Is Objectivism autism rebranded? Nope

[Ayn Rand. Is objectivism autism rebranded? Um...no.]

Thanks to Kim Wombles, I have come across the following from Sam Harris (yes, that Sam Harris):

The result was Objectivism—a view that makes a religious fetish of selfishness and disposes of altruism and compassion as character flaws. If nothing else, this approach to ethics was a triumph of marketing, as Objectivism is basically autism rebranded.

Really? Kim sent him an email saying what probably is obvious to anyone who knows someone with autism, but Imma say it here:

Autistic people do not make a religious fetish of selfishness or dismiss altruism or compassion as character flaws. I'd think that a neuroscientist might be aware of what underlies autism and how it is manifested, but evidently, that is not the case. I would think that a well-educated, aware human being wouldn't take a neural difference or disability and use it as fodder for mockery, but evidently, that also was not the case. I would think that for someone who purports to lay the humanist groundwork for what qualifies as morality, mockery of a specific population of people who are "different" because of their neurology might be considered, well, immoral, but evidently, that is also not the case.

For anyone...Sam Harris, whose writings I usually admire, others who think that autistic people focus only on themselves or lack a sense of altruism, I refer you to the following about my own autistic child. I'm sure that the most minimal research into other stories or simply talking to an autistic person would provide further enlightenment.

Figeater beetles and executive function

Lint in heaven

A brave boy in a brave new world

That's Asperger's, please.

Interview with an autistic child

A social surprise

Teaching TH...and learning from him

Yes, he shows empathy

Vaccines are their own worst enemy...because they work so well

A new post of mine over at PKIDs blog, where I'm a regular blogger. It starts like this:

What’s not to fear directly about vaccines? There’s a needle that someone pokes into your child. Your child screams. You tense up. What’s in there? you wonder. Viral or bacterial bits that, in ways that are mysterious to a non-immunologist, will keep your child well when intuition seems to say they ought to make your child sick.

Needles, screaming, microbial bits…these naturally would make any parent blanch. The number of vaccines has added to the fear for at least a decade, leading to non–evidence-based calls to “spread out” the schedule or reduce the number of vaccinations. More...

A look at the bullying experiences in our lives

Someone has put together a nice compendium of quotes from my blog, so I though I'd provide it here with links to the actual posts. What struck me about this series of quotes is that they all have to do with bullying of special needs children. Sometimes, when I review our lives in this way, I start to lose hope that society's attitudes about bullying will ever change.

"However, I am armed and somewhat dangerous, so don't try stalking." OK, so that's not from my blog. It's from something I posted somewhere else. However, anyone considering bothering me should remember that in this country, we have the right to bear arms, the right to arm bears, and the right to be armed with bear spray.

"The first words out of that man's mouth at this meeting were, "There doesn't seem to have been any ill intent involved." My regret? That I didn't immediately leap onto his desk, reach out and abrade his face in three places with my fingernails, and then ask, "You tell me how someone does that without ill intent." This one still leads me to reliving that moment. Do I *really* regret not leaping across his desk? Well, no. If I'd thought that was a constructive thing to do, I'd've just done it. But that memory leads to a flood of disbelief that anyone could say that about that particular incident. If we're to address bullying in any effective way, adults in responsible positions are a starting point. Hey, adults in responsible positions: Don't countenance or defend or diminish bullying. OK?

From the same post: "Instead, we listened to him bullshit us for an hour, ducking and dodging my husband's pointed and persistent questions, and then we left. We then withdrew our son from school, and he has been happily homeschooled ever since." Yes, he has been homeschooled ever since, and it's been great. Best thing we could have done for him, so I guess our interactions with that invertebrate ended up on a positive note. But we left the system instead of staying to change it while our son endured more torture. We had to do what we had to do.

From my post about a boy at a vacation "resort" who mocked my son. "Unfortunately for the boy, TH's uncle was there, and this uncle--my brother-in-law--stepped in and handled this little dipshit in exactly the right way. Fortunately for said tween dipshit, I was not there to step in because had I been, I'm afraid there would have been more than stepping involved." Although it's not included in the post, there was ultimately more than stepping involved. There was walking, escorting of that child to his parent, whom we apprised of his various inappropriate activities. This, my friends, is one way to end the bullying--let the bullies know that there will be consequences for what they do.

From the same post: "Why does it surprise me that some little bastard of a tween would detect my son's differences and decide to mock them in that way?" From the same post. Why does it surprise me? I'd become too comfortable around people we know well. That's why. Because we chose to protect our son rather than expose him; see "homeschooling," above.

From the same post: "I can be deluded no more. What happens when children like mine, the ones who often can "pass," who are not candidates for specialized living facilities, encounter the assholes of the world outside the protection of those who love them?" This question stands. Certainly not all children who bully grow up to be adults who bully, but it's pretty easy to identify the adults who are bullying assholes. The question is, What will our children, as adults, be able to do about it? We can't provide protection all the time.

Speaking of bullies, we'd had so much in the way of people bullying our oldest that when our middle child bullied another child in his class and then accidentally knocked a little girl down in class by being too impulsive, we had some lessons to learn. The little girl, as I relate, was just fine, thank goodness, but I thought we'd have to commit Dubya for awhile there. "The day I emailed the teacher, Dubya, in a rush to reach the end of the lunch line--yep, you read that right, the end of the line--knocked into a little girl in his class. She fell, bumped her head on a table, and literally was knocked out cold, at least briefly. My son, having bullied a boy in his class, now had knocked a child out. Good times, these.

