I’m somewhat new to learning about autism and neurodiversity, but even before that I was of the opinion that some of what is called “mental illness” wasn’t really, but just seemed that way because of how society is optimized for certain personality types. Now I’m trying to figure out if autism and any other ND types fit this idea.
So I wanted to gauge the community and find out how popular/accepted this idea is. Do you see these as inherent handicaps, like being blind, or just circumstantial, like say being 8 feet tall (side effects of gigantism notwithstanding)? Or, now that I think of it, perhaps like being 8 feet tall with the side effects: are they not inherent handicaps themselves, but often or always come with inherent side effects?
Society is optimized for the majority of people, not just certain personality types. It’s optimized for everyone not being born autistic.
It’s also quite depressing because a lot of people are quite unhappy. We are all just working pointless jobs to get by, kind of. If you can find joy in what you do, then at least you found some meaning with it.
Society is optimized for the majority of people, not just certain personality types.
Eh, more or less. Society is also distorted by those who have a significant amount of economic or political power. It’s still shaped very much with an exclusion of consideration of us but it’s not really something approaching a ‘decent fit for the majority’ rather I would say it’s something more akin to the powerful impressing their demands for the structure of society upon all of us and the majority contorting around it.
Ex. Why doesn’t the US & Canada have a robust passenger rail network? Because of the influence of a strong automotive lobby (they used to and the car companies lobbied for it’s de-prioritization leading to slow degradation to the sorry state they’re in now).
It’s still shaped very much with an exclusion of consideration of us but it’s not really something approaching a ‘decent fit for the majority’ rather I would say it’s something more akin to the powerful impressing their demands for the structure of society upon all of us and the majority contorting around it.
That’s a good point, and is I think the reason why I never saw myself as anything like “neurodivergent” for most of my life. I just assumed that my “not fitting into society” was because of how badly designed it is in general, and I was just one of the unlucky ones. It took a friend of mine who is autistic and knew about this stuff to point out that for me it was likely more than that. So yeah, there is this issue too, and I wonder how many other people it has caused confusion for other than me.
Yeah. Our society is distorted against all our well-being we, the Neurodivergent, are just especially affected by this malady. For the sake of a vanishingly small proportion of the population to be absurdly wealthy we all suffer.
“just assumed that my “not fitting into society” was because of how badly designed it is in general” I don’t think this is an assumption, personally.
Disability is caused by the way society is organized and not by a person’s impairment.
I don’t know if this applies to all or even most other autistic people, but my autism has almost been exclusively positive for me.
Really the only negative thing that ever happens is people being mean or making fun of me because I don’t understand the social rules. But it happens less and less as I both learn the rules and frequent more mature people who don’t care if you’re slightly awkward and don’t always know how to end a conversation 🤷🏻♀️
Autism is not a handicap in my case. Not even slightly.
Doesn’t apply to all, unfortunately. For me, it has been a mess. My life is a constant fight for survival, because even simple things, like eating, are difficult for me, and at the end of the day, I have barely any time to do anything that i want to do in life.
https://kfoundation.org/it-is-no-measure-of-health-to-be-well-adjusted-to-a-profoundly-sick-society/
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Although we cannot attribute these exact words to Krishnamurti, he made similar statements over the decades, and it is a theme he returned to repeatedly. The nearest direct quote from Krishnamurti we have found, from Commentaries on Living Series 3 (1960), written in the early 1950s, is: “Is society healthy, that an individual should return to it? Has not society itself helped to make the individual unhealthy? Of course, the unhealthy must be made healthy, that goes without saying; but why should the individual adjust himself to an unhealthy society? If he is healthy, he will not be a part of it. Without first questioning the health of society, what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society?”
Additionally: “To help the individual to fit into a society which is ever at war with itself – is this what psychologists and analysts are supposed to do? Is the individual to be healed only in order to kill or be killed? If one is not killed, or driven insane, then must one only fit into the structure of hate, envy, ambition and superstition which can be very scientific?”
The origin of this quote being assigned to Krishnamurti is probably a book written by Mark Vonnegut (Kurt Vonnegut’s son) about his mental illness (The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity). The book was published in 1975 and attributes this phrase to Krishnamurti, without giving any source. Vonnegut might have paraphrased or misquoted it, and it must have spread from there.
Aldous Huxley, a close friend of Krishnamurti’s, also wrote a passage that is similar, contained in his book Brave New World Revisited (1958): “The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”
There is also a very similar quote from Henry Miller (who was inspired by Krishnamurti), from his travelogue The Colossus of Maroussi (1941): “There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”
It can be a handicap depending on the situation. Events that require social interaction ofva certain level or type might come up short if they depend on an autistic persons participation
