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DagothGares
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posted October 23, 2009 06:33 PM |
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Autism
Yeah, I wanted to talk about this sibject. Apparently there isn't a thread dedicated towards this according to the search function, so... Yeah.
What prompted me to do this is the fact that last night I went with my big sister to a meeting of several peple who were going to show us and several other people what autism is like and they wanted to make us think about it. They didn't make me think about it or made me learn a whole lot of new things about the condition. It's the fact that afterwards my sister told me that indeed her child, my god child, is autistic. Now, myself have had a few run-in with it myself. They tested whether I was autistic when I was about seven, because I was rather anti-social (personally, I think it runs in the family). Also, well... I did a book report on Ben X (a belgian novel about an autistic boy) and, in fact, watching the film of said book was mandatory in school. I also watched rain man and stuff. So I think I know a bit about it, but the condition seems rather enigmatic to me. A psychological manual I read also briefly touched the subject of autism. I have this idea that people don't really know what autism is, since they say it manifests in all different sorts of ways and has many gradations. I think a perfectionist child with severe OCD could be diagnosed with autism for instance.
Now, obviously, I carry a certain responsibility to my god child and he's a grea kid with normal intelligence (slightly above average with an IQ of 110) . He's just extremely stubborn and sometimes very hard to read. It's also very hard to play with him or he doesn't play with the other children. he's fascinated with doors and he always wants to be the last one to close one. He also repeats jokes ad infinitum. Anyway, I dn't know when I should be mad at him and when I shouldn't. is it okay for his condition to excuse certain actions? Should I be soft on him, since everything's already rather hard for him or should I be rough on him so he'll learn? What do you guys think? Have you guys had run-ins with autism?
I know they're not monsters and that they're people. I don't want to treat him, like he's disabled because he just has a few problems with social interaction and conforming to life (I agree that that's necessary though). And... Bah, no need to excuse myself any further. Please talk.
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TheDeath
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posted October 23, 2009 07:15 PM |
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I'm half-autist, at least on the habits. I think autism is one of those things that are good, because it makes people special and more imaginative. I think you should give him a break and ask yourself why do you consider the usual "normal" social stuff good to begin with?
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2009 07:25 PM |
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So you're kind of like Blade, only you're half-autistic and you slay autistic people instead of vampires? 
Autism isn't a good thing; albeit it can come with some funky inadvertent benefits. If everybody in the world were autistic we would have extreme difficulty communicating properly and thus our species would have trouble surviving. It's not just a matter of "it's only considered a disorder because most people aren't like that." There are objective issues with it.
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DagothGares
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posted October 23, 2009 07:32 PM |
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Quote:
I'm half-autist, at least on the habits. I think autism is one of those things that are good, because it makes people special and more imaginative. I think you should give him a break and ask yourself why do you consider the usual "normal" social stuff good to begin with?
I think normal behaviour is better because right now, the kid is having a hard time and is perhaps easy pickings for the rest of the kids who are all social-darwinists. He also has problems communicating with us and he's definitely having problems with adapting to certain situations. These are all weaknesses I'd prefer he didn't have.
Hell, there's a difference between being a self-diagnosed half-autist (no offence) and a kid who the social workers consider an autist after having studied him in two hours, the bigger part of which studying whether he had OCD and taking an IQ test. Sure, it may have advantages, but autists aren't magical people who sacrificed social skills for incredible math skills or whatever. These are people who are genuinely having trouble getting out of the house and talking with people. Sure, some of them have a gift sometimes, like being oversensitive (whatever you want to call a gift) or perfectionist or seeing things in mathematical patterns (probably all very advantageous), but not all and the benefits don't outweigh the disadvantages by far.
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TheDeath
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posted October 23, 2009 07:38 PM |
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Autism isn't a good thing; albeit it can come with some funky inadvertent benefits. If everybody in the world was autistic we would have extreme difficulty communicating properly and thus our species would have trouble surviving. It's not just a matter of "it's only considered a disorder because most people aren't like that." There are objective issues with it.
The "objective issues" you mention apply probably only in the stone age, I give you that.
And Dagoth I beg to differ. Just because he would get bullied doesn't mean anything at all, actually it means the other kids have that weakness of bullying. Hell even lone black kids are still being bullied in some schools, does that make being black a bad thing? That argument holds no water.
