Independence - Blog Posts

I realized the other day that the reason I didn't watch much TV as a teenager (and why I'm only now catching up on late aughts/early teens media that I missed), is because I literally didn't understand how to use our TV. My parents got a new system, and it had three remotes with a Venn diagram of functions. If someone left the TV on an unfamiliar mode, I didn't know how to get back to where I wanted to be, so I just stopped watching TV on my own altogether.

I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.

In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.

This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.

My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?

My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.

When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.

I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.

Maybe. This is the theory of one person. I'm curious if anyone else vibes with this at all.

She tastes like the metallic burn of blood.

She smells like the pop of wood as the fire consumes it.

She feels like the static that clings to your clothes.

She looks like lightning as it cracks the sky.

And he fancies himself Zeus.

@thefluffyvillain-fluffmaster Fanart for Fluffmaster’s fanfic “Independence”, one of my favorites. This was also an excuse to draw KamiDeku/DekuKami. First time posting on this app. Yay

Radicalisation, Hate, and the Great Die Out.

I didn’t write for a while, it is hard work using my brain to the extent that I do so time off is necessary, as any hyper vigilant person may already know... and for the record, I am playing with this “great die out” in the title. You should know that I classify those using phrases like “the great reset, the great bla bla, etc” as radicalised people.

I want to write about our ongoing, and in my view, dangerous journey that is deepening into the world of single mindedness.

By single mindedness, what I mean is the one track, intolerant, anti diversity that our brains appear to be being trained into, by what often traces back to source as social media.

It doesn't only track back to social media, it also tracks back to certain public speakers, those of which who rightly so, hold their own beliefs and value set in the world, but instead of keeping those various laundries at home on the drying rail amongst friends and family sharing a cup of tea and a biscuit, they are taken out in front of great audiences both in person and online, with the intention of letting people know that their view is the only one that matters.

The problem with that is where some people in the audience have a tendency towards hate, and in many ways would like to act out that hate as a form of completion in their lives to please a specific person, being, or god. They really just want to please themselves.

Beliefs of people are one thing, but when they are pushed upon others as the “right” way above others personal will, then what we are dealing with is a person who wants to radicalise others into their own ideas about how life is to be lived.

Most of the obvious people who do this in the public eye are acting under the guise of religion. They are permitted to be there because they tout the religion as the reasoning behind their thinking, but looking at them all it is easy to see they are simply incredibly old fashioned. They, powerless in a rapidly changed, and still changing world, are struggling to grasp with the realities that they now find themselves in and perhaps have deep, survival based needs to make the modern world that they now find themselves in even more evil than it ever has been.. even though we come from a time where the iron age was probably as gruesome as it gets, and open incest is catalogued in their written histories.

Despite all of our efforts to be beautiful in the world, inclusive and if we like, engaging in of all of our individual, creative worlds, hate will preside both in the overground and the underground, but at least in one projection I can see high potential for the old fashioned overground to simply die out as the arrow of time continues to direct us all ever onward, and onward’s :)

Public speakers who preach hate trickle down their one track ideas to the next generations, but the beauty is that each generation waters it down before the hate it becomes nothing, non existent.

May you all be beautifully blessed, and sending extra massive love to the trans community and all those creating with genders, non genders, roles, and identities right now.

🇨🇺 #Cuba #VersosSencillos Issued 1991 | #JoseMartí was a poet, writer and thinker in the 19th century. He was also exiled for wanting #independence from the #Spanish crown. "Rights are taken, not asked for or begged." -JM In current times, he would have been also an activist and dissent in #Cuba under the #communist regime. | José Martí, un pensador independentista y parte del exilio cubano en el siglo 19. Una de mis frases favoritas: " Los derechos se toman, no se piden, se arrancan, no se mendigan." #AbajoCastro #postagestamp #sello #stampcollection #philately #filatelia #instalike #instamood #instagood #tgif #derechoshumanos

I became so much more delicate

when I was with you—

in body

in spirit

Some days,

a strong gust of wind could’ve scattered me

over the globe

like ashes in an ocean

You taped HANDLE WITH CARE on me and

ignored your own warning

And when I was shattered on the floor,

when I was left sewing together

what was left of my soul

Without you,

That’s when I woke up

and finally realized how much better I am

Without you

So t h a n k y o u

for teaching me

I don’t need anyone but

Me

— Yushan C.

