In the TV show of our lives, we’ve just finished the season finale where: the kid displays some sort of Otherness; then the parent tells them, “Yeah, well, about that…”; at which point the audience erupts in an elated chorus of, “I just knew it.”

In this new season opener, then, the aligned parent gravely intones, “It is time that I tell you about Your People. I should have told you before, but blah blah rhetorical excuse for not having done that (including how it messed me up to know about this too early in my life or whatever).”

Now, our situation is non-canonical in that I did not have any progenitor who handed me down a neatly ritualized curlicue of cultural wisdom, which in the two-hour Holiday Special would otherwise have been passed along to you; nonetheless, what I have figured out on my own might still be helpful for you at this time, and it might put you in a more comfy position should you be in this position with similar kids yourself someday.

So, yeah, with that said… welcome to savancy. Savants are Our People, and while we naturally “variegate” (see well below) in our idiocies and other eccentricities, our defining characteristic is that we have nonphysical qualities that place us more than a couple of standard deviations away from the norm, for well or for ill. Given the nature of the dominant paradigm (DP) around us, though, we reside at the shitty end of the xenophobia stick. Yes, you and I are pretty damned privileged in that we are qualifying DP members when it comes to easily observed physical attributes — which is what our DP appreciably measures and treasures — and we are also very fortunate in comparison to some Savants, in that we have sufficient cognition to burn that we can pass in other ways as needed. But the profile is generally erratic, and not homogeneously beneficial.

It is always truthful, and sometimes valuable, to identify savancy as overlapping some areas of the autism space (more about which below). We incorporate social, linguistic, sensory, and stereotype anomalies (among many others). It is also true that autism is conventionally held to comprise only disabilities in those specific domains (or, at best, nothing that would be considered a superior ability); however, there is much more to autism than just its core, and some of those attributes can in fact be measured as greater than the norm rather than lesser without disconnecting a profile from the autism space (such as the uncommon linguistic abilities often associated with ‘Asperger’). In other words, this heterogeneity is consistent with the (simplistic) pattern where Savancy > PDD > Asperger > Kanner. 

Savancy and autism are still usually consistent even when all of those individual attributes are greater.

In fact, it is the rare case of a lack of consistency that proves the rule, namely: even when all of these individual attributes are greater, they will tend to combine to engender a disability in our DP, such as when an otherwise superior set of language abilities exceeds a Savant’s resources and impairs their register matching when they are communicating with a partner, thus creating a social deficit. No matter how extraordinary the skills of a driver, for example, you can always engineer a vehicle that will outmatch their resources; similarly, take one step back from that example and imagine that you have identified a driver who is essentially superhuman in all regards but one, and then set them on their way. While a more seriously impaired driver might not even get the vehicle started, and thus would remain safe (albeit no farther along the track), the other driver will get closer to their goal before the inevitable crash that will be truly spectacular.

Same goes for socializing.

So, in those cases where the person’s skills are superior in many ways, and they are also able to handle all of those additional resources without detriment in a vastly normal world, there won’t be a case of savancy. They would just be a garden variety genius, with their own People, and they will handle themselves so well that no one in our DP will know that their skills are so much greater; in fact, a measure of their consummate skills is that no one will think ill of them. But the higher or lower that one or more of those attributes strays from the norm, the more unlikely it is that everything will balance well.

And ‘no homeostasis’ = ‘car go boom’.

Of course, the nature of the crash is heavily DP dependent. I used to fit in really well at work in Canada as a Savant, and I made good friends there (who also tended to be Savants); in fact, I feel confident in saying that the extraverts were the distinct minority in that office. In Waterloo, there is an egalitarian spirit, but (or perhaps “and”) we did not experience the same sort of anti-intellectual bias in the local DP that is so firmly entrenched in the US.

I don’t fit in that same way in my current job at LESD (or DP), where my skills are still valued, but many of the administrators there tend to exact a toll derived from an implicit bias dynamic. Which I guess is just a matter of saying that the local bias profile is not necessary to human interaction, since there is one as close as Waterloo that I tend to find preferable in that it is not denigrating to Savants.

I liked the folks in Windsor and Seattle, but I did not fit in there (with some distinct individual exceptions which felt pretty good). Some of that was due to my getting off on the wrong feet due to my naive expectations about openness to experience in a family milieu. The only other “new” family that I had been a part of was that of Doug and his mom Barbara (and her parents), and they were like me in crucial regards. I mean, he was a nerdy psych major introvert and RPGer headed to psych grad school, and his mom was a counselor who did her research in Game Theory. So I think that while I learned fast in Colorado, there was no reprieve once I had been branded. Ah well… life, eh?

