In the wake of a violent tragedy, we feel scared. We wonder whether it could happen to us or our loved ones and we want to feel safe again. Taking action, any action, even that which is not likely to address the root cause, makes us feel better. And then we do stupid things.
After 9/11 we quickly ceded many of our most cherished civil liberties to empower our government to hunt down terrorists. The result was a massive concentration of power, removal of constitutional checks and balances and an immediate and ongoing abuse of those new powers in activities unrelated to terrorism. Weren't those freedoms and American ideals exactly what the terrorists sought to take from us? We took the wrong action and, as repeated reauthorizations of the Patriot Act reveal, it will be extremely difficult to take it back.
Now in the wake of the Newtown shootings, some are blaming Asperger's Syndrome and insinuating that the autistic population are dangerous. I worry that our urgent desire to take action, and our demonstrated disregard of whether that action meaningfully addresses the root cause, will lead to further needless harm and suffering.
As I see it, there are two root causes that we can address. The first of these I learned in school through years of constant torment from bullies. Although I didn't know about my Asperger's at the time, I had figured out that in social situations I need to consciously choose the appropriate response rather than trust my spontaneous reaction to be the right one. It's a bit of a chess game and I think a few moves ahead to figure out the same responses that neurotypical people intuitively arrive at.
Bullies maintain power through a willingness to escalate higher than their opponent. If I fight back, they bring a bat next time. If I bring a friend, they bring the whole football team. Think a few chess moves ahead and it becomes obvious that to win and do so decisively, I'd need to go all-in. To win their game, I'd need to be willing to kill and hope they are not a step ahead when we meet. I seriously thought about killing my tormentors publicly and gruesomely. I considered suicide. Although I spent a lot of time fantasizing and planning how I’d do it, neither of these seemed the right answer.
Instead I decided not to play their game by their rules. I simply didn't escalate, didn't fight back. I absorbed all the punishment they had to give and by doing so, removed their need to escalate and mostly kept the violence to a minimum. This eventually landed me in the hospital. Friends and family offered to go teach someone a lesson and still I did not resort to violence.
Taking action makes you feel better in the short term. Taking the wrong action makes things worse overall. Part of the root cause is our diversion of resources to things which make us feel better but don't solve the underlying problem. Asperger’s isn’t a mental illness, it’s a developmental disorder. The stress of trying to function socially in a neurotypical world leads to mental illness in some. The implicit characterization of the autistic individual as defective, rather than a difference in communication styles among equals, also contributes. Why is the neurotypical communication style “better” than mine? Because it is the majority? There’s been an explosion of new autism diagnoses. If we become the majority, will then it be OK to force you to conform to our preferred communication style? This is T.Rob’s Fairness Reciprocity Principle. If you would balk at living within your own proposed rules, you need to reconsider your proposal.
The second thing I've come to understand is best illustrated looking at the current state of politics, talk radio and fake news. We have propagandists selling their agenda, with no adherence to principles of journalistic accountability, and dressing it up as news. We have talk show hosts preaching the gospel of "Us and Them," teaching hate and that to compromise is to lose. The result, if you look at the Federal voting record, is that we are now divided almost entirely along party lines. Rather than voting on the merit of a bill, or according to the desires of the constituency they were elected to represent, our elected officials now vote primarily on ideology and party loyalty. We have "pro-life" activists taking lives in the name of their cause. We have religious groups compounding the tragedy of Newtown by picketing funerals of innocent children.
The unifying thread running through all of these is the belief that in order to improve one's own life it is necessary to control or suppress someone else. I recognize this from my youth. This is the defining characteristic of the personality of a bully. We have become a nation of bullies at heart.
An incident like the Newtown shooting shakes us up and scares us. We all want to feel safer and urgently want to “do” something. We need to identify a root cause and take some action. Singling out autism and taking action on that basis won’t make you any safer. It will just make the autistic population suffer even more. However, there is an easy way to address these root causes but it requires some faith and it requires some sacrifice. It requires that you are willing to invest in a strategy that is guaranteed to improve the lives of others but has no direct immediate benefit to you, which is why it won't be a popular suggestion. It is simply this:
Find a perfect stranger and do something nice for them. Find a way to contribute your unique gift to improve your local community, something you can give and not that requires someone else to change their behavior, and then go do it. Do these things daily and with no expectation of getting anything in return. Imagine if everyone affected by the loss of a loved one took up the habit of performing daily random acts of kindness in honor of that person’s memory. What higher tribute could be paid in someone’s memory? The world would be safer if we all stopped trying to control one another and simply took direct action to improve our own behavior. None of us are saints. Don’t tell me there’s no room for improvement. Focus on that.
