Society feels thoughtlessly and consistently sub-ethical and uncurious compared to our very grand emotions, which contributes to burnout.
This is a hyper empathic autistic’s heart under the stress of injustice. My resting heart rate rises for days and weeks at a time, contributing to meltdown and autistic burnout. I started trending higher the day I knew I had to confront injustice and start writing and organizing against it. This is constant adrenaline poisoning that goes on for long periods. I feel it all through me from the moment I wake to the moment I finally pass out from exhaustion and into my stress dreams while sleeping. It’s a hell.
Autism is a crucially, vitally, urgently needed human variation—a powerful corrective and counterbalance to the hierarchical, dominance-based mentality currently driving human society and the planet off the rails.
Autistic/neurodiverse thinking and collaborating styles have a critically important role to play as an antidote to the currently dominant neurotypical social-ranking/dominance approach—a critically important role to play in bringing modern society back into some kind of sustainable balance, functionality, social justice, and sanity.
Autistic people are best understood as the agents of a well functioning cultural immune system within human society.
Autists are essential to the future of homo sapiens.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
Justice, equality, fairness, mercy, longsuffering, Work, Passion, knowledge, and above all else, Truth. Those are my primary emotions. Those are emotions which serve the Greater Good. Those emotions are the mobilization of Love… Information-sharing is a love language of autistics, as Knowledge is a “very grand emotion,” indeed. It has potential to inform Progress, to humanize and de-pathologize neurodivergent existence, …, to help inter-neurotype couples and loved ones understand each other better and have more rewarding interactions, and to re-frame the conceptualization of neurodivergent people.
Solidarity is why when you tell an autistic something, we share with you our closest relative experience. We aren’t one-upping or implying we know how you feel… because we truly can’t. It would go against what we can know is empirical Truth to claim to understand your emotions through your perspective and in light of your experiences and history. It would be disrespectful to you, a platitude or a lie.
We are saying, “This is how I share your path.” There is a question implied, too. “Have I come close to your experience?” To neurotypicals, this reads as egotistical in the same way that neurotypicals, estimating our feelings in response reads as egotistical to us.
We want to hear if something was Fair or Just, if our secondary emotions are in-line with the “very grand emotions.” Or, at least we want you to troubleshoot with us and help us explore the angles beyond our limited perspectives.
To know about these differences, though, is empowering. It’s why Knowledge is valuable as a “very grand emotion.”
A neurotypical person is not wired to be rewarded by our brand of interaction and emotional Solidarity. Our method of relatedness doesn’t translate our heart accurately with neurotypicals. Our direct, blunt, and sometimes-brutal honesty is offensive to neurotypicals; and in turn, their roundabout, indirect, suggestive language reads as confusing, manipulative, and patronizing to us.
The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations
I wish I could find other people who have it, and live among them. A biological conscience is better than no conscience at all.
Maybe it’s like my sharing: One more weirdness; one more crazy, deep-rooted delusion that I’m stuck with. I am stuck with it. And in time, I’ll have to do something about it. In spite of what my father will say or do to me, in spite of the poisonous rottenness outside the wall where I might be exiled, I’ll have to do something about it.
That reality scares me to death.
Parable of the Sower (Parable, 1)
There are a number of possible reasons for neurodivergent people experiencing emotions more intensely than others. Neurodivergent people often experience emotional lability, emotional impulsivity, and negative intent attribution.
We’re kind of an intense bunch sometimes.
But that’s okay, our intensity can be a positive thing too: Neurodivergents can be more creative and more passionate. That creativity and passion can drive us to take action where others may not, and our cognitive rigidity can give us a strong sense of morals. These features combined make us more susceptible to a variety of sensitivities, including justice sensitivity.
For example, in 2015, researchers found that participants with ADHD reported significantly higher justice sensitivity and greater perceptions of injustice than those without ADHD.
That same year, Schäfer & Kraneburg did an interesting study in search of a deeper understanding of why neurodivergents are prone to Justice Sensitivity, which is what I will discuss here.
According to Baumert & Schmitt, “justice-sensitive people’s information processing should be guided in a way that raises their probability of experiencing injustice compared with less justice-sensitive people,” and their “emotional reactions to injustice should be stronger the more justice is endorsed as a fundamental value.”
In other words, people who experience high justice sensitivity have a stronger tendency to notice and identify wrongdoing and have more intense cognitive, emotional, and behavioural reactions to perceived injustice.
Additionally, “justice-sensitive people should ruminate longer and more intensively about experienced injustice than less justice-sensitive people” and should have an “inclination to restore justice and undo injustice”.
Those of us with justice sensitivity have a harder time letting these things go and have a strong desire to make right that which we feel is unfair or morally wrong.
Neurodivergents are more likely to experience justice sensitivity, in particular children, but adults as well.
Neurodivergents: Justice Warriors! by Jillian Enright | Invisible Illness
Results: Participants with ADHD produced higher values in observer and profiteer sensitivity than the control group. There were no differences in perpetrator sensitivity. Questionnaire results reveal that the inattentive subtype exhibited higher justice sensitivity than the hyperactive/impulsive and combined subtypes and the control group on all dimensions. Conclusion:The results confirm that justice sensitivity is indeed more pronounced in people with ADHD, particularly in the inattentive subtype. It is suggested that pronounced justice sensitivity may be a coping strategy for inferring appropriate social behavior.
The Kind Nature Behind the Unsocial Semblance: ADHD and Justice Sensitivity—A Pilot Study – Thomas Schäfer, Thomas Kraneburg, 2015
I know I've ruined a night or two I couldn't hold back my views Family dinner turned off the news Stuck in a silent room And I'd rather die by the truth And hide away feeling shades of blue I've ruined a night or two 'Cause it's hard being hardcore I'll cut the lights and cry in the dark more If you don't feel, then what the hell is a heart for? 'Cause it's hard being hardcore
Everybody's got the same blank face Tough roughing up the place When you're not putting up a front Now you're the crazy one Leather jackets line up at the bar Good at hiding who they are Everybody's got the same blank face So I'd rather die by the truth And hide away feeling shades of blue You want tears, I've shed a few 'Cause it's hard being hardcore I'll cut the lights and cry in the dark more If you don't feel, then what the hell is a heart for? 'Cause it's hard being hardcore --Hardcore by Allison Ponthier
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