Remember _Shockwave Rider_?

[nancylebov]

Apparently, Delphi pools can work pretty well as long as the people in them are autonomous, decentralized, and cognitively diverse. There are good reasons to mistrust mobs and committees, but those reasons don't completely generalize to bunches of people who aren't making each other stupid. Link found at geekpress.com. And for rather more about cognitive diversity:

Taken from an autobiography excerpt by an autistic person, posted in this journal, which bears repeating because it can just as easily be applied to a whole range of other problems our culture handles very badly. "This is where I think most attempts to "help" autistic spectrum persons fail. They start from the assumption that the person does not fit in, and then seek to twist the person into some imitation of normalcy — usually at the expense of the autistic spectrum person's sense of self and self-esteem — rather than starting from the position that the person has a role, already does fit in as a critical edge piece of the human puzzle, and seeking to help them develop the tools they need to fill that role effectively. We don't need the skills it takes to be "normal"; we need the skills it takes to be different."

more about autism from various angles

Comments

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

There's an article in today's NY Times about a school that assumes that autistism is not a disease to be cured, but rather a different way of being human that needs to be respected.

In the 1970s, Robert Wilson, a play maker (director, empresario) of experimental theatre pieces (_The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin_, _Einstein on the Beach_, and _Letter to Queen Victoria_) worked with an autistic teenager and had the boy performing in _Letter to Queen Victoria_. The boy was allowed to be autistic and one scene in the play seemed to be about previoius attempts to make him "normal." From all accounts, the boy was overjoyed to be finally in a supportive environment. Wilson noticed his fascination with clocks and gave him all the clocks he wanted.

I don't know how all this played out in the autistic boy's later life, was somewhat concerned about Wilson's committment to him.

People in soc.culture.irish commented that American culture is particularly hard on people who aren't like the majority. There was, they said, more tolerance for the insane in Ireland. Wordsworth commented on the Lake District county people being more tolerant of their retarded children (the poem describes someone who might have been autistic rather than retarded, as a matter of fact).

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Arthur Hlavary talks about insanity being contextual in Mexico--people are seen as being insane in specific circumstances rather than globally crazy.

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense because often people are okay if X doesn't happen and completely lose it if X does happen. This may or may not be the same thing, though.

I really would like to live in another culture for a year or so, just to see what's genetic modern human and what's American culture in my mental maps.