How Asperger’s influences my view of home

My wonderful sister has just started a new blog. She has a wonderful post about the meaning of home to start off with. It has a lot of good thoughts in it but I did notices that, naturally, it had a quite neurotypical perspective. There are some additional things that are important parts of home to me.

    Memories are important parts of home for me, but not because they bring back wonderful emotions or helped define who I am, but because I remember exactly how to get to the grocery store in my neighborhood. Yes, I can use a map to get to somewhere new if I really need to. But it is always an exhausting anxiety filled experience for me. I’m not really comfortable going somewhere until I have taken that route a number of times. It is only when I know every turn and every streetview that the trip ceases to feel like an assault on my senses and a trial of whether I’ll have the nerve to keep going.
    My sense of home is defined not by a country of a state but in terms of blocks I know. Moving just to another city in the same metropolitan area felt like a big shift that took me years to get used to. There are still certain stores where I still feel more comfortable going to the one nearest my childhood home.
    It’s not that people are not important. But people are fascinating and significant in part because they have unplumbed depths, they constantly revealing new things about themselves, doing something different and unexpected. They aren’t the routine things that you can place in a script you are going to use for your day and not think about again. And because I struggle so much with predictability it is the buildings and the streets that outline home for me.

mini-Review Temporary Duty

Yesterday was the day I finished Temporary Duty. It also happened to be the day I found out that the author, Ric Locke recently died. It was weird to be discovering a fascinating new author at the same time I found out that the story of his life here had been completed. I suspect that in science fiction Locke’s impact will be even greater after his death than before.

When an alien trading shipp makes a stop at Earth the US manages to wangle sending a detachment along on their trading loop. Temporary Duty is the story of a Navy enlisted man who lucks into temporary duty with aboard the spacecraft. It’s about competitions and cooperation, about difference between cultures and about similarities, it’s about enforcing rules and about breaking them.

The book doesn't have a stereotypical plot, so the beginning can feel a little slow, because you don’t see what is coming up. But it does pay off in the second half of the book in surprising, if unexpected, ways. If you already like sci-fi I would recommend this as something new and fresh. If you don’t like sci-fi you might try it anyway as it is different enough you might find it more to your tastes.

Rare indeed

It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the cause of it.

     - Edmund Burke

Complementarian Advantages

I originally started writing a comment on the post Praying with women pastors  but then I couldn’t figure out how to comment on that blog and so I grew this into it’s own post. This post mentions how the issue of how complementarians should interact with egalitarians can impact missionary outreach, in making it harder to cooperate. But I would like to mention also, we should not overlook the advantages of the complementarian view. People from more traditional non-western cultures sometimes have the impression the accepting western culture, or accepting protestant christianity, means you get egalitarianism shoved down your throat. If the idea is present that disregarding all gender differences (but the most undeniably ones) is fundamental to western thought and western christianity, then complementarians need to be open and vocal about the fact that there is a stream of thought within western society that does recognize deep gender difference and values unique gender roles. I think it is important to model valuing and cherishing women without erasing an understand of their different and distinct role in society.

I grew up in a culture where the wider society was egalitarian in many ways. I’m comfortable with that and I’m not above taking advantage of some of the benefits that gives me. (Though I do think that monkeying with things like physical requirement to encourage women firefighters or women infantry soldiers is ridiculous.) But I don’t think the approach of civil society here in the US is the only one the Bible allows for. Genders being equivalent before the law works fairly well in the context of American culture and American economic conditions. But a cookie cutter duplicate of that system will not necessarily work as well in a different culture of different economic conditions.

Too often when I hear stories of women being abused or routinely mistreated in foreign cultures, The only ideas I hear being offered for how to address this are based on the idea of importing American notions of gender relations, or perhaps an even more extreme version of gender equality. The message these women need is not “Come on, you can do it, stand on your own two feet.“ the message they need is, “You deserve protection, you deserve care, the community has an obligation to recognize your vulnerability and make provision for you in light of that.” I think complementarians should be coming forward with calls to chivalry. We should be calling for efforts to protect rather than penalize women. We should be advocating for ways woman's unique gifts and be pursued and nurtured.

