The Other Mind
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
1y ago
I've said that I don't identify as human.  What do I mean by that?  I've spent a lot of time thinking about that claim.  Does it even make sense?  As my parents are fully human, it's reasonable to assume that there's an aspect of me that's fully human, too.  But there's another aspect that is something else.  I don't know what.  We generally think of conscious creatures as comprising a body and a mind, with the latter being dependent on the former.  We take it for granted that a human body will only have a human mind.  In this, we presume that the ..read more
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Aspects of Entity
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
1y ago
I look human.  My parents are human.  I've had blood work, x-rays, and MRIs.  No doctor has ever found anything nonhuman about me.  I do have differences though.  My neuroanatomy is aberrant, and I have some mysterious problem with metabolism.  Most scientists would say, understandably, that, even taking my differences into account, there's nothing about me that makes me anything other than human. But maybe there's more to people than we can observe and test. I'm not talking about souls or anything. This isn't me embracing faith or spirituality. I'm saying that ma ..read more
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George Versus Lennie
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
1y ago
People seem to believe that you can't have cognitive deficits if you don't seem stupid. The image many carry in their minds of a person with cognitive problems is an image of someone whose internal dysfunction necessarily finds clear outward manifestation in unusual physical proportions, motor skills, vocal quality, and speech patterns. Less objectively, it's an image of a cartoon idiot: Lennie from Of Mice and Men as depicted in Looney Tunes.  This is a suboptimal situation.  My autism involves some cognitive impairment. Because I'm intelligent and articulate, even paraprofessionals ..read more
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The Basement Stairs
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
1y ago
Going up the basement stairs alone in the dark, you feel like something's behind you even though you know nothing is there. You're not in control of this feeling, but it's one of the strongest feelings you'll ever experience. You're wired to feel it. It's self preservation. That feeling exists because it helped keep our ancestors alive while they were evolving toward us. In the same way, humans are vigilant for differences. If there's something obviously different about you, even if that difference is meaningless, people will notice. They don't notice on purpose; they're wired to look for diff ..read more
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Unconscious Othering
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
2y ago
When you encounter someone, whether you know them or not, you notice things about them, and you aren't always aware of everything you notice.  The things we notice about other people help us decide how to behave around them and what we might expect from them. Everybody has differences.  We allow others to have a certain amount of differences from ourselves before we consider them outsiders.  The case-by-case process by which we set that difference threshold is largely subconscious most of the time.  We can other people without knowing we're doing it.  We can be unaware ..read more
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Different Creatures
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
2y ago
Entertainment media depicts no real aloneness. Nobody in popular fiction is ever actually alone, as there's a tribe for everyone. In the real world, there are outcasts. Some people are judged ineligible for acceptance in any tribe. It can't be that everyone you encounter occupies the center of your attention all the time. Think about what makes someone forgettable. What traits could someone have that would make you, consciously or otherwise, put them on the margins of your consideration? I'm not talking about malice or any moral judgment here. I'm talking about benign inattention. We decide ho ..read more
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The Wall of Crossed Arms
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
2y ago
Socializing is a game.  If you want to integrate, you have to play it well.  The game is ritual, posturing, and pandering.  It's competitive, like every human system.  Every move takes place on a razor's edge.  The penalty for bad play is exile.  If you opt not to play at all, you become invisible.  This game is going on all the time.  Everyone you meet is playing it, even people who think themselves especially compassionate.  Genuine care is earned on the merits of one's performance of normalcy; there's no haven wherein it's given freely. In an ide ..read more
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What's It Like To Be Autistic?
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
2y ago
I've never been asked this, but here's my answer.  Consider all of the social things you can do without thinking.   Now consider something you could do that would necessarily dominate your attention.  What would it be like if you always had to think about doing easy, natural things as much as you had to think about doing new and difficult things?  What if laughing at a joke took as much concentration as escaping a burning building?  What if producing one word in response to a stranger's greeting required as much consideration as defusing a bomb?  What if you ..read more
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Accepting Cruetly
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
3y ago
At the heart of every human person is an expectation of conflict. For their psychological well-being, humans need to engage in tribalism. But out in the world, they're expected to be civil and deferential most of the time. They're pressured to engage with outsiders politely. It's a big pressure, and it's counterintuitive. Given the opportunity to treat outsiders however they want with no consequences, humans reliably default to cruelty. Look how people behave online. Behind the relative anonymity the internet provides, people drop their politeness. They're eager to do so. Being nice must be a ..read more
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Rocking The Boat
Awesome Super Diary
by Ryan D
3y ago
Don't expect me to conform. I'm not like you. I've been called recalcitrant. If I seem that way, it's because I won't do anything that can't be examined. I never act without rationale because knowing why I'm doing something is an important part of knowing what I'm doing. If I don't know why I'm doing something, I probably won't do it very well. So I ask questions, and people don't like that. "Because I said so" and "Because that's just what is done" aren't reasons to do anything.  I can't accept them because they contain nothing to accept. They aren't persuasive because, pragmatically, th ..read more
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