Hello and welcome to my blog “Living Outside the Normative”. This blog is a series of postings about the experience of being different, of living within our world, or our Western Canadian society, when one’s ways of thinking, perceiving, reacting, and experiencing are different than those of the masses of people existing underneath that large bump in the human population curve. It is not an easy place to be, outside of that normative bump, but it can be an interesting one. I have been permitted to a certain extent to see what happens out there, on the edges, through the blessing of my son. The official terminology for my son’s on the edge living is a diagnosis of Asperger’s from when he was 7 and which now, in North America, has been grandfathered in to a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. My son is now 18, at the time of me starting on this blog. His differences, of course, did not start with his official diagnosis, they started at his birth.

I have been considering starting a blog such as this for quite some time, with the purpose of trying to share what life really is like when one is having to live outside of the norm. There is so much to share. It can be a truly amazing world, but, it is also a bit more challenging than existing underneath that large bump in the normative curve.

There is so much, unfortunately, that our society, and the people under that bump, I think unwittingly, do that makes existence outside of that bump more difficult, and that, really, deprives not only those existing outside of that bump of true participation and a sense of value but also the rest of our community of the benefits that can come with having little bits of differences sprinkled about. I truly believe that for the most part people do not go around trying to think of ways to make life more difficult, or to disadvantage others, that this just perhaps happens somewhat accidentally, and is perpetuated through ignorance, but it still happens. Perhaps it wouldn’t so much if people realized what it’s like on the other side, how life is made more difficult when it doesn’t have to be. And perhaps if some of the different amazing perspectives, those blessings I mentioned above, were shared, then people wouldn’t fear so much the differences, would be able to come to value them instead, and then, maybe, true inclusiveness, or even better yet, celebration, of all of our members of community, would grow, and that would become the norm.

The purpose of this blog, therefore, is to share, the joys and the challenges of living outside of the normative, in the hopes that this sharing might lead, little by little, to a more tolerant, more equitable, world, where we, referring to humanity as a whole, can take advantage of the skills of all of our population, not just those who are easiest to understand by the greatest number of the population. There will be blogs which will frustrate the reader, and which may be somewhat discouraging. There will also be blogs which are incredibly uplifting. And there will be blogs which open up a whole new wonderful perspective on the world, allowing the reader to also get a glimpse of the world from a different place, a glimpse that is encouraging and uplifting, for this positive, uplifting, view of the world, presented fresh and new like what one gets from a child who is first experiencing their world, is also one of the greatest benefits from being with someone outside of the normative. So read on, enjoy, cry, comment please, for this is a conversation, a conversation about life, challenges, and possibilities, and I welcome your involvement.

Friday, 22 December 2017

Perspectives - Dec. 22, 2017





This is the first post in the “Perspectives” series, which will be a collection of shorter blogs sharing Enrique’s experiences or perspectives on the world.  This post is more of an opinion, but it is reflective of Enrique’s often analytical approach to the world, which I understand is not atypical for individuals on the autistic spectrum with higher cognitive abilities.  This analytical approach, combined with Enrique’s quite genuine care and concern for other people and the human species in general, come together to provide the assessment below of the question of whether we, humans, should be pursuing the development of true artificial intelligence.  This is a particularly intriguing discussion because the development of artificial intelligence is something in which Enrique would be greatly interested in being involved in personally, if it weren’t for the issues he has identified through his analysis.  I often wonder, how much better would our world be if there were more people like Enrique, who really did look at situations before they just waded in, and restrained themselves appropriately? 

During discussions on the question of whether humans should continue working on the development of artificial intelligence after reading “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick as part of Enrique’s Language Arts program, in Enrique's words….

Androids are stronger, smarter, and harder to destroy than humans.  So far humans have not figured out how to put in emotions, or to manage them.  And we won’t, not soon, because we don’t understand how emotions work in people.  Which means androids, or beings with artificial intelligence, as per humans’ current abilities and understanding, can not have empathy for others. 

Empathy is what manages our society so we can all live together.  In fact, empathy is so important that don’t we have a name for people without it and who as a result act outside the control of our society?  Psychopaths or something like that?  Right.  And we are afraid of these people and put them in jail, because they lack the internal controls to be reliably safe for the rest of society. 

So… we’re asking about whether we should populate our world with a bunch of entities who would essentially be super smart, super strong, really hard to destroy, psychopaths.  When we can’t manage the psychopaths we have.  Really?  It’s a wonder our species has survived.   

And further…

We (humans) have a moral responsibility to treat everything around us with respect.  Androids, having been created by humans, present us with a dilemma which we are not capable yet of solving.  Are they alive, or are they not?  Since we created them, do we need to treat them as their own?  We treat babies as their own.  We do not treat toasters as their own.  Or those fridges that do your grocery shopping for you.  So are androids like babies or machines?  Hmmmm…. This seems to be a debate that we, humans, are not yet capable of resolving.  Which means that we are in danger of treating living creatures as machines.  Until we can conclusively resolve this question and behave accordingly it would be irresponsible of us (humans) to bring these potentially living creatures into the world.  We need to wait until we (humans) have evolved enough to be able to take responsibility for our actions before engaging in those actions.


