Late Boomer

I have this huge edifice built up, my own analysis of my difference with the world and it’s grandiose as can be. I fancy it explains all of humanity’s problems and points to a solution, all within solid scientific principles, and refuting only interpretation and such, using existing knowledge and science. I have been operating under the assumption that I could sell it, explain it to people, if I talked long enough, I could spell it out for the world. I redefine a word or two, but it’s not a whole new language.

(Antisocialization Theory – AST – is that through the application of abuse during childhood, while gene options for a mode of living are being set, empathy is turned off to a degree, and humans are freed up for a violent lifestyle. It says that it is the damage of abuse that social control is selected for, not for the civilizing “deterrents,” that abuse is not accidental but centrally causative in human life – not an endorsement. AST says spanking is war. My blog is a million words about it.)

Except maybe it is a whole new language, except maybe it only makes sense to my brain, or to a certain sort of brain. “Human nature,” didn’t make sense to me, so I came up with all this antisocialization business – but I suppose human nature actually does add up to another sort of brain, and my view does not and will not to those minds?

I’m in the doldrums these days, worried about this, if it’s only a matter of neurotypes, is it pointless, can the people who need to hear it never hear it, it’s not so much an idea as a brain type?

Is what I think of as my life’s work a blind alley, a waste?

It is good to have an explanation for my life, for all my social problems, but an explanation is not a change, or a cheque for damages, of which . . . it really does explain a lot, my entire lowlight reel, the list of inexplicable mistakes I start to review endlessly when I’m getting depressed, and more and more things besides. The reel is getting much longer, but it’s the story of my problem now, my suffering and it’s my defense, not the prosecutor’s speech it always has been, that’s gotta be positive. And it’s going to be less inexplicable; I really had no theory at all and lived in denial about it, and in fear of when this random thing would strike again.

A big one that strikes me this morning, brought me to the computer when I was headed back to bed, is that it explains why I couldn’t stand school. Why I was still on the street crying and fighting it when kindergarten class began and late always, from the very start. Why, when I learned it would be “legal,” I thought that mattered at the time not to go, I stopped, on my fifteenth birthday. Somehow, in adulthood, I managed a minimal high school test and stayed in trade school, a full year, that, electronics. It led to a telco job eventually, and a career just over thirty years long. I was very lucky, I landed in a very free job, I was late all through it, some crying, more health matters, and it was a mobile, union job, I worked from a van.

The office times were fraught, same as school, I felt exposed and threatened, but at work, on the road, at the customer’s site, there was enough room and autonomy for me, I could mostly breathe, set my own goals and schedules. I’m still amazed I lasted there, almost to the bell, when I had planned to retire. There were rough times, it was a stressful job and the corporate environment seemed to only get worse every year. I was very lucky to land there, still, but still, I crashed and was forced out in the end. Not really a divergent meltdown, it was the cumulative meltdown, from everything, “mid-life,” crisis, divorce . . . I think the world’s biggest masking bubble popped. I hadn’t been the only one masking me.

It really is the explanation, by far the only one that even close to fits, autism. I’ve been writing, complaining, screaming to the whole world, I thought, the whole neurotypical world, I guess now, and if I had thought to talk to a single autistic, they probably would have seen me. In my life, all I’ve heard is sexuality, or gender roles, and frankly, I don’t really care about that stuff, sex never seemed big enough to explain my troubles, and I couldn’t understand anyone, of either sex. Freud was clearly neurotypical, I could never relate to him. We live in a very repressive structure, all the clothes and rules and such, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the repressed thing is everything, does it?

A digression, I suppose. Autism really seems like the answer to me – but does it negate my lifelong train of thought? Have I reinvented the wheel, anyone who knows about neurodivergence doesn’t need my homegrown guess about what I see in the neurotypical? Do I give up trying to save the world?

I thought I had solved the world’s problems and that tiny hope is sort of gone, the gulf is even greater than I thought, it seems pointless trying to explain it to anyone now, again, the neurotypicals are the ones I have explained, the ones that need to learn AST, but if their brains lack support for it, if only certain brains can reproduce it, nothing’s going to work. I mean, the tiny hope, the high narrow path looks higher and thinner now, perhaps it’s out of sight altogether.