And just today I found this wonderful post about a complementarian outreach. This is the sort of thing I hope we will not only continue to do but extend.

Ehrman’s Apostolic Fathers

A couple weeks ago I finished After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers by Bart Ehrman. I wasn't going to write a review because I couldn’t recommend it. (Not that I’m against negative reviews on principle, but with so many other things read a non-recommendation would be sort of non-information.) But I’m puzzled by something in it and that is still bugging me. This is a general survey of the writing of the apostolic fathers from a neutral (really secular) point of view. The apostolic fathers is a subject I just love.  So I was looking forward to listening to this course even though I knew of Ehrman’s non-sympathy with traditional Christian views was expecting I would disagree with him on some points. When Ehrman got to Ignatius of Antioch and didn’t so much have a different opinion as not get Ignatious all together, I thought, ‘OK, Ignatius of Antioch is a favorite of mine and maybe I have an unusual degree of sympathy with him.’

What really puzzled me was when he referred, quite incidentally, to the phenomenon of synoptic passages in the gospel. He used differences in the passages to try to demonstrate the oral tradition can change over time. The way he presented it gave the impression that he thinks that oral source are the only source the synoptics share. Now I’m sure that if you asked Ehrman specifically he would agree with the normal scholarly opinion that the minor agreements in the synoptics indicate that there was some sort of shared written source, either copying from each other or a additional source. But it seems Ehrman is so focused on counteracting naive version of Christian belief that he is willing to ignore the very distorted impression of his own beliefs he is leaving. I am still puzzled by this seeming lack of centeredness in his own secular scholarly tradition. It seemed as if Ehrman was centered around a simplistic version of evangelical Christianity, but in a negative way.

One other example of what puzzled me: Ehrman gave a very detailed run through of a version of the theory of the development of orthodoxy in early Christian history that focused on hypothesized centrality of Rome in determining doctrine. Then he admitted in passing the even though most of the details of this theory were wrong (actually he had a slip of the tongue and first admitted all the details were wrong before going back and correcting himself to most) he thought the main thesis still held up. But he didn’t offer a single detail of an alternative supporting detail for his main theory. It makes me wonder if anyone has really gone back and re-evaluated the main theory in light of the downgrading of its details.

All this has started me wondering about the emotions of secular scholars who firmly disavow any commitment to a religious tradition but still spend their careers studying religious documents and religious history in exquisite detail. How much does an aversion to developing and positive connection to what they are suding so intimately predispose them to a negative connection?

Coverture of the Church by Christ

We know that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ saves us from our sin. We can say his blood has washed our sins, that Jesus has paid the price for us and redeemed us. But the redeeming power price is really something outside the rest of our experiences. There is nothing else in the up ever experience that come comes close to what Christ has done for us. We must use analogies to talk about the reality of what Christ has done for us.

This is my own analogy that I've come up with. I wouldn't hold it out as certain gospel truth or cling to it as something that I would put my faith in. But part of my meditation on God's word is trying out ideas, trying to think things out for myself. I've heard various theories about exactly how God accomplishes the work of justifying us taking our sins away and making us righteous. I've heard about substitution and double substitution, and while I wouldn't want to dismiss any of those ideas, the very controversy and passion which there discussed leads me to think of ideas of my own also.

One thing that strikes me as similar is the idea of coverture. Coverture is an old idea in English common law whereby a husband-and-wife are one person and, in the eyes of the law that person is the husband. This meant things like a woman who was married could not contract the legal debt. Any contract she signed would not be enforceable unless her husband had consented to it. This could make it hard for a woman to do business because people, knowing this, would not want to lend her money or conclude business contracts with her without checking with her husband. But if the woman happened to have a perfect husband, then the situation would provide protection for her. It would shield her from obligation, and show clearly that it was her husband's duty to provide. Leviticus provides for something like this in relation to debts to God. A maiden living in her father's house or married woman who promised something to God, a sacrifice or some other obligation, would not be held to that obligation, would be cleared of it in the eyes of God, if her husband or father forbade it when he first heard of it.

