October 9, 2007

Seeing Red

Bobbie left an excellent comment yesterday pertaining to the second of the three situations I discussed in my previous post. As I attempted to answer that comment, I realized that between the comment and my reply ... was yet another post. Hence ...

I'm a psychologist by profession, and what I am about to say is from that point of view.

I have observed the kinds of 'forum wars' you describe on practically every forum I've ever been a part of (or even just read.) Usually -- not always, but usually -- they are started and sustained by people who exhibit signs of a certain kind of personality disorder -- signs that are obvious to someone trained to recognize things like that, but perhaps not by those who are not trained.

A hallmark is a very exaggerated sense of their own importance, for openers. Usually they need (and relentlessly solicit) constant attention and admiration, yet have little concern or empathy for others.

Well-meaning, well-intentioned, thoughtful people fall into their trap in forum discussions because they believe they are responding to and reasoning with a 'normal' person (I use the term loosely). In fact, the best thing to do in these instances, really, is to disengage. Don't participate. It just feeds the fires. You cannot rationally engage with this kind of person, so don't bother to try.

Didn't mean to turn this comment into a blog post, but I felt it needed to be said. Next time someone starts driving everybody nuts on a forum, you'll know what to do: Disengage.

The trick, of course, is to make myself do that and quit going back to those threads where sh-- err, that person is participating! ;) These people are usually quite skilled in at least one of two things: pounding on people's buttons ... and being everywhere at once, often ruining otherwise excellent conversations. And, naturally, irritating people enough through this behaviour to get those of us who know better ... to engage them anyway.

The sad thing to me, is while this comment does attend to the forum wars issue in which it is relatively easy to simply disengage if we practice a little self-discipline ... that doesn't address the issue in society at large. It seems that there are some people who snap who simply need to be heard ... and then there are the trolls from whom we should disengage until they can act like normal folk. (again, normal being a loosely applied term!)

What it doesn't attend, is that snap that the seemingly normal members of a group show ... usually it feels like it's out of nowhere although we all know that it's rooted in something, be it biochemical or past experience. (The third example from yesterday's post.) Some of that kind of snap is a sense of entitlement and a fear of change. In the case of my third example, the changes occurring at 9Rules (and the new changes are launching today!!!!), people had to apply ... they had to hold to a certain standard, in order to get into the organization. So, to a certain point, I can understand that belonging to 9r is something of a trophy, a prize for excellence in blogging. Not a popularity contest, so much as your blog was read and weighed and analyzed ... and found worthy. Your prize was the leaf logo that you could then place on your site.

I understand that people, myself included, thought they had done the work, gotten in, and that was that. I flitted around their community areas ... felt kind of intimidated ... and did not really join in the community. Like some others, I joined with my blog content ... not with me.

The thought of having my "prize" stripped away when the community changed, generated a moment of sadness. As in, aww, I thought I had done what I needed to do ... now the situation has changed. I can either lose my "trophy" or I can participate in yet another online community.

I chose to stay. Participation was undefined. And maybe I'd be able to blend into the community better now.

But whilst I don't particularly like change much of the time (it messes with my ADHD behaviours), I recognize that the only constant is change.

But why did some people SNAP over this? I mean, there are people in unbelievable snits of rage. Why? It's not their community if they haven't participated in it. And, considering that someone has to own the server space and pay for the bandwidth, even the community doesn't fully own the community.

In other words, I don't pay for the bandwidth or the server space. I don't pay for the programming. I don't pay for the designers. I don't own it. I can't really complain when things change there. I can be sad about it. I can try to present a case for why a change shouldn't take place.

But it ain't my place and it ain't really my decision.

What I don't get is the people who can't see that. Has the issue of entitlement, not just in the United States, but around the "Western" world gotten so entrenched that the slightest disagreements become worthy of vitriol and viruses?

And how far is the distance between that verbal snap online ... the verbal snap at work ...

... and action?

