Saktranomicon

by Grawyvern G. Graywyvern

"I doubt if I am human in the accepted sense. I'm of

another recension." --R A Lafferty, The Devil is Dead
(1971)

Nomen Tuum Press, Plano Texas, 2023.

 by way of an introduction

I’m not sure exactly when i first heard of “Asperger’s

Syndrome”—sometime in the early 21c in an article on
Silicon Valley, i’m sure [Wired, 2001?]. At first i was like,
of course, but do we need a special name for that? (And
mentally made note of the term, as something that
applied to myself.) After that, there were internet
quizzes, which put me “on the spectrum”—quizzes per
se meant little or nothing to me, but i could recognize
myself in the descriptions. Baron-Cohen’s theories were
beginning to be bandied about: i guess you could call
them an improvement on Bruno “refrigerator-mother”
Bettelheim [that fraud!] but only as a slightly-less
pernicious mistake…

Then Wrong Planet came along. I see that it says i joined

in 2010. I started saving my comments on a special blog
i called Monkey-Picked Aspie, about a year later. This
book is a collection mostly of scrapings from that blog.

Because i formed my identity much earlier, before the

internet even existed, i sought my likeness in books &
the authors of books. In truth, the idea of Myers-Briggs
type INTJ seemed the greater revelation (20+ years
earlier? around 1985--). I’ve modified my first adherence
to Psychological Types a lot since then.

I suppose it’s fair to refer to myself as a “self-diagnosed”,

autistic elder (i was born in 1958, & i can remember the
Kennedy assassination). I’ve had to figure out everything
for myself, & although i do appreciate the speed & reach
of electronic communications (& especially the ease with
which an author can now self-publish), i still rely on my
own judgment for anything really important. And i
would not wish it otherwise for the reader.
In the following, i have tried to remove any occurrences
of the now-outmoded term “Asperger’s”, & use saktra
(the Vulcan word) & ‘autistic’ pretty much
interchangeably. My inclusion of a few Lojban
expressions in some of these entries is less defensible; i
can only say that at the time, i was trying to use this
constructed language to think better.

empathy
(which i am thinking of using the Vulcan word rigolaya
for, instead)
I think true empathy is a talent, & a rather uncommon
one. (I learned this from becoming close friends with a
highly empathic person: her life was filled with people
telling her their troubles, from friends to total strangers;
in another society she might have become a counselor,
or a witch doctor.)

What passes for empathy is often simply a social

demand that we react in a certain way. it is
fundamentally no different from the demands that
people look & dress within a certain range.

What i have always had is an instinct for justice; &

anger when i see justice denied. (I think this is related
to truthfulness, which i plan to cover as a separate topic
on my autist blog.)

There is something related which i have experienced,

invariably when i spend a lot of time around a person. I
start to involuntarily absorb an impression of their
personality. It is not a fast process, & i don't even know
how accurate an impression it is that i receive, but it
feels like i am becoming that person to a small degree. I
don't know how they are going to react in any situation,
but i somehow imagine i understand a little bit what it
is to be them.

I also experience this sometimes when i have read a

good biography, or watched a movie which i identify
with strongly. (In this case i am more willing to call it an
illusion, since both of those artifacts contain only
personality-simulations, created for a single purpose.)

I think this is a deep subject, & needs to be considered

in several dimensions, rather than assuming that by
giving it a name & then treating the name like a feature
with binary dimensions, it has been comprehended.

I will end by admitting in casual encounters, i only

intellectually understand other people have feelings; & i
can be shockingly callous, if i'm not careful. (In 52 [64
now] years, i have learned a thing or two, i guess.)

uncharismatic

The majority of people, who like to be like others & to have

others be like them, are often repelled; a lesser proportion,
that likes to be different & appreciates difference in others,
will sometimes welcome me as another misfit. But i really
don't fit in with them either.

It's useful to be reminded, however, by stepping outside the

outsiders' ghetto, just how easy it is to become hated.

some Wittgenstein quotes

from Philosophical Investigations (Anscombe transl.):

I.
207. Let us imagine that the people in that country
carried on the usual human activities and in the course
of them employed, apparently, an articulate language. If
we watch their behaviour we find it intelligible, it seems
'logical'. But when we try to learn their language we find
it impossible to do so. For there is no regular connexion
between what they say, the sounds they make, and their
actions...

293. If I say of myself that it is only from my own case

that I know what the word "pain" means--must I not say
the same of other people too? And how can I generalize
the one case so irresponsibly? ...Suppose everyone had
a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one
can look into anyone else's box. and everyone says he
knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --
Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have
something different in his box. One might even imagine
such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the
word "beetle" had a use in these people's language?...
 II.
xi. ...Could there be human beings lacking in the
capacity to see something as something--and what
would that be like? What sort of consequences would it
have? --Would this defect be comparable to colour-
blindness or to not having absolute pitch? --We will call
it "aspect-blindness"...The 'aspect-blind' will have an
altogether different relationship to pictures from ours.

...We also say of some people that they are transparent

to us. It is, however, important as regards this
observation that one human being can be a complete
enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a
strange country with entirely strange traditions; and,
what is more, even given a mastery of the country's
language....

"I cannot understand what is going on in him" is above

all a picture. It is the convincing expression of a
conviction. It does not give the reasons for the
conviction. They are not readily accessible.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Is there such a thing as 'expert judgment' about the

genuineness of expressions of feeling? --Even here,
there are those whose judgment is 'better' and those
whose judgment is 'worse'. ...Can one learn this
knowledge? Yes; some can. Not, however, by taking a
course in it...
on patterns
Autists are often described as pattern-seeking, but i have a
different take on this. I think i have a taste for textures, & to
me a pattern is first & foremost a texture. (The absence of
texture i sometimes--but not always--find repugnant.) The
more intricately textured something is, the more i delight in it.

Now, to me there is not an unbridgeable gulf between more-

orderly textures (called patterns, e.g. everything from basic
checks to repeating "wallpaper" surfaces) & less-orderly, such
as nature produces in great abundance. (This includes prime
numbers, BTW.) What matters to me is the density of
information. I like grotesques, the baroque in art, crunchy
food, rough or ornate clothing. I even enjoy uneven ground--
looking at it, & walking (or climbing) across it. Which does not
feel different from reading a richly-varied narrative. For,
textures are full of incidents.