If Christ and his bride the Church are one flesh, than any debt or obligation we have has already been taken on by him. God disallows, renders null and void all our tresspasses against Him. When people come come to accuse us of our wrongs Jesus says, ‘I and the one you are looking for for my Church is united with me. And I have already been executed.’ Once the head has been cut off justice does not demand that the pinkie finger be executed also.

One thing I like about this analogy is that it emphasizes this is not just an anonymous gift. You can’t send off for your salvation to be delivered via a PO Box. Intimacy with God comes along with accepting His redemption of us. We should expect to know and comune with Him as a result of the fact that He has redeemed us. One we are presented before God in clean linen, we wouldn't just bow and back out, to go our own way, but will be part of the court forever.

Asperger's Syndrome and Communication

It’s surprising how difficult as Asperger’s syndrome can make simple conversations. When I have a specific subject I know something about, I can be clear and talk for hours on that subject. But a simple questions like, “Where are you going?” or “What are you doing?” locks me up and makes me confused. I find it hard for me to figure out how to put words together. When I think about the question, “Where are you going?” it is confusing in a number of dimensions. In the dimension of time, should I answer with right this second I’m going toward the kitchen to pick up my purse that I left there, or I’m going to go to the store? It is also ambiguous in relation to the specificity dimension, should I just say I’m going to the store or I’m going to Safeway or I’m going to the Rivermark Safeway? Should I also include why I’m going there? Sometimes I don’t have a specific plan. So I have to compile the whole plan in my head before I can sort through it to pick out the specific information asked for. I feel very pressured it can take three or 4 seconds to figure this all out and I can feel as that time is passing the pressured answer the question in the proper rhythm for the conversation

Starting a conversation with a specific bit of information I want to convey can be just as hard in its own way.  It was a hard-learned lesson that I couldn’t just come up to somebody and start talking about whatever I want, that I need to pay attention to their mood, their concerns, and the social appropriateness of the moment. But the lesson just bit deeper for all its difficulty. Though I know now that I have to wait for an opening to introduce my subject, I am still not very good at spotting an appropriate opportunity. Often by the time I evaluate a moment consider all the angles and decided it is appropriate, the conversation has already moved on. Sometimes it helps to plan a specific trigger situation and plan specifically what I’m going to say. But then I can get so caught up in concocting an appropriate plan that I never get it correct to actually carry it out.

Dragon Naturally Speaking

I've just gotten a new toy called Dragon Naturally Speaking. I'm just beginning to learn how use it but it feels much different from typing. It is a dictation program that has you speak into a microphone to compose text and give commands. It works best when you speak in clear complete sentences, saying the punctuation out loud. I compose sentences mentally either way, speaking or typing. But I find it much easier to stop in the middle sentence and change the grammar when typing mailing using the dictation program. I find myself closing my eyes to keep track of what I'm saying. I'm still struggling to learn the software, and it is different in feel from anything I've used before. I also find myself so excited sometimes, it seems like magic as the worst just appear on the screen, that I have a hard time concentrating, not on the process, but on the document I'm composing. The dictation program does occasionally mis-hears words, and I'll be editing all these all the posts I make with it extensively. But it will be interesting to see how using the dictation program changes my writing style.

Pair of Posts

A pair of posts I read today...

I don't know that person's prgram

he had to destroy a strong desire to believe that the society he lived in was safe and just. ... That desire to trust society gets in the way of understanding every kind of injustice. I am amazed that people trust a society that does its best to shut out and destroy all but a handful of people. But they do.

Rebels without a Spine

 Rebellion has become conformism.  The pierced kids with multiple tattoos? They’re the ones doing what their boomer parents and teachers tell them.

Voting Responsibility vs. Personal Responsibility

In a democracy, or a republic like ours ,the people ultimately responsible for shaping policy are the voters. Though we votes for them very indirectly, many political arguments revolve around what the right policy should be. One of the primary factors is what choice is morally right to make.

There’s a strategy that is at the base of lot of moral policy reasoning the I want to argue against. This is the strategy of looking at the question as  if it were a question of your personal behavior and voting for America to act as it would be right for you to act. I.e. If it would be right for you to turn the other cheek then it is right for America to turn the other cheek.  

