Better Living Through References

A close friend of mine once told me that her brother with Asperger's has only communicated with her through shared references. Her brother has never had any other type of interaction with her - his efforts to reach out never migrate from direct experiences to reflection - never include what most people consider "real" conversation.

Many people tell me that it's hard to know that I have Asperger's. My close friend has reported that she sees vast differences between her brother and myself, yet sometimes, I feel that all of my "sophisticated, thoughtful" ideas are still loosely based on references and nothing else.

I have a phenomenal working memory for topics that interest me, and I store as much useful (or useless, depending on how you value the data) information as I can. This allows me to cheat, to make me seem like a person with "normal" reactions to life.

I feel like a human version of the "Turing test": every day, I wonder if people can distinguish what I say and how I act from the people around me. Will I pass? How long will people know me before they suspect me?

Once upon a time, Windows operating software like Windows 95 functioned on top of a pre-existing program called DOS. Windows 95 gave users the illusion of direct control, but Windows was still dependent on DOS architecture for daily operations. I like using this analogy to describe what it's like to be a person with Asperger's who has made some adjustments to cope with a neurotypical world.

While I strive to act compatibly with the majority of the people around me, I am in fact deeply dependent on a very different set of hardwiring. As much as I try to act in a synchronized way with what other people seem to expect from me, there are invariably times when I become frustrated by my limitations and the strenuous difficulty of staying on constant alert.

There are many things I do and ways I think about the world which are considered unusual. For example, I have a profoundly different sense of humor than most people I have met. A lot of things amuse me which are similar to neurotypical humor, but they tend to have their own subtle but pleasing spin for me.

Lots of people appreciate slapstick humor and the idea of the pratfall. Countless comedians - from Charlie Chaplin in the silent film era, to Chevy Chase's bumbling impression of Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live, to Ben Stiller antagonizing Robert DeNiro in the Meet the Parents movies - have made their reputations and millions of dollars from this brand of comedy.

For me, though, the concept of the pratfall extends from the physical to the emotional and societal. When people are hypocritical, inconsistent, passive-aggressive, dishonest, euphemistic, or otherwise find their feelings and actions at cross-purposes, I feel a great surge of schadenfreude. Those who have, as I have, spent their entire lives struggling to relate to people or to decipher the murky impressions people agonizingly leave in their wake, find it especially hysterical when neurotypical people struggle with some of the same problems.

On a related note, one of my favorite things is when neurotypical people adopt behaviors that autistic people have used to cope with a society that is inherently difficult for them. Every year, more people adopt smartphones, tablets, and other kinds of technology that occupy a person's every waking moment - insulating individuals from the burden of small talk and other social relationships. People are so cocooned in their own worlds - due to technology - that they miss out on the subtle, intimate details of daily life that people like me have struggled in vain to notice.

It amuses me to no end that so many neurotypical people are voluntarily abandoning a portal to the world that has been troublesome for me to access. When I am surrounded by a group of my friends who are all consumed in their smartphones, and I am the one person most intent on making conversation and observing the world around me...I cannot help but guffaw.

In an era of wildly proliferating Internet memes and the burgeoning celebration of pop culture references as a touchstone of daily life, I am beginning to wonder whether I am the person who truly has a problem with relying too much on abstract references and ideas.

The consumer-focused, hyper-individualized culture of America has blurred the lines (yes, that was intentional) between my struggle to anticipate how other people expect me to behave, and my longing to capture as much of the human experience as I possibly can.

I now face a society that discourages authenticity and the hard work required to immerse one's self in a diverse array of experiences. I face a society seemingly satisfied with low-hanging fruit and lowest-common-denominators. If I used to worry that I would not live up to the expectations of society, perhaps it is society that needs to worry about whether it's going to live up to my expectations.

Laughter As A Way Of Life

I used to be afraid. I felt rage and indignation, mixed with regret and despair.  I felt so out of touch, and I was worried that I would never feel at ease.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night. I feel so much useless energy coursing through me. I feel anxious, and feel so many thoughts rushing through my mind simultaneously that I hardly know which way is which.

I am constantly reminded of my insecurities. Usually, I suppress these feelings, for lack of a better way to cope. I felt like I had to choose between suppression - ignoring the feelings entirely, or depression - blaming myself, or anger - venting at situations over which I had no control.

I didn't know that there was another option.

I'm trying. Sometimes I still feel like I'm in denial. My laughter is not a way to separate myself from my feelings - it is a knowing acknowledgement of the absurdity of my life - but is not a hollow, hopeless, or self-defeating absurdity. This is an affirmation.

I have tried, hard, to find another place - a better place - to go, mentally. I end up so often in my thoughts, that I need some kind of refuge. I have tried to appreciate things in my life for the way they are.

So I laugh. And why do I laugh, and what do I find funny?