So in our anti-intellectual DP one can dial down to fit in, but I find that I have too much of a chip on my shoulder (a self-esteem pathology) to make myself do that most of the time (because it amounts to having to act too stupid to notice that I a being bullied, in essence). The exception is if I am trying not to hurt someone’s feelings, then I can match because I do not feel bullied. It also gets messy because educated people tend to act as if they are also unusually intelligent, but that is not always the case. Earning a degree does not take atypical intelligence.

But in those cases where a Savant is also an introvert, then matching the DP is not just a matter of dumbing down in an anti-intellectual milieu (which is a sustainable ruse, as it takes less energy for the most part), but rather you must also extravert more (which is not sustainable, as it is exhaustively energy expensive).

There are of course additional axes (other than E/I) along which to measure, and simultaneously matching the allistics on all of them is a fragile endeavor, so — for a Savant — something usually goes wrong somewhere along the line. The reason why is complex, but it is often easier to let people think that it’s due to (a) something simple that is (b) not the comm partner’s fault. And if it is going to be treated as (c) all your fault, then it can be advantageous to have the allistics think that it is due to (d) something about you that is worse than them, that (e) you can’t help.

Why? Because trying to explain the bigger picture to them is not only going to fail nearly every time, but in the rare case where it does succeed, it will only have done so with a whole lot of time and effort; furthermore, and crucially, no matter whether you eventually lose, win, or draw, things will get (often much) worse before you have any chance of it getting better. And even when you do win, and it does get better, it can leave a scar. Fortunately, sometimes the bond where the glue repairs a broken piece of wood is actually stronger than the original grain. (But it still doesn’t feel as smooth.)

Or you could just use Option #3 (below) and hope for the best. It usually works, and is easy. When it breaks down, though, it can be a mess.

Now, our DP wants to act like a good measure of social adeptness is getting along in terms of small talk and so forth with a broad, generic crowd. And that is true… but the bar is set deliberately low. Over two-thirds of the people in the world can meet those sorts of criteria with ease: because it represents an average skill. If it were difficult, then most people would fail, and humans wouldn’t have a social structure. Hell, even bulldogs are enormously successful at this skill, and they eat goose poop. The fundamental skills are hardwired, and can run on autopilot. So if it’s all that easy, then why do Savants fail to fit (in those cases where they want and try to do so)?

Well, it’s because they can’t just focus on the easy stuff and ignore everything else that is going on inside. They can’t just go on autopilot.

So I don’t just fail at something that is easy for everyone else. Yes, my hardwiring is different. Yes, I reside in an overlap of the autism space. But I am also spending a whole lot more energy on a whole lot of other stuff that most other people are not. Savants do not have an optimized engine. They fail because they are doing both less and more than is typical. Some of that “more” is better, as is some of that “less.” And some of it is worse. There are times when the picture is relatively simple, just like it is on occasion for everyone else. But more often it is not. And all that said, as easy as it is for a ‘normal’ person to point their fingers at my savancy when things go wrong (or, from their perspective, at my autism), the burden of failure in the interaction is not entirely on my shoulders.

So, choosing to go with the easy, small truth is a matter of risk analysis. Is it important to me that the other person should understand who I am? For that risk analysis: ‘yes’ = ‘big’; ‘no’ = ‘small’. If ’yes’, then is it important enough to be worth the price that we would both have to pay, individually and collectively?

Let’s look at the most common scenarios where I work…

If an exchange goes off the rails because a communication partner is not grasping the concepts, then I can try this:

Option #1: Me > Them

Me: “Sorry about that, I’m a genius. (And you’re not.)”

Them: “Fuck right the hell off, Mr. Superior Asshole Genius.”

End result: The students do not get service, or the agency goes spaghetti-child, and so on.

Auxiliary: The SpEd folks with whom I work will tend to conclude something like Asperger/PDD anyway, because their bias is to assume that really smart folks are too thinky to understand normal feelings, and an inability to understand normal feelings is definitionally autismy. Everyone knows that really smart folks are bad at relating to normal people, right?

If the conversation goes poorly because an extravert is shallowing out, then I can do this:

Option #2: Me ≠ Them

Me: “Sorry about that, I’m an introvert. (And you’re not.)”