Safety doesn’t come from holding people down. It comes from lifting them up.
After 9/11 we quickly ceded many of our most cherished civil liberties to empower our government to hunt down terrorists. The result was a massive concentration of power, removal of constitutional checks and balances and an immediate and ongoing abuse of those new powers in activities unrelated to terrorism. Weren't those freedoms and American ideals exactly what the terrorists sought to take from us? We took the wrong action and, as repeated reauthorizations of the Patriot Act reveal, it will be extremely difficult to take it back.
Now in the wake of the Newtown shootings, some are blaming Asperger's Syndrome and insinuating that the autistic population are dangerous. I worry that our urgent desire to take action, and our demonstrated disregard of whether that action meaningfully addresses the root cause, will lead to further needless harm and suffering.
As I see it, there are two root causes that we can address. The first of these I learned in school through years of constant torment from bullies. Although I didn't know about my Asperger's at the time, I had figured out that in social situations I need to consciously choose the appropriate response rather than trust my spontaneous reaction to be the right one. It's a bit of a chess game and I think a few moves ahead to figure out the same responses that neurotypical people intuitively arrive at.
Bullies maintain power through a willingness to escalate higher than their opponent. If I fight back, they bring a bat next time. If I bring a friend, they bring the whole football team. Think a few chess moves ahead and it becomes obvious that to win and do so decisively, I'd need to go all-in. To win their game, I'd need to be willing to kill and hope they are not a step ahead when we meet. I seriously thought about killing my tormentors publicly and gruesomely. I considered suicide. Although I spent a lot of time fantasizing and planning how I’d do it, neither of these seemed the right answer.
Instead I decided not to play their game by their rules. I simply didn't escalate, didn't fight back. I absorbed all the punishment they had to give and by doing so, removed their need to escalate and mostly kept the violence to a minimum. This eventually landed me in the hospital. Friends and family offered to go teach someone a lesson and still I did not resort to violence.
Taking action makes you feel better in the short term. Taking the wrong action makes things worse overall. Part of the root cause is our diversion of resources to things which make us feel better but don't solve the underlying problem. Asperger’s isn’t a mental illness, it’s a developmental disorder. The stress of trying to function socially in a neurotypical world leads to mental illness in some. The implicit characterization of the autistic individual as defective, rather than a difference in communication styles among equals, also contributes. Why is the neurotypical communication style “better” than mine? Because it is the majority? There’s been an explosion of new autism diagnoses. If we become the majority, will then it be OK to force you to conform to our preferred communication style? This is T.Rob’s Fairness Reciprocity Principle. If you would balk at living within your own proposed rules, you need to reconsider your proposal.
The second thing I've come to understand is best illustrated looking at the current state of politics, talk radio and fake news. We have propagandists selling their agenda, with no adherence to principles of journalistic accountability, and dressing it up as news. We have talk show hosts preaching the gospel of "Us and Them," teaching hate and that to compromise is to lose. The result, if you look at the Federal voting record, is that we are now divided almost entirely along party lines. Rather than voting on the merit of a bill, or according to the desires of the constituency they were elected to represent, our elected officials now vote primarily on ideology and party loyalty. We have "pro-life" activists taking lives in the name of their cause. We have religious groups compounding the tragedy of Newtown by picketing funerals of innocent children.
The unifying thread running through all of these is the belief that in order to improve one's own life it is necessary to control or suppress someone else. I recognize this from my youth. This is the defining characteristic of the personality of a bully. We have become a nation of bullies at heart.
An incident like the Newtown shooting shakes us up and scares us. We all want to feel safer and urgently want to “do” something. We need to identify a root cause and take some action. Singling out autism and taking action on that basis won’t make you any safer. It will just make the autistic population suffer even more. However, there is an easy way to address these root causes but it requires some faith and it requires some sacrifice. It requires that you are willing to invest in a strategy that is guaranteed to improve the lives of others but has no direct immediate benefit to you, which is why it won't be a popular suggestion. It is simply this:
Find a perfect stranger and do something nice for them. Find a way to contribute your unique gift to improve your local community, something you can give and not that requires someone else to change their behavior, and then go do it. Do these things daily and with no expectation of getting anything in return. Imagine if everyone affected by the loss of a loved one took up the habit of performing daily random acts of kindness in honor of that person’s memory. What higher tribute could be paid in someone’s memory? The world would be safer if we all stopped trying to control one another and simply took direct action to improve our own behavior. None of us are saints. Don’t tell me there’s no room for improvement. Focus on that.
Safety doesn’t come from holding people down. It comes from lifting them up.