Initial Notes on Autism

Autistic man is overspecialized man. He appears in the more recent vintages of the human. He is so overspecialized as to be unable to survive on his own, and is a product of man’s ever increasing domestication, his subservience to specialized technologies and the social structure that emerges from them.

The autistic is the unintended consequence of man’s commitment to a particular metaphor and myth: the individual, ultra-competitive, hyper-rational economic man; a man modeled upon the computer; a man who being perfectly rational exists anonymously in the aggregates of the central planners.

The body is all he is. He experiences no “inner-life.”

He is artifice, the development of a culture’s worship of science and the computer, and the use of technologies to handle greater and greater amounts of information processing. Man has begun to resemble his technology, to merge with it, to become the artificial intelligence he endeavored to create.

He does not have an appreciation of music, though he may very well be able to perform it in a mathematically rigorous way.

He understands little of art or literature, or anything of a qualitative, non-technical quality.

He does not have empathy. He does not feel the emotional or physical pain of others. Indeed, the other as other consciousness, does not exist for him.

He does not understand the idea of a mother and father or the family. As such, he is unable to receive their gift: he cannot understand what is given, he cannot understand cooperation.

His inability to reflect upon the other, the consciousness of the other, the other’s perception of him, disconnects him from other men. Thus disconnected he is without self-consciousness beyond the rudimentary recognition that his body is his own and that others are other bodies.

Autistic man has broken the bounds of empathy and cooperation and the gift. Without consciousness of others beyond being bodies necessary to his survival, or the carrying out of a particular task, he is without consciousness. He is conscious of others only in so far as his needs and desires require others for their satisfaction.

He does not know that he will die and is unequipped to consider it. He does not comprehend the death of others in a way meaningful enough to consider it a possibility for himself.

He is incapable of boredom. For through boredom man experiences the extremes of self-consciousness and the consideration of death.

His emotional life is severely limited. His fear is limited to the fear of injury to his body, the only aspect of himself he is conscious of.

His recognition of his parents is limited to his need for them. He recognizes them because he needs them.

He can be said to be exclusively concerned with himself and therein lies his absence of consciousness. For consciousness exists in so far as it makes reference to other consciousnesses. A man’s recognition of other consciousnesses provides him the framework for the understanding of his own--his being self-conscious.

The appearance of autistic man heralds the gradually evolving disappearance of consciousness in humans.

Autistic man is not found to be excessively skilled economically. Indeed, the hoarding of wealth interests him little and he understands almost nothing of taking economic advantage. His interests and ability, when present, are with the code of technological life.

Technology allows for the continuing domestication of man. He is both a product of and reliant upon the technologies that compose his environment.

Technology both makes autistic man possible and allows him to live, to thrive in fact, in a society increasingly technologically focused.

Autistic man’s favorite color is green.

Autistic man finds inspiration in trains, in watching and listening to them, and in train schedules.

Shadows of Consciousness

1.The female migrating swallow is passionate in her care for her chicks. Her day is occupied with their nourishment and she will sacrifice her life to defend them against a predator. But when the flock of migrating swallows appears signaling the end of the season, the mother swallow will immediately leave her chicks to migrate with the others. She joins the migrating flock and abandons her chicks to certain death. She acts without hesitation or evidence of confusion.

2. Some chimpanzees from the Gombe group were observed as they came upon a strange female chimp carrying a baby. The Gombe chimps immediately seized upon the baby chimp and killed it as they might have killed a pig or a monkey. “Humphrey was beating its head against a branch; then he started eating its thigh muscles and the poor infant went limp. Mike was allowed to tear off a foot. But now confusion seems to have overcome the attendant apes. They watched intrigued, but none begged a portion. They did however inspect the carcass, and Humphrey too began poking and sniffing rather than eating it. He even groomed it, then dropped it and walked away (prey is devoured by the group with not so much as a scrap wasted). Others retrieved the small corpse, only to play, examine or groom it, often giving it the respect accorded a dead community member. The carcass changed hands six times and, although battered beyond recognition, very little had been eaten.” (The Ape’s Reflexion, Adrian Desmond, pg 220)

3. Humans feel a deep sense of horror at the neglect, abuse or killing of a child by its mother or another adult. This outrage also extends to the abuse or killing of babies of other social species (puppies and kittens in particular). The case of the migrating mother swallow is curious to the observing ethnologist for this reason. In many ways her conduct appears similar to that of a human mother, but then in one astonishing moment, without any hesitation, she abandons her children to migrate with the group.

