[Ipg-smz] On Stallman

Mon Sep 23 16:48:16 UTC 2019

Brains aren't identical in so many ways, but the varietals are 
identifiable, and autism is a spectrum. Aspberger's a variation.

The incredible varieties have to fight limbic impulses to function in a 
civil world. Some can be taught and might learn. Others, the sociopaths 
and psycopaths feel no guilt or love at all, but share other human traits.

Those in the autism spectrum also not a member of the class of 
socio/psycopaths/narcissists, can have other mental health-functionality 
issues, too.... like depression, schizophrenia, bipolar manifestations 
and more. They can also have mixtures of all of the aforementioned just 
like the rest of the population. Luckily, my brother functions well in 
these regards.

Stating these facts isn't to apologize for them, merely to understand 
where they come from, and how those in the spectrum are able to function 
in a world that's changing for them, and for us.

In my grandfathers' era, both were of the white privileged class, and 
women didn't work, had no real rights, and were subjugated-- treated as 
chattel, along with anyone else who wasn't white and privileged. One 
grandfather was a defender of this class, while the other, despite his 
own privilege and difficulties, became a believer in social justice, 
perhaps in the extreme. The extreme is far closer to the center of the 
currently-labeled progressive movement. Both sides had members with 
symptoms of autism and yes, the other maladies mentioned above.

Today, my daughter's a scientist and my son is a social worker. Time 
changes things, including many metrics. Sometimes it also changes 
behaviors and situational dynamics to the benefit of the core of 
humanity. And every day is a battle for that core as the world evolves.

My brother was so entirely different, i wondered when I was young if 
they had made an accidental switch at the hospital. Kindly and 
steadfastly, my mother convinced me that I was wrong. She was right, of 
course. Embracing his strangeness, his deviation from what I thought was 
the norm, has been life-changing for me. This said, he's a wonderful guy 
and where he has chasms, you cannot see the bottom of the chasm with the 
most powerful binoculars on earth. The barriers in my mind are different 
than his; mine are ultimately flexible and his, where found, are 
intransigent in the extreme. I'm lucky he's trainable and forgivable for 
his strangenesses are comparatively innocuous. My great fear is that 
he'll act out one day, and some hapless public safety officer will 
misidentify a very rare (non-violent but possible) tantrum and fill him 
full of 9mm slugs. It's for this reason that we've carefully constructed 
boundaries for him to allow him to live somewhat alone.