It doesn’t mean AST’s not true, still, just . . . not applicable? Not feasible?

But wait – what about the divergent, my people?

All this has come up because in my early sixties I have finally learned that autistics define themselves as not living in competition (AST, by me), as “people upon whom the punishments and deterrents do not ‘work,'” basically as the varied group for my thesis. They – we, I’m new, I will make this mistake more, I promise –  are this way, it seems, at least the first crowd I’ve found on Twitter is, and even defines themselves this way, “non-competitive,” being the adjective of choice – it’s a bunch of attitudes and behaviours to them, I think, a suite of them, that the NT folks have and the ND do not or do to a lesser degree. They said competition, and social power business, status.

I think I’ve reduced all of it to a single thing, my AST, spanking, social control. OK, three things, or three names, ha. I see no social hierarchy without the abuse to enforce it and I see no abuse without the people get harder and needier, antisocial, competitive, and abusive.

I have listened to a few Twitter Spaces for ND people and felt at home immediately, felt that I understood the people speaking, and that I might be understood if I spoke – funny story, I stressed and hurried and gave them everything in three seconds, ensuring that I could not be. But the feeling persists.

I am very disorganized right now, when I speak, when I type even, what I read back is unfamiliar, it’s this new thing, and the worry I’m talking about now, I think, I’m a mess – but I feel now, that when I am coherent again, these are the people who will understand my speech, my very word-dependent, literal minded, almost asocial speech.

I have spent my adult life in a bit of a fit, that the people in my life seem to ignore my words and simply decide for themselves who I am and what I want, despite I talk and talk and talk, it’s been baffling and incredibly frustrating, some glass wall I have been unable to communicate through. Friends have told me, “you can’t tell people anything,” and it simply does not compute. On one hand, I know it’s true – still doesn’t bite for me. What is language for, then?

And I still can’t shut up.

In those Spaces, I learned that my speech is the autistic sort, and I found the host’s use of language to be absolutely proper, clear as a bell, ND people respect words, and the folks I’ve heard are super articulate . . . a little bit of negativity coming here. This community is this way, let’s say “by default,” but . . . but they need AST too.

They have the NT folks well described, but only empirically, and their explanations ramble and miss AST the very same way the NT scientists and bloggers do, once we get into social science and anthropology, it becomes to me an endless list of vaguely related phenomena offered as though it all makes sense taken together . . . they need AST, same as everyone else, I think.

At least I hope so, I need to feel needed, somehow, even if I’m the only one who thinks it.

Plus – they are going to understand it – or rather, I hope so, and I guess that will be a test of my theory in itself, if the unantisocialized (the ones AST could not program, the ones the abuse could not “charge” with anger for later release) can see it, and the NT cannot, then it is perhaps part of the function of antisocialization, to induce a repression not of an event, but of the entire function, every such event. Everything is within the power of genetics and biology, different neurotypes makes that same case, and antisocialization would simply be a specific matter from which some brains diverge. I believe that is how “competition” is viewed now, as a specific point upon which some diverge – but antisocialization is a knowable process, something people do, not simply an NT trait. That’s the theory, anyway.

They can be an intimidating bunch, autistic Twitter, someone I know is a master of languages, and it seems the hosts in these Spaces have high-achieving biographies, I’m nervous, but I am going to need to find out, see if any of them have time to talk about Antisocialization Theory – maybe NT Socialization Theory now – with me, see if it works for them. I expect things about the existing world of human sciences bother us all, and don’t work for us, but same as other things, it doesn’t help if there’s nothing better with which to think about those things.

It was a challenge from my divergent brain that AST answers, nothing in the world was enough to explain this cruel and competitive life, not to me, not to this brain. I’ve heard it all too, it doesn’t add up, none of it is enough, not without AST.

I hope some of these brilliant divergent folks can see it my way. That’d be great. A divergent theory is better than a theory for nobody. Maybe I could get a little help with it, I mean, until now, I had a genetic theory for all, not so much as a variance to check it against. I need help, clearly. I’ve never had anyone to talk to, it seems.

Jeff

April 8^th., 2022