Nothing has pleased me more in the march of cybernetics than

the invention of fractals. At last the banality of simplistic
human design has succumbed to its absolute origins in an
order beyond our finite understanding; & from that time, our
artificial worlds have become increasingly habitable for those
like me who cannot abide plainness & empty space.

on becoming a
dodo
Historiography, needless to say, belongs to the triumphant;
although there was a Cato to declare, "The victor pleased the
Gods, but the loser pleased me," it was not until very recently
that underdogs as a class could be said to have had actual
advocates, & their claims granted merit. We are only now
feeling the loss of the Dodo, the Great Auk, & the Passenger
Pigeon, which worried nobody earlier (when it was
preventable). With that in mind i can start to contemplate
sundry human & human-caused extinctions. Perhaps some of
them even include my own--such as the case of left-handed
children forced to indite with their other hand ("parasinistral"
i say): when my generation of benighted helpfulness passes,
there will come no more.

Prenatal testing, & its consequent effect on what would

otherwise be a natural incidence of numerous SOCIALLY-
DISFAVORED genetic anomalies, proceeds apace. It is not
hard to foresee the absolute eclipse of, say, non-telegenic
looks, in the fullness of time. Why not autism-spectrum? How
is that not like having crooked teeth?

Seeds of all the earth's varieties are being saved, stored in a

sort of library of genotypes, against ultimate oblivion
(otherwise known as agribusiness monoculture): & we whose
brains function, only not in the way our peers expect, might
envy that scientific solicitude. Are there rare viewpoints, ways
of life, preferences & even exceptional talents going to fall by
the wayside; & will the regrets (there are always regrets)
arrive just a tad too late? Oh, the Aspies & the Auties, they did
not darken the sky like the Passenger Pigeon, but they left us
with a few good licks, Special Relativity maybe; collections of
bottlecaps for sure.

On being uncommon
Over the years, people i have known of various acknowledged
minorities i have made common cause with, would sooner or
later reach a point where they had to acknowledge (or rather,
avow) how THEY had experienced a quality of majority-
oppressiveness that i, as a straight white anglo male, could
only know vicariously at best. I was on their side, plainly: but
i could have chosen otherwise.

Deep down i disagreed. I knew it would only be worse, seem

more arrogant, to protest. Later i was able to explain to
myself: not every minority is visible or has a name. What
minority was i? A minority given to finding patterns not
always obvious or accepted--such as seeing how there is not
THIS prejudice against skin color, THAT prejudice against
sexual orientation, ANOTHER prejudice against gender, &
STILL MORE prejudices wherever fences are erected & walls
made strong.

There is only one injustice, born of the failure of reciprocity, &

not a single human on earth has missed being made the
recipient of it, sometime in their lives.

Hatred of the Other.

autist in the house of love

Long-suffering Autists of the present day might reflect that in
a large scale mercantile society such as ours, the proportion of
discrete, impersonal &/or mediated transactions can be a
hefty one; whilst in a venue such as the Court of Versailles of
Louis Quatorze & the like, without explicit rules but burdened
by innumerable nuances of mores, mass media being entirely
replaced by gossip & innuendo--their disadvantages might
have proven insurmountable. But in one respect, at least, we
are still at that redoubtable Court--& on trial, it often feels, for
our very lives.

In other words, the Court of Love. Our Super Powers fail us.
Each clinker leaves its scar. Interviews, they say, are decided
in the first 15 seconds (or whatever)--like science fiction
nuclear wars--surely romantic interviews fare little better. If it
were up to natural procreation to reproduce our kind, alas, i
think we would not ever have managed to become known.

The services offered by modern communications, particularly

online dating, but defer the issue. (My idea of speed-dating is
growing up with the Girl Next Door.) Fortunately, by
whatever mechanism, both males & females are found in this
as in every scarce moiety & the unique channels by which
heart is revealed to heart are capable of being discovered by
those whose patience is not limited to bus stop vigils.

The one thing we might try to remember is that, even for those
of the likelier persuasions, lasting love has never been
common, cheap or easily available--only its counterfeits.

opsimath
--or "late bloomer" although this is so at odds with my
scholastic prowess as to be an easy secret to keep (mostly). For
example, i taught myself to read by looking over my mother's
shoulder as she read out loud to my year-older brother (the
"average", "normal" one). I always made straight A's & picked
things up so readily that my study practice became to simply
read the textbook at the beginning of the year cover to cover,
& never open it again.

But in fact i was otherwise backwards, & felt it keenly. I had

the most intense awkwardness with girls, finally learned to
swim myself the summer i was 21, having only gotten my
driver's license the year before; lived at home (with one short
exception) until i was 28 (the year i got my first full-time job);
& married at 41 (younger than Yeats, at any rate, but many of
my contemporaries were already divorced or raising families
by that time).

I couldn't explain it, even to myself, but i finally did come to

accept that there is no universal timetable for humans, & the
time for me was the right time for me if i was going to at all.

"I have had to learn the simplest things

last. Which made for difficulties."

--Charles Olson

on being truthful
It is rather a judgment against society, than the reverse, that a
superior truthfulness should prove so unhandy. In almost
every given situation it is better to lie; & this gives a distinct
advantage to those who are able to lie convincingly, & in fact
find it their most graspable tactic.

The only thing that still surprises, then, is how truthfulness

(insofar as it has) has received the approbation of the sages &
the sanction of several bromides. Perhaps that counsel to be
truthful was only another form of misdirection: the truth is,
YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH.

toleration, activism

It seems to be that, while a majority of NTs are the sort

that wants to be like other people & likes other people to
be like them, a smaller but significant proportion prefers
to be different from other people & appreciates
difference in others. I have almost always found
tolerance, & often support, among the latter, who tend
to be alienated just as much in their own way (cf the
first group i mentioned). Conformity in our pseudo-
individualistic age is a serious problem, true. but it does
not help anyone to look at this in an alarmist way.

The first thing that comes to mind, is the fact that the
group of like-minded (i associate these with Myers-
Briggs dominant Sensing, mostly Extraverted Sensing
types--but this pattern is not limited to those) is
susceptible to what they are told; & if they are told there
is a new minority among them that needs to be
respected, eventually they will raise their kids to respect
them & it will not always be prejudicial to grow up as
one of that minority.

