Things I Don't Understand - Number Seven

I don't understand greed.

I don't mean being greedy for food, I do sometimes want to gorge myself on food that tastes really good, eg Christmas dinner, though I've learnt to restrain myself, as the results are not good! No, what I mean by greed is financial greed, the urge to accumulate more and more money, gather more and more of it into one's hands, or bank accounts.

I'm thinking here of how, when a reporter once asked an extremely wealthy man what he wanted, he replied "more money". He already had more than most of us could spend in a lifetime, yet he wanted more. And I suspect there are many out there like him.

Greedy people have always been amongst us, and there have always been disparities of wealth, though till the Industrial Revolution only royalty and the most powerful nobles could hope to live truly extravagantly. The resources and the material goodies just weren't there. And there have also always been those opposed to anyone having such a lion's share of the world's wealth, especially if it's at the expense of others (and it usually is). And during the middle decades of the twentieth century, it truly did seem that the world's wealth was becoming more evenly distributed, at least in the Western part of the world.

Now, however, it seems the wealthy are gaining the upper hand again. I read somewhere recently that in the 1960s, the USA's richest men had about thirty times the income of the poorest. These days, the richest are worth around three hundred times the poorest. (I don't have the reference handy, but it was something like that.) With this sort of concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, is it really so surprising that even the middle class are struggling, while the truly poor increasingly go to the wall? I think not.

Even in New Zealand, a country traditionally without this kind of financial obscenity, we are beginning to see such differences. In the same week that Campbell Live, a NZ current affairs programme, campaigned to raise money for Kids Can, a charity that feeds kids in poor schools, one of the wealthiest men in NZ launched his new yacht in Norway - worth around $NZ 78 million. The Campbell Live campaign raised around $NZ 800,000. This means that for less than one seventy-eighth of the value of his yacht (and he already has two others), this wealthy man could have provided breakfast and lunch for hundreds of hungry kids from poor families.

There are of course plenty of other obscenities of wealth out there. The movie stars who think nothing of spending thousands on a handbag or scarf, or tens of thousands on 'therapy', while just a few miles away homeless people are rummaging in bins to feed themselves. The huge houses of the rich, while down the road kids go barefoot and hungry to school. And no, I'm not talking about third world countries, but countries like New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the USA. 'First World Poverty' is very, very real, and becoming more so.

Don't get me wrong - though I would be deemed at least 'left-leaning' by most standards, I'm not any kind of communist, in fact I dislike communism as a system. And life's luxuries are very nice, I wouldn't deny that. I like decent cars and a nice house and smart clothes as much as the next person. I also know that many of the richest do give substantial amounts to charities. Though perhaps not all - a recent magazine article here in New Zealand asked if being rich made you nasty and selfish - and it seemed that sometimes, yes, it does. A typical example they quoted was how street charity collectors often get a better response in poorer neighbourhoods than they do in rich ones, that in fact the rich often ignore such collectors. The phenomenon of the rich attitude that the poor are 'just lazy', and should 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps' is also very real too, according to that article - which of course totally ignores the fact that a) not everyone has the entrepreneurial ability to become rich, and b) they've left a lot of us without any metaphorical 'boots'.

I don't know if my lack of understanding on this is due to my being an aspie or not - I have noticed many aspies do seem to be on the 'left' side of the political spectrum, probably because of our passion for justice, which extends to social justice. Others seem to be totally neutral, either undecided or so turned off by humanity that they don't give a damn, while a few express rabidly right-wing opinions - though I've noticed they also seem to be the ones who have jaundiced, misanthropic views in general, due usually to years of ill-treatment from the world.

I wonder too if my attitude is at least partly due to the family values I was brought up with. These values weren't made explicit, were never lectured to us or pushed on us, but rather simply demonstrated. I grew up seeing my parents get involved with groups such as Plunket committees, school lunch committees, and Lions Clubs. In more recent years, groups like the Child Cancer Foundation, Hospice, Save the Children and others have received the benefits of my family's energies. Moreover, we've all tended to gravitate towards careers and jobs that help, educate or take care of people - nursing, education, social work, etc. Community involvement is almost taken for granted in my family.

