Real Freedom is Living Outside the NT Box

Those of us with AS have a different nature. We have to be true to our natures just as NT's have to be true to their natures. To all adults, like me, with Asperger's I say, be sure to celebrate your differences and not get caught up in the "I'm supposed to be like everyone else" kind of thinking. There truly is not, despite the rhetoric spouted from so many areas of life, any everyone else, at all.

Gregory B. Yates, in his writing, "A Topological Theory of Autism," - the website - www.autismtheory.org/topotheory.html says, "Autism emerges as a major feature of brain evolution: It is generally not a disease. Autism has been with humans as long as humans have been and has marked human history."

Yates makes it clear that the central defining feature of autism is social disconnectedness. Yates points out that, "The name "autism" derives from the Greek word "auto" for self, and proclaims the apparent mental involution or self-absorption of autistic people."

As one who has to a certain degree experienced (and I continue to experience) what Yates describes as an "apparent mental involution" along with a dose of "self-absorption" I do not agree that how these are from the inside out are the same as how they are defined from those on the outside, looking in and trying to understand.

There is an awesome gift in the form of AS mental involution. I experience that gift in many different ways not the least of which is the way that I crave and process information.

I would also assert that not all that is involuted is negative either. Just as all that is exuded is not all positive or negative.

Just as the words of Ashok Tiwari, in "Real Freedom, A Philosophical View, "...men, in so far as they realize their intuitive ideas, pursue only their own human ends. Moreover, each individual pursues his own particular ends. For the world of ideas comes to expression, not in a community of men, but only in human individuals..." point out self-absorption is not reserved only for those who are autistic of have Asperger's but is to some degree a part of the human condition.

What then, I ask, is the difference between the pursuits of those with Asperger's, such as myself, for example, and the pursuits of others? Though some want to make these worlds or realities so different I postulate that there is more similarity than difference.