Another point, is that there are what might be termed

healthfear-crazes, or hot topics that sweep through
society, by the same media, influencing people's
insecurities into taking irrational & sometimes drastic
action. Maybe profit lies behind these, maybe they just
happen & charlatans latch onto them. The thing about
childhood immunization falls under this head. Basically,
put the facts out & discredit the fearmongers, is the way
to proceed.

Finally, i have come to understand that resistance to

difference is not all the same even in those who are like-
minded; & autism-spectrum affects them more
viscerally even than skin color or physical deformity.
this may be because they cannot imagine a mind that is
otherwise & not inimical. Or else maybe it is not even
that close to being a thought.

This last may be beyond remedy; hence the need to

write protection explicitly into our laws.

functioning: low, high

I would just like to point out something that seems to
me is not often enough examined: by employing the
LINEAR concept of "low"--"high" we are obviating the
palpable impact of circumstances & surroundings--
indeed, i believe these are greater determinants of
response than one's place on the "spectrum".

When my wife & i are with people i don't know, i notice

she apologizes for me not saying much (or anything) &
says, "he does talk"; when i am with people i trust &
know well i can be actually quite verbose. Likewise for
spaces that are comfortable (close, familiar, not
intensely loud or bright)--things i know about & can to
some degree compensate for, but it takes an effort
(occasionally an extreme effort) to overcome--versus,
say, WalMart, an amusement park, or airports.

Having a clear purpose, like a thread in the labyrinth.

And the whole sequence is important also. If i have had

to drive in heavy traffic for an hour, even reaching a
comfortable destination doesn't do me much good at
first, & for some time thereafter. I learned to travel early
to the site of job interviews, & wait leisurely at a
separate location to calm down. or the thought of having
to leave on a similar journey, at a preordained time: this
also jangles.

So you see that tests performed in a "lab" environment,

travelled to from home, in themselves create a
distortion-effect that is not considered part of the result.

I believe most people with whatever degree of aut-

spectrum impairment could function in a society that
granted them the possibility of secure spaces wherever
they went, & peaceful transit thereto; even those whose
are practically nonverbal.

But this is too utopian. It would be enough, just to take

away the BLAME.

coordination
When i was growing up, i wasn't very coordinated; i
couldn't throw, or run, or fight like a good kid was
supposed to.

After sleeping on a futon for 10 years, my posture,

breathing & coordination improved markedly.
(I have read that the Japanese, by sleeping on the floor,
stay limber into old age.)

Oh--but i'm still a terrible dancer.

self-awareness
I was a reader of science fiction from early on. when i
finished all the kids' sci-fi i started in on the adults'.

I had already decided what i was.

I was a mutant.

maps

I have always loved maps & atlases of all sorts; one of

the few good memories of my earlier schooling is the
elaborately decorated maps i made for my Texas history
class--i colored each of the counties in a different
pattern--& did it differently every time.

I especially like atlases published between 1922 & 1943

that show the country of Tannu Tuva, famed for its
throat-singing.

Historical atlases--from classical times, ktp. These

explain a lot about current events, actually (e.g. the
Ottoman Empire)...

I even like imaginary maps. for instance, i treasure a

book from the early 70s that predicted California would
fall into the ocean--& printed a helpful chart of what the
new coastline would look like.

Also images of the earth after the polar caps melt. I

think about this one a lot.

I have made my own maps in a limited way (the

underground tunnel system downtown, a creek near my
house).

Sometimes i think of all my other work as map-making,

only in places you can't walk.

genius
Word denoting what, highest accolades? Earth-shaking?
All-around handy? Incomprehensible, but--? Word used
to aggravate me. I felt as rebuke. I never wanted to be a
quiz kid: i couldn't help it. How was test-taking not part
& parcel of the regimentation around me i so deeply
abhorred? If they had rewarded me with freedom it
might have meant something. They didn't.

You don't have to be supernaturally endowed to grok

that this society is a game or rather, a whole set of
interlocking games in which the actual solving of
problems, say, nilpertains what the game calls "a good
move"... In the pantheon of game-heroes you may scan
names that once belonged to some of the luckier
contestants. Now they're the wrapper, the advertizing.

In actual fact, on occasion one's contributions will be

gladly acknowledged; more often, they're bitterly
opposed at first then factions contest them for years.
Ultimately it's forgotten even that there was a way to do
things otherwise. That's society's last joke on the
creative.

If you study game-history you learn of contributions

scorned, just as worthy, & maybe you'll cherish names
that no one else remembers. Do this for long, you'll
begin to forget the solitary bitterness of not being
acknowledged. It would be enough, wouldn't it, simply
to notice & remember.

This is not in the game. Work at it.

23 Vulcan words
a'rie'mnu: passion's mastery

awek'es: solitude, privacy

besau: to map

fusik: bashful, shy

it-fam: blunt, tactless

kla-lil: research (n)

koh-nar: cultural fear of emotional vulnerability

let'theiri: peace of mind-serenity

mnu: mastery

nel-dath: pattern

nenat-su'us: prime number

nirsh-saktra: neurotypical

ri'a'gra: singleminded

rilokavik starun: deceptive/misleading speech

riolozhikaikaik: highly illogical

limuk patalan: face detection

saktra: autistic [Vulcan is the only language in which

this word is a primitive.]

shi'dunap: library

telvan: reading
terish: the art of combining

trau'es: honesty

tsatik- secret (aj)

vakh-hal-tor: to go boldly

another map of empathy

Other people's feelings.

Neurotypical: knows and cares.

Autistic-spectrum: doesn't know, but still cares.
Narcissist: knows but doesn't care.
Sociopath: doesn't know and doesn't care.

Which brings us to the question: what is it to know?

chess
I took to it immediately i guess it was the year of Bobby
Fischer; i was an unformed pre-adolescent & it gave me,
for the first time, an area outside of school i could excel
at.

I played passionately at the local chess club for a

number of years, with a little bit of monetary success, &
a lots of success for my ego. Almost managed a master's
rating, but not consistently (too many sensitivities,
things that could throw me off my stride. my one out-of-
town tournament was a total fiasco...)

I still play online a bit, after a long layoff in which i tried

to concentrate at things i was good at that also
mattered. Well, i found out that talent can only get you
so far, & the rest is politics. what's that, & how do i
learn it?

