Over time, it grew clearer to me what other people were thinking and feeling, particularly regarding how they were relating to me.  My obsessions grew integrated with my goals.  I became far less split or self conflicted.

The split that I experienced had perhaps less to do with my Asperger’s tendencies than with a childhood characterized by extreme stress.  But, I’m not sure.

People with autism aren’t generally understood to display classic personality splits featuring conflicts with self, self deprecation or a deep feeling of personal responsibility for what is wrong.  That split would suggest a developed theory of mind, with a mind in conflict, assigning responsibility for difficulties to a self that feels separate.  Nevertheless, there are degrees of split depending on where one sits on the autism-Asperger’s spectrum.  I’ve observed those with Asperger’s feeling deeply divided, assigning to self responsibility for a life characterized by distress.

It was often, if not usually, the case that children with Asperger’s were isolated from most social groups and often were targeted with teasing.  I was teased when others discovered that I would believe most anything I was told.  This occasionally would make me a center of attention when a joke could be constructed around my believing whatever had been imagined.  I often felt humiliated, furious and alone.  I would assign blame to myself for my feeling of isolation.  I expect that this is a common experience for those with Asperger’s.

One way I would adjust was to recoil from those that the class shunned, boys with Asperger’s.  I felt like I could blend in with the “normal” side, and mostly I did.  Yet, I often maintained a feeling I’d be “discovered.”

I was terrified of being singled out for torment.  At the same time, I felt powerfully attracted to people on an individual basis or while playing sports.  I spent no small amount of my childhood collecting boys to play baseball and football.  I proactively sought out playmates.  Yet, I only liked groups when we were playing games.  Mostly, I engaged in various collecting hobbies with another boy.  I introduced many friends to new hobbies such as collecting stamps, coins, rocks, miscellaneous stuff and comics.  I was obsessed with comics.  This was the 1950s and 1960s.

The idea I’m trying to tease out right now is that autism theory suggests that neurodiverse individuals maintain an experience characterized by the “other” as often absent or inscrutable.  Yet, as children, experience is often characterized by uniquely high degrees of stress in social situations because those with autism and Asperger’s are often singled out as different and worthy of receiving negative attention.  This tends to engender self reflection as possible sources for the distress, and malaise is explored and evaluated.  I’ve observed in myself and folks with Asperger’s a tendency to assign to the self blame for being “different” and blame of self for the experience of ongoing distress.  In other words, in some ways Asperger’s individuals have a heightened theory of mind as they experience a deeply personal divide.  They may not be able to easily intuit what is happening in others, but they often engage in a struggle characterized by two sides, and they take both sides in the conflict.

I say such an individual is able to take both sides in the conflict because the person evidently participates in both the placating and blaming polarity in the struggle, identifying with both sides, taking turns.

This begs a question.  Perhaps theory of mind is not an ability to experience both sides of a polarity but an ability to have that experience, to some degree, simultaneously.  Do neurotypicals have an ability to experience simultaneous identification with another while being with self, while the neurodiverse, even while in relationship with self, are only able to identify with one at one time?

Clearly, the neurotypicals are often just as split within themselves as any person with Asperger’s.  A question is:  Do neurotypicals have some brain-structure advantage when it comes to identifying simultaneously with both aspects of the split?

I am suggesting that theory of mind is not just an estimation of what goes on within another person.  It is also an ability to identify with what is going on within the self.

“Primary process is characterized (e.g., by Fenichel) as lacking negatives, lacking tense, lacking in any identification of linguistic mood (i.e., no identification of indicative, subjunctive, optative, etc.) and metaphoric.  These characterizations are based upon the experience of psychoanalysts, who must interpret dreams and the patterns of free associations.” (Bateson G (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind.  Balantine: New York, p. 139)

In other words, some ancient matrilineal societies may exhibit a less robust “theory of mind” than moderns.  Connections between matrifocal aboriginals and modern autistics are made.

The recapitulationists of the early twentieth century that emphasized three-fold and four-fold parallelisms make a new kind of sense.  In other words, there emerges a connection between the scales of human societal evolution and individual ontogeny insofar as aboriginal society child rearing practices inform how modern society can raise the children of its high testosterone women.  (I hypothesize that the women in early matrifocal societies are high testosterone and high estrogen.)