Them: “Then I can ignore you because you are not normal like us.”

End result: Same as above.

Auxiliary: Likewise.

But in both of those cases, I can choose to do this instead:

Option #3: Me < Them

Me: “Sorry about that. It’s not your fault. I have something like PDD. (And you don’t.)”

Them: “Let me try a little harder to understand, while you practice saying things like a normal person.”

End result: The students get service, the union members get protected, or whatever.

But in none of those cases am I worried about developing a close relationship; I do not need them to understand who I am. I just need them to believe that they want my plans. If they dislike me, then they will tend to dislike my plans; therefore, I want them to ‘not dislike’ me. So I go easy on them (and on myself).

Also, if I am having a conversation instead with someone for whom detailed explanations are not an issue, or are actually preferred, then there is much less likely to be a problem in the first place, and if there is, then we can talk it out. It’s more like:

Option #0: Me ≙ Them (we estimate each other)

Me: “We’re not communicating as well as we could.”

Them: “Yeah, let’s figure out why, so we can maintain the topic at hand.”

So the most common scenarios above (1-3) are the ones where I am trying to talk with someone who — from my perspective — is specifically not interested in listening anyway. Which, I admit, does make it irritating down the line if they then suggest that the lack of communication is my fault for choosing not to share the details with them. They say that they want greater honesty, as long as no greater honesty is actually involved.

Therefore, when I do need to display some finesse, Option #3 is generally preferable, because: a) it is not untrue, b) it does no one else any harm, and c) it does me no harm… unless d) someone starts to assume that my identified difference (i.e., my “autism”) is the source of all of our comm difficulties, and e) I feel that I will continue to care about their opinion into the foreseeable future, in which case f) I then desire to have some mutual recalibration on the “autism” vocabulary item so that they can know who I am.

Changing that common ground can be very tricky, because I contributed heavily to the original (mis)conception, possibly over the course of several years while it did not matter to me whether they really understood my particular profile. So, accepting the entire burden of the failure blame can be easier, but it presents a risk of someday possibly having to clarify uphill backwards through the snow, with the aforementioned scarring and whatnot.

And I never had to face that consequence until pretty late in my life.

So, having thus introduced the notion that I use some words (like “autism”) to mean atypical things, let’s move on to the part of the script where the aligned parent says, “Our People call that pluegarfl,” or whatever. Only in being who we are, we have to meta that trope, right?

Up to this point, I have been hampered by some unsatisfactory semantic approximations, so I’m going to get into more about savancy, autism (per se), myths, and whatever else.

A frequent challenge (that occasionally mounts to an annoyance) is when I can find no familiar word to accurately convey a concept that feels fairly simple to me. It forebodes a lot of work that I can’t just ignore even though the result will ultimately remain unsatisfying; that is to say, when it comes to connecting with a comm partner, I won’t be able to bring our minds to actually meet as closely as I would need (or like) without making that effort, but at least our minds won’t remain awkward strangers if I put in the time. Verbal comprehension is a strength, since open-experience linguistic totem Savants are sensitive to ambiguities and polysemy, but expression can be a chore… or, when it finally comes out right, a joy. Some people make furniture, clothes, boats, or whatever; I make stuff like this. This is my art and craft.

So, if I feel the value of making some sort of connection between minds, then I just growl grumpily and dig in; if not, then I resign myself to muddling through with someone else’s conventional symbolism. Or, on many occasions, there is some pragmatic benefit to be gained by just bowing to their fundamental assumptions. But let’s pretend that I have decided to go for it.

What tends to be most frustrating is when the word that I want is almost like one or more that people use often, but is in some important way not quite what I want. It is like suspending a magnet on a string over a trayful of other magnets that have already bound themselves together into a familiar and comfy equilibrium: you swing your personal magnet over the tray and it staggers about gradually losing energy, finally settling somewhere between some of those other magnets without actually touching any of them. It feels like there really should be a good match, but there are only a bunch of near misses. And without that word being available, explaining the meaning will require stringing together a whole lot of other words that people typically do not want to wade through.

One of the most wonderful properties of words is that they are encyclopedic in their meaning, such as where I could say something as simple as “peanut,” and you could access a whole world of shared information about peanuts while using context to narrow down all of that information into the specific subset that is likely to match what I want you to know. Sharing all of that experience to begin with helps to increase the odds of finding a close enough match that we can use to communicate well. But when the meaning that I want is not close enough to the world of a conventional word, then I have to resort to these sorts of involved explanations.

