I stumbled across this on zazzle. It's the first time I've ever seen the quotation and I find it rather inspiring.
"For success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential." -Hans Asperger
I'm going to make my own version of that quotation. I'm thinking of putting it into my blog header, too.
But here's another Asperger quotation that is perhaps more to the point of the month:
What is that, you may well ask?
Well, I'd have to say, if I were forced to explain my own role and generalize based on other aspies I know, it would be reality checking and social criticism. (Or systems analysis, looking at all sorts of different systems and rules sets.)
As children, our expectation that rules, strictures and diktats should make sense often gets us into a great deal of trouble, and as adults we tend to look back and try to make sense of it all.
But here's another Asperger quotation that is perhaps more to the point of the month:
We are convinced, then, that autistic people have their place in the organism of the social community. They fulfil their role well, perhaps better than anyone else could, and we are talking of people who as children had the greatest difficulties and caused untold worries to their care-givers.[3]Yeah. What he said. I perhaps might add that one's success may well be inversely proportional to the degree with which worry and difficulty translates into "interventions" designed to minimize autistic distinctions that serve our distinct social purpose.
What is that, you may well ask?
Well, I'd have to say, if I were forced to explain my own role and generalize based on other aspies I know, it would be reality checking and social criticism. (Or systems analysis, looking at all sorts of different systems and rules sets.)
As children, our expectation that rules, strictures and diktats should make sense often gets us into a great deal of trouble, and as adults we tend to look back and try to make sense of it all.
He [Asperger] followed one child, Fritz V., into adulthood. Fritz V. became a professor of astronomy and solved an error in Newton’s work he originally noticed as a child.
I can just imagine how well that went over in a properly Germanic pedagogical context.
Well, I imagine it was received about as well as criticisms of the revealed doctrines of ABA and Chelation Therapy, or the observation that a treatment that improves a co-morbid condition, such as gluten intolerance, is not therefore a "cure" for autism, or indeed, suitable for all persons with AS issues.
I suspect that the sons and daughters of those obsessively searching for ways to impose normalcy upon them will grow up to be an immensely productive disappointment to their parents. I know that my father's form of bigotry made a deep impression on me, and my personal disconnect between internal reaction and facial expression probably saved me many a beating, such as the day he informed me that he was a much more valuable person than Martin Luther King, because he, my father, was a blue eyed white man.
Yeah. To this day, racism strikes me as being indescribably stupid, the refuge of those with no better distinction than being a completely undistinguished member of a visible majority - and generally an example most other members of that majority would do well to exclude.
The tragedy, of course, is that in attempting to suppress what I was and am, my parents spent little or no time considering how to inform and empower my abilities, being focused exclusively on what they saw as my deficits.
Neither seemed able to understand why I was so ungrateful for the benefits of their tender concern, or my lack of interest in continuing in that same vein once I was legally permitted to ignore them.
Even so, I consider myself immensely lucky to have not "benefited" to the extent many persons on the AS spectrum have - and the rates of both suicide and homicide of autistic spectrum persons tends to grimly underline the dark side of "awareness."
For some, "awareness" promotes xenophobia, rather than compassion. When you see that reaction - dissociate yourself. Fear is contagious - and it does more to debase and destroy families and civilization than any degree of autism could. And I factor the cost of care into that equation.
Credit: Asperger Quote by jillgo4thWell, I imagine it was received about as well as criticisms of the revealed doctrines of ABA and Chelation Therapy, or the observation that a treatment that improves a co-morbid condition, such as gluten intolerance, is not therefore a "cure" for autism, or indeed, suitable for all persons with AS issues.
I suspect that the sons and daughters of those obsessively searching for ways to impose normalcy upon them will grow up to be an immensely productive disappointment to their parents. I know that my father's form of bigotry made a deep impression on me, and my personal disconnect between internal reaction and facial expression probably saved me many a beating, such as the day he informed me that he was a much more valuable person than Martin Luther King, because he, my father, was a blue eyed white man.
Yeah. To this day, racism strikes me as being indescribably stupid, the refuge of those with no better distinction than being a completely undistinguished member of a visible majority - and generally an example most other members of that majority would do well to exclude.
The tragedy, of course, is that in attempting to suppress what I was and am, my parents spent little or no time considering how to inform and empower my abilities, being focused exclusively on what they saw as my deficits.
Neither seemed able to understand why I was so ungrateful for the benefits of their tender concern, or my lack of interest in continuing in that same vein once I was legally permitted to ignore them.
Even so, I consider myself immensely lucky to have not "benefited" to the extent many persons on the AS spectrum have - and the rates of both suicide and homicide of autistic spectrum persons tends to grimly underline the dark side of "awareness."
For some, "awareness" promotes xenophobia, rather than compassion. When you see that reaction - dissociate yourself. Fear is contagious - and it does more to debase and destroy families and civilization than any degree of autism could. And I factor the cost of care into that equation.
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