This philanthropy goes further back than just this generation - family history research has turned up evidence my ancestors were on church or sports committees, organised fundraising events, or were members of such groups as the Rebekah Lodge, the Hibernian Society and the Druids Lodge.

I've also had more than one discussion with various family members about "what we'd do if we won Lotto". The general consensus was that, after we'd satisfied our own needs, we'd distribute our wealth. 'Paying off our younger generation's student loans' and 'buying everyone in the family houses' featured prominently on that list, and there was a general feeling that beyond taking care of your own needs, it was best to 'spread the wealth' and help as many as possible.

Or perhaps my attitude is because of my own personal experience of all too often having to go without - I've survived, at times, thankfully never for too long, without things that most Westerners consider 'basic amenities', such as fridges, electricity or hot and cold running water; I've also lived (for a few weeks or months each) in a tent, caravan, housetruck and converted cowshed. I've gone without fancy clothes and many material goodies that others take for granted, and had to trim my budget or shopping bill to eliminate anything not absolutely essential to keeping body and soul together. I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'd very much like to not have to do that, but it has taught me you can live without many of the things most Westerners consider necessary to existence. Luxuries are very nice, but they're not essential. Other life-experiences have also contributed to what I can only describe as a feeling that "all things are best in moderation".

And that includes wealth. So I just don't understand greed.

A Crisis of Faith

I haven’t been doing much writing on this blog lately, for several reasons. I went to an autism conference, and then suffered a prolonged post-conference recovery, and just haven’t been at my best physically. Plus, my financial dire straits mean I’ve been feeling pressure to get on with other projects that might bring in some money. But I’ve also been having a bit of a ‘crisis of faith’. I felt like I was ‘preaching to the choir’, in that I seemed to have a very small audience who seemed to be already aware of the issues I raised, even if they couldn’t put it into words, and/or to pretty much agree with me. So I didn’t feel like I was actually ‘raising anyone’s consciousness’. But even more importantly, I’ve been getting more and more conscious of just how bad autism’s public image is, and how urgent it is to reach out to the general public and/or the media to get our viewpoint across, and change that image. So my blog seemed like a sort of distraction from that, a self-indulgent place where I raved on about my favourite hobby-horses, but not anything, I felt, that was really going to change the world for autistic people. As a result I didn’t feel much like writing any posts, and even wondered if I should let it go altogether.

But I’ve changed my mind on that, as a result of quite a few posts I’ve read recently in several autistic Facebook groups, which have left me feeling both saddened and alarmed. It seems there are still far more autistics out there who hate their autism than I realised, and who almost invariably hint that they hate themselves as well, for having it. Moreover, they don’t feel there is anything good about being autistic/aspie. Suffering from chronic depression, anxiety, or executive functioning issues, they are confused, overwhelmed, and miserable. Sometimes they’re not aware of the neurodiversity movement, or the concept of ‘autistic rights’, especially if they’re new to the scene, but even when they are aware, they frequently don’t see its relevance to them and their daily struggles.

But I most whole-heartedly believe it is extremely relevant – to all aspies/auties, no matter where they are, or what they’re doing, or what their ‘functioning level’ is. There’s so much that needs changing in autistic lives, and the first step in that change has to be changing our attitudes towards ourselves. We need to end the self-loathing and the impossible attempts to force ourselves into NT patterns which cause us so much misery. I do understand why we feel that way and do that to ourselves, but truly, it’s nonsense that we are not good enough as we are. It’s a set of mental shackles, and it’s time to break out of them and be free.

And the best way to do this, is with the support and companionship of other autistics – who can say “yes, I feel like that too, and no, you’re not crazy for thinking that”, who have had similar experiences, who can offer advice that actually works, who can accept us just as we are, in all our genuine, eccentric, autistic glory. We can value each other, support each other, break those mental shackles… but only if we first have the concept that we have worth as autistics.

