For autistic people, the struggle is to remain “oneself” and not dissolve in the changes. Strategy: find something ‘fixed’? A different understanding of what is going on, in which something does remain the same? Otherwise, there is a feeling of constant siege, of one’s territory being under constant threat if not attack.

The revision could be at the interface level, with all kinds of adjusting and tweaking to try to give people what they want. Being who they want seems an act of surrender or sacrifice of one’s very identity. (Googling ‘altar of conformity’ could be instructive...)

Perhaps the alternative is to find one’s essence and cling fiercely to it, regardless of the bombardment from outside, be it sensory, others’ demands and expectations, the fearsome situation of having too much freedom... a possible way out of this jam would be to substitute “refinement” for “revision”, leaving purity-of-essence as a desirable goal. A mechanical analog for this would be the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft, whose skin was strengthened by the extreme heat of air friction each time it flew...

Last revised: June 20, 2007
(c)2007 Dave Spicer
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