A Quick One: Why Must Atypicality Justify Itself?

Why is is that non-typical things (and people) are held to an extremely high standard of self-justification, whereas more typical things (and people) get to have their existence taken at face value?

I came across a comment today (I don't remember the exact site) in which someone was making the claim that even if an autistic person was happy and okay with being autistic, we (there's that lovely non-inclusive "we" again) still have an obligation to prevent future people from being autistic. The reason? Because there's apparently "no reason for autism/Asperger's to exist."

(and no, this person didn't even bother claiming that he was only talking about people with "severe difficulties" -- he was including everyone who might presumably fall under the "autistic spectrum" umbrella, as far as I could tell.)

My first response to this (internally) was, "Wha?!"

See, as far as I know, there's no "reason" outside conscious awareness for anything to exist in the first place...stuff just sort of exists, and different people find meaning and value in different parts of existence. Maybe it's my vaguely existential tendencies talking here (if so, it's all Joss Whedon's fault!), but I think it's perfectly valid for people to decide for themselves that their existence -- however they might happen to be configured -- has value for its own sake.

Which means that autistic people (regardless of what their "label" happens to be, if they have one) have just as much right as anyone else to assert that there's nothing wrong with the fact of their existence, or the existence of similar others. The idea that any deviation from the norm needs to provide extra justification points for its existence is just plain silly. Real life is not some kind of assembly line, and people are not interchangeable parts.

There is no set of figures or statistics that can possibly provide an "objective" guide to configuring humans on some grand scale of promised "improvement". Either you decide that people are valuable for their own sakes and keep that in mind when making decisions from that point on, or you decide to play the "leaky lifeboat" game of looking at all of humanity with the goal of deciding who it is okay to throw overboard.

To me, it seems obvious that the former position is more ethically sound, but it sometimes seems to be very hard to justify it in ways that others can readily understand.

(Obviously this isn't some kind of hard-and-fast guide, and I am not suggesting everyone go home and snuggle with a serial killer because "everyone just needs to be loved". Rather, I am talking about a general weighting of attitudes, in which a person cultivates a default position of presuming value and seeing where that presumption takes them.

My guess is that if more people did this, there would be a lot less in the way of "writing people off" and/or assuming that because you can't understand how someone else could be happy, their own assertions to that effect can't be taken as anything more than signs of ignorance or "resignation to a lesser life").

What Each Of Us Notices, Exploratorium Edition

I wrote What Each Of Us Notices a while back to offer a bit of an illustration of how I perceive things. I find perception and its variations fascinating, and I also find that it can sometimes be difficult in the realm of the highly word-oriented Internet to remain cognizant of the myriad ways different people might process, interpret, and appreciate the world around them.

Anyway, while I've been working on a few "wordy" posts that I hope to have in a bloggable state soon, I figured I'd do another perception/picture post tonight, as I spent most of today in San Francisco at the Exploratorium. Aside from it being a bit noisy in that echo-y way that reminds me disconcertingly of the school gymnasiums of my youth, the Exploratorium is one of the coolest environments there is -- not only is there science everywhere, there are also a ton of purely visual delights, including many Things That Spin. :D

The photos below are just a few of the images that caught my eye today.

A panel on the wall made of numerous tiny curved mirrors:



A neat spinny disc-shaped thing in the wall:



A portion of the inside architecture of the Exploratorium. Not an exhibit -- just a collection of lines, angles, and surfaces I found really cool:



Matt (my SO) and me inside a giant kaleidoscope (basically 3 mirrors held together at the edges in a triangle shape):



(As always, I would absolutely love to see images -- drawings, photographs, etc. -- from others, so feel free to comment with links to things you feel are representative of how you see the world.)

Chaos and Aesthetics Survey Results

My friend Dora (a Portland State University grad student) has completed the project paper based on her Chaos and Aesthetics Survey - thanks very much to any Existence is Wonderful readers who helped provide her with data!

The "short version" of the results is here (note: it may not make a lot of sense to folks outside Artificial Life classes); a (more accessible) PDF of her presentation explaining the survey's creation process and offering an analysis of the results is here.

I'm not particularly well-versed in Artificial Life studies myself, but I'm definitely intrigued by the idea, and I find it super-nifty indeed that there exists a field of study wherein art, math, and computer programming are so closely intertwined.

(Also, I should point out that in Dora's presentation PDF, the bulk of the text was written as a script to be read by a computerized text-to-speech program -- hence the occasional "odd" spelling here and there.)

No Such Thing As An Irrelevant Skill

Following up (somewhat tangentially) on my recent post on "fascinations", the article Many of My Most Useful Skills I Owe to Serendipity on the (excellent) Slow Leadership blog makes a few statements I can quite thoroughly agree with:

Serendipity is not only an essential input to creative thinking, it often serves up unexpected benefits elsewhere. There’s no way of knowing in advance precisely how — and whether — anything you learn or become interested in will benefit you. Yet sometimes you find yourself needing idea or technique and there it is; right from an area of interest or learning you undertook years ago with no thought it would ever be useful.

And I especially like this part:

Learn all you can about anything that interests you. Never mind if it’s “useful” or “relevant.” It’s all relevant. If you’re passionate about cats, or cars, or canyons, learn all you can about them. If you love hiking, learn all you can about the sport and the places you hike through. Keep adding to your learning. One day — you won’t be able to predict when, so don’t worry about it — it’ll be exactly what you need the most.

(The whole article is worth reading, I just figured I'd share a few quotes here, as someone who has gotten a ton of unexpected benefit from simply being fascinated with things).

Confessions Of A Non-Driving American

As a youngster, I always took it as a given that I'd get my drivers' license someday.