Tom

On 9/23/19 10:41 AM, Tara Calishain via Ipg-smz wrote:
> "Every day I deal with my autistic brother's shenanigans. He is built,
> how he's built.; in the 1960s it was rare to even get a diagnosis and
> few knew what to do with autistim diagnoses. He's trainable. Graduated
> high school. But moving outside of his own context is nigh impossible. "
>
> Oh my word. This. So this. My brother was not diagnosed with 
> Aspberger's until 2003, when he was almost 40. (He has other health 
> problems that might have inhibited an earlier diagnosis.)
>
> He has done things that have made me want to crawl in a hole and pull 
> it in after myself. But I will give him this: if he does something 
> ridiculous, my mother explains that it was ridiculous and not to do it 
> again, and he doesn't. And I have never seen him be intentionally 
> cruel or mean.
>
> (He's also the only one of the three of us who graduated from high 
> school, so he also gets props for that.)
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 11:24 AM Tom Henderson via Ipg-smz 
> <ipg-smz at netpress.org <mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org>> wrote:
>
>     Fellow Guilders,
>
>     I go way back in Linux. Long ago, the Linux Business Expo was part of
>     COMDEX, and I was one of many functionaries in the greater spheres of
>     COMDEX program development. Lots of interesting characters evolved
>     Linux
>     for a variety of motivations.
>
>     Stallman was the anti-Microsoft. The pillar of free. I'm not a
>     licensed
>     medical/health/psych practitioner in any jurisdiction, but
>     Stallman had
>     brains, perhaps some autisim, and thought things through. He cared
>     not
>     one whit about his personal appearance or scent. Clue #1.
>
>     He had boundaries in the philosophy of Free. They were well-developed
>     and thought through. Much of his hard work in finishing the utilities
>     that make the operating system we know as Linux were at his hands, or
>     one step-away.
>
>     His lip flatulence was notorious, as is/was/were many in the early
>     free/open source movement. Many of them had a gripe with the sheer
>     mendacity of Microsoft and its minions. SJV-N believes Microsoft has
>     changed. I'm not sure if I share that believe, but as an
>     researcher, I
>     continue to observe.
>
>     Stallman is a member of a wider body of men that think within
>     their own
>     context. It's difficult to shift outside of that personal context for
>     them. I'm not excusing their behavior, just observing it.
>
>     Nor am I forgiving it, and history shouldn't, either. The object that
>     we'll look backwards upon 100yrs from now, should have that stain
>     mentioned, not just the bullet-point of: founder of "free" as a
>     construction and architectural concept. He was also: a dick.
>
>     Can he help being a dick? I'll leave that to others. Too many men
>     follow
>     their hormones rather than something evolved in the pre-frontal
>     cortex.
>     Is being a dick part of autism? Does it being autism make it
>     forgivable?
>     No, is my answer-- it's a quality that doesn't offset the fetid scent.
>
>     Every day I deal with my autistic brother's shenanigans. He is built,
>     how he's built.; in the 1960s it was rare to even get a diagnosis and
>     few knew what to do with autistim diagnoses. He's trainable.
>     Graduated
>     high school. But moving outside of his own context is nigh
>     impossible.
>     Change comes after daunting repetition. Only then. Trust me: only
>     then.
>     My late mother had him queued in a very Pavlovian way, and was
>     successful, but my brother doesn't live with me. I've developed a
>     support network for him. At a family event, he will blurt the most
>     insane stuff, not understanding how a poop joke might not go over
>     well
>     with his aging aunt. Clueless. There are many clueless in the world.
>     Their population doesn't forgive the cluelessness, just makes us work
>     harder at inculcating manners. Like most of us, he wants to be loved.
>
>     And so, atop the object that we might describe about others, their
>     incredible accomplishments but their amazing lip flatulence and even
>     more morbid felonies: some were built to not recognize the emotive
>     response of other humans. It's just the way things are.
>
>     There are many "Aspie" and autistic people somehow in my immediate
>     circle of people, or perhaps, one step away. Here in the
>     university town
>     where I live, it's like the aforementioned Mensa meeting, where
>     people
>     came to study, and unable to live in the real world, became
>     academics,
>     or failing that, became "townies" with IQs in excess of 145 joining
>     their peers. They never succeed in any recognizable way, but they fit
>     into a rag-tag bunch of intellectual misfits which in turn, becomes a
>     subculture of snorters. Nothing inherently wrong with snorters. And a
>     common denominator of humanity is: Misfit, if of differing
>     cultures and
>     acumen.
>
>     To address therefore Dana's "everyone is eventually forgiven"
>     comment,
>     my answer is no, that's not quite correct. Like most things, it's
>     more
>     complicated than that. Some will want to understand the complexity,
>     while others just want to ascribe to The Winning Team or soundbite.
>
>     Tom
>
>
>     -- 
>     Tom Henderson
>     ExtremeLabs, Inc.
>     +1 317 250 4646
>     Twitter: @extremelabs
>     Skype: extremelabsinc
>
>
>     -- 
>     Ipg-smz mailing list
>     Ipg-smz at netpress.org <mailto:Ipg-smz at netpress.org>
>     http://netpress.org/mailman/listinfo/ipg-smz_netpress.org
>
>
-- 
Tom Henderson
ExtremeLabs, Inc.
+1 317 250 4646
Twitter: @extremelabs
Skype: extremelabsinc

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