So I wouldn’t be able to use the word “peanut” if I needed to include some notion that was somehow crucially different than what people might normally associate with the concept [peanut], if that shift couldn’t be explained with a simple extension, such as, “dry-roasted peanut.” If you didn’t know what dry roasting was, or didn’t already have a personal experience with the end products of that process, then getting you up to speed would require some explanation. But once that was done it would have been worth the effort because from then on we could just say, “dry-roasted peanut” and expect our minds to meet. Crucially, however, we cannot convey differences about relatively abstract concepts by just having you eat one, so there’s more work involved.

So let’s suppose that we were trying to find a word that was associated with a concept like: [wandering about through an existing field of systematic forces, trying to find a place to settle (and ending up in a previously unoccupied space due to a lack of close enough matches)]. For me, that is a very simple, unified concept, but there is no familiar word for it. I know how it feels. There are words for all sorts of related concepts dealing with chaotic orbits, nearest match pattern filtering, fuzziness, and so on, but I also want to include the idea that the final equilibrium area does not associate with any easily identifiable, familiar place that already has a word. 

There is a fairly familiar notion of [asteroid capture], where a foreign body wanders into an existing system and settles into a previously unoccupied orbit, and that seems like a pretty good conceptual metaphor, except that I don’t really want the facet in there about the continued orbit because I want the asteroid to settle into one place (where it fails to crash into an existing orbital body). So I want to dimensionally flatten that part of the idea. We want something like the following concept: [the state of achieving a relatively stable system position upon introduction to an existing field of force-distributed entities, as applied to word forms approximating variations on conventional meanings]. Or something that feels very similar to that.

In some sense, we already use phrases like, “capturing a meaning.” The words that we find in that process are sort of asteroidal synonyms that have not crashed into an existing planet, nor have they been flung off into some other space. It is a satellite meaning, then. But the system already has natural satellites, and we want to talk about one that stakes a claim in previously unoccupied space (which is a reduction of finding an empty orbit).

That’s one reason that we dial in some existing words with a modifier like ‘-oid’. The word “asteroid” was originally devised when the lights in the sky were mostly all just thought to be ‘asters’, where some of those asters were treated as more aster-like than others, with the “merely somewhat unusual” ones being ‘asteroids’. So, with that in mind, my problem is with synonymoids, or, “words that almost mean what I want.” 

And while it took well over 800 other words to get here (if you just start counting at the part about my frustration), at least I have a satisfying word for them now.

Which is all a preface to establishing some synonymoids for the purposes of the discussion that I was originally going to get into, before I realized that I didn’t have the words available. So, as a continuing prelude to approaching the whole autism thing in more depth, and explaining it in a new light, let’s go here…

Every canonical spectrum displays an infinitely continuous shift across some definitive attribute, where a familiar example would be the domain of rainbows, with variation across the range of color, specifically where color is measured along a single dimension by wavelengths of light. (Let’s pretend for the moment that my choice of the simple word “rainbow” over some term more like “visible light electromagnetic spectrum” does not also entail the assumption of several other semantic attributes, such as those associated with cartoon ponies, leprechauns, and so forth.) If you got into additional properties of light and pigment, though, such as hue, saturation, brightness, and so on, then you would have a multidimensional color space rather than a simple spectrum.

Similarly, autism spectrum disorders are more like autism space disorders. There are currently four axes that are commonly held to describe that space, namely: sociability, communication (anywhere from symbolization to language), stereotypy, and sensory lifestyle. While this is widely treated as definitive, in reality it is more descriptive than prescriptive. The whole thing is very hand-wavy. And those spectral axes are — in several ways — not as simple as they are portrayed.

How areas of meaning vary along just one spectrum is different in kind (not degree alone) compared to how they vary within spaces. It is not a matter of geometric complexity. It is so different that using the term “vary” for both spectra and spaces is not helpful; in other words, “vary” is a misleading synonymoid when used to describe variation within spaces (as is the word “variation”).

When you are dealing with a simple spectrum, distribution varies only as more or less. On the electromagnetic spectrum, red has a higher frequency than blue: red is more than blue, and blue is less than red. That is how they vary. But if you have a space defined by as few as two spectra, such as chrominance (color) and luminance (brightness), then you get into situations where one resident of that space, such as “bright blue,” can be both more and less than another, like “dark red.” It is less easy to talk meaningfully about how those two residents simply “vary.” And what if you crossed the visible light and “favorite” spectra? What is the variation between “red (that I like)” and “blue (that is fairly okay)”?