Which is exactly how the ‘autism rights’ or ‘neurodiverse’ movement started – by a few autistics getting together, offering support to each other, and in the process realising, hey, you’re not so bad, we’re not so bad, we’re not the terrible, useless, mentally crippled beings that we’ve been told we are… So how come they treat us like that? And – how can we change things? And so it all began, with just a few, and has grown and grown from there. (That’s really how any social movement begins actually.) The concepts of ‘autistic pride’ or ‘autistic rights’ are really about accepting and valuing ourselves as autistics, and then striving to ensure others do the same. These concepts can be communicated from one autie to another, spread wholesale through communities, spoken of at conferences, written about in the media, discussed on social network sites, and developed in our daily lives. And thus, the principles of the neurodiversity movement can have an effect even on those not directly involved in it – much the same as the principles of other social movements, eg feminism, have spread to those who have never taken any part in them.

And yet, as I’ve said, there are so many who seem to be isolated from all this, alone, lost, hating themselves and their autism. So, in feeling the need to communicate with them, to show them that being autistic is not All Bad News, I’ve experienced a renewal of the impetus to write on my blog, because that seems the best way to reach out to ALL autistics, to tell them that they are not alone, that they are not worthless, that there are good things about being autistic, and that it is possible to change our lives for the better. I want them to know that even if they feel that no-one else values them, I value them, feel for them and their struggles, and want to do all I can to change things for them.

Of course I’m not thinking I can do this single-handedly – there are, happily, plenty of other fine autistic writers and advocates out there, all doing their bit, and more coming forward all the time. However I hope to do my bit, to add my rivulet to what is becoming a flood, to help swing the scales to positive with my few ounces, all in the hope that my words will have an impact, will make a difference. I certainly hope so.

Things I Don't Understand - Number Two

Status-seeking, social climbing, keeping up with the Joneses, impressing the neighbours, showing off, conspicuous display of wealth, whatever you call it, I don’t get it. Sure, many expensive and ‘prestige’ items are very nice, and handy to have. I’d like a few of them myself. But to buy something that you really, really don’t need, simply in order to impress others? Especially if the people you are trying to impress are not your friends, you don’t even like them much, or even really know them? Why would you bother? What on earth does it matter if So-And-So down the road has a new Ferrari or BMW, and you’re only driving a Ford? Or What’s-Her-Name from the school committee makes a smug point of mentioning the new extension to their house, or their flash new pool? (Okay, on stinking hot days like we’ve had here lately, I would envy the pool, but otherwise… :) )

I especially don’t understand it if people spend money they don’t in fact have, in order to impress others. Seriously? They’d bankrupt themselves, in order to get one up on the Smiths next door? Is that really the sum of their ambitions in life? I pity them, if so, for the pettiness of their minds, their visions. And I would still never do it. Even if I didn’t think it petty, even if I didn’t have better things to do or to worry about, I still wouldn’t do it. I simply DON’T CARE enough. I don’t care about status or privilege, I am not impressed by wealth or rank or power. And if I don’t know someone, I don’t care much about impressing them either. Why should I? I have enough problems in life without worrying about the opinions of people I barely know, or don’t know at all.

My efforts (such as they are) to ‘impress’ others are typically with the following in mind :-

a) To ensure my personal safety – usually by being very inconspicuous, and unnoticed;

b) To impress a potential employer that I’m the right person for the job; or

c) To convince someone in authority – a doctor, police officer, etc – that I need help or support, or simply to be believed.

That’s it. I don’t care about showing off, and not just because I’ve never had much to show off. I could have an income of a million dollars a year, and, after my own needs were taken care of, I’d start looking round for firstly, how to help out my family, and secondly, how to help others – my aspie/autie friends and associates, say, or my favourite charities. I wouldn’t buy flash yachts or cars, or expensive designer clothing and jewellery, etc; I don’t need or even especially want these things, especially not if the money could be used for a better purpose instead. It seems both selfish and silly, not to mention vulgarly excessive. There’s an environmental (I think) activist saying I’ve been trying to remember, something about excessive consumption being obscene, or ‘excreta’. I’m reminded of it every time I see or read about some rich person’s lavish yacht, or diamond necklace worth millions, or other evidence of a lavish lifestyle. I always think of how many Third World kids that could feed and educate, how many charitable projects it could fund, or how many low-socio-economic schools and families could be helped by it. That anyone could waste money on fancy yachts and so on when there is so much need in the world seems such a skewed set of priorities I literally cannot understand it.

