During the past 10 years, the prevalence of autism has risen dramatically:
"Autism is about 10 times as prevalent today as it was in the 1980s, according to the largest study ever in the United States on the problem. Some of the increase is the result of widened definitions of the disorder, researchers say, but the explanation for the rest of the increase is unknown." - Sandra Blakeslee, Study Shows Increase in Autism, New York Times, January 1, 2003
According to the study, 3.4 in every 1,000 children now have autism. And nobody knows why. But ironically, the explanations for this may not be that obscure. Just not very palatable.
The success of efforts at the H.A.N.D.L.E. Institute in Seattle indicate physical activity - or lack of it - plays a role. Normal development of the brain, according to H.A.N.D.L.E. founder Judith Bluestone, requires certain types of physical activities. Sitting in front of a TV or video game just doesn't provide the brain of a child with the stimulus it needs to grow properly.
While this may account for some of the increase, it's probably not the only reason. TV, after all, has been used as a surrogate babysitter for a few generations, but the surge in autism and related disorders has occurred just during the past 10 years. Add better detection techniques and refined definitions, and there's still a whole lot of explaining left to do. But that explaining may have already been published a year ago in an article about the high prevalence of autism among the children of programmers and engineers:
"The chilling possibility is that what's happening now is the first proof that the genes responsible for bestowing certain special gifts on slightly autistic adults - the very abilities that have made them dreamers and architects of our technological future - are capable of bringing a plague down on the best minds of the next generation." - The Geek Syndrome, Steve Silberman, Wired, December 2001
The highest incidence of autism appears to be among the children of parents who work in IT (Information Technology). Why? Because high tech Meccas, like Silicon Valley and Microsoft, attract women and men with Asperger's Disorder, where they meet and marry their soul mates, and have children with autism. A clear sign there's a genetic component at work. Which, as I wrote a year ago, suggests aspies (slang for somebody with Asperger's) should not reproduce with one another, but should limit their mating selections to NTs (or neurotypicals, which is slang for normal people).
For aspie chicks, this poses no real challenge - NT guys love aspie chicks. But for aspie guys, this can be a big problem as wooing normal women is an irrational social process we find baffling.
Did I say irrational? Yes. Given that the average IQ among aspies is slightly higher than it is among NTs, it should come as no surprise that a backlash against the notion that Asperger's is a real disability has arisen so quickly. But that is precisely what is happening, as more aspies wonder if we are like people with healthy vision being diagnosed by the blind.
In a delightfully disturbing short story, The Country of the Blind, H.G. Wells explored the validity of the old saying that, "In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." As the story unfolds, the blind people, who have never known sight, determine that the seeing man is suffering from delusions and to cure him they must cut out his eyes.
A sentiment spreading among aspies is that we are like the one-eyed man. That we are not socially stunted, or incapable of apprehending and understanding the inner realities of others, or that we lack empathy. Well okay, maybe we do to some extent. But a lot of it has to do with the fact we perceive what passes for normal as being irrational, if not insane.
When I first took an interest in girls, for example, back in the dark ages, sometime after the Wright brothers made history at Kitty Hawk but before the first landing on the moon, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the wooing process. It made no sense! You see a girl you're interested in, you go up, say something stupid to make her laugh, talk about irrelevant stuff (a process known as "making small talk"), slyly suggest some future rendezvous lacking any hint of sexual overtones, obtain her phone number for the purpose of spending countless hours talking about more irrelevant stuff, make a date, and so on until at some point you finally "score."
Where's the sense and sanity in that? The purpose of mate selection is to find an appropriate companion with whom to reproduce, raise a family, provide and obtain emotional and physical intimacy, and contribute in meaningful ways to the health and welfare of the community. Finding love can be, and to an aspie is, a rational process. Or at least a reasonable one. But NTs have romanticized it so far beyond reason and reality that young adults have all but given up and are "hooking up," engaging in a series of temporary relationships for the sole purpose of unfulfilling but recreational sex and companionship.
Nuts!
The strange mating habits of modern man aside, the point is that Asperger's Syndrome is probably neither a syndrome nor a disorder, but a collection of valuable traits that preclude full participation in the weird social antics of NTs, yet enable the kind of creativity, candor and focus required to innovate, invent and engineer the future in ways without which we might still be living in small villages constructed of rock and earthen shelters, and relying on livestock and subsistence farming to survive. But because aspie traits are relatively rare, those without them, who comprise the majority, set the norm, and by those standards aspies are socially inept, hard to teach, and a disorder to treat rather than a resource to cultivate.
In short, we are like the two-eyed man in the valley of the blind:
"Those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Nunez, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction. ... And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him complete, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation--namely, to remove these irritant bodies." - The Country of the Blind, H.G. Wells
Theories abound as to the origin of aspie traits. One even suggests that they come from some prehistoric offspring of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, hybrids lacking Cro-Magnon aggression and limited by Neanderthal insularity, but possessing a greater capacity for details, more creativity and a higher sensitivity to patterns than either of their forebears. Whatever the truth turns out to be, two things we know for certain: aspies risk having autistic children when they reproduce with one another, and society should cultivate aspies as a rich source of intelligence and creativity.
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