So, i still regard chess as a kind of platonic ideal of

human interaction. All the rules are there.
 fear &
acceptance
More distinctions need to be made here. It seems to be
that, while a majority of NTs are the sort that wants to
be like other people & likes other people to be like them,
a smaller but significant proportion prefers to be
different from other people & appreciates difference in
others. I have almost always found tolerance, & often
support, among the latter, who tend to be alienated just
as much in their own way (cf. the first group i
mentioned). Conformity in our pseudo-individualistic
age is a serious problem, true. but it does not help
anyone to look at this in an alarmist way.

The first thing that comes to mind, is the fact that the
group of like-minded (i associate these with Myers-
Briggs dominant Sensing, mostly Extraverted Sensing
types--but this pattern is not limited to those) is
susceptible to what they are told; & if they are told there
is a new minority among them that needs to be
respected, eventually they will raise their kids to respect
them & it will not always be prejudicial to grow up as
one of that minority.

Another point, is that there are what might be termed

healthfear-crazes, or hot topics that sweep through
society, by the same media, influencing people's
insecurities into taking irrational & sometimes drastic
action. Maybe profit lies behind these, maybe they just
happen & charlatans latch onto them. The thing about
childhood immunization falls under this head. Basically,
put the facts out & discredit the fearmongers, is the way
to proceed.

Finally, i have come to understand that resistance to

difference is not all the same even in those who are like-
minded; & autism-spectrum affects them more
viscerally even than skin color or physical deformity.
This may be because they cannot imagine a mind that is
otherwise & not inimical. Or else maybe it is not even
that close to being a thought.
This last may be beyond remedy; hence the need to
write protection explicitly into our laws.

rituals

There are quite a lot of complicated bits to my routine,

& other things i don't do except at odd intervals.

Making Turkish coffee on the stove, for me is nearly as

enjoyable as drinking it. I bring it to nearly boiling three
times, just like you're supposed to. I think it's either the
holy trinity or else this custom was invented by an
autist.

I also have numerous rituals associated with writing

poems. e. g. taking a line & using only anagrams of that
line for each of the following lines (this may take awhile).
but my favorite here must be the composition of a
poembook. I choose the total number of poems so it
equals a square number, number them chronologically,
then sort them according to the places of a magic
square. E. g. 4-9-2-3-5-7-8-1-6 if i had only nine poems.
The one i wrote earliest would be in eighth place.

Not only does this satisfy my sense of hidden order, it

always creates interesting juxtapositions i never would
have thought of.
 counting nickels, counting
words
Part of my job involves counting coins: nickels & dimes
two at a time, quarters four at a time, pennies five. Not
just reducing “chaos” (the uncounted) to “order” (one
count in an array of counts), for each integer is the
name of a sum & bears its own identity.

Integers are as distinct as colors, as words. (3334 no

more resembles 3324 than “cult” does “c**t”.) Making a
count is the birth of another instantiation of some
integer. It connects in a family way with all the other
sums of counted things in the world, regardless of what
they happen to be (jellybeans? nuclear warheads?). That
number has oddness or evenness, which in numbers is
like their gender. And sometimes it’s prime, which is the
chief specialness of counted things.

I like counting nickels best—they are just the right

weight & thickness, & a better metal than quarters
IMHO. A prime sum of nickels is better than a birthday.

Thus I like to count syllables in writing a poem. Almost

always it’s an odd number, most often seven, to a line. I
oscillate between same-length lines & lines that go
longer & shorter. These correspond to kinds of moods.
When I really want more number in my poetry, I resort
to “rhime”: that is to say, by adding up the letters of a
word (A=1, B=2…Z=26), so that any two words with the
same sum are pairable, exactly like a sound-rhyme. I
find that with enough practice i remember some of the
words that go together; & this for me forms a completely
new matrix of order within the existing system of
English words.

I will never count all the words, so that matrix has

mystery.

drawing
Drawing for me falls into distinct phases. I remember
being very visual as a child & how, at some point, i
realized i was becoming less so. When i read a book, i
really didn't experience the words as words but as a dim
set of imagery, something like a movie i was making up
as it went along. I had a sense of loss after i began only
reading words, the sense & sound of the words
becoming something i was afterwards conscious of
noticing.

In the earlier part of my life, i drew constantly. I liked to

use pencil, ballpoint, felt-tip pens. I must have started
by drawing monsters. then i entered a long period where
i only drew cars. In both these periods i used elements
of things i had seen, but much else i had never seen. At
the end of my car period, i could draw much of the
underlying structural detail of the cars from memory.
Style had become as important as the quality of detail.

Taking an art class in high school, after i had more or

less reached a static point in my drawing, was a
revelation. I fell in love with color & abstract art.
Although before this i had gone through a short phase
of painting impressionistic landscapes in watercolor on
dampened paper (a technique i discovered for myself),
this was a new kind of art for me.

I eventually studied oil painting in great depth--without

great commercial success. (The effects i was striving for
were too idiosyncratic, for the most part.) On the other
hand, i began to avoid a "too-studied" look to my
drawing, & to prefer the "wild" look of children's & naive
artists'. To achieve this end, i stopped drawing with my
right hand, & took up drawing with my left exclusively.

That's where i am today.

to read
Somehow i just picked it up by looking over my mother's
shoulder as she read to my brother, who was just one
year older; this was prior to school age. So it was awhile
before i came to anything there that i didn't already
know.

I started going to the branch library regularly. I got tired

of kid's books pretty early because for me they ended
too soon. So i started on the adult science fiction--at the
beginning of the alphabet. By sometime in jr. high, i had
read all of these. But after that i had found particular
interests & i read more & more nonfiction & started
going to the central library downtown. I'd come out with
a huge stack of books i could barely manage, & by the
time i got home i'd have read half of one.

I remember the year they introduced a sort of color-

coded ranked reading system where you read a text &
then answered questions about it. I went through the
whole thing in a single day. This was the time when they
figured i could read about 1200 words per minute (i
wouldn't read anywhere near that today: i like the
sounds of words too much).

The thing i regret most about adulthood is i have so

little time anymore for that kind of voracious reading.
Now i just buy books i might like & it can take a couple
of years before i get around to opening them. In college i
would sit on the floor between the stacks & read a book
in a few hours if i found one i liked. These days i still try
to get into one big book every year (last summer it was
War and Peace). I'm about 3 Pynchons behind...

the social being

I am a lifelong nonconformist. As a kid i was even
rebellious; fortunately, i was too smart not to see how
dangerous this could become.

