The laws of thermodynamics never fail, even the least of us
Imagine if you got on a plane and the pilot was on the spectrum. Then they had to get a new pilot, not because the pilot wasn’t skilled and talented enough to fly the plane, but—because of his autism—the laws of thermodynamics wouldn’t work in such a way that the plane would fly. That would be ridiculous. But that describes our relationship with God and religion pretty perfectly. Because of the way our brains our wired we have a hard to impossible time interacting with the divine. Which begs the question, if there were a god wouldn’t he be equally accessible to everyone (the same way the law of thermodynamics is), regardless of their brain configuration?
I find science is a safe space for me because it functions uniformly regardless of brain configuration. A night when I was completely out of my mind (would be heading to the mental hospital the next day) I picked up an old school Game Boy Color and played some Tetris. I was trying to test whether I had gotten a lot better at it, to match what my delusions of grandeur were telling me. In that moment in that game it was shown that I wasn’t any better. I was just as bad as usual. Tetris was being the scientific objective voice I needed (God, on the other hand, was telling me all kinds of crazy shit).
Religion didn’t always involve the brain being front and center and then it was probably easier for autistics to be involved in it. But as people have amassed more of a sense of self and the promises of interaction with the divine go grander and grander, the brain has taken center stage.
Offensive Holding on Fourth Down in Field Goal Range
There was a play in the Super Bowl, not sure which team, where they were near the end zone and on fourth down there was an offensive holding call on a play they made a first down on. That offensive holding was probably what allowed them to make the first down. The penalty was accepted but since the call was before the play they still got to replay the down to kick a field goal. This didn’t seem fair to me, kind of like a loophole that is bound to be exploited more and more as the game goes on.
Unemployment Distribution Graphs
The economy added 151,000 jobs and the unemployment rate went below 5%. Sounds nice but a lot of us are curious as to what quality of jobs those added are. After all, 151,000 more people flipping burgers for less than a living wage is not an accomplishment to boast about. I think they need a graph like below (I know it would take a lot of work but we have people and computers that love crunching numbers).
And the unemployment statistics don’t give you a good feel for the amount people are working. Whether they are marginally attached to the labor force or over working. The U6 unemployment figures are a step in the right direction but we could go further.
Autistic While Black: The Erasure of Blacks From Histories of Autism
Interesting article on black people on the spectrum. The tone won’t sit well with people of privilege but the content is good.
Fundies and Aspies
One of my favorite articles of all time about a guy on the autistic spectrum raised fundamentalist who left the Christian faith.
For me, it was like God was an imaginary friend that I absolutely knew was real, rather than just merely a faith I had… and all the crazy delusions that came with it. In order for us Aspies to believe in something we can’t see, we have to find something to latch onto, to make it part of our world. My mind ran wild with kooky ideas. Like Faggot Killer.
…
People tell me I need to be saved. I tell them, it’s cool that you believe in Jesus or God, that you’re going to church, but that life for me, as a person with Asperger’s syndrome, that was poison to me.
Men in their 30’s verses women in their 30’s
Psychology is not dispensed in age appropriate ways. For example as a 35 year old male for someone to tell me not to let my vocational failure define me is laughable. Pass 30 as a male and what’s on your W2 does define you and determines whether you make guy friends or have success dating. And I find this sort of comforting, knowing however messed up my head is that number is all that matters. Now a 35 year old women does not have it so good. What is going on in her head has more ramifications on how people see her and ultimately how her life turns out. It’s on her to make her brain perform the tasks to build a life and that makes for higher rates of mental illness because the world is very cruel to women, more cruel to them than men (or at least cruel in different ways).
Getting a Job
The conventional means of getting a job will almost never work for those on the spectrum:
Unless you’re lucky and land a job right out of school your employment history is likely not going to have contiguous periods of full-time employment. When you apply online to jobs, resumes without contiguous periods of full-time employment get winnowed out right away, usually by the software itself. If they can’t tell you may get a phone interview where they will ask you more directly about your employment history. Keep in mind hundreds, if not thousands, of people are applying for the same job as you so they can be picky.