It's not just things like the shooting in Crandon, Wisconsin. It's not just the extremes. What about what happened to Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a student doing nothing violent, who was tased repeatedly whilst attempting to leave his university library? Why did those police act the way they did?

Why do we want to applaud Jodi Foster's character in The Brave One for what boils down to another snap. Vigilantism. To a certain extent, and I don't think this really spoils anything in the movie, the character engages in cold-blooded execution, murder.

Why do we make these violent and often self-righteous snaps? What about our society allows them to happen? Why are some of them "acceptable" and some are not?

I do not accept the standard easy answers. It is not caused by music or movies or video games or Dungeons and Dragons. Listening to music describing violence, watching violence in movies, playing violence in a game ... these things might be a reflection of our lives. We've seen real violence, we use a violent song to give us a kind of catharsis. A sense that we're not alone in that pain ... and a putting away of it. We take a frustration out on a video game because it is not acceptable to do such things in real life. It serves as a safe substitute.

And then there are those who become lost inside their media. Instead of using the media to release tension, to dissipate the anger ... it builds up further.

It's not the media who cause a snap. It is something within us.

What causes that snap, the "descent" into anti-social behaviour? I suppose, really, that has been my question all along.

How do we as a community of people, online and off-line, pay enough attention to each other in the right ways that no one snaps? Okay, that's more than a little utopian instead of practical, but you get this idea.

Preventing the next Unabomber, the next Columbine, the next workplace shooting does not really include ridding the world of angry or violent media.

It has to do with connections with people. It has to do with really seeing each other and holding each other accountable for our own behaviours.

But in a society so large, can there really be true accountability? If you don't want to face your consequences, can't you always keep on the move, feeling more and more disaffected and isolated until that snap is even more inevitable?

Where do we go from here?
Why is the path unclear?
When we know home is near
Understand
We'll go hand in hand
But we'll walk alone in fear

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:47 AM | Comments (2) | Struggles | Stumble

October 8, 2007

Sowing Discord, Eating Crow

It seems as though everywhere I go lately in "real life" and online, I see conflict. Not just, "gee, I disagree with you about that." I see people foaming at the mouth, veins on forehead and neck throbbing. I see epithets thrown at each other like kids shooting marbles into the circle, certain their shot will cause that clink and knock someone else out of the game ... and equally sure that they won't get knocked out ... or if they do, they were robbed, cheated, taken advantage of.

At the moment, I'm part of three online communities, to varying degrees. In one, a solely social site filled with a fair number of young people, I see roughly an explosion a week. Someone misinterprets what someone else says and then all hell breaks lose. Accusations fly. Feelings are hurt. Someone plays healer ... and all is mostly well again. Some bruised feelings all around, but things are better.

That's the best situation of the communities I've seen lately. And it's essentially young adults learning how to behave and interact as adults.

A second site revolves around writers. Here I see the "adult" version of fighting. I see people deliberately posting something to a discussion board, not because the ideas are necessarily believed, but because they will create anger. The worst possible spin ... the most emotionally loaded words. All to get a negative reaction. And when the community called one person on this behaviour, the response was simply "I don't think the community has the right to police its members. Leave that to Admin." An interesting thought.

The problem, of course, is that like in a real-life community, the Admin for an online community are far outnumbered by the community itself. It is impossible for each police department to know that none of the drivers in their jurisdiction are running red lights. It is impossible for them to know that none of the people in their jurisdiction are stealing. Instead, they act on information they are given from the community ... and from what limited observations of the whole they can make, considering that they can't be everywhere at once.

Likewise, Admin for an online community must rely on the community itself to let them know what is going on. They have to look at the Terms of Agreement ... they have to look at the tenor of the community. But they cannot read every thread, much less every comment and private message.

It was not surprising after a few weeks of kicking the ant hill, the member who insisted "they" were always correct and knew more than those with whom "they" conversed, "decided" to leave the community.