How do you even expect people to be "more tolerant" if you went and "operated" the black kid with surgery so he's white? The result is that it's not that kid who is the problem, it's exactly the other way around, it's the OTHER kids.
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DagothGares
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posted October 23, 2009 07:44 PM |
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yes, but a black kid can communicate properly. He can communicate as well as white kids, can go outside and function in society (which is rather important in a society) as properly as white kids. Autistic kids don't, however. They have to rely on others. It's not the bullying I worry about so much, in fact. It's a side thing (though, I fear for it slightly) more than anything else.
Just imagine a kid that can't even hold a good, stable relationship with his own parents. Imagine someone like that. Imagine that person to experience every deviation from his world to be problematic, irritating and even frightening. Now, imagine that person to have the inability to clearly vocalise what it wants to say and that kid to have self-esteem issues, since no one can reach out to him.
these are all problems. Don't you see that?
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2009 07:44 PM |
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The "objective issues" you mention apply probably only in the stone age, I give you that.
No, communication is more critical to society than it ever has been. We might not go outright extinct, but if the new generations were to be 100% autistic, there would be a total breakdown of communication and civilization would largely collapse.
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TheDeath
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posted October 23, 2009 07:54 PM |
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@Dagoth: I happen to share some of the things you listed and I do not *see* a problem at all. You may say I'm biased, but I haven't even had a serious problem relating to those.
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No, communication is more critical to society than it ever has been. We might not go outright extinct, but if the new generations were to be 100% autistic, there would be a total breakdown of communication and civilization would largely collapse.
I don't buy your argument at all, can you be more specific than "OMG doomsday" if you can? What type of communication are you talking about: I'm anti-social myself but very active on the internet too. Not sure how an autist would do, but you get the idea.
Maybe you're saying society "as we know it" would collapse. That's ok, it already did in the last two decades, I don't think it was for the bad. (I'm talking about the "non-social activities" today b/c of computers & internet & entertainment).
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2009 07:59 PM |
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Take a fully autistic person and replace the 6.5 billion people on the planet with people like them. I don't need to elaborate further; it's not just a matter of switching around the means of communication. Autistic people have horrible adaptability (a critical trait for any living thing) and communication problems.
I'm assuming you agree that prosperity is a good thing, which granted you don't since you're a misanthrope. But then again, for a misanthrope, cancer is also a good thing. But if you view prosperity as a good thing, then autism is inherently a problem.
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TheDeath
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posted October 23, 2009 08:06 PM |
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Take a fully autistic person and replace the 6.5 billion people on the planet with people like them. I don't need to elaborate further; it's not just a matter of switching around the means of communication. Autistic people have horrible adaptability (a critical trait for any living thing) and communication problems.
Adaptability for what?
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I'm assuming you agree that prosperity is a good thing, which granted you don't since you're a misanthrope. But then again, for a misanthrope, cancer is also a good thing. But if you view prosperity as a good thing, then autism is inherently a problem.
I'm pretty sure I disagree with your definition of prosperity.
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DagothGares
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posted October 23, 2009 08:09 PM |
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Adaptability for what?
ANYTHING!
If this person has to take the bus and the busis late or someone else is sitting on 'his' seat, he's having hysteria attacks! In some cases, anyway.
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2009 08:13 PM |
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Adaptability for what?
Everyday life, Death. I'm not going to hold your hand through this because you're too egotistical to admit that autism is a problem. It's not just a matter of having different social tastes. A person that likes peace, quiet, and writing in private has different social tastes from the typical person; it's not a disorder, it's just a different personality. A person that becomes immensely frustrated and distraught because one of their socks is slightly more off white than the other has a disorder, which is one of the innumerable potential problems an autist faces.
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I'm pretty sure I disagree with your definition of prosperity.
Ok, how would you define prosperity?
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DagothGares
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posted October 23, 2009 08:20 PM |
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Autism is the point where this lack of adaptibility spoils the life quality is what they say...
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TheDeath
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posted October 23, 2009 08:25 PM |
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Everyday life, Death. I'm not going to hold your hand through this because you're too egotistical to admit that autism is a problem.