The woman you are becoming will cost you people, relationships, spaces, and material things. Choose her over everything.

The House on Mango Street was the first book that put what I wanted when I grew up into words. I hyperfixated on the shoes especially. They symbolize Esperanza's sexuality, and then her inner conflict between that sexuality and her desire for independence. I had similar struggles, particularly when I was 15. Quinces are a huge event in a Cuban girls life. Everyone in the extended family comes to ogle at the garish decorations while talking smack about the girl's dress and body in between bites of ropa vieja and croquetas. At the end, they exchange the little girl shoes she has for a high heel. Symbolizing her "ascension" into womanhood. This terrified me. I was still growing into my body. My feet still clumsy and my hands too small to hold onto to the ridiculous bouffant skirt of the dress which would inevitably lead me to trip even more in front of judging relatives. More than anything, I wasn't ready to be a woman, even symbolically. The questions of when I would get married, have children, would increase in their seriousness as they did for my first cousin. Under this pressure, she then had her baby at 17 with a man who constantly cheats on her to this day. They will tell me to go to university so I can find an educated man. Not to worry about about an education from myself. That I already study/read too much and men don't want overly smart women. This was the picture I had of "becoming a woman" since I transitioned from baby to child shoes. I told everyone the Christmas before my Quince in September that I would not be having one. The adults laughed and my cousins jeered at me at the kids table thinking I was loca and "antisocial". My mother, told me it would be my choice, but that the family would like to join me in this joyous occasion. I was shaking beneath their eyes, but again I said I did not want one. As September drew closer, the questions for when the invites were going out started to grow numerous. I again told them I would not be doing a quince. My aunt cried and called me selfish. That she never had a daughter, only sons, and she wanted to help me plan it. For the first time in my 15 years, I refused to give in. No amount of crocodile tears would get me to budge. I'm glad I did. It was the first step in MY path to becoming a woman. No high heels needed. Now, I keep my heelless "child shoes" near my bed in my own apartment where I live alone with my dog. Comfortable and free.

YOU decide what it means to be woman. Do not let anyone and their outdated traditions tell you what to do.

The Message that goes unheard

Science and scientists are not the enemy. We're on the same team.

We scientists are servants to society. We are here to serve you. We're supposed to find, share and defend the truth. We're supposed to listen to your concerns and investigate them rigorously. It's our job to serve you. We are your servants, not your enemies.

Policymakers and government officials are supposed to consult us, scientists and experts so that when they're making decisions they do so in ways that benefit society that protect you. That doesn't always happen and it wouldn't be the first time in history that we scientists have had to take governments to task for their failure to protect you, for their failure to take decisions that benefit society.

The scientific community, independent academic scientists are completely distinct from pharmaceutical companies who hire scientists, they need people with scientific training, but they are distinct. The independent academic scientific community is its own thing. We, scientists. Regulators.

We are here to protect you from those companies. Think about Francis Kelsey in the 1960s who refused to approve thalidomide because there was a lack of evidence to support its safety. Think about the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 when the Soviet state tried to hide the scale and danger of the incident, not just from its own citizens but from the world. It was we scientists, independent scientists, both in and outside of the USSR, who exposed the truth. We gathered data, generated evidence and shared it so that the global community could respond to the crisis and contain the destruction to the best of our ability.

We academic scientists spend most of our early career earning less than a minimum wage. And we do not benefit financially from producing one outcome over another. Private companies do. Politicians and policy makers do.

Science, like all human institutions, is not perfect and it is not entirely immune from corruption. However, the scientific method and the academic system is built such that it's pretty well insulated from corruption. Much better than private business, politics, which are environments in which corruption not only happens freely, but is specifically rewarded. The system is stacked such that those behaviours are rewarded.

Scientists are your servants. We stand with you. And this is precisely because we are among the most powerful weapons you have in your armoury to push back against corruption and exploitation.

It's precisely for that reason that you are being led to believe that you cannot trust scientists and experts. That was deliberate.

Dr. Rachel Barr

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdYxJSW8/