Simply put, it gets messy. “Vary” implies too much simplicity.

So I would like a good word that talks about how areas vary in conceptual spaces, something other than the synonymoids for “vary” that also have misleadingly simplistic meanings (such as “range,” “differ,” and the like).

Instead of “vary,” then, I will tend to use “variegate” (as I did far above). I know that this word’s conventional meaning tends to associate with the manifestation of external colors or patterns, but it can also be used more generally where “variety” of any kind adds some sort of interest. I would like to extend this concept to encompass the adjacent meanings that address spaces being defined by such heterogeneously complex attributes as their innards.

Now we have some of the critical vocabulary established that we will need for talking meaningfully about attribute spaces, and there are good reasons to highlight the sociability hallmark of autism before the others (albeit we have been laying groundwork for the rest as we have been going along). So I will start off by saying that one definitive way in which human social systems are variegated is in terms of intimacy across all of the component interpersonal relationships; more to the point, intimacy is one of the richest attributes across which social networks variegate.

Having said all of that, then, I will now say this (treating people as if they could be measured along just one component spectrum):

People vary a lot in their intimacy. 

Of course, the word “intimacy” should not be interpreted as definitionally sexual. I know that you understand what I mean, but with other folks I might not be able to move on until I had discussed that distinction in detail until they accepted that clarification.

Specifically, intimacy is one particularly useful quality around which to discuss the differences between and among extraverts and introverts, where: a) there is a relationship between intimacy (as a complex space) and isolation (likewise); and b) autism (which we will get into below) is often said to be hallmarked in significant part by issues of isolation (where people fail to pay adequate attention to the sources of that separation).

Introverts are said to shy away from social interaction, and indeed some do withdraw in a very general way; however, some introverts (like myself) deeply treasure rich connections with other people. That intensity of intimacy dilutes as it is distributed among an increasing number of people, so in practical terms it can only be shared with a few confidants before it starts to fade. That is just as well, because very few people are really interested in that intensity of connection anyway. What I need personally is to be understood in a manner so intimate that it should only be shared with one person. [redacted material here]

Extraverts are said to value social connections (and be recharged by that participation), where they are less vulnerable to broad distribution of those links among a greater number of people because each such pool is comparatively shallow. They are more comfortable with that pastel quality, tending to prefer small talk over discussion, where in contrast I find that small talk establishes barriers between me and what I want to get to. Even their approach to immediate family social connections can be different than what introverts tend to do. That said, few people are so extraverted as to want absolutely no time alone, or no close time with a preferred confident, although there are some people who come pretty close.

That difference can make it tough for certain types of introverts and extraverts to each get what they need out of a relationship with each other without one or both of them getting their feelings hurt, even if they are the most emotionally healthy of individuals (which I am told do exist). And I told you above about the ‘having to walk through the Valley of Death’ thing before you get to the better part. But there really is some significant value in the attraction of opposites, if they survive the alchemical processes.

In any event, because of this sort of thing, introverts are more likely than extraverts to get erroneously labeled (generally by extraverts… as majority members of the germane DP) as being spectrumy due to their social preferences manifesting the minority (i.e., non-extravert) pattern. In a nontrivial sense, there is some truth to this labeling (at least by definition), but what would the difference be between (a) someone whose introversion is the actual source of their unconventional socialization, and (b) someone whose source was something else? People tend to get that all screwed up, and most other source identifications are circular or tautological; for example, they know that the person has autism because they know that they have an impoverished Theory of Mind, and they know that they have an unconventional Theory of Mind because they know that they have autism. Are we going to say that the only source that associates with the autism space is Theory of Mind? Can we do that without Theory of Mind just being an empty synonym for autism?

Nope.

Well, some folks want to say that the point would be moot because autism is a matter of more than just the social hallmark; then again, we know that they also allow an autism label with three out of the four classic hallmarks. But the limit of those four is arbitrary (i.e., there could have been three, five, or whatever), so how about just two? Or two plus a third one that is not on the current list? Do we call it something besides autism then? What about just one hallmark?

That’s why this is a multidimensional space, with those hallmarks representing dimensions. And autism is not a label in that sense. It is a passport.