In December 2008, I will turn thirty years old. I still don't have a license. This no longer bothers me in the least. But it certainly seems to unnerve others, as I often find myself in the position of being expected to justify and explain my indefinite non-driverhood. Apparently, according to some, non-driving Americans are somewhere on the rarity scale between the Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat and the Yeti.

But contrary to popular opinion, no, we are not mythical beasts. Plenty of people don't drive, and yes, some of us live in the good old US of A. Non-drivers include children 16 and under, elderly persons, blind persons, neuro-atypical persons (though neuro-atypicality certainly doesn't necessarily preclude driving), urbanite hipsters, skate punks, exercise enthusiasts, farm workers, and others who just plain don't like driving.

In other words, despite the car-obsessed culture we North Americans live in, not all of us drive. And while some of us may want to drive, not all of us do. And it's high time we had our say.

So here's my story, for what it's worth.

First Attempts

The first time I attempted to operate an automobile, I was about sixteen. I don't remember much about that attempt, except for the fact that it didn't last very long. Nobody was injured, but I seem to recall someone yelling "STOP!" after I'd gone a few clumsy feet in the driveway.

I didn't attempt driving again until I was eighteen, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I didn't need to drive in order to get anywhere I needed to go; my high school and the public library were within walking distance, so even though I sometimes got a ride with someone, I wasn't stranded when I didn't have a ride.

For another thing, I didn't see the point of trying for a license when I couldn't afford a car -- I had no expectation that my parents would buy me one (and it bugged me to hear other teenagers talking as if they were somehow "entitled" to cars), and I didn't have personal funds sufficient to buy one myself, let alone deal with insurance and gas and maintenance.

And finally, I simply wasn't all that interested in driving, as I was plenty busy with school, and my hobbies (reading, art, computer games) didn't pose heavy transportation demands.

But one day, my stepmom randomly asked me if I wanted to try driving again. I accepted this offer, and managed to make my way slowly around the parking lot of the local junior college in her tan minivan. I don't think I did too horribly, but it wasn't exactly an experience I was compelled to repeat soon afterward; it was very mentally exhausting. And soon I got caught up again in other things that didn't involve driving or attempting to drive, and the whole idea of doing so simply fell off my radar.

Round Two

Fast forward another three years or so. I'd transferred to university after completing my general education requirements at two local junior colleges, but I was home on summer break working as an engineering intern (at the same company I now work for; they hired me on after I graduated). My parents were starting to get concerned about my non-driving status at that point, judging from their repeated and pointed suggestions that I get my learner's permit. Eventually I guess the nagging got to me, as I went down to the DMV one day and passed the written test, thereby qualifying myself for behind-the-wheel instruction.

The day the driving instructor showed up in the little gray automatic with the extra brake was the first day I actually went out on a real road (as opposed to a driveway or parking lot). I was 21 years old, and still more or less optimistic that all I needed was a bit of practice in order to become a skilled, safe driver. So practice I did. And within a few hours of instruction, I was definitely a bit better than when I'd started at controlling the car. I was able to start it up, make it go straight, and steer, (albeit somewhat clumsily) around curves in the road.

The instructor had me drive on residential streets for the most part, which weren't too bad, though I had some trouble whenever there were other cars in the vicinity, as I found it very difficult to predict their behavior and judge where they were in relation to the car I was in. There were several incidents in which the instructor either had to slam on the extra brake (which I didn't find overly discouraging, as I knew the pedal was there for a reason) or grab the wheel from me in order to avoid Massive Crunchy Death, but I pressed on. We tried going up a really twisty mountain road at one point, and I actually didn't do too badly there, as there were very few other cars and the ones that were present seemed to be driving carefully and fairly slowly. And a few times, I ended up on the freeway.

The freeway experience was probably the biggest eye-opener of all with regard to what the demands of driving actually were. I actually liked driving on the freeway in some respects -- the "going really fast in a straight line" part was exhilirating, and several times I had to be reminded to note the speed limit. I also appreciated the "no stoplights" thing (as it meant less fiddling with the controls while simultaneously trying to pay attention to the road). But when it came to steering, merging, changing lanes, entering, or exiting, I was pretty well flummoxed. It became apparent to me fairly early on that freeway driving required a lot in the way of rapid responsiveness, and that even tiny movements of the steering wheel could have major effects on the car's trajectory when said car was careening along at 80 MPH.

I obviously didn't end up crashing and dying, but frankly I still chalk that up to luck and the presence of the instructor. But I finished my six hours (or whatever it was), and got the little permit certificate. I was pretty proud of that, and still figured that all I needed was more road practice.

After finishing up with the driving instructor, I mostly went out on the road with my dad. I could tell he and my stepmom were doing their best to help and encourage me, but at the same time, I also felt really pressured -- they would randomly quiz me on things like three-point turns (using napkins to represent cars) during dinner, and I was not very good at answering accurately in real-time, which frustrated both me and my parents alike. Once they had me drive the lot of us to the pizza place, and not only did I end up "drifting all over the road like a drunk", I also over-shot the driveway to the parking lot, and was in tears by the time we actually reached our destination. Another time, I was out driving with my dad, and he had to prevent me from driving through another car -- basically, we were at a green light (which my brain took to mean "go"), but the car in front of us wasn't actually moving yet.

Sometimes I seemed to do okay, but gradually I started noticing that I was really only "okay" when I had the whole road to myself. Any other large, moving objects, and I'd suddenly become exceedingly confused -- it was almost like the presence of even one other vehicle would break the whole scene around me into little pieces, which I then had to scramble to figure out the significance of. I'd been vaguely aware of this when I was driving with the instructor, but I'd not figured it to be anything unusual; I still figured at that point that everyone processed visual data the same way I did, and that if other people could drive, there was no reason I couldn't learn as well.