But you are not making decisions for just yourself when voting.  Think how we would judge an absolute king who decided what must be right for his people based upon what was right for himself without ever getting to know his subjects. The citizens of a democratic state are collectively sovereign over it. When we exercise the sovereign franchise we also have the responsibilities of a sovereign for his people’s welfare.

Thus we need to think not just about what risks we are willing to run and what sacrifices we are willing to make but also what risks and sacrifices we are willing to impose on others. We don’t just have to realize the others have different opinions and different viewpoints from ours. We have to really take their opinions seriously because the decision being made is on their behalf as well as our own.

We stand as trustees for rights and property of others. We have a responsibility to act for their good, even if we would not bother to pursue that good on our own behalf. Giving your own money away is a good in many situations where giving someone else’s money to the same cause is much more problematic. Sacrificing some else’s dignity is the same situation where sacrificing your own dignity would be self confident and above the situation. We need to be conscious of the sider responsibility we have as voters than we have in ordinary life. The authority that has been entrusted to us is precious, and we need to have due reverence for it’s awesome responsibility. 

Inside the Body

Today at church we had communion. And the I was thinking about the act of symbolically drinking the blood of Jesus. Some days ago I was doing an internet survey of what pictures are disgusting. One of the candidates presented was a splatter of blood against a white background.

Since the red and white color combination was so clearly not offensive, it started me thinking about why the idea of blood might be disgusting. After all everyone has blood circulating around inside their body and that is not considered disgusting. It’s the idea that the blood, when outside the body, is profoundly out of place.

When we take the cup in communion we are acknowledging that we are already inside the body of Christ. Metaphorical blood is not out of place here because it is not on the outside. This blood is fulfilling its purposes, flowing among the different members of Jesus’s body.

if you never had to make those decisions

But she wondered, as she rose, if this was the danger the gods presented to mortals: the sense that someone, somewhere, knew if all, and knew it well enough that there was no point and no need to struggle to reach a decision; one could leave it, for eternity, in their hands. If the Mother were here, Jewel would have gratefully handed the whole of the War--all of it--into her keeping. What did you become, in the end, if you never had to make those decisions and those mistakes?  

-from Skirmish by Michelle West

Privilege and Responsiblity

Today I was reading this article about why some of today’s meritocratically selected elite don’t seem to feel the responsibility of their position like some elites used to. This brought to mind something that has been simmering in my head since I discovered RaceFail ‘09, which is like a reality TV show but 100 times better. It helped me understand the far left, even though I still don’t agree with them on many things; I can see that they have attractive premisses and that their ideas were rational extensions from those premisses. One of the central things I learned is the special definition of privilege and the central concept tied to it, which you can read about here. For the super short version there is this

Privilege is ... about advantages you have that you think are normal. It's about you being normal, and others being the deviation from normal. It's about fate dealing from the bottom of the deck on your behalf. ...  If you get a job, to what extent was that based on the way you look, your gender, your accent, your connections? How can you tell?   -from  A primer on privilege: what it is and what it isn't.

While I could see some of the arguments against this concept of privilege, and the attitudes that went with it, were self-serving; I also felt that the way privilege was being talked about was pointing to misleading conclusions. The results I think are true, for everyone regardless of any privileged difference you can point to, are that we should be aware that there are going to be times when our accustomed authority or status doesn’t apply, and that we should be willing to let our power decrease so that others might increase, where that is appropriate. But because of the indefinite but all encompassing way “privilege” is talked about, it leads to the implication that everyone should always be rejecting the idea they are supposed to be in charge and always acting like they don’t have any status. But this can lead to nobody taking charge of overall results and feeling they are responsible.

There is a contradiction in saying the special position you hold in the world in wrong and needs to be discarded at the same time as saying the special responsibility of your position is something that you need to live up to.  The implication of the way ‘privilege’ is used is that because whatever power you have may have been, in some unknown percentage, possible for you to gain because you were favored but factors outside your control, then that power is in some percentage illegitimate. But if your authority is illegitimate then your responsibility is too. If you can’t divest yourself of a power then must claim the power in order to claim the associated responsibility. In order to have a functioning society there has to be a way for some to have legitimate authority and those with legitimate power can legitimately be privileged.

So what are groups really?

