"Autism is used too much as an excuse for bad behavior."
- Temple Grandin
Link to the MSNBC article from which this quote was taken:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35150832/ns/health-mental_health/?ns=health-mental_health
where biography meets neuroscience, where biography meets nonsense
4 comments:
A lot of autistic children are neither loners nor misanthropes.
They learn to be, just as they learn to be sociable or like people.
(and just as neurotypicals do).
I do wonder: how can you be born not liking your own species?
Adelaide, with respect, have you never heard of solitary animals? Right through the animal kingdom, from locusts to orangutans, you will find particular species of animals that are by nature solitary, but are closely related to another species that is sociable by nature. I find this most remarkable, but apparently no one else does, including scientists.
I believe the locust responds to environmental changes by switching between solitary mode and sociable (but cannibal) mode. Apparently bears are solitary animals, as are Tasmanian Devils, a species that I find particularly delightful. Orangutans share many unique features in common with humans, and some maverick scientists believe that they are our closest relatives. But orangs spend most of their time alone. When I hear scientists and anthropologists banging on about humans being a social animal, it seems to me that they are not so much dispassionately stating a fact, but are telling us how they personally believe we should behave.
I personally do not see anything morally wrong with disliking the noise or the smell of other people, or the mildly threatening irritation of sensing the spatial movement and the minds of other people around us. This is what it means to be hypersensitive. I also don't believe it is wrong to lack a tolerance for the faults and rule-breaking of others because one lacks some inborn empathy for others of the same species that over-rides rational negative judgements.
No, I really haven't heard of solitary animals, except in the abstract.
Thank you for the examples. I did know about Tasmanian devils, but not about bears, so much, much less ourangs.
As for the third paragraph of your reply, I can see a detachment between senses and morals.
If people don't know much about solitary animals, it's not really surprising, considering the lack of information about this specific important aspect of normal animal behaviour. There is no Wikipedia page specifically about solitary animals. There is no listing of particular species of solitary animals in the Wikipedia that I can find. A Google search on "solitary animals" turns up some information, but it's hard to judge how authoritative it is.
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