But the more I went out on the road, the more it became clear to me that I wasn't getting any better at dealing with multiple random moving variables in my visual field. Sure, I was getting better at manipulating the steering wheel and signal lights, but I was also still regularly forgetting which pedal was the gas and which was the brake, and just generally not dealing well with any outside motion or unpredictable situation on the road.

I began to dread practice sessions, but I tried to maintain some semblance of enthusiasm. Not only had I been culturally conditioned to think that I "needed" to drive in order to be a respectable adult, I also figured I'd be a huge disappointment to my parents if I didn't drive, and I felt very guilty about being so poor at it. I got plenty of advice from various people on what my "problem" supposedly was: that I was "just nervous", that I still hadn't gotten enough practice, that I wasn't really trying, that I was "relying too much" on other modes of transportation, etc. None of those explanations really felt right, but I couldn't articulate what was actually going on, so I vacillated between feeling ashamed of myself for my "laziness" and trying to ignore and push the idea of driving out of my mind altogether.

I tried driving a few more times when I returned to university after summer break -- my very patient and supportive boyfriend Matt was plenty willing to lend me vehicular access for practice purposes. I drove around in the school parking lot a bit (though that was kind of unnerving, as there was a pen of goats at the edge of the lot!), and drove once or twice from Matt's apartment to mine. But then I got busy again with school, and driving fell off my mental map again until after graduation.

Third Time's The Charm?

Fast forward again, this time to 2004. I'd graduated college the previous year, and Matt and I had moved into a small apartment in Santa Clara following my getting hired on permanently at my job. I started having more contact with my family again, as they're local to the Bay Area, and once again, I started feeling ashamed and angry at myself for not having a license. I was 24ish and decided that I would get my license once and for all before turning 25 -- no more excuses, no more procrastinating.

Finally, I figured, I was really and truly ready. I had a patient and willing licensed driver to help me (Matt), a cute shiny new Ford Focus to zip around in, and plenty of wide streets and parking lots to practice in. I marched into the DMV and renewed my expired learner's permit, and prepared for my first parking-lot re-acquaintance with the driver's seat.

And...I did okay in parking lots, as usual. Not great, but okay. I then went out on the road with Matt, where I noted the same phenomena as I'd experienced in the beginning of my quest to become a real driver: being "fine" on straight stretches of road with no other cars, but randomly forgetting how to use the controls in the middle of navigating an intersection, and not reacting in safe or appropriate ways to unexpected events or moving objects in my visual field. And don't even get me started on those unprotected left turns -- without fail, it always looked to me like the cars going in the other direction were coming straight at my front bumper, which led to no end of dangerous overcompensation on my part.

But I felt better. Less like a failure. More like someone who was actually growing up, who was actually "trying".

The only problem (well, aside from the obvious safety issues that entered the picture every time I ventured out onto the road) was that after every session, I'd come home feeling utterly brain-dead. I would return to my apartment after less than an hour of driving practice end up doing nothing for the rest of the day beyond clicking random Internet links and wandering around the living room in circles.

It would have been one thing if I was actually becoming a better driver. But I just wasn't. And I wasn't doing much of anything else aside from work and household chores, either.

So eventually, after much internal deliberation, I decided that my energies would be spent better elsewhere than trying to get a drivers' license.

Realizations and Trade-Offs

It's worth noting how dysfunctional my overall self-image was at the time I was most concerned with trying to get a license.

For a while after deciding to cease my attempts at becoming a driver indefinitely, I second-guessed myself relentlessly:

Maybe I stopped practicing one session too early -- maybe another hour on the road and it all would have clicked!

Maybe I just need to find the right book or Web site or teacher -- maybe if I keep looking a little longer, I'll find something that will work for me.

Maybe I AM just too lazy. Maybe everyone who learns to drive goes through the same thing I've been through and worse, and I'm just weak-willed and making excuses to cover for it.

Those "maybes" (and plenty of others) danced in my head for months. Even though I knew I'd made the right decision (for the sake of my personal safety and productivity in my non-work life), I was still concerned that I was going to be a "burden" forever, and that people were always going to end up feeling "pressured" into driving me around. I thought of the well-intentioned people who'd been telling me since I was a teenager that I ought to be able to drive because I was supposedly "smart enough" to do so; I felt like I was almost assuredly letting them down.

But: the fact of the matter was that even after several years of on-and-off practice, I still couldn't get behind the wheel and consistently keep track of what was going on. There were moments -- brief moments -- wherein I felt like I was truly in control of the vehicle, but it only ever took one too many moving objects outside, or someone honking the horn, or a bird flying by, etc., to throw my brain completely off-track.

And by "completely off-track", I mean "totally unable to process any incoming information in a manner meaningful to driving".

My hearing is very sensitive. I'm sure this helps me appreciate music; I wouldn't trade it for less acute hearing if I could, any more than I'd poke my eye with a stick to reduce the painful glare of the sun. But it also means that car horns (and worse, car alarms) fill my entire skull with a hot, opaque red-blackness that effectively blocks out everything else in the universe.

My visual information-processing system works atypically. I didn't know until just a few years ago that not everyone saw things the way I did. I had no idea that it wasn't "normal" to see the world as raw shapes, colors, and patterns as opposed to readily-recognizable "macro-objects". I didn't have a clue that most people could look out their car windows and instantaneously parse out what shapes were attached to other cars, which were attached to trees, etc. -- for me, this process has always been at least semi-conscious and also energy-intensive to maintain.