Assuming you do land an interview your chances are generally dead on arrival. Within the first minute of a job interview the interviewer has decided whether you are worth hiring. I had someone who is now a CEO tell me this and read it in a prominent marketing book Selling the Invisible. People call this “trusting their instinct”. And naturally this “instinct” is informed by their prejudices. If you are on the spectrum they are going to sense something is off about you right away. They’ll rationalize that you aren’t a good “cultural fit”, a political correct way of saying they only hire neurotypicals and generally people just like them.
What about unconventional means?
What they generally mean by this is networking. Never eat alone, always be having lunch with someone who is high status that can advance your career. The problem is, networking is the thing those on the spectrum are very poor at. This is particularly true because, in my experience, the high status people are the ones the most rejecting of those on the spectrum (or anyone different for that matter). I can carry on a conversation with an Uber driver or an accounting major fine but anyone high status will be cold and shut down.
What can companies do to hire more people on the spectrum?
They can realize that the only word that means anything to us is PLACEMENT. Teaching us interview skills is like teaching someone how to go up against an AK-47 with a butter knife. If companies are truly serious about diversity hiring they’ll designate a point person that people far from privilege can go to to circumvent the traditional resume/interview process (someone on the spectrum applying online with a less than stellar employment history will just get their resume thrown out by the software). I know this seems unfair but it’s also unfair that so many people on the spectrum with skills and smarts languish un or underemployed.
Creativity Comment
Great comment by Josh on a NYTimes creativity article:
Unless he’s one of a very lucky few, the creative person will be punished for his creativity at every stage of his life. School rewards students only for completing simple exercises according to schedule. At work, gifts are taken from the creator while most of the profit and credit accrue to others. If the creator is too good, he will be misunderstood. If he is not, he will fail.
Creativity and talent do have their own rewards, but creativity is a cruel task master, since the creative person must create, and modern society offers relatively few opportunities and rewards for doing so.
Autism in Love film and status
I highly recommend a PBS Independent Lens documentary called Autism in Love (you can watch it online). It follows a few people on the spectrum who (like pretty much all of us) are looking for love. Some of them are in relationships, others are not. Even for the ones who were successful by society’s standards it was a lot of effort to keep communication lines open and make the relationship work.
The person I identified with the most was the lower functioning young man who was unsuccessful in finding love. In one part of the film he was keenly aware of his low social status, raising his palm saying “they’re up here” and lowering it down and saying “I’m down here”. Which brings me to a truth about a lot of people on the spectrum. On a micro level we might not be aware of everything going on (as we generally have a poor ability at picking up on social cues) but on a macro level, specifically with things that pertain directly to us, very little escapes us. This is because macro level things are drilled into our heads over and over again so even if we miss 95% of the social cues, the 5% we do catch we catch again and again. To go back to the example in the film, those of us with low status (of whom I am one) are overly aware of it.
Suggestions/Observations (from an ’07 post)
Cat’s Eye
If there’s even a little bit of light then a cat can see decently well in the dark because its eyes reflect and amplify the light somehow but if there is no light, their night vision isn’t any better than ours. In the same way, if there is just a little light at the end of the tunnel then there is reason to hope but if there is none, all hope is gone.
Comparative Advantage
People always talk about praying hard but rarely talk about praying smart. It’s not much of a secret that the more righteous you are, the better your prayer works. We’ve got to saddle the most righteous among us with more prayer requests–and while they’re praying, we should be helping them with tasks that can be done by folks of any level of righteousness like cooking, cleaning, and home maintenance.
Evangelicals are hurting themselves by–while droning on about power of prayer–creating a church environment that alienates the elderly, many of whom are prayer warriors. If you believe prayer is powerful, you’d see that alienating the older generation is cutting off the lifeblood of the church.
Bank Panic
Faith is the tension in the rubber band you‘re pulling apart. One finger pulling it is unbelief and other is expectation. When it snaps the two parts droop from each of your two fingers. It’s like bank panic. One of the things they were afraid of happening in Y2K was that people would lose faith in the monetary system. Some would go back to barter to get their goods and services while others would rush to the bank and withdraw everything from their account.