The French students who drew
a connection between contemporary economics and autism have made
one of the more profound observations of our time. Technically,
the kind of autism exhibited by leading economists - and (although
the students did not note it) leaders in politics and media -
is called higher functioning autism or Asperger's Syndrome. Here
are some professional descriptions:
"Asperger's Syndrome, also
known as Asperger's Disorder or Autistic Psychopathy, is a Pervasive
Developmental Disorder characterized by severe and sustained
impairment in social interaction, development of restricted and
repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. These
characteristics result in clinically significant impairment in
social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
In contrast to Autistic disorder (Autism), there are no clinically
significant delays in language or cognition or self help skills
or in adaptive behavior, other than social interaction. Prevalence
is limited but it appears to be more common in males . . . Adults
with Asperger's have trouble with empathy and modulation of social
interaction - the disorder follows a continuous course and is
usually lifelong . . . "
"There is a general impression
that Asperger's syndrome carries with it superior intelligence
and a tendency to become very interested in and preoccupied with
a particular subject. Often this preoccupation leads to a specific
career at which the adult is very successful . . . "
Nothing so well describes the
monocular mania over "free markets" and related clichés
that has characterized the thoughts and words of our elite since
the days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. What better
description of our typical political or media leader than: "Has
an average or above average intelligence. Has highly developed
language skills. Lacks social interaction skills. Exhibits inappropriate
behavioral response to social situations. Lacks understanding
of humor or irony . . ."
There has never been the slightest
logical reason for believing that all of life's mysteries could
be explained by reference to quarterly reports, yet over the
past couple of decades this has become a wildly held assumption
of those in charge of running our country, from the think tanks
to the White House to NPR.
Critics have struggled vainly
to suggest the contrary with a notable lack of success. The reason
is now obvious: they have attempted to defeat pathology with
logic. It doesn't work, not because the single-factor obsessives
are idiots or even evil, but because they are afflicted.
And it's far from just a matter
of Reaganomics. Politics have come to be characterized by the
serial introduction of small ideas of even smaller rationality
but which soon find themselves elevated to iconographic status
in everything from op ed pages to the federal budget.
Among them: the fictional huge
federal surplus, the even more fictional Bush tax cut, the false
depiction of the status of Social Security, the enormously expensive
capture and imprisonment those who prefer marijuana to vodka,
the very autistic assumption that counting student test scores
is the same as educating students, and, most recently, an obsession
with anti-terrorism to the detriment of every other aspect of
American existence.
Key to the Asperger style of
politics and media is the constant repetition of thought patterns
and the imperviousness of the practitioners' thinking to outside
fact or argument. The technical name for this is perseveration
which has been defined as "the persistent repetition of
a response after cessation of the causative stimuli; for example,
the repetition of a correct answer to one question as the answer
to succeeding questions," an almost perfect description
of what regularly occurs on your average Sunday talk show. A
less technical but even more generally apt definition is "continuation
of something usually to an exceptional degree or beyond a desired
point."
How did it happen that we have
become cursed with a perseverating elite that endlessly repeats
the same thoughts to whatever is said to it, and which insists
on pursuing ideas well past any possible usefulness? Well, one
theory is that the SAT has played a role, helping to choose an
establishment that, while seemingly diverse, is actually disproportionately
comprised of those of above average intelligence but who think
life consists mainly of coming up with the right answers. In
their own ways, both Clinton and Bush (not to mention Ted Koppel
and Jim Lehrer) have manifested this disconnect between "policy,"
i.e. the right answer, and something called life which is in
the end an imaginative and moral creation and not merely a technical
problem.
This is a matter of no little
concern. Those of us still willing to let the empirical, the
non-quantifiable, and the creative into our lives are being bullied,
twisted, and threatened by a politically autistic confederacy
at every level from the obdurate local bureaucrat to CNN with
its propagandistic mantras parading as news to a president who
doesn't know when to stop saying "terrorist." At its
worst, the privatized and gated logic of our leaders is of the
same ilk that once created a nation of good Germans willing to
follow the pathology of a few.
Silently, without argument or
recognition, the logic of our nation has drastically changed
- from "show me" to "tell me," from experience
to propaganda, from the empirical to the virtual, and from debate
and discussion to addictive perseveration.
Autistic epilogue
SOME WEEKS BACK I put forth the
hypothesis that a growing portion of America's elite suffers
from higher functioning autism, a disability characterized by,
in one definition, "severe and sustained impairment in social
interaction, development of restricted and repetitive patterns
of behavior, interests, and activities." The higher functioning
autistic is typically quite intelligent and verbal but has a
closed loop sort of mind resistant to new information and ideas
that normal observation and interaction offer.
It is not clear that this, in
the case of the elite, is a genetic problem. Rather, there is
a strong suspicion that late 20th century higher education -
particularly at certain well known law and business schools -
has been more influential. For example, a woman who works at
the World Bank reports that she prepared two policy options for
her boss who, after a quick review, declared option A clearly
preferable. The woman spent a restless night going over the matter
and by daylight had concluded the opposite: option B was better.
She cautiously told her boss of her concerns and he promptly
responded that, okay, they would follow option B. But you were
so certain about option A, she said. Oh that, he explained, was
just something he had learned at the Harvard Business School:
to always be decisive.