And...cognitively speaking, there's something about my overall brain functioning that makes safe driving totally unsustainable for me. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but as near as I can tell, my brain does a lot of "buffering". That is, I take in a lot of information all the time, and rather than immediately making automatic assumptions about its significance, I sift through it slowly and painstakingly.

This sifting process is part conscious, part unconscious, and while it definitely contributes to my ability to absorb certain kinds of knowledge like a sponge (and to learn certain skills very very thoroughly), it also means I have periods wherein my motor, speech, and other "basic" skills aren't 100% reliable.

For example, I've written before about how walking into an unfamiliar place feels rather like walking into a kaleidescope to me -- sometimes I literally freeze in place when hit by a barrage of visual input, whereas other times I sort of dart off (not necessarily voluntarily) into a corner or other location-shape that feels instinctually "safe" to me.

Mind you, this isn't a terrible thing as far as I'm concerned.

I think there's definitely a place in the world for people who process information the way I do (just as there is for people who process information in other ways), and overall, the universe (at least the parts of it that are accessible to me) looks stunningly beautiful most of the time from behind my eyes.

But it's not the greatest thing in the world when it comes to being able to drive safely. I can deal with it while walking, or even biking -- but in a car, everything is going way too fast for any of my compensation mechanisms to kick in.

One can't get away from trade-offs, at least not in this reality.

And given that fact, most (if not all) people are going to run up against situations in their lives where they have to choose between accepting some aspect of how they are configured and making the best of it, or continuing to fight to "overcome" that aspect.

But How Do You Get Around?

Believe it or not, there are ways to get around even when one lacks a drivers' license.

Right now it works out that my place of employment is on the way to Matt's, making it quite convenient for us to car-pool every morning and afternoon. He's assured me that he doesn't mind driving me, and since he's not a passive-aggressive liar by nature, I'm compelled to believe him. And if he couldn't drive me for some reason, I could ride my bike, take the bus, or possibly even rollerblade. I'm not "dependent" on him for rides to work; it's just convenient given our circumstances right now, and if I had to, I could certainly find some way to effectively commute.

I also presently live within easy walking distance from the bank and several basic stores where I can purchase water, food, and even underwear should the need arise. I can take the bus to any doctors' appointments I might have if need be, as the routes run by the local Kaiser facilities. I can even take the train to San Francisco if there's something worth seeing there. And I don't even live in a particularly urban area -- I'm smack in the middle of the South Bay suburbs.

This is not to say that transit is perfect around here -- there are some locations between which no convenient transit lines seem to run. I occasionally have to visit a lab in Fremont, CA for EMC testing, and if I were to take transit between here and there, the trip would surpass two and a half hours (whereas it's only about 20 minutes or so by car).

This makes me "dependent" on getting rides from co-workers when I have lab work to do, and at first I was embarrassed about this -- but then I realized that nobody even thought to question the fact that I also needed help with lifting and moving heavy equipment. If it's okay to need help in one area, why not in other areas as well? It would make just about as much sense for me to feel guilty about needing rides to the lab as it would for needing help carrying a 70-pound power supply -- which is to say, no sense at all. Plus, the reason my company sends me to the lab in the first place is because of my engineering knowledge -- knowledge that is not in any way affected by whether or not I can drive.

Bottom line: everyone has areas in which they need help, and areas in which they can help others, and there's no reason for anyone to be ashamed because their skill set isn't typical of their culture. And if people truly want to their cultures to become more inclusive, more flexible, and more capable of fulfilling the basic function of civilization at large (enabling all citizens to access food, shelter, and opportunities for self-determination and creative contribution), services like transit are major areas to pay attention to.

Acceptance Is Acknowledging What's In Your Toolbox, Not "Admitting Defeat"!

Faced with a trying situation, it is reflexive for people to ask themselves, "What could I have done to prevent this? What caused it? And how might I prevent similar situations in the future?"

There's nothing wrong with asking these questions, just as there's nothing wrong with acknowledging a difficulty or admitting that something is bothering you. And of course, each of us has our own ambition(s) and goals and projects, which necessarily entail the honing of existing skills or the acquisition of new skills.

But: the idea of sitting there being mad at what "could" have been prior to my birth no longer makes any sense to me. I used to go around feeling several sharp and conflicting flavors of angst about all the "what-ifs" and "might-have-beens" that I saw as having affected my life, but nowadays I'm seeing how counterproductive that sort of thing can be. I mean, it's one thing to look at the circumstances of your life and try to figure out the various ways in which you could improve certain aspects of your existence, but it's quite another to obsess over every little thing that could have conceivably contributed to any difficulty you presently experience.

What's strange to me, I guess, is how often I observe people coming to the conclusion that "working with the available materials" (where the "materials" in question are the various factors that have gone toward shaping you as a person, in conjunction with your past and present life circumstances) is tantamount to "admitting defeat".

I find it difficult to even write this, because of how often this kind of statement gets interpreted as meaning, "Nobody should ever bother doing anything to improve themselves or their circumstances", and how often notions like "acceptance" are seen as expressions of untoward "relativism" and calls for effective stagnation. I don't mean anything like that, though, so hopefully this explanation is clear enough on that front.

What I do mean is that it ought to be possible to be a psychologically and emotionally healthy person with dreams, goals, and ambitions -- while at the same time being someone who doesn't view themselves or the rest of the universe as a pathology waiting to be cured, or a broken machine waiting to be fixed. Explored, tinkered with, and played with, perhaps -- but not pitied for what it is not.

So, no, I'm not interested in practicing driving again right now. I'm not interested in advice or well-meaning "encouragement", or suggestions as to the deep, underlying psychological factors that might be "limiting" my driving prowess. I've received enough of that to last a lifetime already, thanks, and I've got plenty of other things I'd rather be doing with my time.