4. I previously used the metaphor of a suddenly stopped film to describe the appearance of consciousness. It was as though you were at the cinema when midway through a film the screen went blank, the lights came on, and the story in which you had been immersed is gone. You are suddenly aware of yourself sitting in the cinema. Consciousness appears as a similar sort of breakdown and awareness. The world in which one has been acting, its fluid, narrative-like quality, is abruptly broken. One is aware of himself and a world outside himself, seemingly distant. He feels very alone. He hesitates to act. What causes this hesitation? What triggers the conscious moment?

5. The mother swallow joins the migrating flock so that she may survive the winter and there is no evidence that she is conflicted over the abandonment of her children. The Gombe chimps by contrast appear conflicted over the infanticide. Humphrey and Mike carry out the killing, but when the others fail to join them in eating the dead infant both Humphrey and Mike hesitate. When the others (likely more than two) poke and sniff at the carcass Humphrey imitates them. Some of the others then play with the carcass or groom it, one seemingly treating it as a dead community member.

6. There is confusion among the chimps over what has happened and its significance. Though the gender of the other chimps was not recorded (were some or all of them women, mothers perhaps?), it is clear these chimps do not consider the infant chimp to be prey. Humphrey and Mike do not follow through on their impulse to eat the dead infant. None among them is certain how to act.

10. In their own chimp manner Humphrey and Mike have become aware of the conflict between their impulse and the behavior of the other chimps. To conceive this conflict is to become conscious. They are self-conscious because they are conscious of others.

21. Man’s consciousness is rooted in his sociability. There is no self-consciousness without consciousness of other selves. The two require each other. In much the same way a man’s genetics express themselves through the institutions that surround him, his self-consciousness requires the consciousness of others to express itself.

35. Consciousness emerges from a disagreement between genes and the institutions that exist for their expression. A man unwilling to express himself within the institutions around him feels alone, world-less. There is a breakdown of sociability. The institutions that surround him are no longer welcoming. Instead of acting he hesitates. He fears the disapproving look of the others, their judgment, if he acts otherwise. When the others are not present to provide the disapproving look his conscience provides it. The others physically, or through the institutions he was born into and through which he expresses himself, are part of him.

49. Institutions define what is expected, they define appropriate behavior and standards of conduct. Certain institutions are more deeply coded into man’s genes and to break with them will produce in him a physical anguish, the pang of conscience.

68. Motherhood is the original institution. Upon the model of the mother’s care for her child other species specific behaviors are based. Changes to the institution of motherhood as a result of birth control; first pregnancies in their late thirties; refusal to breast feed; employment of nannies to care for children born to careerist mothers; etc. pose specific challenges for institutions throughout a society.

Aphorism on Consciousness

1. The suddenness of the appearance of consciousness, the disruption with which it appears, is as if one were watching a film at the cinema, being very much inside the story on the screen, the characters, feeling with them and being surprised and excited as the film progresses, when then, suddenly, the screen goes black. The lights come on. There is some technical problem. Suddenly you are aware of the movie theater itself, the others in the audience, and you and the others are anxious that the film begin again. The idea is to get the film projector working again, even if it is some temporary fix. Just so that you can finish this film.

Here Comes Success

1. He speaks of transcendence when he is unhappy, when he feels displeasure because of his environment or the action he performs. Do happy people speak of transcendence?

15. He tells himself he will transcend the world rather than act within it. To act might break certain rules. To act might offend the others. To act would be too risky. Transcendence is a sort of act without risk. The others will not even be aware he is performing a transcendence. Instead of changing his life he transcends.