Dubya was horrified, in tears, his teacher worried he was traumatized. I sort of hoped that he was. Why? Because he does that kind of thing all the time, rushing past people, pushing his way through, thinking only of what he needs to do, where he's intent on going. I'm huge compared to him, so when he pushes past me, I don't go down and sustain a concussion. But this little girl? In the end, she was fine. But Dubya...not so much." That was a horrifying experience. We had to grapple with the fact that after all that our oldest had endured, our middle child had been teasing another child because...he was different.

Finally, remember this incident, with the father getting on the bus to pin down the bullies of his defenseless, special needs daughter? How many of us can relate to this father's impulses? "So, some people probably are going to think that this father was out of line. I think he was out of line, especially with the language and using, in his turn, his size and his anger to intimidate these boys. But in spite of that cool assessment on my part, there's a hot little core inside of me that supports his behavior fully, right down to the f-bombs. Why? Because if he didn't scare the shit out of these boys--likely ensuring that they'll at least think twice about doing something like that again--who will? Certainly not the adults in charge. What kills me is that the county sheriff's department says the father, who is facing charges, should've called them. Right. How much time and effort do you think they'd've put into investigating that? News reports say that the father had, in fact, tried to report incidents to county school administrators previously, to no avail. Big shock, that. The bullying, according to reports, had been going on since school started." One of the upshots of this horrible situation was, according to this report, that the bullying of this child continued and the daughter had to be placed on suicide watch. Also, there are allegedly some suspect connections between the district and the family of one of the bullies. So, I'm guessing that I was wrong in hoping that by scaring the shit out of these kids, the father would be successful in stopping the bullying. What is the recourse here?

As this little trip through Daisymayfattypants Land reveals, bullying comes from many quarters, but it's not only the bullying that we must face and fight--it is also those who look the other way, fail to confront it, or even countenance it. Does it make me angry when people bully my child or when I learn of others who do it without repercussion? Yes, it does. Our resolution has been protection. Not every parent has that luxury. But they--and we--shouldn't have to resort to that. What needs to happen is for bullying to get its due. And the time for that has long since passed.

Serendipity or phenotype?

I've always thought of TH as unique. I think many parents view their autistic children as not only quirky but also simply unique. There's just no one else like my oldest son. How could there be? He's got a seemingly disconnected and unduplicated collection of interests and obsessions, behaviors that are his and his alone, a way of living and being that's unmatched. At least...that's what I thought.

This summer, a family came to stay for a few days in the townhome across from ours. We knew they were there because Dubya, our middle son, came rushing into the home, uncharacteristically excited about meeting someone new. The "someone" was a boy about 11 years old whom I'll call Denton. This child, it seemed, wanted to meet us. Was waiting in our garage to do so.

Did I find that odd? Yes, I did. In part because Dubya was so so so enthusiastic about this Denton and in part because I've never, ever encountered a peer of my children who actually asked to meet me.

So, I descended into the garage to see a gangly boy, all elbows and angles, glasses, and...yep...that's it: a little bit of toe walking. He extended a hand, greeted me with a perfect script, and started telling me about ghost stories. I knew, without further data collection, that I was in the presence of one of our own. That Denton was from France.

What baffled me was Dubya's enthusiasm. The more I talked with Denton and watched him, the more I saw clear parallels between his behaviors and those of our oldest, TH. Yet, TH, the older brother, had the power to drive Dubya to the edge of reason, pushing buttons on that child that only older brothers can find. And here Dubya was, attracted to this boy who was so much like that needling, button-pushing older brother of his. Maybe it was those two things, that Denton was a person whose behaviors were well within Dubya's comfort zone and that Denton was not his big brother, that made Dubya so happy and excited to meet this new, chatty, sweet open book of a friend.

Then, we brought TH and Denton together. And that's when bemusement turned into wheel-grinding analysis. Why? Because these two boys who had never met seemed to have been living parallel lives complete with parallel likes. I'm not making it up when I say that one of TH's most notable exclamations (and one I secretly think to myself about 20 times a day) is, "Curse you, laws of physics!" And I'm not lying when I say that in the midst of the biggest "I love Pokemon, I love Mario, you have Wii!" geekfest I've ever heard--and damn, but these two were LOUD--I heard Denton holler out, "Curse you, laws of physics!"

Mario, SuperSmash Bros. Brawl (and with both boys pronouncing it "broze"), Pokemon--complete with a full-blown "I know more about Pokemon than you" competition, loud unmodulated voices echoing through the house--it was like TH had cloned himself at full volume. They're even both obsessed with ghosts and UFOs, each seemingly trying to out-talk the other to get a ghost story in edgewise.

As I pondered all of these similarities--I mean, really...there's a phenotype interacting with culture here, right?--Denton's mother came over. In the usual exchange of "Where are you from" and "Where do your kids go to school?", I kinda sorta purposely dropped that we homeschool TH in part because he has Asperger's. To no surprise, Denton's mom exclaimed that Denton, too, has Asperger's. And then, after considerably more conversation--can two autism parents ever get together without canvassing and comparing their children's entire early development?--came the kicker.

Regular readers of this blog or anyone who knows TH knows what his greatest obsession is. As it turns out, Denton has, throughout his lifetime, had the exact same obsession: Acorns. Collecting them by the dozens. Obsessing over them. Making designs with them. Getting upset if you try to throw them out. Acorns, people. We're talking a Scrat-level obsession with the little nuts. And here, there were two of them.

Asperger's and acorns. I'm dying to get my hands on these children's gene sequences. Do you think they carry an Acorn-loving gene that underlies this phenotype? In all seriousness, though, it's these behavioral manifestations that make me look to the future with some excitement, hoping that the fine-combed explorations of the genome will turn up some genetic underpinnings to explain this mutual cursing of the laws of physics and this mutual love of Mario, Pokemon, ghosts, and...acorns.