And frankly, I'm plenty willing at this point to start extolling the benefits of cutting down on car use in general.

I don't expect that autonomous personal vehicles are ever really going to go away completely (as even a well-designed transit system would have difficulty accommodating people who needed to pick up a pallet of planks or cinderblocks at the hardware store, or a new sofa). But you'd have to be pretty clueless to think that present-day automobiles (and the roads they drive on, and the traffic situations they create) aren't dangerous even for good drivers.

I'm actually regularly shocked both at the sheer number of accidents (and accident residue) I see on the roads around where I live, and at peoples' callous disregard for their own lives and the lives of others. I literally saw a guy a while back driving an SUV while talking on a cell phone with one hand, smoking a cigarette with the other, and reading a map with his eyes. (I don't even want to know what he was using to steer with...).

And then there's the whole environmental-impact thing to consider: I used to worry about being a "burden" due to not having my own car, but now I'm figuring I'm probably saving some carbon via my carpooling/walking/biking/bus-riding lifestyle. I try not to be judgmental, but seriously, Hummers? In the suburbs? Please.

All in all, I'm really hoping to see the day when more folks wake up and realize this and promptly build cool, safe, robot cars hooked into GPS units for route planning, and powered by solar panels and biodiesel.

And that monorail is long overdue.

(Hey, a non-driving girl can dream, right?)

Descriptive, Not Prescriptive

A while back, I was involved in a BBS discussion about computers and gender (in the context of whether the notion of "female-friendly design features" was a logical one).

Initially I was rather annoyed with the very premise of the discussion, as when I think of "female-friendly design features", my mind cynically goes straight to pictures of pink Barbie-themed laptops where you can play "shopping games".

But it turned out that (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here, since this discussion happened a while ago) the person who started the discussion was actually just referring to design features that might actually be functionally useful for a statistically significant percentage of women. Such features might include, say, a smaller keyboard to accommodate smaller hands. In other words, she wasn't talking about making computers pink, or pre-loading them with "Magic Makeover" software or anything else relating to cultural stereotypes -- she was just talking about perhaps implementing design variations and options that at least some women might benefit from.

Now, I'm still vaguely skeptical about the need to "gender" these features in the first place, as there are always going to be people of every gender (and I say "every" because gender isn't exactly binary) who find certain device options useful per their individual characteristics. But at the same time, I do see it as potentially useful to look at what groups are using (or not using) particular devices, and why. Sometimes, things end up getting designed with all kinds of built-in assumptions about who is going to be using them -- and consequently, people the designers didn't have in mind have more difficulty using those things, or have a sub-optimal experience while using them.

So in a sense, I guess I'm okay with considering gender as a design factor when the consideration is geared toward making devices (or offering services) that a wider variety of people can benefit from. As the person who started the gender-and-computers discussion noted, there are ways of accounting for physical and functional realities different people face that are descriptive, not prescriptive.

Descriptive Versus Prescriptive

I want to explore the concept of "descriptive versus prescriptive" a bit here, as it's a distinction I've been finding tremendously useful lately in thinking about labels and how they are employed. In the aforementioned discussion about computers and gender, I initially jumped right to the conclusion that "female-friendly design features" must refer to silly, stereotype-reinforcing aesthetic elements.

I remember as a kid being tremendously irritated by things like the fact that bicycles in catalogs advertised as being "for girls" were almost invariably PINK, covered in hearts, and emblazoned with ridiculous phrases like "Pretty Lady" or "Princess Sunshine". Not only that, but they often had white tires (as if they didn't expect girls would even dream of riding through mud puddles, etc.).



(Me, I was all about riding the BMX through the dirt.)

Eventually, as a result of seeing so many things I had no interest in presented as being "for girls!", and being occasionally chastised for daring to wander outside the boundaries of certain stereotypes, it got to the point where I started to wonder if I even was a "real girl". There was so much I was apparently "supposed" to be that I just plain wasn't, so my natural reaction was to wonder if someone had stuck the wrong tag on me at the factory, so to speak.

So, even though I was definitely what you might call "socially oblivious" in some respects, I was very aware of stereotypes and how they tended to be "enforced" from a fairly early age. I couldn't really not notice them, as I ran up against them constantly in pursuing my interests and trying to express my actual preferences.

Nevertheless, I can now see that pretty much everything that bothered me about gender-related stuff as a kid was rooted in gender (and gender stereotypes in particular) being applied prescriptively. I think I figured this out on some level (though not the linguistic level, as I couldn't have described it in this way back then) when I was maybe ten or eleven -- at that point I stopped doubting the fact that I was actually a girl, and decided instead that the problem had to do with the assumed definition of "girl" being too narrow.

In other words, girl was a fine enough descriptive term for someone with my physical features and chromosome configuration, but there was absolutely no reason for that term to limit me as far as what activities I could try out, or as far as what things I could be interested in.

And...that's how I've tended to approach labels and associated concepts ever since.

What Each Of Us Notices

I.
When I draw, I usually start with one small area or bit of detail. Sometimes my aim is to draw a particular thing; other times, I just want to draw shapes and patterns representing the parts of reality I tend to see and notice.

When I am not trying to draw anything in particular, I seem to use a lot of "tree branch" and vine motifs, along with things that resemble steam and smoke and cracks and shine accents on the surfaces of amorphous shapes.

When I draw a picture such as the one below (which is really only a portion of a larger picture), I tend to hone in on one tiny area, and fill it up with detail. Only when an area has been appropriately saturated with inky curves do I move on to the next area (which may be adjacent, or which may be on a different and wholly empty part of the page).