But eventually i came not to despise the existence of

social conditioning in itself. Just as there are conditions
for me which render life infinitely more bearable, though
idiosyncratic ones, i realize that it is as if all these
others were one single being that sought to harmonize
itself in the same way that i try to maintain my own
environment. If i prefer silence, it prefers noise. If i
choose my own path, it takes the path of the majority or
least resistance. It doesn't, after all, require very much
camouflage on my part; & in the place where i live, there
isn't even hazard in slight nonconformity. Sometimes i
feel sad that the great social being cannot manage to
preserve itself, over the long run, but will eventually fall
apart--if it doesn't destroy all life on the planet first--:
it's not aware of its actions like i am, nor of the farther
reaches of causality. I say then, that i don't know where
the social being came from, & maybe because it is so
much larger than me, i am not in a good position to
judge if this is part of its normal cycle, to be created &
then to be destroyed, or part of an evolution into
something that will become stable in time, one or more
cycles hence.

I pretend at times that i can tell.

theism, theists
Theism itself is oppressive. God everywhere, watching &
keeping track.

Theists can be nice people, or not so nice. I think the

world's real problem is selfishness--though being self-
deluded with a sense of religious righteousness tends to
exacerbate this, for sure. Same with political zealotry. I
suppose any ideology can produce its torturers.

But i've gone from toleration, because everyone is

entitled to their opinions, to active dislike, because it
seems so much of the active harm people do, comes
from trying to impose their beliefs on others--to an
understanding that it's really about structuring your
emotional life. Everyone has symbols, rituals, & a
feeling of relatedness to the world. Even alienation is a
feeling. I don't think these are all interchangeable, or
equivalent, consequently; but i'm not going to try to
argue another person out of it.

What the world needs is more cosmopolitanism--live &

let live. And solidarity. So i won't count people out, just
because we don't have the same symbols in our heads.

(Or because we experience the world differently, either.)

 feral

I imagine in many other places & times there was not

even sanctioned nonconformity, but during my life i
have visited several of the sanctioned subcultures
(which are generally pretty conformist within their
limits, but moreso than the society around) & managed
to fit in, while it served my purposes to.

True eccentricity is not easy for most others to even

perceive; they don't get past their initial repugnance to
discover what it is that made them dislike it. They
substitute something they already know about. You're
lucky if it's not a projection. Better a cliché of harmless
silliness than that-which-must-be-destroyed.

I have met numerous individuals of the authentic kind,

not always simpatico but often. These believe in
following their own forms, something i call "autotelic" to
unite it with similar phenomena (the creation of a work
of art, for example). Even though i know this is not
possible for everyone, i can't help thinking the world
would be a better place if it were.

Endangered--like the rest of the natural world. Saktra is

somehow feral.

on neurodiversity politics

That article* is good. I think it brings many of the

relevant topics into this academic idiom very well.

Historically, every pluralist victory has been achieved

not because it's the right thing to do but because that
belated acceptance promises to put an end to the
troublesome minority's clamor for equal rights.
There's not a chance in the world that NTs will actually
come to consider themselves other than the custodians
of consensus reality; they are newly confirmed by each
effortless interaction, & begrudge even handicapped
parking places when it means they have to park farther
out.

We will be doing good to achieve the status of just

another minority, colorful & empowered to have a
putative say in how our lives can be minimally
accommodated. Our point of view in any particular
discussion, though, will not prevail except by adopting
the rhetorical tools & persuasions that an NT is able to
respond to; it's a characteristically saktra mistake to
rely upon unadorned logic. That doesn't even work on
professional philosophers.

on being correct when others aren’t

It used to bother me a lot that schools weren't doing a
better job of turning out literate adults, since i believe
that to be the best defense a democratic society has
against demagoguery, but after seeing the rise of a host
of pipsqueak prescriptivists, who base their repetitious
punditry not upon any deep acquaintance with the
literary tradition, but upon a small set of gotchas they
use to express their inordinate contempt for the masses,
i have to say: our language is not served by such self-
appointed guardians; & even though one of my two jobs
is helping students (often ESOL) master mid-twentieth
century formal English (--which i say: most of our books
are written in), i also know that there existed a form of
English before that, & another before that, which were
equally good tools of communication for their speakers.
so will there be another, when these (high-acid) books
are dust.

But like every other public debate, this gets reduced to a

comicbook battle between antagonists, each with their
half-truth.

on the two principles

It seems almost too obvious for me to remark upon: the

longer i spend in a place (a place, that is, under my sole
purview), the more orderly it becomes. Though of an
order often uncertain to a casual onlooker, i can
invariably give my reason or reasoning for any aspect
being made thus. On the other hand, i have observed
the opposite in others, to the point where i can imagine
some asymptote of total chaos, should their sojourn in
the vicinity be prolonged. How is this so?
Convergent, divergent versions of the same process.
Where i adjust toward & always replicate, another
person fails to put back, or puts back differently. Not
that they aren't capable of a reasoned construction. It
just isn't where they dwell. It is felt as a dreary necessity
("cleaning"--at overdue intervals), or an imposition.
There isn't the pleasure i feel in repose, or peace, or
silence. Instead, a pleasure in release, in abandon,--in
breaking things.

Other dialectics superimpose upon this one: the desire

to stop others from their "fun"--to lock them up, or kill
them, if necessary. A bad order, because the good order
is unimaginable. If so many of us didn't act like grown
children, then the parent-state could just wither, i
suppose. Because a true grown-up does what has to be
done. Picks up, puts away, plans for the future. You see
how much of that has been happening.

If we listened long enough to the music of the world, we

might find ourselves able to attune to it. I do not think a
good human order will be different from a good order in
nature. In fact this is a way to judge our tentative
utopias from the get-go: how many of our fellow
creatures, do they require us to destroy?

what do NTs want?

The group mind uses all sorts of masks to conceal its

motivations. Some of them are images; some, emotions.
"power" implies there is a non-reciprocal relation
between controllers & controlled. However, no one is
more in the grip of control than the one in charge.
Unfortunately, there is no privileged vantage from which
to observe. Those who are by nature excluded, are not
subject to the same forces. They only feel a lack of
meaning to what occurs around them. Interrogation of
one isolated member of the group mind, can only
produce the usual formulas of absolution.