When I had not yet finished The Righteous Mind, I was trying to explain the book’s proposal that some of the fundamental differences in viewpoint that can underlie conservative strands in various cultures can have to do with seeing things more at the group level than at the individual level. It seemed right when I read it but when I try to explain it it seemed to be: wait a minute, aren’t the liberals and progressives the ones known for championing groups like how want to pursue the interests of minorities or of the poor? So I’ve been thinking about groups and what they are. I think first of a collection of people. But if your dealings with a group are just a collection of dealings with individuals then what is the point of calling the people a group. I think we sometimes fall unconsciously into thinkin of a group as a sort of uber-person. Just like any other person, but bigger. This might be connected to the idea of homo economicus and similar statistical models that assume people have basically the same goals so that in similar situations people will react similarly. If one hungry person equals a concession stall sale then if you multiply the number of hungry people by 5 then just multiply the number of sales. In the same way we can tend to think of a group as an individual behavior multiplied by a number of members. When we deal with a group as a whole the only pattern we have is to treat it as if it was just a big individual. This seems to be the part of what underlies the Citizens United decision.

I see two problems with this way of viewing groups. This first is a tendency to blur distinctions which can lead to stereotypes and the type of category confusion Sarah Hoyt points out in I am a Culturist. If a group is just the set-of all people with characterises x then for the purpose of the discussion all people with characteristics x are interchangeable. Take this article about the reaction to the conviction of a group of men for sex offences. It seems that the way the crimes were committed (though not the crimes themselves) were in some way correlated with some aspect of their culture. But race religion and culture are all mixed up in the public’s minds. So these men’s incorrect way of adapting the Asian culture in which they were raised to british culture is spilling over into negative perceptions of the race and religion they are associated with. Situations like this which ‘Muslim’ is treated like a nationality or a place unintentionally confuse people and increase stigmas. If you start thinking of a group as all people with characteristic z = one big person with the average of its members action you are making everyone collectively responsible for each member’s individual actions.

The second problem is that if a group is just a collection of people than being in the group doesn't change your actions; as long as you have characteristic x you will behave in way why whether there are any other members of your group involved or not. You don’t have people above ,below, and beside you, people you influence and whom you are influenced by. I saw this neat graph:

see the whole story at druks and lampposts.

and realized it was actually a picture of a group. Philosophy wouldn’t be what it is without philosophers reaching out to influence and be influenced by other philosophers. How much more will membership in a tribe, an ethnic group, a church or an activist group be affected by how members are interconnected with each other. How group membership affects you wil be mediated by whether you are a leader or a follower, on the fringes or in the middle. Because of that Network of ties you can deal with this sort of group as one whole. Its internal ties can cause it to have coherent responses pressures and persuasions, but they won’t be the same responses any one person would have. They won’t even be the same responses prominent leaders in the group would have on their own. A group is a different type of thing than an individual and if you are just looking for individuals you will miss the forest for the trees.

It takes different things are needed to keep a group cohesive and functional than are need to keep a person happy and health. People acting in groups do not act in the same way as they would outside of the group. Things that make a good person do not necessarily make a good group. Whenever we are dealing with more than one person at a time we need to be clear in our own minds whether we are dealing just with a collection of people who happen to have some particular trait in common or whether we are dealing with a true group. In the first case we need to make sure that minimise as far as possible averaging our perception and our response over the different people. If it is the second case we need to make sure we are alert to the ways the group will NOT behave like an individual. We need to open our minds to seeing groups as something different from the individuals we are used to dealing with.

Freedom from our Fellows

Today in sunday school the lesson I was teaching included the song victory in Jesus and as I was listening my attention was caught by the mention of mansions. The song is referencing the King James version translation of John 14:2. Last weekend I was visiting a house that compared to my own home was like a mansion. Even with all the guests they had their was still plenty of room for us all to spread out, and there were many beautiful things in the house without it feeling at all cluttered. In the world today space is sometimes at a premium and it’s a luxury to have plenty of space for each person. It allows us to distance ourselves from the irritations of others and can conceal our own foibles.