But during the course of that tenure within the community a lot of damage was done. Several people had been calling the recalcitrant member to task after witnessing "their" behaviour over a series of posts. New people only saw one thread's worth of the story, and missed reading a lot of earlier arguments. Those new people, acting in ignorance of the backstory tended to try to defend the recalcitrant member ... until they, too, read enough threads to see the pattern emerging.

Still others were simply afraid to post at all. Afraid that this "clique" who was hounding (oh, let's call this person Rosalita Conchita Consuela Gonzalez ... a fictional drag queen from my high school days ... and if enough people hound me about this fictional character, I'll tell her story which is nothing like the one I'm telling now) ... hrm. I hate it when the asides get so long as to foul the grammar of the sentence they appear in. Anyhow ...

Still others were simply afraid to post at all. Afraid that this "clique" who was hounding Rosalita, would come after them.

But there was no "clique." There were some like-minded members who were calling Rosalita to task. But, without knowing the entire story, it certainly did appear that a pack of jackals was terrorizing poor Rosalita until, despite a valiant fight, Rosalita had no other choice, but to leave.

It took some time before the community recovered, and I daresay, that in that time, some members left in fear, others in disgust. And now, as the United States begins seriously ramping up for the elections still a year away, that cycle is starting over again somewhat. Some people are looking for reaction so that they might belittle the opposing political side. Some are looking for honest discussion of the issues.

The result of the reactionaries often ends in sound bites and name-calling.

To be sure, I've actually been quite impressed that this particular community was able to maintain a few political threads without devolving into angry argument and fighting. But it seemed no sooner than someone said, "Wow, political discussion without the crap" ... the crap started up again.

The third community, like many communities around the world, was going through a time of immense change. They'd started out as one type of site ... and begin developing more and more along related lines, but lines requiring more active participation. Months of discussion among the members and the Admin happened between the participating members. Those who had been passive were left out of the conversation, not out of malice ... but because they were not participating.

After some months, the active community decided that they preferred to be a community with active participants. A new terms of agreement was emailed to the non-participatory members stating that the community had discussed this in some depth and decided that if a member felt they could not participate, then they should resign from the community -- with an emphasis on this: there was NO quota on what participating meant. Once a week, once a month? Open-ended.

This seemed more than fair to me. I would not have been surprised to discover that those of us who had not been participating were "kicked out" with an invitation to re-join should we choose to become a part of the community. The Admin's handling of the situation seemed more than fair to me.

However, as seems to be human nature, some had to screech. Disagreement I can understand. Disappointment.

But shrill "THIS ISN'T FAIR!!!!111" ??

People angrily denigrating the site and their Admin for what ultimately is a consensus from the participating membership?

What is it that causes us to snap, to lose our reason and begin degenerating into five year old kids in the sandbox? "That's MY toy, you can't play with it." "I can so." "Well, your Daddy is a dummy."

WTH?

What emotional defect do we all share to cause so many of us to falter to this childhood behaviour over what is really the stupidest of things? What out-dated piece of biological machinery is pumping out some insidious "asshole" chemical and flooding our brains until we can't reason any more?

And ...

... what is the connection between those "minor" verbal snaps ...

... and Crandon, Wisconsin?

Below is a portion of my comic book which asks some of these same questions. Talking about the extremes as in Crandon and Virginia Tech and Noida, India.
(Don't strain your eyes to read the captions ... I've re-written them for you in the lower right corner ... somewhat bigger and more clear.)

What does it take to "graduate" from the small and petty snaps we make as humans ... to a life of verbally baiting others so that we can belittle them and feel superior? And what does it take devolve further into the decision that hatred and destruction are good answers? That pain and suffering of others means that we are more powerful and somehow better?

Why do we seem to crave conflict and discord?

And why are some conflicts and discords and suffering more "interesting" to us than others? What keeps Madeline in the news and the Jena 6 quiet? What allows the incident with Mostafa Tabatabainejad to drop off the radar ... and keeps OJ's and Paris's and Britney's "plight" and antics in the news?