The social connectivity that we have been talking about is nowhere near the only way in which to variegate within this space. You might have someone who is not fond of time spent with other people, but who still spends much of their energy focused on their interaction with the outside world. The conflation of extraversion and sociability occurs because “other people” generally tend to be a typical part of that outside world. But it is pretty easy to imagine someone who pursues the company of nature as opposed to that of other people, maintaining their outward focus without having other people in their range.

And let’s expand on the notion of energy for a bit, since I have mentioned it more than once in passing. Energy (as a resource) is another useful quality when it comes to distinguishing E/I (and other axes). There are all sorts of resource economies in a person: physical, mental, emotional, social, behavioral, spiritual… lots of stuff, all interconnected (and not all ending in -al). When it comes to these domains, people variegate their internal combustion, external expression, and so forth.

The classic extravert, in these terms, is observed to be a profligate expender of resources. Not just a consumer, mind you, although it is inferred that their internal engine is running powerfully. The classic introvert (in contrast) is not so observed, and is often assumed to be quiet inside as well. Naturally, with the exception of our individual selves, we can’t really observe anything from the inside, but introverts are relatively adept at that.

Anyway, this is another simplistic view. Some extraverts don’t burn all that hot inside. Some introverts are traveling internally at light speed. Some very quiet people are extraverts who are low expenders for one reason or another, but their focus is still external. The fundamental factor is supposed to be the world within which a person is most comfortable existing, namely outside or inside. The vast majority of people who prefer to live outside do so with a whole lot of other people, they are adjusted to doing so, and it feels good to them in terms of their resource model. In that world, they are able to economize their resource expenditure in a way that feels right. But the occasional extravert does not want their world to be filled up with a bunch of other folks. They want to focus and live outside, but not in a way where they have to spend a lot of energy dealing with other people. Or maybe they just want to observe other people, but not interact with them (which is often the function of the small talk buffer). Which begs the question of whether or not they could interact in a seemingly typical way, or if their “preferences” are actually limits tailored by their ability profiles.

Similar thing with introverts. Some truly are focused internally to the extent that the external world has a difficult time intruding. They might be socially adept, but just not prefer to spend their energy that way. Or maybe they are not good at spending their resources that way, or perhaps they have just fallen out of practice. Again, there are a lot of possibilities here. The fundamental factor is still supposed to be a preference for an internal world focus.

So let’s look at this in terms of intimacy. It does not seem odd to think of an introvert feeling most comfortable being intimate with just one person (other than themselves), and an extravert preferring intimacy with more than just one. This does not mean that an extravert desires romantic intimacy with many partners, but rather that their “shallow end of the pool” relationships that are spread across many friends would not feel comfortable to the introvert, who would rather have one “deep end of the pool” association with one person. An extravert might have several confidants, and an introvert just one. Sometimes this is reflected in their romantic lives, and sometimes it is not. But it can cause a problem if they are involved together, and the introvert ends up feeling like their intimacy is less special because the extravert shares it so readily with so many other people. And an extravert can end up feeling constrained when they cannot share with others, or be burned out by the introvert’s constant demand for individual depth.

On top of all of this, our DP equates depth of intimacy with romance (and specifically heterosexual romance in our current DP).

It’s workable, but that work can require a depth of focus that can be anathema to the extravert when it occurs with any frequency. So what do they do? Well, they get help from a neutral party, of course. Someone who can help them to develop balance. If that third party is worth their salt (relative to when salt used to be worth more than gold), then that is entirely possible.

Now, here is the important bit: going through all of that is not a matter of just developing Option #4, whatever that might be. Because remember, Options #1-3 were all predicated on the notion that there was no long-term relationship, no caring about the other person’s opinion, and no reason for them to understand who you are. So what you want to get to is something completely different, where those sorts of Options would not be relevant.

To do any of that, you want to understand who you are.

So, yeah, that’s the intimacy prism of sociability and the zillion facets of autism.

And that is all just one part of one hallmark. The others do the same thing. Where sociability can be richly explored in terms of intimacy, communication can likewise be opened up for jectivity, which is like depolarized objectivity and subjectivity. Stereotypy is not just flapping and scripting, but rather deals with all sorts of stuff around volition and magical thinking and control and whatnot. Sensory lifestyle issues are not just a matter of sensitivities and so on, but do cover some of the familiar synaesthesias and other anomalies. And that’s not even addressing the interactions between the axes, such as communication plus sensory anomalies giving rise to ideasthesias.