Here is further evidence that
something strange is going on in the minds of the elite. To accept
the notion that America is the greatest empire of all history,
we must ignore that fact that America's greatest military and
economic icons - the Pentagon and the World Trade Center - were
recently damaged or destroyed by a few angry young men armed
with box cutters. We have to ignore the fact that our boundless
power over Afghanistan has been achieved through the dismantling
of our Constitution, a massive propagation of paranoia, the strip
searching of grandmothers, and other dysfunctions not typical
of a well-functioning, smug empire. And your typical empire does
not ask the Norwegian air force to provide cover for its major
cities. Further, demonstrating massive power over Afghanistan
is not all that good a measure of imperial might given that our
bombs cost a couple times more than the Afghan GDP.
A rational person might assume
that September 11 was - regardless of what one wants to do about
it - a tragedy revealing some deep problems in the way we have
been functioning. But it would appear that some members of our
elite -- who have been infatuated with words like hegemony ever
since they first heard them in Gov 101 - have extracted exactly
the reverse meaning, namely that the attacks have revealed us
to be now the biggest, baddest, and best empire the world have
ever known. To them, a mind is a clearly a terrible thing to
waste on new information.
Living with Asperger's
NeantHumain, KURO5HIN
Maybe you've heard of it: the
Geek Syndrome. You might even know it's a mild form of autism.
The truth is Asperger's presents unique struggles that you might
not have even thought of before.
Asperger's syndrome is a pervasive
developmental disorder, or autistic spectrum disorder, recognizable
by the lack of social skills and the often highly intellectual,
perseverative interests developed by those with Asperger's. For
a person with Asperger's (an aspie), friendships, social banter,
and romantic relationships can be difficult channels to navigate.
First of all, unlike autistic
people, I did not have trouble learning to speak. However, I
do have mild hyperlexia, which basically means a large vocabulary.
Moreover, it is common for autistics and aspies to have some
trouble lying, recognizing lies, and interpeting metaphors. The
result is that most aspies are seen as literal and humorless.
Like many aspies, my voice can
sometimes sound monotonous and emotionless. Similarly, aspies
are known for giving soliloquies about their favorite subjects,
or perseverations, not always realizing how much they are boring
the people they are speaking to.
Aspies sometimes also miss facial
expressions, body gestures, and implications. While I can often
pick up on someone's emotional state from a quick glance at their
face (and it has to be quick because, like most aspies, I have
trouble looking people in the eye), I can often completely miss
things or misinterpret them. Likewise, my facial expression is
usually plain or uncontrolled.
Aspies tend to take an obsessive
interest in detailed things. It is typical for an aspie to take
an all-encompassing interest in something for a few months and
later become interested in something else after having already
learned enough about the first subject. In other words, we aspies
have "weird," nerdy interests and hobbies.
This is a chicken-and-egg problem,
of course. Do we aspies take up these perseverations because
we are unable to occupy ourselves with more neurotypical (that
is, something relating to nonautistics) socializing, or do our
perseverations prevent us from socializing? Maybe it's a little
bit of both.
Nevertheless, perseveration for
me has meant spending my early teenage years learning how to
program and becoming especially adept at using Windows. A little
later it meant focusing on perfecting my French accent and reading
French newspapers like Le Monde. Because of my perseverations,
I have a more thorough understanding of history, politics, language,
computers, psychology, geography, and numerous other subjects
than the average person. In contrast, I have a deficit of knowledge
about today's pop stars, actors, and social gossip. This sometimes
makes it hard for people to have interesting conversations with
me.
Another thing is I frequently
mishear people and sometimes don't hear them at all. If you say,
"I went to the park today," I might hear, "I went
tooth per day," or some other nonsense; and so I often have
to ask, "Huh?" or "What?"
Sometimes I don't notice things
right in front of my face. I have more than once accidentally
skipped problems on a test because the question was too close
to the directions, which I probably didn't read (did I mention
aspies are sometimes too honest?). Especially in mathematics,
I have been known to make absent-minded mistakes by doing things
like 6 * 5 = 35. This would disqualify me from being an engineer
or surgeon, I think.
Aspies have more than their share
of difficulties making friends and finding a loving mate. Part
of it is our perseverative interests, another part must be our
tendency towards literal interpretations, and a third must be
our tendency to be rigid and conservative--unfun. Many of us
long for better social acceptance or at least friends to keep
our lives interesting, but sometimes this seems beyond our grasp.
The aspie sense of humor is somewhat
different from most people's sense of humor. I am especially
good at making odd connections about social happenings and use
highly sarcastic humor to criticize actions like the invasion
of Iraq. My disconnection from society along with my attempts
to better understand society are a gold mine containing the nuggets
of social injustices and inequalities, hypocrisies, and self-aggrandizement.
I vent my unattainable need for
excitement and companionship through art. I can sketch disturbing
images of distorted faces and forms as well as near photorealistic
pictures--if I'm looking at the object or a photograph of that
object. Writing , especially humorous writing, is another thing
that allows me to assuage my unfulfillment.
I have written--even perseverated
on--this article in the sincere hope that someone might better
understand aspies and not write us off as clueless geeks. We
aspies only want what everyone else wants: happiness.
