regulated.  In addition to DMR’s regulation of JRC in this regard, JRC’s use of aversives with an individual student must be authorized by the probate court under a “substituted judgment proceeding.”  This means that for each student for whom JRC wishes to use aversives, it must submit to the probate court a behavioral plan that the court must approve and annually review.  In addition, the court appoints an attorney to represent the student’s interests in the court proceeding and the student’s attorney may request an independent clinical review of the behavioral plan submitted by JRC regarding the student."

Behavioral programs such as Applied Behavioral Analysis would never be considered an educational approach if it weren't for the school system equating appropriate and sophisticated behavior as equal in importance to the acquisition of knowledge. Nothing is more relative and practically useless than the labels society uses to declare a person's competence.

However, JRC is not the exception to the rule (although more is known about their abuses). This behavioral treatment center/mental institution/juvinille punishment and rehabilitation center can't be
 penalized or effectively requested to change until we look at how their methods are in keeping with the goals that progressive education has always maintained.


This describes John Dewey's aspirations for
 compulsory schooling:

John Dewey: Education Was Never About Learning

"(Makow) – No one has had a more pernicious effect on American education, and by extension the corruption of American society today than John Dewey. Born in 1859, John Dewey turned historic American values and logic upside down.

In Dewey’s view, the individual existed only to serve society. “Socialization” (i.e., the individual’s conformity to a group) was seen as more important than factual learning. This twisted view of education infected all of his work, resulting in a century of ever diminishing American academic achievement, with the resultant corruption of American society."

AND

"Incredibly, Dewey ridiculed the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, declaring that knowledge was only valid and worthwhile if “society” decided so.

If the Powers That Be (“society”) decided literature, or geometry, or chemistry is no longer a valid pursuit, but multicultural studies, minority oppression, and remedial basket weaving are, then the individual should have no alternative to that course of education.

Every virtue, including curiosity, resourcefulness, competitiveness, ethical conduct, right reasoning, rhetorical skills, logic and inventiveness — could be considered to be “vices” overnight if the Powers That Be (“Society”) decided they were no longer desirable."

 

I can only imagine that within a week of the introduction of compulsory schooling, parents began to compete with each other to show which of them, by producing offspring, had created a superior product. I'm sure that almost immediately one mother rushed out to put a bumper sticker on the rear of the horse that drew the family carriage which said," my kid made the honor roll." The neighboring parent chose to advertise, "my kids got autism, but I love them anyway." It must not have been long after that when some parent told the news reporter, "I would've driven my carriage off the side of a bridge if it weren't for my competent kids which would also be destroyed in the accident." It may have taken a little time, but I'll bet similar behavior began fairly soon after this age appropriate ranking system began.

People involved in progressive education politics often frame discussions in a way, which encourages the false belief that they are all looking for the best ways to include and provide for the majority of the public. It has never been this way and in the same way that the US political system is falsely defined by two parties in competition with each other, our involvement in these meaningless debates supports the myth of everyone being involved in a noble effort.

It's silly to consider someone to be superior (which is what positive labels of achievement or ability ultimately do) without considering the validity of the standard of measurement. If there is an agenda to provide some people with positive labels, they can then use to their advantage at the expense of most others that receive negative ones, then it's silly, arrogant, and a way to support and mimic corporate values to present your own label or that of someone close to you as being valid due to a fair standard of evaluation.

The people who are behind government decisions that use a person's success and achievement along with another person's lack of it as a means for keeping them hostage don't care about your abilities or your achievements and only present glorified labels to dissuade the public from looking too closely at the flaws in the system and challenging it.


The system can change. Diversity can be encouraged, and we can learn to empower each other. However, this will not happen pursuant to continuing to honor the system and its values which has been used to prevent our empowerment. The system itself was designed and is sustained as an end unto itself. Until we find an appropriate means to encourage our own individual creativity and redefine institutions as a means to our individual goals everyone (whether formally involved in the system or disenfranchised by it) will remain hostage to the inappropriate values it has taught us.

Public Relations and Fractured Individuals

 

http://diversityrules.typepad.com/.a/6a01053625d752970c0115708274ff970b-800wi

The choices people make regarding which cause they champion and how they champion it are too often decided based on the appeal of having an influence that more of the public recognizes rather than on what is most important and what an individual is best suited to affect.

The biggest dangers that accompany hierarchical values (which affects who's advocacy is considered valid) come from how people are falsely taught about equal opportunities. The royal views of the "chosen" advocates and politicians are often used to discourage alternative ideas, and they can support the same oppression these people claim to be advocating against.