I'll end with a quote from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ... in this episode, each of the major characters has been forced to reveal some secrets that they had each preferred to stay secrets. Most of the characters were shocked and appalled at some of what had been hidden ... at surprises revealed about people they thought they knew so well. The episode is called "Once More With Feeling," and it's a spoof of broadway musicals and one of the most cleverly written pieces of American television I've ever seen. At the very end of the episode, after all the secrets are revealed ... after everyone is left standing around, reeling at what they've learned:

Where do we go from here?
Why is the path unclear?
When we know home is near
Understand
We'll go hand in hand
But we'll walk alone in fear

So is that the answer to all of this conflict and discord? That we might walk "hand in hand/ But we'll walk alone in fear"?

Why are we so scared? Why are we so scared that hurting each other can make us feel better or safer?

I wish I knew.

I wish we all did.

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:09 AM | Comments (5) | Struggles | Stumble

September 20, 2007

Stealth, Blatant, Repressed

It doesn't matter what labels we put with prejudice, be it racism, homophobia, xenophobia or hatred of the newest wave of immigrants.

We are not the colour of our skin. We are not our religion. We are not whom we sleep with. We are not our country of origin. We are not our culture.

These things shape us as our experiences shape us. But one aspect of our lives does not define us.

Today in Jena, Louisiana, civil rights protesters are marching in response to the biased way that the law is carried out in many places in the United States. They have found an egregious case-in-point in Jena where white kids are simply "pranking" and the black kids are obviously attempting murder.

Many factors both biological and experiential shape the people we become. That shaping goes on constantly and we are constantly in a state of flux and change. It is up to each of us to challenge ourselves to look beyond the obvious and investigate not only our own motives and behaviours, but others' motives and behaviours as well. Not to condone bad behaviour, but to understand the place from which it comes and to look at why. After all, theft is wrong ... but theft to feed yourself when you have no other options? It's an old chestnut of an example, but one that still gives many of us pause.

When what you know is one set of rules for the blue-eyed kids ... and another set of rules for the brown-eyed kids ... when experience has taught you that you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't ...

Take a look at this again. (It'll open in a new window/tab depending on your settings.)

Look at these people gathered around and smiling.

Is that any better than treating some people to one set of standards ... and "those people" to another set of standards? Aren't we learning that zero tolerance policies are NOT fair because there are usually extenuating circumstances which mitigate or worsen a situation?

I'll repeat the end of my last post, because I think it bears repeating. If you're not familiar with the Jena situation, please read Eating Crow.

I'm not saying that the boys don't deserve some repercussions. But when I say that, I mean every single one of them. I mean the boys who put up the nooses. I mean the kids who started fights in the halls. I mean the children who called each other names. I mean the school board who eased the punishment of the noose-boys. I mean the people who burned down the school.

I mean the people who look at each other warily from across the street. Is that white dude going to start something? Is that black girl going to start screaming at me?

I mean the white dude who decided to teach them uppity black boys a lesson at the party. I mean the boy who had to brandish his shotgun.

I mean all of us. These are the repercussions for our attitudes, for our distrust in those who seem different from us, for our certainty that "we" are good and "they" are wrong, whatever our definitions of we, they, good and wrong.

And there's a march scheduled now for the unfair way the justice system is choosing to pursue the problems in Jena.

It's a start. Trying to keep these issues at the forefront of people's minds. It reminds us not to be complacent. It reminds us to question our motives, not endlessly navel-gazing, but honestly attempting to look at what we do ... and what results those actions have.

Stealth racism. Jim Crow laws. Lynchings. Colored water fountains. Separate but equal.

Racial profiling. Fear of the different.

Fear.

I am chilled.