Eventually, the paper I started with is covered with shapes and lines. Sometimes the whole thing resembles a kind of surreal "scene", other times it does not. When I look later upon pictures such as this, my eyes wander and track and follow from one small area to the next. I like to get lost when drawing, and lost when looking, in the microcosms of each small area of the whole.

This is very much the way I actually look at the world. I didn't realize that until relatively recently, but when I did, my own drawings suddenly fell into a kind of context.

My parents tell me that my very first questions about the world around me involved parts: I wanted to know about the holes in the telephone receiver, the insides of rocks, the mechanisms that made the hot water come out of the tap hot, and the composition of my hair.

II.
What does it feel like to walk into a store or other environment you have never visited before?

For me, it feels rather like walking into a kaliedoscope.

I see shapes and colors all around me -- raw shapes and colors, not "objects" or things invested intrinsically or instantaneously with symbolic meaning. The symbolic meaning-layer must be consciously or at least semi-consciously applied.

This does not mean I cannot see patterns or functional/aesthetic attributes of things -- it just means that, for instance, if I know I want a place to sit down and I walk into an unfamiliar room, I am just as likely to sit on the floor or on a windowsill or some other flat surface as I am to sit on a chair.

It means that if I am watching a movie, I might be looking at something off to the side of the actors, or the pattern on someone's shirt, or at something in the background, rather than at the aspects of the foreground the camera is directly focusing on.

It means that I am drawn to particular patterns and collections of shape, color, and light, and hurtled into confusion by others.

It means that right when I enter a new environment, I am uncommonly clumsy and vulnerable. I walk into people and walls. I scamper and run away from too much input, too much light, too many moving hands and the shadows they cast.

Perhaps this is a "constraint".



But do not ask me if I would rather be "free" of it, for such a question assumes that there is nothing but loss in such vulnerability and gracelessness.

And believe me, that is not the case.

The Empathy Conundrum: Ethics, Emotion, and Autistic Cognition

Two Capacities, One Word?

The word "empathy" gets bandied about a lot these days in popular media concerning brain and behavior-related topics.

Specifically, I've noticed that articles about either autism or sociopathy and criminal behavior tend to discuss a supposed "lack of empathy" in autistics - and in the sorts of people who like to torture animals for fun.

It is of great concern to me that the notion of particular kinds of people lacking empathy is so often brought up in a muddled, careless manner. I realize that most people writing about empathy and "mirror neurons" these days probably don't mean any harm by it, but that doesn't make the potential consequences of their writing any less worth pointing out and discussing critically.

First of all, I have noticed that when most people use the word empathy, they're actually referring to one of two very different things:

(1) The capacity of a person to "read" culture-typical social signals, respond in expected/predictable ways to common situations and experiences, and engage in a certain amount of "social learning" via particular kinds of imitation.

(2) The capacity of a person to feel emotions "on behalf" of others, to care about others, and to feel compelled toward ethical behavior.

I hardly think the two capacities decribed in (1) and (2) above could really be confused for each other, or assumed to mean the exact same thing, by anyone putting any actual thought into their discussion of what "empathy" means. And yet, it is not unusual to find people switching from talking about capacity (1) to talking about capacity (2) without any explicit indication that they are doing so, or any apparent understanding of what it might mean to conflate the two.

For a particularly egregious example of this, consider the Empathy Quotient quiz. Based on some of the theories and writings of British autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen (not to be confused with his cousin, comedic actor Sacha Baron-Cohen), the Empathy Quotient quiz includes such items as:

- I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation.

- I am very blunt, which some people take to be rudeness, even though this is unintentional.

- I can pick up quickly if someone says one thing but means another.

Notice that the three quiz items above all pertain to interpretation (1) of what "empathy" means.

Rather than having anything to do with whether a person actually cares about other people (or animals), these items all have to do with how someone might "operate" in the social arena. These items may indeed suggest areas where someone might experience social difficulty as a result of not functioning, thinking, or perceiving in a culture-typical manner, but they don't say anything about a person's capacity to respond emotionally to situations affecting other people. Nor do they say anything about a person's capacity to behave ethically or hold and adhere to principles.

Now, consider the next example set of items from the quiz:

- It upsets me to see an animal in pain.

- Seeing people cry doesn't really upset me.

- I get upset if I see people suffering on news programmes.

These items, in contrast to the previous three, are directly concerned with a person's internal, affective response to the suffering of others. Not with how the person "comes across" socially, or how good the person is at quickly noticing and responding to indirect communication and/or typical social cues. And that's a very important distinction to be aware of.

But the "empathy quotient" quiz doesn't make this distinction. Nor, apparently, do many people who write articles about autism in the popular press.

The Empathy Quotient quiz designates scores of 0 - 32 as "low", and suggests that "most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20".

I took this quiz this evening myself, and scored 18. So, while I don't put any actual stock in this quiz as a diagnostic instrument (its wording is extremely ambiguous in some places, among other problems), I certainly can't deny that my score does correlate with what my ASD diagnosis would supposedly predict.

But what does that actually mean, if anything?

My Own "Empathic Deficit"

I initially encountered the concept of "theory of mind" (and how it supposedly pertains to empathy) back when I was in the midst of the evaluation of my developmental history and cognitive/behavioral style that ended up leading to my diagnosis. At first, the idea that I might have "empathic difficulties" seemed to make sense and explain a lot of things about my pervasive and ongoing social difficulties.

After all:

- I have been called "insensitive" and "oblivious to other people" on numerous occasions.

- I was reprimanded at the first two jobs I worked at for such things as "sweeping the floor too much" (meaning I was focusing too intently on cleaning and not intently enough on greeting customers), and coming across as aloof or even rude.

- I have trouble spontaneously answering questions like "How are you?" (I actually have the comic below posted outside my cubicle at work).


