Autism Gives Woman An ‘Alien View’ Of Social Brains : NPR
This is a very interesting article.
This lady has autism; but she keeps a blog, and makes observations about “normal” behavior and its effects. Her autism means she doesn’t have the capacity to engage in that same behavior; but she recognizes it, observes it, and describes in an unusual way the sorts of social and interactive behavior that most of us simply take for granted (and because we do, we don’t necessarily pay any attention to it at all).
What struck me is how well she’s come to terms with her autism, and in such a productive way.
Here’s one paragraph from her blog:
The idea that the world of an autistic person is something pathological probably comes from the simple fact that other people have difficulty reading us, and we have difficulty acting in ways that are easy for them to read. So they assume that what they can read is all there is, and that we must be turned inward to some mental landscape that has taken us prisoner. I wish they would get rid of that notion; it’s very damaging. Forcing an autistic person to constantly connect with other people will inevitably cause burnout. We need to spend some time not interacting, just the way anyone needs some time to think and process things that they experienced.
And below is the beginning of the NPR story; a link to the whole story follows:
It takes a smart brain to invent a spaceship. But putting one in orbit takes a brain with extraordinary social skills.
That’s because getting from concept to launchpad takes more than technology — it takes thousands of people agreeing on a common goal and working together to accomplish it.
Humans have succeeded in part because we evolved a brain with a remarkable capacity for this type of complex social interaction. We automatically respond to social cues and facial expressions. We can look at the world from another person’s point of view. We are predisposed to cooperate.
But all these things are so much a part of us, they’re easy to take for granted.
Unless you have autism, like Lisa Daxer.