Jena 6
racism

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:24 AM | Comments (1) | Struggles | Stumble

September 12, 2007

Eating Crow

Today we're not so prejudiced that we have water fountains labeled White and Colored. We allow "them" to sit at the lunch counter with "us." And still, it seems, "they" have the gall to complain.

Until you read about Jena, Louisiana, and the "white tree."

Now it's being called stealth racism because instead of being codified in Jim Crow laws, it's being played out "unofficially" ... it's not written down ... therefore it doesn't happen.

The problem with this theory often used by those trying to cover up their racist views is that it is written down. And, sadly, one of the best examples is from my own home state, although I'm told it's prevalent throughout the States.

The written record is in our legal system, but unlike the Jim Crow laws, these are "codified" in the way that we choose to pursue justice, who we sentence, and what sentence they receive. The bulk of crimes "deserving" the death penalty are sentences handed to black men. (Look at the race of those executed in Texas since the re-instatement of the death penalty.) Black violence to white = harsher punishment.

Another example? Look more closely at the Jena, Louisiana, issues. A black student "jokingly" asked if he could sit under the tree with the white students. You see, all of the white kids sat under the big tree, whilst the black kids sat on the bleachers. They weren't labeled White Tree and Black Bleachers. There was no law that said that. It was simply a case of everyone sticking to their own.

Except the tree was known around town as the white tree, when, in fact, the tree, like most trees, was brown. Now why could it be called the white tree? The principal told the kid he could sit wherever he liked ... but the next morning, 3 nooses were found hanging from the tree.

A schoolyard prank. It didn't mean anything.

Unless you've seen this. Unless you've lived it. Heard relatives telling the "story." And then, you can't help but be chilled by the threat. Can you take that risk? Can you really take that risk that it was just a joke?

The school recommended expulsion for the "pranksters" but the school board over-ruled them and decided a simple in-school suspension was plenty of punishment. No need to escalate things.

Except, of course, that that's exactly what happened. Things escalated as they have a tendency to do. Fights breaking out along racial lines, seeming to culminate with the burning of the main academic building of the school and the blaming of "Them" by "Us," with the definitions changing depending on which group a person was in.

But what has appeared to be a kind of proverbial "last straw" is the arrest of the so-called Jena Six.

One account includes one of the Jena Six attempting to go to a party and being turned away. And then, getting into a fight over the issue. The white man who instigated the violence was eventually charged with simple battery. The next day a white student argued with the black boys and ran to his pick-up truck for his pistol-grip shotgun. Reportedly Robert Bailey took the gun from the white boy and refused to give it back. (Personal aside ... given the situation, I can't say I'd want a pissed off white boy to have his damn shotgun back either!) Bailey was charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white boy? Not charged. Had he not brandished the firearm to start with ... but that seems to be beside the point.

The real culmination of this series of events came a few days later at school. Apparently one of the white boys, bragged how the black Bailey had been beaten up by a white man. Later that day, Justin Barker (the white boy) was jumped by the so-called Jena Six (including Robert Bailey). They did beat the crap out of Justin. He was knocked unconscious either by hitting the concrete or by being punched in the head ... but despite a short hospital observation (2 hours), he was released and went to the school's Ring Ceremony that evening.

The six boys were arrested originally for aggravated assault, which was later changed to attempted second degree and conspiracy to murder, not the simple assault/battery that it was. Later, one of the boys had his charge "reduced" to aggravated second degree battery. Sounds better right? That's a charge that requires the use of a "deadly weapon." Okay, so what'd the boy use? A pipe? A big length of thick branch?

His sneakers were dubbed deadly weapons.

The jury was all white.

The court-appointed attorney did not call a single witness to the stand.

It sounds like the days of Jim Crow, and I know every single blogger who has written about this has used the same phrase ... but yanno? It freaking fits ... and that terrifies me.

I'm not saying that the boys don't deserve some repercussions. But when I say that, I mean every single one of them. I mean the boys who put up the nooses. I mean the kids who started fights in the halls. I mean the children who called each other names. I mean the school board who eased the punishment of the noose-boys. I mean the people who burned down the school.