And yet others further down the social ‘food chain’ admire them, and try to emulate them, or convince others they are halfway to that state, or closer to it than them, even if they don’t really have the wherewithal to do so.

Crazy.

One further note here – it may be that I feel this way not just because of being aspie, and a ‘socially aware’ one, but also because of being ‘creative’. In ‘The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (one of my personal ‘bibles’) she remarks that “To be an artist is to risk admitting that much of what is money, property and prestige strikes you as just a little silly”. Quite.

First Responder Training in Autism

One thing which has been on many aspies’ minds as a result of the Arie case is the need for police and other ‘first responder’ training in how to recognise and handle autistic people.

Now some might think, “oh, why should they get special treatment?”, but the issue is not ‘special’ treatment so much as appropriate treatment. Imagine, for instance, that a police or ambulance officer sees a person staggering down the street, maybe falling down, twitching and shaking, slurring their words. Their first thought is likely to be “hmm, got another drunk or druggie here!” But if they then found out that the person was actually a diabetic in dire need of insulin, or an epileptic on the edge of a seizure, their whole approach would of course change.

And so it is with autism. Use your imagination once again, and visualise a police officer who encounters a person who ‘walks funny’, who makes inappropriate eye contact or none at all, who ignores social niceties; flinches from bright lights and the clanging of steel doors, seems confused under questioning, gives ‘strange’ answers, or asks lots of ‘strange’ questions themselves; someone who perhaps rambles on and on about things that have no relevance whatsoever to the situation (in the police officer’s eyes anyway), or at any point suddenly ‘shuts down’ and refuses to talk anymore, or insists on using a communication device that the police don’t understand; or suddenly goes into a huge ‘tantrum’, throwing objects, screaming and shouting, or bursting into a sobbing fit, perhaps banging their head against a wall.

If this hypothetical officer had no experience with autism, and no knowledge of it, wouldn’t they likely think the person was drunk, drugged, a psychiatric case, or guilty of something (“He won’t look me in the eye”), or just ‘faking it’ (“She could talk just fine half an hour ago!”)? But a basic knowledge of autism would enable them to see that the person is simply frightened, confused, overwhelmed, and probably experiencing the breakdown or loss of what few social skills they possess, not to mention sensory overload; and that further pressure will only worsen the situation. They could dim lights, provide a less noisy environment, etc etc, and above all not assume the person is ‘guilty’ simply because they don’t respond ‘appropriately’.

This is not ‘special treatment’, but simply common sense, once you understand just how differently autistic people experience the world around them. It’s similar to how knowledgeable individuals interact with people of different cultures. In Samoan culture, for instance, you always put yourself physically ‘lower’ than someone who is above you in status, and staring someone right in the eyes is considered rude. Thus a Samoan, intending to be polite, will immediately sit down, and won’t meet your eye. If they didn’t know, a ‘Palagi’ (white person) might think the Samoan was being rude or evasive. Many other cultures have similar rules. It’s generally only in Western cultures that looking someone straight in the eyes is considered a good thing. This is just one small example of how things can seem very different, once you understand the person you’re interacting with, and where they are ‘coming from’.

Training in awareness of autism for police and emergency personnel isn’t about ‘special treatment’, but rather about understanding and helping all members of the community, in the best way possible.

My Outlook on Life

I’ve been meaning to do a piece on my spiritual views for ages, and I will get to it soon. But first I want to say something about my general outlook on life.

The central fact anyone needs to know about me, is that I am a spiritually-orientated person. The thing I desire the most is to be One with The Infinite. Because nothing else beats that feeling, no high or thrill of any kind. The Love of the Infinite is the most powerful force in the Universe, and if you know that Love, you cannot but help love Its creations, human beings. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, you cannot help but feel compassion, because humans in general are in a mess. Wars, oppression, poverty, violence and difficulties of all kinds, from large to small - we all know what a sorry state the world is in. And most of the pain is caused by humans themselves, on themselves or other humans. You have to either loathe them or feel sorry for them, and I prefer the latter. Because to allow bitterness, prejudice and intolerance into my heart, takes me away from God, and I’m not going to allow that to happen.