- I have often been accused of missing the "emotional tone" of a conversation or situation -- e.g., my third grade teacher was once lecturing me about something (I can't remember what), and at one point she used a funny word, at which point I burst into laughter. I was then made to write "I will not laugh while I am being reprimanded" on a piece of paper multiple times.

- I have always found most social situations to be overwhelming and confusing (particularly if there are large groups involved).

- I have trouble keeping track of which people of my acquaintance know which pieces of information, and sometimes I get confused at the fact that things that seem "obvious" to me are not, in fact, "common knowledge".

- I also remember one of my childhood nicknames being "Miss Contrary", as I often appeared to "insist" on doing everything in my own way as opposed to a way I was shown or told -- and while I will certainly admit to stubbornness as a character trait (it runs in the family), the fact of the matter is that I often can't match people's movements in learning to perform tasks. (I'm a lot better at figuring out how to operate devices and accomplish physical tasks by studying and experimenting with the relevant objects myself than by watching other people performing the tasks and copying their movements, and I often find that the presence of other people when I'm trying to figure out how to do something hurts more than it helps.)

In light of all that, it seemed perfectly logical for me to figure that the popular literature conflating autistic cognition with a "lack of empathy" made sense. Until I was identified as being on the autistic spectrum, I'd tended to assume that I was "normal" and that other people were all weird and unpredictable. But learning that I might have "empathy deficits" turned the tables on that assumption, and for a while I found the notion that my social difficulties were due to such deficits quite useful as an explanatory tool.

Carelessness and Confusion

But as I read more (in seeking to learn how to better function in the world given the particulars of my neurology), I started to realize that empathy was a massively important and significant topic in the estimation of numerous scientists and laypeople. Empathy, according to many, is a key part of what makes humans "human" -- or perhaps more generally, what makes any sentient creature worthy and capable of membership in civilization.

So while I was (and am) perfectly okay with acknowledging my difficulties, I found myself becoming more and more distressed at how autistics were described in the media, particularly with regard to how tragic and horrible (or "bad for society") our existence was supposed to be, largely on account of our supposed empathic failures.

What's more, I observed that in quite a few of the discussions of autism I came across, "having a conscience" was being conflated or confused with "demonstrating and rapidly being able to interpret typical social signals".

I don't think this is the kind of linguistic carelessness anyone can afford to just ignore or brush aside, regardless of how naive it might be. Ignorance, and the perpetuation of misconceptions about what it is actually like to be and experience the world as a certain kind of person, can have real and serious consequences for people who actually happen to be the kind of person in question.

My concern is that if autistic people are culturally defined as "lacking empathy", and if people aren't exceedingly careful to define their terms (which they often aren't), and if "empathy" is widely considered to be a precursor to conscience, then we're basically being written off straight from the get-go.

And when people are written off, there's very little motivation to think about extending basic human rights to them, let alone (gasp) learning to better accommodate and integrate different sorts of people into society.

An example of what I mean by the confusion/conflation of "typical social skills" with "emotional response" can be found in the words of a commenter on a recent BoingBoing post referring to the Online Movement for autistics' rights. This commenter states that:

Mirror neurons allow us to literally feel someone else's pain. When we see someone hurt themselves, or see someone who is clearly emotionally upset, mirror neurons are triggered in the observer's mind that are analogous to the other individual's mental process.

This also allows us to learn through observation. You see someone going through a step-by-step process, and mirror neurons allow us to learn by having analogous neurons triggered.

But since autistics don't have the same mirror neural activity, they don't learn the same way, and they also don't have the same empathetic response.

The commenter quoted above is making what I see as the essential mistake in his appraisal of what it means to be autistic. He takes a particular mechanism by which learning may take place, notes that this mechanism may be difficult for (or inaccessible to) autistics, and jumps seamlessly to the conclusion that this has something to do with "being able to feel someone else's pain".

And it is my assertion that this assertion is invalid and scientifically untenable.

Different, Not Ethically Bankrupt!

A lot of discussions about autism, regardless of where they occur, seem to get stuck on the central dilemma of what autism actually is -- that is, what it means for a person to be autistic.

Do you go strictly by the DSM-IV definition? The ICD-10? What about all those people claiming that autism is caused by vaccines, or television, or French fries, or "yeast overgrowth"? Is autism a "set of behaviors" that, if a person can suppress them, will indicate that the person has been "cured" (this is certainly what the behaviorists would have you believe)? Are autism and Asperger's the same thing, or two different things? Does Asperger's even exist? Is autism more easily identified according to a person's weaknesses, or according to a person's strengths?

Truly, the sheer range of questions on this subject boggles the mind. I can certainly see how people end up getting confused, and believe me, I was pretty confused myself about the whole thing when I first started learning about what it meant for a person to be autistic. But over time I've come to settle on something of a cogent idea in this regard. And that idea is the fact that as near as I can tell, autism isn't so much about what a person does as about how a person does it.

It is quite apparent that autistics do tend to learn, think, and perceive differently than nonautistics do. There's good solid research backing this stuff up in the cognitive science arena, and I would dearly love to see it get more attention, seeing as the field of autism research has too long been dominated by the ghosts of radical behaviorism and psychoanalysis (and has of late been further polluted by opportunistic quackery, antivaccination pseudoscience, and homeopathic nincompoopery).

I agree very much with researcher Michelle Dawson (who works with the University of Montreal) who frequently and firmly asserts that autistics deserve the same high standards of science and ethics as nonautistic people can generally expect to enjoy. And this, to me, means that "deficit model" biases have no place in serious research. The best ways to help autistics -- who can certainly sometimes have extreme difficulties with daily living and other skills -- are much more likely to be found if corners aren't cut scientifically or ethically, and if the focus is on understanding the autistic brain as opposed to merely "remediating" it or trying to "prevent" it.