I mean the people who look at each other warily from across the street. Is that white dude going to start something?
Is that black girl going to start screaming at me?

I mean the white dude who decided to teach them uppity black boys a lesson at the party. I mean the boy who had to brandish his shotgun.

I mean all of us. These are the repercussions for our attitudes, for our distrust in those who seem different from us, for our certainty that "we" are good and "they" are wrong, whatever our definitions of we, they, good and wrong.

And there's a march scheduled now for the unfair way the justice system is choosing to pursue the problems in Jena.

It's a start. Trying to keep these issues at the forefront of people's minds. It reminds us not to be complacent. It reminds us to question our motives, not endlessly navel-gazing, but honestly attempting to look at what we do ... and what results those actions have.

Stealth racism. Jim Crow laws. Lynchings. Colored water fountains. Separate but equal.

Racial profiling. Fear of the different.

Fear.

I am chilled.

Jena 6
racism

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:18 AM | Comments (2) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | Stumble

September 11, 2007

The Multi-Coloured Coat

I grew up in Texas in the 70s and 80s. I was in first grade during the time period that the movie Dazed and Confused covers. It was the age of Free to Be You and Me and, so far as a little kid could tell, the battle for civil rights was over. Blacks (no longer referred to as "them coloreds") were equal in the eyes of anyone. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a martyred hero who had, through that martyrdom, won.

Of course, I was completely wrong about much of that, but I thought that the time for marching not just for civil rights, but marching against hatred and prejudice, was over.

I was, of course, terribly naive. But what seven year old isn't? By the time I was 13, I realized that I had only been to school with one black child. And I began putting more details together. My mother locked her car doors if a black man was on a street corner. Regardless of what he was wearing/looked like. My father dropped the N-word in regard to Differen' Strokes (and yet he loved Sanford and Son). I still strongly suspect that he did at least a brief stint in the Klan. I was removed from one junior high school and placed in another ... purportedly because the second school had a higher level math class that I could take for only one semester out of the three I had left. In retrospect, this move feels much like my change of schools for second grade ... in junior high, I was fast becoming best friends with Paula. A black girl. In second grade, my teacher was black. And, worse, Austin was preparing to begin busing.

In both cases, my mother thought she was protecting me. She was in the very difficult position of having tried, by her own admission, to raise her children without prejudice ... and yet being unable to let go of those old habits herself. In talking to her about this later, she admitted that she was afraid that whatever the other results of busing, she just knew that if some of the kids (or even the adults) got into an argument, a fight ... that I would be right there in the thick of it, attempting to create peace. And probably getting hurt. Reflecting on who I was back then, I think she was probably correct. It wouldn't have mattered to me who had started it nor even, really, what it was about. I was outspoken about what I felt was right. If a white person picked on a black; or a black person picked on a white, I would have been defending the picked on and trying to make peace.

Even in the case of the junior high move, she had pointed out that some of the kids at the school might call me an N-lover for being friends with Paula. I snorted and said, "So? I don't care what people like that think." This time, she was even more wrong for moving me as there really wasn't that kind of racial tension in the school. I'm not saying that everything was always perfect between the white kids and the black kids ... but simply being friends with someone from the "opposite camp" was not really going to fuss anyone.

And then I began to open my eyes to the wider community, not just the small one that I inhabited. I saw incidences of prejudice in Texas, in the South. I fussed to myself. Why were people not doing something about this. I had announced in junior high that if there were civil rights marches, I would be there. Oh how that must have just terrified my mother.

I was discussing the issue of prejudice and violence in the south and in the north with someone last night and I said that I had seen more and worse events here in the North than I had ever seen in Texas. That's personally seen, not just read newspaper stories of. Although, come to think of it, I think I've seen more of that here in Indiana than I did in Texas as well.