But what happens when you oppose the group

interaction is worth analyzing. There is, on one hand,
the stereotyping of ingroup/outgroup features--to
whatever degree the initial commotion provokes, like
antibodies, ranging from "malcontent" to "homicidal
maniac." On the other hand, to the degree that intimacy
exists in regard to any separate member, the group
mind retreats & can be talked about reasonably.

As long as you don't try to argue that the group mind is

"wrong". It can't be wrong. It is simply one of the forces
on this planet, just as gravity is.

neurotypical privilege

I've always had trouble with people giving me

complicated sequences of verbal instructions. Early on, i
started carrying paper & pen so i could write it down &
refer to it (for, the way my mind works, either the later
part of the instructions will erase the earlier part, or
some new thought of my own will cause me to forget
part or all of it), and now, even though i seldom have the
same need, i still write a lot of things down that i think
most NTs would count on being able to remember.

There has never been a job i've worked at, that did not
favor verbal instructions over written. (Sometimes they
even associate having to read something written down,
as punitive.)

--This is just a tiny example—

I won't even go into the massive inequality experienced
in school where socialization is mostly not given via
explicit instruction, at a time when acceptance is
compulsively withheld for infinitesimal departures from
the norm. What's weird is how little this situation gets
described here in terms of privilege, instead of as a
"struggle to fit in" (skin-lightening potions, anyone?).
privilege is political, it's politics you can't change the
channel from. It's barbed wire & attack dogs.

Being naturally adept at lying & negotiating a swarm of

variously-sincere statements is like being born with a
swimming instinct; then some kid who doesn't know
how (doesn't even guess that he doesn't know how) is
thrown into the pool to sink or swim--a pool he will
remain in for the rest of his life. The seeming adaptation
of learning to conceal one's true feelings & opinions is at
best a stricture, & at worst a kind of self-deception (they
can see right through you, nine times out of ten).

--But the cruellest form of NT privilege is political

theater. They use the language of ideas as if they mean
something; it's all about tribes & belonging & rivalry, &
anyone who wants to actually examine cause & effect in
public affairs (look at Dennis Kucinich's presidential
bid) is ridiculed & ignored by the media--just like the
treatment in junior high.

untruthiness & his friends

"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay

for an answer." --Francis Bacon
As in so many things, considering the Lojban expression
of this reveals a hidden nuance. JETNU contains two
arguments: 'x1 is true according to x2' is the whole of its
meaning. Usually we think in terms of so-called
"objective" (JETNU RODA, or 'true according to
everyone') and "subjective" (JETNU DA, or 'true
according to someone') truth, assigning one to hard
sciences or other dogma, and the other to the arts or the
man in the street. When one does not partake of the
assumptions (hidden and overt) belonging to the group,
one is liable to have a clearer sense of the truth, even as
an individual of emotions and other biases, simply by
virtue of having removed the sway of the others (the part
which I am happy to now have the word "truthiness"
for): this tendency to agree which is imperative in
neurotypicals, and absent (or even contradicted) in
autists. Actually, of course, there is no mooting this
RODA, there is only a ZU'I ('the usual') in that JETNU
place; one might even say that 'the usual' consists of LO
SIMSA PRENU, 'similar persons' who not only override
the otherwise opinions of LO NARSIMSA PRENU JA
NARPRE ('persons who are different, plus nonpersons'),
they enjoy the privilege of not having to imagine whether
these opinions
exist.
One can still hope for a science that is JETNU ZI'O--true
without regard to viewpoint--but that will hardly come
about by the efforts of groupthink, nor by a more
inclusive politics that carefully validates minority views
without having to answer them. This is not to say that
only saktra desires truth, but that the truth they desire
resides in insight as well as systematic reasoning, nor
does the result of mere reasoning force them to accept a
truth they might well have reasons for knowing
otherwise. Thus autistic research--in the arts also, by
the way--sometimes fails to be acknowledged (even as
attempt) because it does not proceed from the body of
established practice. It is not an answer to the questions
everyone has been asking; it does not take part in the
conversation, except to say: look at this. Hear me out.
It may take hundreds of years for that to happen. I
suppose truthiness can accrue, little by little, as the air
of strangeness that surrounds an unmooted truth
slowly yields to familiarity. Looking back then, we
wonder why so many people fought for so long not to
acknowledge what seems obvious to us today. We
wonder, that is, if we are not among those whose simple
insights fall on deaf ears in the perpetual present of
JETNU ZU'I.

the loneliest number

I would not say that saktra never feels loneliness, but

that they experience both solitude & communion in a
uniquely different way. Nirshsaktra-communion is
based on a constant flow of subtle agreement-signals.
Saktra communion can be triggered by as little as a
single agreement (rated on a scale according to how
significant the thing agreed-upon may be). If a space
alien KESFANGE were also a chess player, i would
count them kin.

Solitude for the one is default, as communion is for the

other. Thus, as there is a word for the undesirable-
solitude ("loneliness") of nirshsaktra, there should be a
word for the undesirable-communion ("overcrowding"
doesn't quite get it) of saktra. MALKANSA in Lojban, or
even 'chaotic being-with' KALSA KANSA.

A principle which the two share: harmony (Lojban: KA

SARXE). Even harmony, however, is defined in different
ways. For saktra it is non-interference. For nirshsaktra
it is single purpose. A group in which each member is in
competition with the rest may seem to be defined by
their mutual disconnection, but actually they all serve
the same end, which is maximizing one's share
(compare with a goal of only just having enough for each
member).
Struggles for territory (TUTRA TE DAMBA), though often
bloody, are universally considered an unalterable state
of affairs--in an age of many dispersed groups ("blixen")
this takes the form of policing membership-definitions;
more radical, & therefore more threatening, is a heresy
that questions the basis of the group (SE GIRZU). Here
is where authority-basis-principles ("abskrelg" or TE
CATNI JICMU) enter in. One can dispute the succession
of a lineage-authority, the veracity of a leader-authority,
the accuracy of an empirical-authority, or the
worthiness of the beloved.