This is not an attempt to be cute. This is not an attempt to "romanticize" autism or the lives of the many individuals who fight in vain to find a place, a community, a school, etc., that can balance their needs with the needs of the cognitive/perceptual/functional majority. This is not "political correctness".

This is, frankly, concern. And a little bit of desperation, perhaps, as the assumptions frequently made about the capacities (for thought, for feeling, for happiness, for a worthwhile existence) of autistic people appear to run so deep at times that I can scarcely imagine how we as a culture might effectively root them out.

Empathy is only one area where particularly damaging assumptions tend to get made. There are many, many more, and I don't know if I could ever effectively cover them all in the depth they require. But empathy is an important subject -- an important word -- to hash through and define and consider in the relevant contexts.

The Bottom Line

I'm almost beginning to suspect that some folks might actually believe that in order to have an internal, affective response to another person's suffering or delight, and in order to engage in ethical behavior (which should never be confused with, or conflated with, "nice" behavior), a person must also consistently display the ability to read and respond to typical social cues in expected ways very fast in real-time.

And if anyone gets anything at all out of reading this, I would hope that it's some degree of reassurance that this is not, in fact, the case.

Autism is not a "personality type", and it is certainly not just another word for "being a jerk". It is a neurodevelopmental difference that, according to the best science I can find, primarily affects the cognition and processing of low-level information. This difference in turn can influence what skills and types of interests a person might end up having, and it may make a person aware of different details in the environment than the nonautistic person would notice, and it can also contribute to documented patterns of strength and weakness.

It can mean we use body language differently, that we don't make typical eye contact, and that we push the boundaries of social norms as far as how we express happiness, distress, or other emotions. It can mean we use and relate to language in an idiosyncratic or peculiar-seeming manner. And so on, and so forth.

Consequently, the autistic person can sometimes appear aloof, uninterested in social interaction (and may in fact be uninterested in culture-typical dominant forms of social interplay), unpredictable, "difficult", insensitive, or any of a number of other adjectives that skirt around the notion of "empathic deficit".

But this does not mean that we hate people. It does not mean we see people as disposable objects, or that we are somehow like sociopaths.

I'm not saying all autistics are going to seem "nice" or "sensitive" once you get to know us -- I can be a pretty harsh character myself on occasion, particularly if I encounter people whining about how all the evil "disability extremists" and "political correctness zealots" are conspiring to take over the world and drain Your Tax Dollars(TM) so they can sit around all day watching sitcoms and producing hordes of deaf, autistic, and possibly even gay babies. If you insist on expressing racist, pseudoscientific, sexist, homophobic, or ableist attitudes, you will raise my ire, and the results will not be cute.

I may not be able to tell when someone is "mildly irritated" or "subtly upset" easily (particularly if I'm trying to keep track of a conversation I'm having in real-time with that person), but if someone is crying or obviously in pain, I am powerfully (sometimes overwhelmingly) affected by it.

Heck, I can't even stand to see robots (fictional or real) being smashed or otherwise abused. I used to hide my eyes as a kid while watching Short Circuit 2 during the scene where the robotic protagonist is beaten by a group of thugs (which you can actually watch here if you're curious, but be warned that it is extremely upsetting and may very well make you cry).

So, I don't personally have any doubt that I at least have whatever basic circuitry is necessary for a person to care about other beings. I don't have any inclination to believe that autistic neurology, regardless of whether you want to talk about "Asperger's"-labeled people, or "PDD"-labeled people, or those with labels of "Autistic Disorder", in any way, shape, or form negates a person's capacity for care, for love, or for ethics. And I firmly believe that if the future is to be an open, welcoming place for all the various forms that may come about due to choice or accident or experiment, it is vital not to confuse charisma with conscience.

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Links: Autistics (and Family Members of Autistics) On Empathy

- Bev at Asperger Square 8 describes her experiences in Empathy Class, and illustrates a few scenarios that aren't necessarily what they might seem.

- Autistic self-advocate Joel Smith discusses how it is certainly possible to be autistic and a caring person at the same time.

- ABFH at Whose Planet Is It Anyway? offers an "alternative" version of the Empathy Quotient -- one might perhaps say a revised version!

- Autistic self-advocate Jim Sinclair offers Thoughts About Empathy.

- Amanda Baggs writes quite a lot worth reading here regarding bullying, exclusion, and the "we're not like those people!" phenomenon that underlies so much of the actually pernicious empathic failure that is not constrained to any individual or named pathology, but endemic throughout society in certain manifestations.

- Temple Grandin, an author and professor of animal science who also happens to be autistic, notes an interview on NPR how she is "frustrated by the inability of normal [nonautistic] people to have sensory empathy. They can't seem to acknowledge these different realities because they're so far away from their own experiences."

- Special education teacher (and parent to autistic son) Mike Stanton discusses a pair of autistic artists and muses, "Why should there be a connection between [neurotypical] social cognition and moral values?"

- Lisa at Life In The New Republic describes how her 12-year-old autistic son, Brendan, upon realizing that the stuffed animal he'd just picked up did not light up when squeezed (as it was advertised to do), asserted that he did not want to return the toy because "...he was worried about what would happen to it if he took it back, that no-one would love it."

(NOTE: Links have been listed here to provide a range of perspectives on empathy as it pertains to autism and human morality/conscience/cognition in general. Please note that the opinions expressed by the individuals linked are theirs alone, and my listing them here does not imply that I always agree with all these people on everything. I probably agree with many of them on a lot of things, but there is no person I agree with 100% of the time).