Much of it here has revolved around how so much of the black community has been pushed into the worst areas of town. The gangs run rampant on that side of town. Here, two towns essentially run together and it can be very difficult to tell where South Bend ends and Mishawaka begins. And I can't count the number of times I have heard someone from Mishawaka say they could never live in South Bend ... because of the gangs ... because of the "black troubles."

I've observed black people being waited on last. I about got my head bit off for telling my waitress someone else was there first. And I got the same kind of service that the black family got for my trouble. A dear friend in grad school told how she and her husband were thrown out of Sears - for trying to get the repair center to honour their warranty. After less than 2 weeks, her new vacuum cleaner had broken. She took it in. Her husband waited, in the manner of most people ready to be done with a chore and off to the more interesting things of the day, slouched against a wall, waiting for her to be done.

The clerk told her nothing could be done. She produced receipt. She produced warranty. The clerk merely produced more anger. Finally, the clerk called security. Not to deal with my friend, who was a seriously PISSED off ex-drill sergeant by this point. No, to escort her husband out of the building and to ban him from Sears. For intimidating the clerk. You know, by freaking standing there.

There was the piling on of cops and pepperspray for the one black guy who tried to lift a pack of cigarettes. (Turns out he stole nothing. It was a mistake ....)

And my God, but the Klan is active here ... they terrify me and infuriate me all at once. My friends have tried on more than one occasion to make sure I am otherwise occupied when there's a rally in the area. (If for no other reason than they're tired of hearing me rant.)

So, today I know that my childhood belief that Martin Luther King, Jr. had won, is indeed not true. Some civil rights are more protected than they once were. But you can't legislate attitudes, and legally protecting things that simply should be ... creates equal and opposite pushes. Sometimes I think for every person like me who arises from that time period, we have ten who feel they were wronged by the legislation.

There are so very many ways that people can be different. And we as a society seem hell-bent on repeating the past. "The problem with the Irish immigrant is they are lazy, heathen, fighting is in their very physical make-up. They're little better than animals." Then it's the Italians. The Jews. The blacks. Gypsies. Them Mexicans. The queers are out to give us all AIDS. The Irish Travelers all abuse their kids. A perpetual game of Them vs. Us with constantly changing definitions of the tribes.

And God forbid you compare the plight of one group to another. The fight for civil rights by the queers is just nothing like the fight for black equality.

And I wonder whatever happened with Mostafa Tabatabainejad, the student at UCLA who was tased repeatedly for being different. (Okay, for not showing his ID the instant someone asked him for it.)

Of course, today we're not so blatant as we were "back then," right? We don't see White and Colored water fountains now.

(continued tomorrow)

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:49 AM | Comments (1) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | Stumble

September 6, 2007

Underdog, Outsider, Autist - The Speed of Dark

My mother used to tell me that I only rooted for the underdog. The first time I heard her say that, I thought she meant the cartoon ... and I did very much adore Underdog. It wasn't exactly true, what she said, but at five, six, even eight, I really didn't have the words to explain what the difference was.

It was true if I saw someone being picked on, I would go try to help that person. Go tell a teacher, intervene myself if I thought I could make a difference, go to the person in pain afterward and try to lend a hand, or an ear, or a shoulder.

I had occasion yesterday to really examine how I think, what processes my brain goes through to arrive at the conclusions it does. Part of this is because I was re-reading The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. It's a book about Lou Arrendale, a man in the near-future who happens to have what we would call high-functioning autism, maybe even Aspberger's.

It was partially due to re-reading this book that I remembered Mom's comment, complaint, really, that I always cheered for the underdog. Her fear at the time was that I would get hurt doing that one day. In Texas, in the 70s during the time of busing, she may very well have been right. I probably would have.

