[PEN-L:31516] Re: Autism on the rise

[Charles Jannuzi <b_rieux@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Greetings Economists,
> Charles' set of articles is interesting.
> However I would like to add a
> social dimension.  We tend to think of
> Autistics as defective.  Do we think
> that way about Gorillas, Chimpanzees, and
> Orangutans?  The crucial element
> of course with Autism is social development
> that all the other primates
> can't achieve either.   The main social
> structure of human beings is a type
> of social interaction that arises from language
> use.  For Autistics language
> use is greatly affected and this is the
> 'problem' for them.

This is just a quick response to Doyle's generous
post and important analysis. Please read his
post.

I agree with you completely Doyle. Social welfare
case workers can get frustrated dealing with
schools misdiagnosing students just for the
purposes of getting funds and paying off
psychiatrists. And there is the constant tension
of pounding many various round pegs into uniform
square holes (hence the 'epidemic' increase in
autism and attention deficit disorders, I
believe). The reality is that many children and
adolescents just can't adapt to
incarceration-style education.

One element that complicates human communication
is that so much of it now is removed from
face-to-face communication. In some ways we all
end up with a degree of 'autism'. On the other
hand, many people are too easily taken in with
face-to-face encounters--the false intimacy of
politics on TV, for example. And I wonder how
many people get ripped off in phone sales because
they have only to deal with someone's voice and
don't know how to make judgements based on such
limited information.

Anyway, look how many people end up on the rocks
in e-mail communication because they can't put a
face and personality to an e-mail. It's almost
impossible for some people to take people they
don't know seriously unless they can meet them
outside of e-mail communications.

It's been noted that people characterized as
'autistic' often take to computers and the
internet, but I have my doubts that if they have
difficulty in relating to people face-to-face
that they would find things like e-mail lists
comfortable (I may be wrong though).

C. Jannuzi

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