33. One hears talk of transcendence from prisoners or those working at jobs they do not like. Transcendence is a refusal to affirm the world in which one acts. It is a refusal of the maxim that one is as one does: He doesn’t want to be a prisoner; he doesn’t want to be an accountant; he doesn’t want to be a freight team worker--he feels displeasure to act in these worlds. He would rather be elsewhere. He dreams of elsewhere. He speaks of transcendence when his will is not in some action, yet he still performs that action.

34. It allows him to perform an action he does not to want to perform. He tells himself: I have transcended and thereby removed the pain and I am not really what I am doing and it is now painless to perform this act. I am not really here. I have willed myself elsewhere. Transcendence is a delicate trick consciousness plays on the body to realign it with the world and get it acting again within the world, while removing the displeasure of the action.

51. To act without the full force of one’s will is a moral failing. He should become the greatest accountant, the greatest freight team worker--even the greatest prisoner. Any action can become a project, even a strong project, if he has the will for it.

76. Transcendence might be contrasted with the phenomenological attitude. Such an approach entails the suspension of judgment and full engagement with phenomena. The epoché engages him with the world without regard for his pain or pleasure, his happiness or unhappiness. He does not rank phenomena according to his desire. He does not speak of liking or disliking. The phenomenologist does not retreat from the world in which he acts.

79. Projects direct action. He who has a project will act according to his project, or not. When an action does not contribute to his project, or give him pleasure, he must ask himself why he is doing it. In an economy an action that does not contribute to one’s project invariably contributes to someone else’s: He works to promote someone else’s project. Often this means he sacrifices his own. The stronger one’s project the more painful this sacrifice will be.

81. Greatness is gifted only to him who has his own project.

82. If his project is strong he will only act according to it. A strong project is a strong will. A strong project is its own courage.

83. Transcendence is not a project. Transcendence is an avoidance of commitment to a project and the world in which one acts. To the man with a strong project it will seem the vilest sort of nonsense.

Aphorisms for Michel

"The turbulence of a river flowing around the supporting pillars of a bridge is stucturally unpredictable, but no one would think to describe it as being free."

--Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

122. His is a life in pursuit of comfort and pleasure, and a turning away from what is painful. His body has a particular feeling about his environment and he will act to avoid what hurts him and makes him insecure. The life of most men is little more than a quest for comfort and pleasure in an unpredictable world. How adventurous this life will be will depend upon the predictability of the environment in which he lives and the particular genetic demands of his body.

123. What then could the philosophers have possibly meant by freedom?

149. If we can say anything at all about it, we may say that consciousness is a reflecting upon an action that has happened or is about to happen. It is an awareness that has the effect of separating one's body from the world. The moment of consciousness objectifies the body and leads one to think he is not his body, that it is something foreign to him--a sort of container that consciousness is trapped inside. It may lead him to wrongly conclude that consciousness is the primary director of the body, or the seat of a man's essence.

151. Consciousness appears and through rationalization and justification of some action it effects a realignment of the body with the world. Consciousness often appears when a gap emerges between how a man wishes to act and what other men expect of him. Consciousness proceeds to justify a man's action in a world that he worries will find it disagreeable.

155. Consciousness appears as the separation of body, world, and action. It appears as an interruption of life. With rationalization and justification his body, his environment and the action he has taken, or will take, is reunited. He regains the confidence to act. He can live again. He need no more question his body and the world. And with that consciousness again disappears.

158. Consciousness is subject to the body, a tool in the body's pursuit of comfort and pleasure.

160. When an action cannot be justified consciousness lingers. His body, his environment and his action remain strangely suspended. He does not feel of the world. His body is a sort of familiar object, immediate yet strangely distant. He is bewildered.

161. How curious that some philosophers would see in this moment of confusion a deep truth about man and declare consciousness to be what is essential, what is most meaningful about him.

179. A man with desires that fit neatly with his environment has little use for reflection. He does not need to rationalize conduct that his environment can easily satisfy or that men around him consider acceptable. It follows that he has little need for or experience of consciousness.

184. The less a man experiences moments of consciousness the healthier and happier he is.