I don't admit to weak arguments, or rather, no specific arguments at all.
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It's not just a matter of having different social tastes. A person that likes peace, quiet, and writing in private has different social tastes from the typical person; it's not a disorder, it's just a different personality. A person that becomes immensely frustrated and distraught because one of their socks is slightly more off white than the other has a disorder, which is one of the innumerable potential problems an autist faces.
Actually I see people would become more perfectionist. 
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Ok, how would you define prosperity?
That would be long, let's just say it does not mean "Live a happy life and have kids" or anything that helps in this process. Some autist people are math freaks which do theoretical and "useless" things as far as the above short-sighted goal is concerned. I actually call their work advancement even if it doesn't help that goal.
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2009 08:34 PM |
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I don't admit to weak arguments, or rather, no specific arguments at all.
Specificity is irrelevant, and you can figure out a million different scenarios on your own. But here's one of 10 billion scenarios just to entertain you:
Autistic kid walks outside of his cave and goes on his daily walk. There's a fallen tree in his path. The kid pisses in his loincloth and starts rocking back and forth, then a sabretooth tiger comes along and rips him open and feeds him to her young. Good news for mommy sabretooth, bad news for autistic kid.
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Actually I see people would become more perfectionist.
At the cost of a total lack of adaptability. The world is not forgiving to such people.
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That would be long, let's just say it does not mean "Live a happy life and have kids" or anything that helps in this process. Some autist people are math freaks which do theoretical and "useless" things as far as the above short-sighted goal is concerned. I actually call their work advancement even if it doesn't help that goal.
I already agreed that autism can have it's inadvertent benefits, and some autists can accomplish some pretty amazing feats. But on the whole, they have great difficulty doing anything without a tremendous amount of support from other people, and even then, many of them don't end up doing much.
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TheDeath
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posted October 23, 2009 08:38 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
I don't admit to weak arguments, or rather, no specific arguments at all.
Specificity is irrelevant, and you can figure out a million different scenarios on your own. But here's one of 10 billion scenarios just to entertain you:
Autistic kid walks outside of his cave and goes on his daily walk. There's a fallen tree in his path. The kid pisses in his loincloth and starts rocking back and forth, then a sabretooth tiger comes along and rips him open and feeds him to her young. Good news for mommy sabretooth, bad news for autistic kid.
The "objective issues" you mention apply probably only in the stone age, I give you that.
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Adaptability for what?
ANYTHING!
If this person has to take the bus and the busis late or someone else is sitting on 'his' seat, he's having hysteria attacks! In some cases, anyway.
Hmm well that's a bit extreme, me wasn't talking about that kind of autism. I thought it was called differently, at least the "I can't go outside cause of fear" disorder...
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2009 08:43 PM |
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The "objective issues" you mention apply probably only in the stone age, I give you that.
We would never be where we are to begin with if everybody was autistic. But let's pretend that we're somehow living in a modern society of autistic people:
Kid walks outside of his house to go on his daily walk. There's a traffic jam (in which case, thousands of other people are in the process of flipping out inside of their cars). The kid pisses his pants and starts rocking back in forth. Nobody is around to help him because everybody else is flipping out because not everything is going 100% according to plan. Then it starts thundering and a telephone pole gets struck and there's a fire. Then everybody really starts flipping out, and the fire department (which could never function under a bunch of autistic people) starts flipping out and running in circles. You see? It's hard for me to even get specific because the level of self-ownage is too complex and immense to really accurately calculate.
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TheDeath
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posted October 23, 2009 08:53 PM |
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Well it sounds kinda extreme because in that situation they wouldn't have much to do with socializing others, since the others are autistic too. The firemen don't socialize with fire -- although there probably are different cases of autism, I'm talking about the social one.
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Corribus
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posted October 23, 2009 09:10 PM |
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firemen don't socialize with fire -- although there probably are different cases of autism, I'm talking about the social one.
They have to socialize with each other in order to be effective at putting out fires. Putting out fires requires coordinated teamwork. Come on, Death, you're just being stubborn. A society of severe autistics would function just about as well as a society of Alzheimers patients.
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TheDeath
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posted October 23, 2009 09:16 PM |
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hmm... I thought autists are comfortable with themselves, but if it's severe autism, then yeah.
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