Imagine that ten years from now these connections are being made.  High testosterone mothers (and perhaps high testosterone, high estrogen mothers) are provided specific guidance on how to raise their children using aboriginal techniques.  The web becomes filled with the various ways children are guided into adulthood within an environment suited to their unique bodies, minds and brains.  Autism rates plummet but fully functional, socialized children with autistic (matrilineal aboriginal) bodies, minds and spirits are discovered to be making unique and profound contributions to society.

World culture drifts in the direction of raising children using aboriginal conventions.

The result two generations from now is a dramatic drop in commercial innovation and industrial production but a skyrocketing in aesthetics, programming and mathematics.  Art and the abstract sciences burn up the planet’s online bandwidth with an amateurization of professions formerly available to the very few.

Our consumer economy is crashing.  What will take its place?  Consider this just-so story as one alternative direction.

There’s about a three-month lag from the time these pieces are written until they post. It is January 16, 2009, today and Simon Baron-Cohen is releasing another study emphasizing that high mother uterine testosterone levels influence the likelihood of autism in her children.

I’m starting to see pieces on the web suggesting that lowering a mother’s testosterone levels might mitigate the chances of autism. A piece by Baron-Cohen suggested that it would be a very bad idea to approach autism as a disease that can be prevented via foeticide. (See Autism Is Not Cancer)
I’ve outlined in essays on this website a number of different ways that testosterone is managed or manipulated by the various circumstances in our life. In 1998, I noted the connection between a mother’s uterine testosterone levels and conditions informed by maturational delay and acceleration that included autism. Then, as now, I maintain a respect and reverence for the humans that experience the world through this condition.

“The fundamental pattern of the brain thus appears to be asymmetrical, with the same pattern of asymmetries found in most adults. There are, however, influences in pregnancy that tend to diminish the extent of left-sided predominance, at least in the regions involved in handedness and language, and thus secondarily to result in larger regions on the right side. As noted earlier, our hypothesis is that some factor related to male sex, perhaps testosterone or some closely related factor, is the most likely candidate. The net effect of these intrauterine influences is to produce a shift from left predominance to symmetry, and in a smaller number of cases to modest right predominance.” (Geschwind & Galaburda 1987: 46, Cerebral Lateralization)
A discussion has not yet begun that addresses how life style changes influence hormone levels that may influence autism. I’m feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the notion that women will seek either to lower testosterone rates or abort potential autistic children. I would expect that the neurodiversity movement will violently oppose foeticide and hormone manipulation interventions. I foresee major struggles regarding these issues.

“To determine whether ethanol per se affects testosterone metabolism, alcohol was administered to normal male volunteers for periods up to four weeks, resulting in an initial dampening of the episodic bursts of testosterone secretion followed by decreases in both the mean plasma concentration and the production rate of testosterone. The volunteers received adequate nutrition and none lost weight during the study, which tended to exclude a nutritional disturbance as the cause of the decreased testosterone levels. The changes in plasma luteinizing hormone suggested both a central (hypothalamus-pituitary) and gonadal effect of alcohol. In addition, alcohol consumption increased the metabolic clearance rate of testosterone in most subjects studied, probably owing to the combined effects of a decreased plasma binding capacity for the androgen and increased hepatic testosterone A-ring reductase activity. These results indicate that alcohol markedly affects testosterone metabolism independently of cirrhosis or nutritional factors.” (Gordon, G. G., Altman, K., Southren, A. L., Rubin, E. and Lieber, C. S. (1976) Effect of alcohol (ethanol) administration on sex-hormone metabolism in normal men. N Engl J Med 295 (15): 793)

I’ve hypothesized that diet, touch and rhythm are the foundation of what is required for a child born of a mother with high testosterone levels. I estimate that the classic pre-agricultural Neolithic diet is right for the male maturational delayed, female maturational accelerated body. Constant touch keeps these unique children in constant contact. Rhythm is the lifeblood of these pattern-compulsive personalities. The rhythm ties them to the others that are engaged in the rhythms in their lives.

The idea is not to make the autistic child normal. We can seek to make it possible for the autistic child to become what they are naturally inclined to be. The evolutionary theory that this website promotes has its foundation in an understanding that the autistic are emerging in a society behaving in deeply inappropriate ways for autistic health. Our society is changing. It is my belief that it is changing in the direction of becoming a healthier environment for the autistic and the rest of us. Still, it is necessary to understand the context of autism, the ways that humans have evolved, to understand the ways the world would best nourish the autistic. The rest of us may profit handsomely from these insights. Understanding health for an autistic child is to understand foundations for human health.