Advocates on the internet are often reminded of the narrowness of how oppression is described and how few expressions that oppose that narrowness are recognized as valid. The way that neurodiversity is important tends to be hidden by those who abuse the term. As a narrow political agenda it has practically no value at all.

The speed at which information can be transferred today by the increasingly larger number of people provides both for the opportunity of liberation as well as the ease for how those with the most resources can instead exploit more people.

The way that people strive today to find what is considered the best information and the most popular way to express it is very much entangled with the ways that the richest and powerful people control the media and promote a set of standard values, which encourages how the public is pathologized and shamed in the interest of population control.

 

http://images.popcontrol.multiply.com/image/1/photos/upload/300x300/SX4zrwoKCB8AACkpsQ41/overpopulation.gif?et=Aam0IfgRf7TP7yjGHyDoeA&nmid=0

The expectation of responsibility is placed on the people with the least resources. Since they can't express themselves in ways that public relations specialist teaches as being best, what they say and do is ranked accordingly.

Disenfranchisement is the key to exploitation. Once someone can be described by a popular resource as inconvenient and disconnected from what politicians have declared to be an appropriate society, they can be declared an enemy and abused in a way that is justified in society as well as in the legal system.

It says here of Horace Mann:

 
"Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval from modernizers, especially in his Whig Party, for building public schools. Indeed, most states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers[1]. Mann has been credited by many educational historians as the "Father of the Common School Movement"[2]."

AND:

"Under the auspices of the board, but at his own expense, he went to Europe in 1843 to visit schools, especially in Prussia, and his seventh annual report, published after his return, embodied the results of his tour. Many editions of this report were printed, not only in Massachusetts, but in other states, in some cases by private individuals and in others by legislatures; several editions were issued in England. In 1852, he supported the decision to adopt the Prussian education system in Massachusetts. Shortly after Massachusetts adopted the Prussian system, the Governor of New York set up the same method in twelve different New York schools on a trial basis."

It says here of the Prussian education system:

History

During the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education, comprising an eight-year course of primary education, called Volksschule. It provided not only the skills needed in an early industrialized world (reading, writing and arithmetic), but also a strict education in ethics, duty, discipline and obedience. Affluent children often went on to attend preparatory private schools for an additional four years, but the general population had virtually no access to secondary education.

Lutheran influence

Historically, the Lutheran denomination had a strong influence on German culture, including its education. Martin Luther advocated compulsory schooling and this idea became a model for schools throughout Germany.

Pietist influence

Pietism, a reformist group within Lutheranism, forged a political alliance with the King of Prussia based on a mutual interest in breaking the dominance of the Lutheran state church. The Prussian Kings, Calvinists among Lutherans, feared the influence of the Lutheran state church and its close connections with the provincial nobility, while Pietists suffered from persecution by the Lutheran orthodoxy. Bolstered by royal patronage, Pietism replaced the Lutheran church as the effective state religion by the 1760s.

Pietist theology stressed the need for "inner spirituality", which can only come about through the reading of Scripture. Consequently, Pietists helped form the principles of the modern public school system, including the stress on literacy.


The political motivations of the King of Prussia

Seeking to replace the controlling functions of the local aristocracy, the Prussian court attempted to instill social obedience in the citizens through indoctrination. Every individual had to become convinced, in the core of his being, that the King was just, his decisions always right, and the need for obedience paramount.[citation needed]

The schools imposed an official language, to the prejudice of ethnic groups living in Prussia. The purpose of the system was to instill loyalty to the Crown and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy. As the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a key influence on the system, said, "If you want to influence [the student] at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will." [1


John Taylor Gatto[1] (born December 15, 1935[2]) is an American retired school teacher of 29 years and 8 months experience in the classroom and author of several books on education. He is an activist critical of compulsory schooling and of what he characterizes as the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions.

He has many educational videos on this subject which can be found on YouTube. This is my favorite and I think a good introduction to understanding what he teaches:

John Taylor Gatto - State Controlled Consciousness


“The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house”

 Audre Lorde


Radical change needs to occur for anything similar to the ideal of neurodiversity to be respected in the United States. Our school systems as well as the political realm where decisions are made about how it is run are designed to discourage neurodiversity in every way. The way to encourage it is to face the oppressive nature of how our present system works to provide for the elite at the expense of the majority. It's important to not be used by the system in a way that promotes and protects its tradition of oppression.

Take, for Example, The Judge Rotenberg Center

The government of the United States began with a mindset which strictly divided classes of people and made extreme demands of the lower class. Governing and ruling meant demanding obedience at the expense of trust and no one cared to be creative about how to motivate people beyond the use of punishment.

