something wrong with you
A thing as common as dirt that those in power do is getting people to believe there is something wrong with them (instead of there being something wrong with the system) when things don’t go the way they’re supposed to. In religion when people don’t experience God at all like this God is Silent post, people say there is something missing in them. If you can’t “find God” there’s a problem with you, not with the religious system. Never mind that people on the spectrum have much higher rates of atheism and agnosticism than the general population. Because of this our inability to “access God” is chalked up to the incorrect wiring in our brains. The same parts of the brain that facilitate social skills between humans facilitate them between you and the divine I guess. It’s just kind of suspect that one would have to have “social skills” to interact with a deity. Couldn’t this part of the brain just as easily be making the whole thing up?
2016 election
The 2016 election has been a wild ride, with two insurgent grassroots campaigns literally giving the political establishment a run for its money. But as the events of this presidential primary season play out, it’s becoming clear the U.S. election — and even more so, the presidential race — is a big scam being perpetrated on the American people.
On Prayer Working
One can ask am I taking this bike ride to get me somewhere or am I taking it to get some exercise. One is doing both simultaneously but is usually focused on one or the other. In the same way it is helpful to tease out the components of prayer, the spiritual and the kinetic. The prayer is a spiritual action but may be priming you to do some good that couldn’t come about by appeal to the divine (because God can’t counter free will). For example prayer for a job. When you pray for a job you are asking free will to be preempted. The only way the prayer can be answered is the person being primed to help and work connections.
On Facts
From an After the Fact New Yorker article:
Lynch thinks we are frighteningly close to this point: blind to proof, no longer able to know. After all, we’re already no longer able to agree about how to know. (See: climate change, above.)
…
In England, the abolition of trial by ordeal led to the adoption of trial by jury for criminal cases. This required a new doctrine of evidence and a new method of inquiry, and led to what the historian Barbara Shapiro has called “the culture of fact”: the idea that an observed or witnessed act or thing—the substance, the matter, of fact—is the basis of truth and the only kind of evidence that’s admissible not only in court but also in other realms where truth is arbitrated. Between the thirteenth century and the nineteenth, the fact spread from law outward to science, history, and journalism.
trust in a person vs trust in God
One of the interesting things that comes out of marketing Christianity as a “personal relationship with God” is people take that paradigm to mean one can trust God the way one trusts a person. When one trusts a person it is an implicit expectation that they’ll deliver on something. For example if you trust a pizza delivery company, you expect the pizza there within a reasonable amount of time. If the pizza doesn’t come you will get mad at the pizza company and maybe leave a bad Yelp review. But this anger shows that you respect the company in a way. If the roles were reversed and you didn’t deliver on something you’d respect and accept the resulting bad reviews and understand that was a necessary evil to keep society running smoothly.
Trust in God is open ended (but people selling you religion fail to mention this). God cares about you on his own terms. His actions are not subject to evaluation by empirical evidence, only scripture and church teaching. That means if God comes through that’s great, if he doesn’t there’s something wrong with the way you are seeing things. This is almost the exact opposite of how trust between humans works. You are expected to expect nothing. Respect is shown by submission instead of empathy.
Of course Christians try their best to market the faith as allowing one to trust God as one trusts a person. Of course they don’t tell you that sometimes part of trusting a person involves them betraying your trust (for example when you tell someone you have planned and are about to commit suicide).
Seeing What You’re Told To
There are two important components of faith. Being able to see and feel what you’re told to and, once accomplished, being able to convince others of this fact. To fit in religious communities one needs to do both.
Testing
So I found out today it’s $800-$1,200 to get tested to see whether I’m on the spectrum (they don’t take any of the insurance I have). I’ve been told I have some traits of people on the spectrum by psychiatrists but never got formal testing done. Part of the reason I don’t have that kind of money is because of disability based prejudice partially due to things that look an awful lot like autism symptoms.
spelling learning tool
It’s International Ideas Month so I came up with a list of misspelled words color coded to warn of common misspellings. I did this project almost eleven years ago. I think I see words differently than most people though (having had cataracts and being on the spectrum). So it may not be that useful to the average person. I called it Spelling Therapy.
more poetry
hope is that space in the middle
between conjecture and wishful thinking
and when times get lean
that space becomes the fat that burns away
forcing you to choose between the two
(vocation)
when you have multiple disabilities
you just have to be twice as good for half as much
because being good is the only bulwark
against the world being cruel
science is for the why
humanities is for the why bother
no, society is not broken
it’s working perfectly
it only seems broken to those of us far from privilege
if God were on Yelp
he’d get mostly five star
and one star reviews
as long as righteousness is isolating
and sin is communal
sin will win
Lesson: At the Store
Sometimes people on the spectrum’s mannerisms mimic shoplifters. Follow these tips to be safer. These tips apply for anyone, especially anyone who is not clean cut, neurotypical and white.
- If possible don’t bring a backpack into a store. It raises suspicion.
- Never put merchandise you are going to purchase in your cloths or jacket pockets. You may forget it on the way out of the store.
- Always have a question ready in case an employee asks you if you need help. A lot of times they are watching for shoplifting.
- The answer to, “do you want a bag for this”, is always yes. Sometimes you will be able to purchase things in a different area of a store (for example the electronics section at Meijer). You always need to have a bag with a receipt in it because this shows onlookers you made the purchase. You could get stopped without a bag and if you lost your receipt you could be in big trouble.
The store (particularly big box stores) are not a kind place for those on the spectrum with the crowds, fluorescent lights, and store equipment beeping their trouble tones everywhere.