But it struck me as wrong to think of that sort of mansion in association with our Father’s house. Would I need that freedom from my fellows once we are all free of the frailties of this fallen world? So I prefer the other definition of μοναι as simply dwelling place. I think we’ll all live in closeness in together in the house of the Lord rather than rattling around in our own mansions.

mini-Review: The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

Are you a person of the left wondering why conservatives are so cruel? are you a person of the right wondering why liberals are so blind? are somewhere in the middle wondering why we can’t all just get along? are you someone who doesn’t care wondering why there are all these political commercials on your TV? In any of these cases this book is for you.

Haidt drills down to the fundamental inclinations that are behind our feelings and convictions of what is right and wrong. He examines the differences in our values, how they come about and how they shape our perceptions of politics. He looks at how culture influences moral beliefs and how moral beliefs shape actions that impact the overall outcomes for societies, and how politics reflects this. Using his own research and that of others from a broad array of disciplines, he displays penetrating insight into how we shape morals and how morals shape us. There are some of his conclusions that I don’t necessarily agree with but he brings in new information to the conversation that point to fruitful areas of research and important things to think about.

This book is an easy and engaging read. It is well organized with a narrative that pulls you through the information. The evidence the ideas are based on is clearly explained. Haidt teaches powerful tools for either side to reach across the political divide to convince or to cooperate. The ideas in this book are important to understand if we are going to understand and work with each other. America needs to grasp these ideas if we are act coherently to influence our own future and communicate clearly with the rest of the world. I would recommend this book to everyone.

all devils

“‘I am a man,’ answered Father Brown; ‘and therefore have all devils in my heart.’”   - G. K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown

Catching the Ball

I was down in Southern California this weekend visiting relatives. With travel and new places and new people I was really noticing my asperger’s syndrome a lot. At home my coping mechanisms are so routine and so practiced I don’t really have to think about them. But traveling I was very aware of all the things I was struggling with. One thing I noticed was how poor my physical coordination was under these circumstances. I literally did worse in a game of catch then a 4 year old. I think the base problem is a vision one. But not of perceiving  is there at any one time. If I have my glasses on then, as long as something stays still and I focus on it for a second, I can see it fine.  Of course most people can see things better when they look at them paused. But I seem to have a harder time using short cuts to get usable information out of a generalized glance or a moving object.

When I look at an array of objects, say things on a desk, I’ll look at each object individually, a box, a pen, post-its. But until I’ve looked at everything and have it all absorbed, I can give a generalized statement like there is no pencil. To do that I’ll have to look at each object and identify it enough to know it is not a pencil. If I know specifically what I’m looking, say a long yellow no. 2 school pencil, for I’ll be able to eliminate some things quickly, wrong color, wrong general shape. But if I could be looking for any pencil from slick mechanical to a worn down stub I’ll have to pretty much identify every object on the table in order to eliminate the possibility of a pencil. If someone moves one of the objects on a desk I feel like I have to re-identify not only the object that moved but also every other object on the desk, especially those around either it’s new or old position, before I once again feel like I’ve seen the desk. (This means I have a strong disinclination to move things around more than necessary.)

Moving objects are even worse. If I let myself truly mindfully look at them, I start the identification process but then objected has moved and I click over and start the identification process from the beginning, over and over again without every really absorbing the object I’m focused on. The background gives the impression of flipping between a zoom lens coming towards focus and away from focus without even having a stop on in focus. The whole thing is very nausea making.

Most of the time, especially in places I’m habituated to, I can manage to withdraw just enough attention that the identification process never fully engages and I can get my mind to accept using what I saw last second to take the place of fully absorbing what I see this second. This works best when the motion is slow or relatively far away so that less of my visual field is involved in the motion. Things that make it harder include watching something coming close to touching something else, as that makes the motion more attention grabbing, and also watching my own body move as that too tends to focus too much attention of the movement. I have a habit of putting something down on the counter by looking at the counter while I begin the motion and then looking away set-down. This cuts down on the queasy making visuals but can also lead to occasional spills.

Of course flinching my eyes closed at the sight of my hand reaching for a flying ball was pretty disastrous. Luckily the kids didn’t seem to mind that my only ‘adult’ like contribution to the games was things like saying that in a room with breakable object the ball should only rolled, not thrown. Even though I’ve come so far, all through the trip I was very aware of how my capabilities were more like the kids then like the adults.