These heresiarchs, therefore, comprise the loneliest of

nirshsaktra; & nothing can matter to them more, than
to acquire followers. Saktra, adhering to the maxim
"Neither a follower nor a leader be," often
misunderstands this whole dynamic as a question of
ascertaining the "truth." It is nothing of the sort. it is
only the intolerable extremity of nirshsaktra in saktra's
shoes. --Si eppur muove.

the impotence of being earnest

Feeling that one is outside (BARTU) the process &

should be, somehow, included; the desire to be helpful;
even, imagining you can fix (CIKRE) something (whether
or not it actually can be fixed)--these are illusions or
impulses saktra is prone to, & suffers from. Which is
not the same as reciprocity. Thus, one philosophizes:
when admonishment received would have better served.
A haggard kind of hipster grace inheres in
bystanderness. Among, but not belonging to. The cool
that is attained, not attributed. Fulcanelli (attributing it
to Zoroaster, bad Latin & all) names the Sphingid
powers as: scire 'to know', potere [=posse] 'to be able'
(oft altered to "velle"--to will--per Uncle
Aleister), audere 'to dare', tacere 'to keep silent'--which
suggests Joyce's "silence, exile, cunning"-- these saktra
mostly purely can imagine. How often must one bite
one's tongue, or (most usually) risk the exposure of a
ridiculous blurt...

DJUNO, KAKNE, VIRNU, SMAJI. Alchemy doesn't travel.

on believing & disbelieving

Part one. To believe is not in neurotypicals intellectual

assent so much as it is an affirmation of solidarity with
other believers; in this sense even to consider the
question of "proofs" would already be impolitic. (For
saktra the feeling of solidarity--sobernost--has no
compelling force, thus it hardly matters whether anyone
else is "onboard" with them or not.) So the fact of tribes
of believers itself is important to human society; the
putative content of dogmas of belief is not. The former,
however, defines itself as "not-politics" in order to nullify
the effect of dissent, for no one but unbelievers will pay
heed to those arguments (however conclusive). The
history of atheism is a story that ever repeats; & ever
accomplishes nothing. (Except maybe: establishing a
brand.)
Part two. The word "God" is used for an abstract idea
comprising various superlatives, an agent without
observable activity, a feeling with unspecific
antecedents, but most of all as the subject of predicates
that are meant to sound loud. It is quite feasible to
discuss any aspect of existing religious practices
without having recourse to such blurry words (or
"fnords"--good only for muddying the discourse), but the
greatest incitement to their retention must be simple
nostalgia for the tradition of similar arguments. It is one
of those venerable games that only those fascinated by
the game are still playing. Unfortunately a core part of
their conception of the game is that everyone else
should be compelled to play.

Part three. Cosmopolitanism was a brief, unstable

construct at the best of times. One can hope it is not yet
completely over. In fact the vast majority of each tribe of
believers does not yearn for global victory so much as
for local peace. Nor are most of the people who insist on
having a non-secular vocabulary, inherently intolerant. I
imagine we would not have arrived at the present revival
of internecine warfare without the simultaneous
conditions of overpopulation, resource depletion, &
general weather contrariness. (America's latter-day
imperialist blunders being only the match to that
tinderbox.) It does not bode well either for sustained
rational discourse or disciplined problem-solving, for the
great strength of religious tribal formations has always
been their relative indifference to the survival of
individual members.

Cosmopolitanism must offer something more than the

mere absence of persecution; in order to prevail, it
needs to hold on to the humane vision of a world in
which everyone, equally, matters. And equality (NU
PREDUNLI) is something they should all have been able
to agree on, if they but read their book.
 crazy

It seems pejoratives never simply condemn (except in

Lojban, which has MABLA, otherwise semantically-
empty), but have to map out a culture’s shadow-
obsessions, whether excremental or sexual,
adscititiously. So now we are starting to talk about “the
R-word” (analogous to "N-") 'retarded' --& looking
askance at such perennials as 'stupid' (JMIBLE
'understand-weak'—which is not pejorative in Lojban) &
'insane' (FENKI--ditto) as well. Though that may make it
problematic, in the heat of the moment, to have to
actually think about what it is you are condemning, I
say that that is a good thing.

In politics, for example, which is another kind of team

sports, I am angered by—what, the opposing
team behaving like they always do? (We need a verb for
this--. JIKPRO?) Them acting out their fantasies about
how the world works (XLALI 'bad' by standard of x3:
FATCI 'the facts')? Their hypocrisy? (PALCI 'immoral'
covers this--.) Their refusal to acknowledge what I
consider to be the real problems? (Something with
'refuse' CPAPRO. 'Problem' NABMI, probably.) These can
all be specified, & when they are, I am a bit closer to
understanding the motives of my enemy. (And maybe,
after all, there might be something they have in common
with me.)
Other typical human behaviors, I might as well call:
ignorant (TOLDJUNO), denialist, selfish (SEZYSE’U),
malicious, materialistic, foolish BEBNA (which is
making bad choices that are known to be bad), short-
sighted, or mistaken TOLDRA in some other way
(causality, anyone?)… If somebody nearly hits me in
traffic, I can say they’re not paying enough attention to
other cars, or else maybe they expect me to get out of
their way (this—entitlemented—accounts for a lot of
things that aggravate me). (DUSLEBNA 'excessively-
take'?)
Somehow when we want to be extremely condemnatory,
or dismissive, it’s always the thinking-ability of the
other that is called into question. –Not, say: the poorly
chosen assumptions/ misleading worldview/ lazy
application of reasoning which might have led to this
debacle. It’s like I don’t want to argue, because they
won’t be capable of hearing it anyway. The problem, not
between two humans, but removed to a location inside
the head of one of them.

But if I am turning this interpersonal disagreement into

a matter which my very own culture regards
as definitely not something blameworthy--indeed, a
defense to its highest condemnation, the charge of
murder--, isn’t this making my assigning-blame into an
empty gesture? What I would want to have said, rather,
is more like: "You should be prevented from doing that,
even by coercive means if necessary." Because that’s
what we do with crazy people: we disregard their words.

Mirrored by the other side, who also disregard these

words.

change & temper-monkeys

It’s true that saktra is all too prone not only to revisit
the same restaurant every time, but even to sit in the
same chair at the same table, & order the exact same
item on the menu. Nevertheless, this is more about an
internal sense of the order of the world, than
attachment to actual places or things. At odds with this
intransigence, seemingly trivial, stands an army of
agents of change: sheer randomness, entropic
deterioration (resisting this is, alas, not even in favor,
often enough, among neurotypicals, who you’d think
would like to have their Great Machine run, if not
elegantly, at least with unimpaired forward motion--),
but most of all by the incessant compulsive activity of a
small class of humans i will henceforward refer to as
"tamper monkeys".