“Theoretical speculation in humans (S. F Witelson, Psychoneuroendocrinology 16 (1991) 131-153) and empirical findings in animals (R. H. Fitch, P. E. Cowell, L. M. Schrott, V. H. Denenberg, Int. J. Dev. Neurosci. 9 (1991) 35-38) suggest that testosterone (T) may play a significant role in the development of the corpus callosum (CC). However, there are currently no empirical studies directly relating T concentrations to callosal morphology in humans. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between free T concentrations as determined by radioimmunoassay, and the mid-sagittal area of the corpus callosum, as determined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Subjects were 68 young adult (20-35 years), neurologically normal, right-handed males. All subjects underwent MRI and provided two samples of saliva for radioimmunoassay of T and cortisol. Anatomical regions of interest included total brain volume, left and right hemisphere volume and regional areas of the CC. CC regions were defined using two different measurement techniques, each dividing the CC into six sub-sections. Anatomical measurements were performed blind with respect to the hormone levels of subjects. A significant positive correlation between T concentration and cross-sectional area of the posterior body of the CC was found. This finding was consistent across the two measurement techniques and was not attributable to individual differences in total brain volume. All correlations between cortisol and CC sub-regions were non-significant. The results of this study are consistent with the notion that T, at an earlier stage in development, may play a significant role in modulating cortical/callosal architecture in humans.” (Moffat, S. D, Hampson, E., Wickett, J. C., Vernon, P. A., Lee, D. H. (1997) Testosterone is correlated with regional morphology of the human corpus callosum. Brain Res 767 (2):297)

There is a canary in this coal mine, a signal to society as we navigate the passageways of society’s Vast Depression and the toppling of our hierarchical conventions. That singing bird is our autistic. Understanding autism, we understand ourselves. Not only are we notified of dangerous paths by those environments deleterious to our autistic, but maybe we can allow ourselves to be guided forward by what we learn about ourselves learning about our autistic.

As Baron-Cohen noted, autism is not a cancer. Autism is not a disease. Autism is quite possibly an integral part of human illumination. Understanding our origins, we understand ourselves. In autism is an understanding of how we came to be.

Competitors are encouraged to “stay focused.” Shutting out the world achieves goals. Bateson might suggest that this ability to shut out the world also destroys it.

This blog describes a hypothetical proto society characterized by dance-and-song-driven rituals and a population selecting neotenous features in our species over time. We lived in dreamtime. We communicated by gesture. Both cerebral hemispheres were the same size, the corpus callosum brain bridge was still wide, we did not split time and children did not know who their fathers were. We were random-handed, left and right-handed half the time.

There were changes, changes described in this work. The result was society stopped selecting exclusively for aesthetics and started selecting for those adept at spoken language, splitting time and telling stories. The right cerebral hemisphere grew smaller, the corpus callosum became thinner and dreams retreated to the time we spend asleep. While awake, imagination flourished with an ability to manipulate time. Consciousness was now split with two hemispheres allied but in poor communication. Instead of each individual being unconsciously part of a larger whole, each was now consciously divided.

Thesis and antithesis. The synthesis is what we face today. How does each individual become consciously part of the larger whole?

I am coming to the conclusion that this is not so much a spiritual or religious question as much as it is social and biological. As a species, we are in the process of making the transition to a form of consciousness that features a far higher number of interconnections in space and time than has been the case before the emergence of the social networking technologies. Observing the ways the young are using the new technologies and how they encourage the invention of even newer technologies that enhance the destruction of traditional ideas of space and time, I conclude that we are deep into a social/biological transition.

Our world is becoming characterized by massive interconnection with individuals, each a hub in a universe of incoming and outgoing information. To some degree, this mitigates the destructive capabilities of the split-brain, split-time human. We are each becoming experts in consultation with an increasing capacity to embrace the connotations of repercussion. We are developing an intuition or understanding that our ability to split time can create unintended consequences. Society is technologically and socially addressing the destruction we have wrought. Still, to transcend the dissociative plague that Bateson describes requires more than just technology.

