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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