Unfortunately, people who are driven by ego in a place where the laws favor only those who have power often use what gets labeled as punishment for nothing more than the self gratification and the delusion that they are in control. This pathological need to believe that you are in control will continue to be the driving force of people in positions of power, until or, unless there are regulations to stop them, or they choose to find a more productive and fair means to motivate others.

The first corporations which used U.S.labor were slave owners who used punishment as a means of humiliation and control rather than any type of quest for justice. Today we continue to abuse our legal system and discourage citizen's from taking pride in where they live in very similar ways.

When people take the time to be creative and inspiring they will naturally want to understand others and will find gratification in their success.

Since punishment is unimaginative and ultimately unproductive purposed initiatives within such an environment will only lead to more punishment than reward, unless the entire mindset changes. It is the presumption that everyone is inspired in the same way that allows for and even encourages punishment as a convenient alternative to creative thinking.

Applied behaviorism became a popular treatment for autistic people in the US when many parents were offered no hope by the government and were therefore, willing to institutionalize their autistic children. As the institutionalization in America has continued to increase over the years' institutions that were originally considered to offer some sort of therapy and those which are simply punitive have become less distinguishable.

Recently, as reported by ABC news, the United Nations has declared the adversives being used at the Judge Rotenberg Center as torture and have asked our government to investigate. Now that behaviorists are attempting to present a more friendly image by renaming Applied Behavioral Analysis as Positive Behavioral Support and have all schoolteachers trained by that model the Judge Rotenberg Center may be a political hot potato that behaviorist want to disassociate from.


The problem is that the Judge Rotenberg Center is a symptom of a much bigger problem. While it absolutely should be used as an example of what the public will not tolerate in terms of abuse, and it should be shut down, the political environment that continues to encourage the thinking that has allowed for the abuses at JRC for so long needs to be investigated.

Statewide Positive Behavioral Support is part of an effort to more clearly define the merging of the school system and the judicial system. The agency that certifies people who are trained in Applied Behavioral Analysis have worked for many years to have ABA used to train teachers and students in all schools.

The DSM does not distinguish between behaviors that are done in private at no risk to another's safety and those that are done in public that do risk someone's safety. Furthermore, the police and the courts are allowed to use a formal diagnosis from the DSM to help or to hurt the accused.

The nicer sounding form of Applied Behavioral Analysis known as Positive Behavioral Support was recently falsely advertised as the answer to harmful restraints and seclusion in order to pass the bill HR 4247. I have even seen where people are describing Statewide Positive Behavioral Support as the solution to problems such as those which have been exposed at JRC. These claims are very misleading.

It's typical of such policies as incorporating statewide PBS in all schools that those who are worst affected are the most disenfranchised, so they will question it the least. The school systems are mainly exclusive so the vocal voting public (which is the minority of the population) will have their way. However, if the object of the school systems is to make the schools safer for those children who are valued (which is the minority who doesn't complain) the majority who is meant to be excluded will sacrifice their safety in order to provide it for them.

In order to present ABA in a better more appealing way(which the name Positive Behavioral Support so obviously is trying to accomplish), those who wouldn't have protested JRC in the past will now. It would serve their agenda of creating a new image to abandon those who have received a bad reputation.

James A. Mulick (supporter of JRC) and Erik M. Butter from The Ohio State University and the Columbus Children's Hospital wrote this paper called Positive Behavioral Support: A Paternalistic Utopian Delusion.


One of the points they make is that the popularity of PBS has grown partially due to the misrepresentation of the civil rights group known as TASH. If PBS had been held to scientific standards rather than resting on its political appeal the views held by PBS advocates as well as the program itself would be continually altering due to the ongoing questions which would naturally occur. It not being that way makes it anti-scientific, which is in total contrast of how it is advertised.

Whether or not the Judge Rotenberg Center is in keeping with the more prevalent standards of behaviorists or not isn't as important as whether or not the more prevalent standards are also allowed to be questioned.

In this post 9/11 age, the psychiatric industry is growing much faster than the questions about their practices can be addressed. Freedoms are being taken away at an alarming rate and our tradition of placing the burden on the weakest and the most vulnerable part of the population is naturally repeating since such little effort has been made to change our system of government.

The United States relies more on institutionalization than ever and the jails, mental institutions, and schools are creating more standards, which are interchangeable. Therefore, the people who fill these institutions are being recognized by government officials in more similar ways.

The Judge Rotenberg Center uses an uncommon form of punishment but the thinking behind it will encourage more of the same if not worse, unless more people are questioning the standards of behavioral authorities.

Allowing for a standardized method of behavior control/modification is not an area that any community should vote in solidarity for, unless or until it has been thoroughly scrutinized. Even then it must continue to be questioned and reviewed to prevent the kind of corruption that is traditional in our society.