I giggle about what I don't know - what I once didn't know but have now learned - what other people deeply feel to be true but don't actually know - about patterns others miss that I understand - when I finally learn something that it seems like other people understand easily.

One of my closest friends recently told me that I am one of the most optimistic people she knows. This shocked me. I have never thought of myself as an optimistic person. Now, I am trying to be more like the version of myself that she has apparently seen.

I'm not saying that I am changing to satisfy other people. I'm doing as much as I can to be true to myself, it's just that there are things about myself that I don't like. Besides, the idea of being "true to myself" has always seemed somewhat contradictory and problematic for me, both in theory and practice.

Theoretically, how can I be true to myself when I barely know what I want? Aren't I just privileging the things I already know? What's the fun in that? I want to keep expanding my horizons - I don't know where I will be in the future, and how I can be true to what I do not yet know?

Practically, I've always felt insecure about some of the ways I act. I feel very uncomfortable in many different situations, and yet I can be extremely engaging and gregarious with very close friends and when I'm talking about my passions. Still, I'm clumsy about how I express myself - I interrupt other people too much, and too often find myself waiting to speak again instead of listening to what people are saying. I'm genuinely trying not to be inconsiderate - I really am - I just find it so difficult to relate to people sometimes, that when I feel like I have something valuable to contribute, it's hard for me to hold back...so this is a way that insecurity feeds upon itself.

I'm constantly struggling to live up to my own expectations of who I can be, of what I can do, and what I can accomplish. I put a lot of pressure on myself. All this laughter is a way for me to deflate the tension.

Sometimes, I just look in the mirror, and I start laughing. Then, like the world's unsexiest vampire, I disappear for a little while.

Everything Is Unfair

Here's a series of lovely thoughts: Life is never fair, and no one ever plays fair. If the appearance of fairness exists, it is either a temporary equilibrium or it has been imposed by force.

The best way to achieve a semblance of fairness is through empowerment. Expect the process to be slow, painful, and difficult. No one will listen because no one has to listen. You will repeat yourself - constantly. Other people will deliberately misinterpret, distort, and misunderstand your words.

Human beings spend a significant amount of their lives acting irrationally. You can try to convince other people to change their minds, but this will probably not happen until:
1. People are convinced by arguments (you thought this was the only step, didn't you? oh, no!)
2. From their perspective, there are more benefits to changing their mind than not changing their mind
3. They consciously decide to change their own mind and take ownership of that change

There is no guarantee that any notion of progress is inevitable. Things can always get worse. Society does not necessarily improve in every generation - but each new generation has an opportunity to improve on the previous one. That is the only advantage on the side of progress: death.

A generation can be as short-sighted as it can be, and another generation will still take its place. Death is a guarantee. What isn't a guarantee is that there will be another generation, or that younger generations won't inherit the stigmas of their elders.

If you really want people to follow, you must make it easier for people to join you instead of being passive and doing nothing. Defaults are powerful weapons: change expectations, and you will change behavior. Very few systems that are entirely voluntary make a real difference. (Sorry libertarians, you need to wake up and smell the civilization.)

Any successful political movement needs to remember the three steps of persuasion that I've outlined here. Additionally, the first step I listed is not necessarily the first step. Often, it will be more useful to start with the second step, and then the ground is prepared for your audience to tread the other steps in your path to persuasion.

Sometimes it sucks to be a liberal. Change is hard, and annoying. <-- Is this true, though? Is that thought worth thinking? Conservatives know quite a bit about change. Liberals can learn from their example. You don't take a country from FDR and LBJ to Reagan and George W. Bush without change.

There are some specific, extremely useful things you should have to change expectations and shift the default consensus to your views. You'll need: 1) money 2) journalists/other popularizers 3) ideologues/strategists 4) politicians 5) organizations [not listed in order of importance]

The "Occupy" movement disappointed me greatly. Protest without context is an empty, meaningless, futile exercise. You need organizations. You need spokespeople. You need message discipline. The bottom-up structure is a good way to attract anarchists and Ron Paul supporters, and it's a fantastic way to ensure that everyone else in America is ignoring you. Do you want change, or do you want martyrdom?

"Occupy" gave America a blank canvas. When only liberals talked about "Occupy", that was fine. When conservatives also talked about "Occupy", that decision became a disaster. When you have no clear, concise identity and agenda, people can attack you without end and those attacks will stick. You have to own your messaging. "Occupy" didn't.

People aren't going to listen to you because you're in the streets. People will listen to you if you're in the streets and you have a clear, simple, powerful narrative that is frequently repeated and echoed by credible authorities that your audience trusts. Being right isn't enough. Is that fair? No, no, it's not: but nothing in life is fair, and if you want people to change their minds, then you need to be smarter, more efficient, and more organized than the people who have an interest in silencing you. Let's go do that.