But it wasn't so much that I was rooting for the underdog as it was how strongly I identified with the outsider. These are not necessarily the same group. My favourite books all underscored this:
The Outsiders ... S.E. Hinton (that's just a gimme)
the Bagthorpe Saga ... Helen Cresswell
Ender's Game ... Orson Scott Card
Chaim Potok's books, and here's where I really began to understand the depth to which I identified with the outsider. In The Chosen, the narrator is Reuven Malter. He is an outsider peering into a form of orthodox Judaism he has not seen before. But the true outsider of the story is Danny, the Hasidic rebbe's son who would prefer to study psychology and not become the next rebbe. And while I enjoyed the two books which dealt with Danny and Reuven, they always bothered me deeply as well. Because I wanted Danny to be the narrator. I wanted the true outsider to narrate the books. And I suppose that this is one reason I prefer My Name Is Asher Lev to most of Potok's other books.

And then, of course, there's Moon's The Speed of Dark itself. Lou is an outsider to "normal" society, but Moon crafted the book so that we are also an outsider to Lou's society ... and yet inside it all at the same time. It's an incredible crafting of a world for any author to be able to do that to the extent that Moon does.

What is particularly fascinating to me about this book is it lays bare the way we categorize people without thinking of the complexities and truth of those categorizations. I don't mean categorizing as "normal" or "autistic" but something even more detailed such as: austists do not recognize social cues. Autists recognize patterns.

And what all of this reminds me of is something I began saying in elementary school: we are all on a continuum, or, more accurately, a series of continuums. Our lives and beings seem like one huge mixer board of slides and the position of each slide on its little scale is what makes one person different from another.

Perhaps my slider for patterns is high, but not so high as someone with certain levels of autism. My slider for certain types of social cues, like how to tell if someone is chatting and being nice, or is actually flirting, is very low.

Thinking about this, I wish that we could identify all the sliders available on the human mixer board rather than all the genes in the human genome. The problem with this, of course, is that the human mixer board is not something we can see so readily as the genome. And, perhaps, mapping the genome will help us define the mixer board. Theories of multiple intelligence fit right into this mixer board concept of humanity. As does the kinsey scale, and, I think the Meyers Briggs personality scales.

And what happens when some sliders are turned all the way up and others all the way down? Then you have severe disorders. I think that's where you see severe autism or people like Mother Teresa or sociopaths. The bulk of us live in variations along the mid-range. The extraordinary people are "dialed up."

The next set of questions, at least for me, is what causes the sliders to move? I'm sure some of it is "preset" within a certain range at birth. I feel certain that experience can move the sliders, some sliders are probably more prone to movement than others. Accident, trauma, these can move the sliders in unpredictable ways and to extremes that they otherwise could not reach based on "normal" nature/nurture parameters.

I come to all of this because the more often I read about autism, the more I can see, not the differences that mark an autist, but the similarities.

Which all comes down to this: I wonder if any work has been done on the difference between birth-autism and trauma-autism. Because I see a LOT of similarities between people who have undergone certain kinds of extreme traumas, particularly as children, and people labeled autistic at birth. (Well, okay, so they're not often labeled autistic at birth, but I use that to say there are people who are apparently autistic from birth and some who seem to acquire some aspects of autism from trauma.) Please note that I am not saying parents or trauma causes autism. Autism is a disease or disorder. But I do wonder if there are people with certain slider settings who can undergo early traumas causing new slider settings which are similar to those people with autism.

For example, there are a few cases of children raised in total silence and not taught to speak. When discovered, they share a lot of characteristics with some "dialed up" autistics. The difference is that some of these children who were abused in this way can eventually change their slider settings into something closer to the mid-range that we call "normal." Because the autist has his or her parameters set more by nature than by any lack of nurture, there is only so much movement possible on the slider. (Without medical intervention, I mean.)

The question, then, for the trauma-austist is how to identify that some sliders are out of whack with the "norm" and then how to learn to move those sliders.

The question for the birth-autist is: can we learn anything from the trauma-autist that will apply to moving the birth-autist's sliders as well?

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | Struggles | Stumble