Far Removed

There are people who believe that one's family members necessarily deserve special standing in one's life. I am not among them. I accept no debt to my family. To me, family is just other people. Love is not inherited. What could I have loved even before I developed cause - effect reasoning or an understanding of object permanence? What could I have valued about relationships before I was capable of forming enduring mental representations? Mutual, giving love doesn't arise from nothing. It requires mature understanding. An adult who expects their child to have the same capacity for love that they do is, in my opinion, unprepared to parent. Parent - child love is unequal. It's not a good model for how adults should relate to each other. When I was a child, my parents and guardians wanted me to act like an adult so that I wouldn't trouble them. But they didn't want to treat me like an adult because that would mean acknowledging my autonomy. They wanted me to be non...

My books do not sell.  I ended my professional relationship with my publisher and resolved to retire as an author.  My therapist was unhappy that I had decided to quit and suggested that I contact the Autism Society of Indiana as well as animal rights advocate and autism spokesperson Dr. Temple Grandin.  He said I should ask for help promoting myself.  Maybe I could send Dr. Grandin a book.  Though I thought there was little point in doing so, I did as he suggested.  I sent messages to these two entities via their websites. I got an email from Dr. Grandin's people.  It said I could call her at a certain number and that she would return my call.  I don't like talking to strangers on the phone but I called anyway and spoke to someone who was not Dr. Grandin.  I told this person why I was calling and that I was uncomfortable speaking on the phone.  He said Dr. Grandin would email me.  She called me instead. I was very nervous....

I haven't made a blog post for a while.  I'm not interested in recording my thoughts and feelings.  These are flashes.  When I have insight, it's not worth imparting.  I observe for my own edification, and my observations only work for me, as far as I know.  My therapist tells me that I have good insights and that I should compile a book of them.  I don't know whether my insights are good for others or not.  Because I don't know what other people's insights are, I have nothing to which to compare my own to evaluate any assessment of them. Most of the observations I make about people are blind grabs made in desperation as I flail for purchase in a world that doesn't want to stop me from falling out of it.  I'm not grasping for handholds that I might instruct others to use.  I'm trying to make sense of the world for myself.  I presume that my specific confusions are limited to me.  But is there something I could say about people...

I intellectualize everything. My emotional intelligence is low. My life has very limited emotional dimension. If I must interact with others, I must decide whether to think about them or not. I decide to think about them because that seems safer. My reasoning is this: if there is nothing to think about regarding other people, then all I risk is a wasted effort. But if there is something to think about and I choose not to think about anything, a bad misunderstanding might happen. So, what do I think when I think about others? I think about understanding them. Is there anything about anyone to understand? Probably.  There are things about me to understand, and I make the same claims that others make. I say that I want things, that I feel things, and that I am conscious. I am having experiences. It seems safe to assume that others are like me. People probably aren't blank objects, but maybe they are. They seem to act with intention, but maybe they don't. If I'm wrong that ...

In my experience, people are seldom straightforward. When they speak, they hide some things. Often, even if I can see what they're implying, I don't understand the reason for the implication. I assume that people have reasons for putting things in indirect terms. If you can speak directly but you don't, that must be significant of something. But what does it signify? This is something that I'm likely to misunderstand. The sculptor Michelangelo is reputed to have said, "The sculpture is already complete within the marble block before I start my work. It is already there. I just have to chisel away the superfluous material."  For now, let's imagine that he definitely said that. It's very poetic, but it's just another way of saying, "I improvise a lot."  Why did he choose to say what he said? Is there anything implicit in the way that he said it? I understand what he meant, but I don't understand why he expressed himself the way he did...

 There is a cascade of questions: how can I live a good life? What is the value of goodness? What is the essence of value? We might assess our lives as either good or bad. We might say that good is better than bad, and that we should be good because being bad is the only alternative. But surely being neither good nor bad is an option. It must be possible to observe without assessing. This is what I want. I want to leave nothing in the world. Some will say that neutrality is simply in the bad category, and that we must want to live positive lives.  Let them say so, and let them condemn me if I live a life of non-participation. I have no interest in politics or society. I have no interest in justice or the common good. To some, saying this is the same as saying that I'm bad or that I'm at best contributing to the bad. Is appeasing critics to be my sole motivation for engaging with this evaluating system? Perhaps I should want to make the world better. But I don't believe ...

My therapist asked me recently if I thought that I had any unresolved anger.  Apparently, he suspected that I might.  I do have anger, but it's not unresolved. I used to be very angry.  I was angry because I didn't understand the world as others presented it.  Others' descriptions of the world didn't comport with my experiences of it.  I saw a world full of unnecessary limits and rules.  Others insisted those rules and limits were eminently necessary even though they couldn't explain why and, in many cases, hadn't even considered why.  This was disorienting and it made me suspect that people were lying to me. But they weren't, for the most part.  Once I stopped imagining malice, it became easier to let go of anger.  I learned that being angry without being considerate was conducive to objectification, and I was objectifying the people I felt anger toward. Some of the people who should have protected me acted to hurt me instead.  I ...

Mental health workers sometimes encourage neurodivergent people to imitate some of the behaviors of neurotypical people.   The aim of this is to foster learned prosocial behaviors; mimicking an attitude may lead to adopting that attitude.  "Fake it till you make it" is one way to describe this strategy. I see in this the implication that neurodivergent people like me should learn to integrate with neurotypical people who in turn have no social responsibility to accommodate us.  Because we are the ones with the differences, we are the ones who must adapt.  Not integrating presents significant obstructions to the pursuit of happiness.  If people think you're weird, they won't meet you halfway. In order to accept the idea that I must pretend to be a certain way in order to ingratiate myself to people who aren't likely to help me otherwise, I must admit that the World of Others is hostile toward me.  This doesn't make me want to win anyone's favor....

My grandfather died recently.  He was sick for a long time with multiple myeloma.  We had no kind of relationship, and I am no more grieved by his death than I would be by that of a rank stranger.  He was intelligent, stalwart, and aloof from me.  And he was proud of his life. His was a military funeral because my grandfather was a veteran of the Korean War.  My wife and I attended.  Rituals are strange to me; I watched the death ceremony with some curiosity.  What did it mean to others?  How was the symbolism important?  Which emotional expressions were genuine and considered, and which were Pavlovian?  There were no answers in the proceedings. I don't fear death.  I do fear pain and as an anxious person I am prone to dread, so I would prefer to die suddenly, having no idea what was happening.  But I have no dread of my own annihilation.  In fact, I'm trying, through philosophy, to affect it now while I am alive.  ...

I lost my disability case. The hearing is over, the decision is made, but the fight goes on. Now I have to sit down with my legal counsel and talk about the ruling. The court sent me the Decision Rationale.  In four two-sided pages this document explains the judge's finding of "not disabled."  Given among the reasons for this finding are the fact that I can play video games, that I am married, that I use social media, that I am able to eat in public with my wife, that I can feed my cats and myself, and that I have "been able to work through difficulties with social interaction as [I have] been able to push through this way through [sic] the situation when there was no alternative."  The document describes as "allegations" my reports of real experience, which I suppose isn't unusual but which makes me feel dehumanized nonetheless. My chronic insomnia, a well documented symptom of PTSD, is dismissed as an allegation that can't be corroborated. ...