Their salient trait is an irritation with, not just

the rules of the status quo, but its very arrangement.
Now, saktra is in favor of any change, even a radical
one, so long as it makes the situation better (--or is this
just an INTJ trait?...must consider). But why spend
hours moving furniture around in a room whose
functions & contents will remain unaltered afterwards?
Well, the itch will have been scratched. For the moment.

Saktra is apt to feel irrationally persecuted by such

spasms. They occur in corporate contexts under the
guise of “restructuring” & the like; when not a covert
assault upon jobs, pay, or privileges, they often occur
when someone who has been undeservedly empowered
with such options starts moving colored squares around
on a computer screen. Why they can’t be content with
video games is beyond me. (Probably it comes from a
subconscious realization of being otherwise useless.) Do
tamper monkeys serve a real purpose in the scheme of
things?

Yes. Because the people with good ideas are not going to
be listened to, social evolution depends upon tamper-
monkey innovation as the single motor of progress.
 pertuply

Philosophers have sometimes talked about a country of

liars, but before James Morrow no one has imagined
a City of Truth. This first-rate satire postulates the
discovery of a way to condition humans so that even the
prospect of telling a lie becomes unbearably painful.
Then he adds a secret underground of fantasy-
enthusiasts, a child with an incurable, terminal illness,
& a father who believes that only lies can cure him. (It's
to Morrow's credit that they don't.)

The reader would expect a novelist to come down in

favor of fiction. This work, however, offers something
more nuanced. "I don't love the lies...but I don't hate
them either," is the father's final reflection. It is clear
that, as in the abortion-satire film Citizen Ruth, both
sides can easily be made ridiculous. Still, from an
Autistic point of view, it would be as wrong to place
lying & truth-telling on the same level, as myths &
scientific accounts of causality. Ours is a society of lies.
One of them is that it believes in telling the truth.
Another, that it is not even possible to know the truth.
On the one hand, an ethics without probity is empty; on
the other, an epistemology without axioms is nonsense.

Such paradoxes hardly perturb the majority of Cretans,

who lie at every opportunity & whose constant mutual
gazes demand lying in return.

"nocitura toga, nocitura petuntur

militia" --Juvenal, Satire X.8-9

three thoughts on the group-mind

In opposing the Egregore, that claims to be the world,
one does not reject the world itself but affirms it. What
was transcended is only the lie. The world remains as it
was, a mystery, but a mystery not impenetrable to the
seeker.

If the Egregore is a thing, it is a thing only as a story is

a thing. Or rather, humans' need of storying their
happenstance: it calls forth story, it calls forth
agreement. And it calls forth elaboration, which being
inconsistent, leads to imperfect agreement. The story
takes maintenance, or it fractures.

The truth of the Egregore is hidden, not because it is

secret, but because it isn't.

magic never died

Most of our law, too much of our medicine, & an

increasingly onerous share of our education, is filled
with the exigencies of magic ritual. In this milieu, clear
thinking is at best a handicap; at worst, heresy. Magic
never died, because as the masses were disenfranchised
of their contact with the land, so was its logic erased
from the book of representations. What took its place is
arbitrary & unreal. I have not wanted to waste my time
learning the rules of games they would never let me
play.

(Yet it turns out--i did.)

precursors

Retrodiagnosing historical figures as autistic (this badly

needs a name) is one of those things that's both
deplorable & morbidly fascinating. Certainly i find it
makes sense of such inscrutables as Wittgenstein &
Weil (not to mention Emily Dickinson, though i also find
the lesbian ED, the epileptic ED, ktp, useful lenses-- not
so much, the PMS'd-out Plath), & fits Van Gogh pretty
well (factoring-in other ailments, absinthe- or toxic
paint- poisoning) too. There's nothing wrong with feeling
kinship; being an artist is lonely enough. My
Foucauldian view, which would make this just another
historical-construct, doesn't do away with the actual
existence of human variability (& all its possible
causations). But it's more like: drawing up a new canon,
a genealogy, for heuristic rather than political purposes.
Much as we'd like to propel a new chauvinism into its
own civil rights movement (one i jokingly named "Dork
Lib"), the only civil rights victory that matters is the one
that puts everyone on an equal footing, regardless of
team-sports identifications...

That's a long way away.

to wind up, if not to conclude

Just in my short lifetime, autism has gone from an

uncommon disability known primarily among
developmental psychologists, to a stereotype in popular
culture, & perhaps an “identity” in the political sense.
(See In a Different Key for a detailed, well-documented
history--one of the most depressing books I’ve ever
read!) “Neurodiversity” is a word, however, that belongs
to a future we have yet to attain, & a struggle that is
only just beginning (2023). As a poet, i’ve devoted a lot
of thought to naming things, & naming things rightly.
But i’m less sanguine these days about appropriate
coinages becoming accepted on a broad scale, & about
my place in this process. It may well be that even the
words “autism” & “autistic” will fall by the wayside.
Does saktra need a special vocabulary to communicate
its distinct experience? Honestly, there isn’t a singular
autistic experience, though many share broad
similarities. I like to think that slang & natural language
will continue to be sufficient for these needs.
One last consideration which may have greater moment:
in a few places i have written as if neurotypicals share a
“group mind” in a way that autists do not. The first part
of this is not a new perception (Extraordinary Popular
Delusions; Canetti’s Crowds and Power). Certainly there
is scope for further analysis here—even as i myself feel
threatened by the chaos of an increasingly polarized
nation (which perhaps could not be a problem if NTs
were restricted to having only one group’s mindset), i
know that there is much in my everyday life that this
metaphor explains. But i can’t just induce new insights
the way one simply spins out words…

So i leave that question to those who come after.

"Their brains differed from ours, their concepts must

have been different, and therefore they lived in a
different world." --The Devil is Dead

Cover & all illustrations made at Nightcafe.com.

*here_to_learn, “The Tyranny of Neuronormativity”

https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4614
051#4614051

Donvan, John and Caren Zucker. In a Different Key: The

Story of Autism. Crown: 2016.

Vulcan Language Dictionary. https://www.starbase-

10.de/vld/