Well.  There you go.  A pretty in depth analysis I think.  And just one of many examples I have seen from Enrique of how having a “disability” in one, or many, areas does not preclude the ability to think, or perform, in selected other areas.  And also how the ability to think or perform in various particular areas does not necessarily correspond with ability in other areas, including those essential for functionality in every day living.  Something for the rest of us who don’t experience such extremes to think about….  







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Monday, 11 December 2017

Opening your mind



So here’s a video you probably wouldn’t expect to see on this blog, seeing as it’s a video on travel – “The Value of Travel” by Rick Steves.  
  
But… I think it is actually highly relevant to this blog.  The link above is to a TED talk by Rick Steves, who speaks a lot on travel, and who has authored many European travel books held in high regard by many.  I travel quite a bit, as I try to learn more about the world we live in and peoples’ different perspectives and approaches to life, and my thoughts mirror those Mr. Steve puts forth in this talk. 

That’s all very nice you might say, but how is a TED talk by a primarily European travel writer relevant to the discussions here on this blog on living outside the normative?  Well, the topic of this TED talk is the value of travel.  In the words of Mark Twain, as quoted by Mr. Steves, travel  “is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness”.  Throughout his talk Mr. Steves brings in many instances and examples of how this statement of Mr. Twain’s can be realized, one of my favourite discussions on this relates to Mr. Steves’ generalized sharing of encounters with people in the places he travels where he sums up what he gets from these and how this brings value to not just that particular travel experience but also to the individual, and the greater global community, going forward, with these words  “this man was very different from us, but he's fundamentally the same, and if we can take home that understanding, that's the very best souvenir ever. And for the rest of our lives, when we look at the rest of the world, rather than fear its diversity we can better understand it”.  If you have read my introduction to this blog, you can perhaps now see the relevance of this talk of Mr. Steves’ to this blog.

Mr. Steves’ talk illustrates very well how travelling can open one’s mind, can bring in the recognition that, well, although those people might from afar seem very different, and their ways of doing things strange, and thus they and their ways of doing things are scary and to be feared and barricaded against, or even destroyed, in reality, the people aren’t that different and their ways of doing things aren’t that incomprehensible, and maybe some discussion and understanding would be more appropriate, and actually achievable, than destruction or rejection. Can you see any similarities here with treatment of people within our societies who are different?  All this talk about inclusion and exclusion?  Which could translate to understanding or rejection? Or even, shiver, destruction?  (And don’t scoff, really, there has been, and continues to be, talk of destruction of those with special needs, after they have been born, before they are born, and through the forced prevention of their reproduction, in the event that they might produce others like them, or, heaven forbid, they might want to try to care for their young themselves).

So how does travelling do this?  Open peoples’ minds that is?  By moving the traveller from their world into somebody else’s.  The traveller doesn’t have to become the other, he or she just needs to be enough removed from their world, and into the other world, to be able to see that, well, it’s just another world.  It’s not necessarily better or worse, it’s just different.  And the people in that world have the same basic needs and desires as the people from the world from which the traveller came, and from the traveller him or her self.  Mr. Steves says he likes to go to Europe, because there is so much the same - in outlook, difficulties, and resources - but somehow, the solutions to those difficulties come up being different.  This doesn’t necessarily make any of them better or worse, they’re just different.  So you have the same basic needs, and challenges, but a different world wrapped around them.  Not necessarily better, or worse, just different.

Well, I’m going to link all those thoughts about travelling physically over large distances to recognizably different cultures in the form of different countries to a shorter distance travel, and one that isn’t necessarily as physical.  Imagine travelling from the safe world of the normative within your community into the unknown world of the outlier, that little red speck on the far right hand side of the Bell Curve image I have posted to the right side of my blog posts.  Maybe go live in a wheelchair for a couple of days.  Follow this blog.  Or, hang out with somebody with Asperger’s, or autism, or some other developmental disability, and truly interact with and get to see, and experience, the world from their perspective, experience their challenges, and their dreams, for an extended amount of time.  Somehow get yourself travelling to somebody else's world, somebody within your community but who is outside of that big bump in the bell curve, just like you would do on a vacation, but you're staying home.  What would that world be like?  What would you see?  Would it be strange to be in a completely different world, while still being within the one with which you are familiar?  What would that double perspective be like?  Would this travel reap similar benefits to the benefits Mr. Steve talks about with the more traditional form of travel?  Hmmmmmm…. something to consider….

So listen to Mr. Steve’s talk.  And think.  Think about what he says about the benefits of travel, the learning that can take place, the benefit this can have both for the individual and our world, and then, think of how that could apply to travel within our communities as well, travel along the roller coaster of the bell curve, out to the edges and back, in all the infinite orientations of that ride.

And if you want to read some on my travel experiences, by all means visit my travel blog – "Erika's Cultural Adventures", and if you want to read a bit about my comments on more general human rights issues than what I am presenting in this blog, and which I sometimes relate to my travels, visit my human rights blog - "Exploring the World of International Human Rights".

Erika 
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