Autism, therefore, is far more than not knowing how to get along with people, being overwhelmed by too much sensory stimulation, and flapping one’s hands… but frankly you wouldn’t know it to talk with some self-identified ‘experts’.

In any event, it has taken us a while to get to this point, but we had to go through all of that before we finally were ready for the whole “autism” thing.

Which gets complicated. (Surprise!)

That we are Autistic is both true and not. Useful and not. The term has made life easier for me in some valuable ways, and I only clarify (not correct) the association when it threatens to be more harmful in balance than just letting it go.

Now, think about just how much different those three sentences would have sounded had I not first provided the broader picture above them.

And here’s the thing: that was the first paragraph that I wrote for this letter.

Welcome to linguistic totem savancy, and the mitigated perils of Option #3.

And now back to autism.

It can be worthwhile to consult experts on autism while specifically keeping firmly in mind that they know fuck all about it. There’s this extraordinarily complicated thing going on, and they can’t grasp the holistic picture, so they satisfy themselves with cobblations of partial insights. They engage in the classic activity of touching ropes, flags, plowshares, and so on, concluding with solemn, planetary gravitas, “It is all one animal… and that animal is an oliphaunt! You see? We have peered beyond the veil behind which resides this mysterious entity that intrudes upon our lives, therefore we are no longer sensorily impaired.” Set aside the fact that they are not always touching the same animal, nor any animal at all… sometimes they have just grabbed an actual tree trunk. Having thus agreed upon a metaphor which seems to be plausibly consistent with their interpretation of the limited evidence, and ignoring the fact that some of that consistency derived from massaging the data to fit the theory, individuals then get identified with Oliphaunt Syndrome.

At best, what they are trying to describe are the Paenungulata… but is it helpful to say that a hyrax is like a dugong? Well, yes, in the context of needing to identify a class of animals whose males lack a scrotum (and instead have testicles protected up near their kidneys). And then you have some other class of items that comprises pillar-like things, such as elephant’s legs and tree trunks and so on. So what use is there to overlap the two classes, trying to fit an actual tree trunk into the class of animals? Well, it is useful in the sense that this is precisely what happened when someone first created the story about the visually impaired people and the elephant. They needed that categorial concept.

So is it useful to say that Nathan and I are alike, even in an ancillary, auxiliary, peripheral manner?

It has been useful for me, because it helps folks to move on. It relieves them. And I am a denizen of the larger autism space, but I reside in an area related to that space that they do not understand exists. So I agree with them about my living in PDD-land. It is the least-inaccurate place on the map with which they are familiar, and it is still the right map. I live in Oregon, but I am also Californian, and it is helpful to have people believe that too, even though it is also wrong in terms of my current residence.

They sort of get the notion that autism is a spectral disorder. They kind of know that it goes: Kanner’s, Asperger’s, then PDD… as wrong as that is. What they don’t get is the stuff outside of PDD, and I don’t want to explain it to them for the reasons given above. They do not get how much more complicated the issue is than a simple spectrum. Same goes for their understanding of intelligence. They know that there’s a scale between low and high (which is sort of true). They know that folks bunch up around the middle, and spread out at the ends. They think that they know what it is like to move towards the lower end of the scale, but generally they have no accurate idea of how complicated that gets, and how variegated the people are who reside there. And they only have some sort of science-fictiony notion of what happens as you go way up that scale. And again, I don’t want to explain it. As in Option #1, things get immediately icky when you say, “Yeah, I’m a genius. I am (in some domains) one of the five or six smartest human beings on the planet… so there are many orangutans who are more basically close to ‘human’ that I am.” It is a whole hell of a lot easier to have people think that I am simply weird.

So the notion of autism is not wrong, as it is part of savancy. It is just very difficult to explain to people why it is right, and why the problem is as much theirs as it is mine. It is easier for them to think of me as disabled and fairly well compensated, than it is for them to think of themselves as relatively impaired.

But this all applies to you, so I think that it is worth the effort to get it all laid out. You are a genius along certain axes, and you have the paperwork to prove it. You have been feeling like you do not fit, and this is part of that picture. Without this more detailed explanation of what it means to be Autistic in our particular way (to the degree that we are similar), you would not have what you need to make a fully informed decision about whether or not you want to identify yourself that way. It is your choice. It has its uses, and sometimes it protects people from harm.

2015-12

[Anomic Aphasia]