I admit, in my earlier years I often felt that bitterness, and even sometimes edged close to that intolerance and prejudice, because of the pain that is the inevitable result of living with undiagnosed, unknown-even-to-me Aspergers. Those on the spectrum, especially those over thirty, will know the struggle of which I speak. But though I often floundered in confusion and angst, I couldn’t ever sustain negativity, not completely, and never for long, it simply isn’t in my nature. In the end, burnt-out and worn-out from trying to be ‘normal’, I knew I had to take a different approach to life – or die. It was that stark. I couldn’t go on any longer the way I had, I was beyond even ‘running on empty’, I was bone-dry, not a drop left in the tank. It was at that point I sought out a spiritual centre and learnt meditation, consciously stepping onto the spiritual path, which I’ve been on ever since (admittedly with a good deal of meandering!). Over a decade of meditation, prayer and ‘living with God’ has not only given me tools to cope with the world, it’s helped me to understand this crazy old world better – and to feel compassion for it. I see the pain, I see the troubles, and my heart can’t help but be moved. It’s who I am, what I am.

So I feel this compassion, and naturally I want to help. Well, I’m still an aspie, and I can’t cushion things much – I speak the truth, about how I see things. But here’s the thing – I want that truth to be a way by which people are helped. As a writer, words are my stock-in-trade, and I do my damndest to use them wisely; to help people see their own Truths, to clarify their lives, understand themselves and others better, simplify complicated situations, and generally make the world a better place. (Because who the heck wants it to be a worse one?) I see this as a responsibility that comes with having a gift for using words. So though I may at times seem forthright, even blunt, it’s not with the intent to hurt, but rather with the object of ‘cutting through the thicket’, unravelling the complicated, and laying bare the heart of the problem. Sometimes, yes, this is painful. But only when the problem is clear, can people actually do something

about it. If I can’t find the right words to help someone to see their way, or if I feel unclear in myself about what’s happening, then I try to refrain from saying anything (or at least until something does become clear). I remind myself that no-one but God can know everything. (And in case you were wondering, yes, I also do this ‘cutting through the thicket’ on myself. How else do you think I learnt it?)

It may seem arrogant to some, this belief that I can help others simply through my words. Let me be clear on this - I have no illusions (a kind of wistful hope, maybe, but no illusions), that I can, simply by my words, ‘wave a magic wand’, and utterly transform people’s lives for the better. Sometimes my words are rejected, resented, or ignored. Fine, no-one has to listen to me, and I’m not the fount of all wisdom. (If I was, I’d have handled my own life better!) But I do have certain understandings, mostly gained the hard way, and if I feel I can help, I will say something. And more than that, I seek to be a channel for a Greater Wisdom – something that doesn’t come from me so much as through me. And sometimes you can sort of ‘plant seeds’ in people’s minds, which might grow and flower in time. Or just enable them to look at things a different way, empower them to make their own changes. Others have done this for me in the past, I’m simply passing the favour on.

So my philosophy can be summed up basically as – to do good whenever I can, or at least to do no harm. I figure there’s enough negative energy and aggro in the world already, and I don’t want to add to it. I want to help people when I can, and if not, then refrain from making things worse. Sounds simple, perhaps even ‘woolly-wafty-liberal’, but it’s actually pretty radical, and not always easy in practise. I admit, I have my bad times. Times when I feel down and rejecting of the world for a while; or times I curse out a driver who cuts me off in traffic and give Jesus Christ a new middle name (though this is mainly fear, because my driving reactions are not that fast, and drivers who drive recklessly or carelessly scare the crap out of me); and other times I get stressed and snap at someone, or I say the wrong thing – even when it feels right - and hurt someone’s feelings. And still other times I know there’s probably something I could say, but I’m too emotionally scattered or stressed to find the words, or the energy to say them. There are people I fail. I’m human, I have shortcomings and make mistakes and blunders like anyone else. And I’m also aspie, with all that that entails.

But the main thing is that I try. I have this approach to life, this outlook, because it’s the only way I can live with myself, the only way I can stay close to The Infinite, the only way I can be a spiritual being and a person with Aspergers, and not succumb to pain, bitterness, and the downward spiral. It’s the only way I can live. Literally.