Children at Play

1. The parent does not understand how the child conquers his boredom. The parent does not understand what the child develops through play. What occurs when the child appears to scribble idly? How does his climbing on the swing set in the park do him any benefit? What does he learn from conducting a battle between plastic enemy soldiers on the living room floor?

2. The play of the child seems undirected by reason, disorderly and even wasteful to the adult observer. The parent is convinced it best to as early as possible send him to a school and engage him in programs. There a curriculum can be administered to the child. The child can take part in organized activities to learn teamwork and a proper response to authority. Implicit is the assumption that that which can be tested and quantified, a method of learning that is explained by trained education professionals, will improve the child and more quickly prepare him for economic life. Because it is assumed too that the child can learn little on his own outside such programs, or that what he may learn is inferior and will result in bad habits.

7. The child develops through play the self-sustaining creativity to conquer his boredom. The development of this ability is man’s most important: that he has the confidence in his creativity to overcome that which might destroy him.

19. Man has rejected boredom. Man fears his boredom and looks to suppress it through distractions, the purchasing of pleasures and entertainments. Yet he also dislikes the work that would keep him from boredom. He looks to disengage himself from both the boredom that emerges from his idleness as well as the expenditure of energy that comes from work. He wishes to be idle but not bored. In the absence of the self-sustaining creativity developed in childhood, he turns to drug use, overeating, shopping, video games, etc. as responses to the problem. Indeed, autistic man might very well be an evolutionary response to the problem.

24. Verily, it is by man’s creative response to his boredom that civilization is often advanced. Civilization does not advance upon men trained to submit to authority, team-players, and those who would avoid boredom at any cost through drugs or programmed distractions. Man’s experience of boredom is his challenge to greatness.

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.

On Sick Babies

The following are hypotheses I developed after speaking with my mother who, other than working many decades in the school systems with damaged children, I take to be an expert on many matters. None of these observations are the result of scientific study--the causations and inferences are entirely speculative--though I hope that one day some scientist will take up a study with them in mind.

1. It is now a confirmed trend that women are choosing to have their first pregnancy in or after their middle thirties. This trend has correlated with a dramatic rise in the birthrate of autistic children and children afflicted with a variety of syndromes not known before (these are facts, numbering well beyond the bar of statistical significance). Correlation is not necessarily causation, but a link between autism and the greater frequency of older first-time mothers should be acknowledged and investigated.

2. Women who do not use their reproductive organs during their peak reproductive period (approximately 16-28) are more prone to cancers. Powerful hormones within the female urge action and reproduction, and a woman ignores those hormones at her own risk. The reproductive systems require use and practice and undirected, ignored hormones lead to imbalances--cancer.

3. Men have a responsibility in this as well. As a man ages his sperm is reproduced as an imitation of the prior vintage of sperm. Thus an older man beyond his peak sexual years (essentially the same as a woman’s) is impregnating women with sperm that is the copy many times over of itself. These copies are never exact copies and are often copies of sperm which is defective or not as strong as younger sperm. Such “old sperm” could be a contributing factor to autism and other emerging syndromes.

4. Never should a man and woman participate in artificial insemination. In such a case certain sperm, sometimes one individual sperm, is favored by a doctor to enter the egg. However, this is probably not the strongest of the male sperm during an ejaculation (only 2000 of millions and millions actually get anywhere near the egg; some ejaculations even contain no sperm strong enough to reach and penetrate the egg) and any pregnancy induced in this matter has a greater chance of producing a damaged child due to defective or less than ideal sperm. This is to say nothing of the risks associated with the doctor choosing where to place the egg inside the woman, the health of the egg, etc etc.

5. Never should a woman abort a pregnancy as a matter of convenience. Not only does the abortion of a healthy pregnancy pose risks to the reproductive health of the woman, but it does not allow her body the practice of giving birth (see 2. above). Put the child up for adoption if healthy. Or, if born sick, dispose of the baby as the Spartans did by placing it in a cave to die. A healthy woman can within a year have another baby to replace it should she choose to.

6. The West has embraced women giving birth later or not at all. This has enabled career-minded women to forego child-bearing to compete with men and make money during their most fertile years. The medical industry has expanded rapidly as a result of the afflicted children born of these career-minded mothers. There is big money in the sickness and long-term care for such children born of old eggs and old sperm. Choosing to make babies when it is convenient for your career and not your body is a mistake.

Additional Notes On Autism:

7. Those afflicted with autism are often technically gifted, excelling in the fields of science, mathematics, and computer technology. These gifts come in exchange for a lack of emphathy towards other humans and social ability. Given that the Western world is one dominated by technology and science (in the service of capitalism) the career opportunities for those with autism and rare technical abilities are many. With autism afflicting males at significantly higher rates than females (1 in 70 vs 1 in 110) there are many more technically gifted autistic men who are successful career-wise (making money). And given that women prefer wealth in a man to most other characteristics it follows that there are more autistic men giving birth to autistic children than in the past (autism is 90% hereditary). Autistic men, once ostracized for a lack of social skills, are now viewed as suitable mates as result of wealth gained through their technical prowess (e.g. Bill Gates).

8. Might the intricately systematic nature of modern life be in fact triggering the development of autistic instincts in individuals? Could a culture enamoured with science and mathematics and control be turning on genes that are related to autism? (One might say it takes a mild form of autism to excel in a systematic culture.) Could successful careerist (read: some form of systematized life) adults be passing along "turned-on" autistic genes to their offspring? It would figure the older the parent the more likely the autistic genes have been triggered, the more active the genes, and hence the more likely a child with autism is produced.

9. Might autism be related to a sort of system building gene?