In addition to evolving as a society, our biology is transforming. There has been a return of matrifocal values that include horizontal interconnection and the original matrifocal neurological structures. The numbers of left-handers have been increasing along with the numbers of neurological conditions characterized by both cerebral hemispheres being the same size with a wide corpus callosum. These are the members of the self described neurodiversity movement. Autistic and Asperger’s individuals are stating that they are not subjects of a disorder, but members of a new order. I would suggest that the representatives of the neurodiversity movement embody the re-emergence of matrifocal proto society, in a context where their strengths and intimacy with nondifferentiation can become the guide and balance to the modern split.

What does the neurological synthesis look like? I’m not exactly sure. I suspect it has something to do with what we’re observing in Scandinavia, though visually the new humans may look a lot more like the Obamas. Left-handed, lanky synthesizers are in our future. Speciation is not easy to predict.

Savage said that autism was a “fraud, a racket.” He went on to say, “I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.”

The rage of autism advocates communicated quickly. Home Depot, Aflac, Sears, Budweiser, Direct Buy, Cisco and Radio Shack withdrew sponsorship before the end of the month. Radio stations dropped the show.

As an activist and organizer, I feel like what I observed was a social change miracle. Society likes to keep its anomalies and minorities invisible. Savage’s words have revealed the power of a group that will not hide.

Deep into this great transition from a capitalist, hierarchical, patrifocal society to the horizontal, aesthetic-based, partnership society, events occur that provide a window into the future. Neurodiversity is almost invisible at present. It is becoming a central focus of society very quickly. This last July was a coming out party.

Autism and Asperger’s rights represent the third wave of genetic justice. Civil rights, the first wave, established the language, strategy and tactics for creating social change. Women’s rights and gay rights manifested integral aspects of the social structure conflict between matrifocal and patrifocal frames of reference, championing the rights of all peoples. The neurodiversity movement heralds the hidden, central theme of changes underway, the ascendancy of an alternative neurophysiology characterized by male maturational delay and female maturational acceleration. The physical, neurological and behavioral features of autistic and Asperger’s children and adults are confounding to a society unaware that these individuals are the third wave of a massive social movement.

Evolutionary biological theory in the U.S. revolves around a belief that natural selection satisfactorily explains how evolution unfolds. Evolutionary developmental biology is relieving many academics of this failed frame of reference. Still, with scientists unable to make the connections between societal transformation and biological evolution, the evolutionary mechanisms responsible for the dramatic increases in neurological anomalies are little understood. Darwin proposed three dynamics as integral to transformation: natural selection, sexual selection and Lamarckian processes. It is sexual selection in the context of social structure and the influence of the environment (Lamarckian selection) on an embryo that are together responsible for a switch from patrifocal to matrifocal frames of reference and the re-emergence of ancient genotypes in the present day.

We’re not talking about regression or reversion. It seems that something wholly new is emerging. It is possible that we are observing the first stage of a synthesis of the two great paradigms.

The thesis is that there were ancient, dance-driven matrifocal societies with commanding women, cooperative men and consciousness only beginning to split. We communicated by gesture. Waking was not unlike dream. Myth and miracle felt personal. Rhythm and pattern were the central aesthetics. Children did not know their fathers.

The antithesis becomes ascendant with the Indo-Europeans. A patrifocal society characterized by split-brain speech makers demands that woman cooperate with males that pass down possessions to the sons. God was distant. The rhythm of society becomes the horse hoof as the warrior takes control of the agricultural economy, song and story.

In the midst of synthesis, it’s difficult to understand the implication of the re-emergence of an Asperger’s/autism neurology characterized by a tendency to know things whole while engaged in the rhythm of the part. Back in Africa, when language was only beginning to break our brains into two, we were more unconscious than conscious beings.

Indo-Europeanized, we became separate and split-brained, focused only on the part or on the goal, alienated and male dominated, destroying what seemed not useful, unable to easily see the repercussions of our actions or feel responsible to change our behavior if we did.

The synthesis is a neurology with an intuition for understanding the big picture with guidance by a brain that can achieve goals step by step, a brain that has differentiated and understands that wholes are made of parts. We are merging the unconscious experience of the whole with the conscious focus on the part.

Aesthetics + reductionism = self awareness. Nature + individuality = humanity. Ancient aboriginal + Indo-European = Neurosynthesis.

The neurodiversity movement is only now just acquiring its legs. It needs to convince society that autism and Asperger’s are not disorders, not just unique, but are the first steps toward neurological synthesis.

We’ve waited a long time for this synthesis. Savor every moment of these unique times. An age of miracles has returned.