Posted by alexandra_k on October 19, 2013, at 1:17:23
One thing Temple Grandin has done quite well is made a case for differently empathetic rather than deficiently empathetic.
Her understanding of what gets cattle anxious / upset. Her ability to detect the things that are upsetting them. Her ability to think like a cow. That is empathy, of course.
She reckons it is because her psychology is more like a prey animal. I think she might well be onto something there...
The animal I like most is the Alpacka. I can't spell that. They seriously are a prey animal and they have a prey response to people. So... Their one desire is to get pretty far from people. Learning to train them involves thinking your way into their psychology. If you want them in the far left corner of the pen the way to bring that about is to put yourself in the near right corner. In their efforts to move as far away from you as possible you can predict how they will respond to your movements... And move yourself about accordingly. You can even train them to tolerate touch etc. But you need to remember: You have trained them to tolerate touch. Don't kid yourself that they like it. Or you.
I think they are pretty f*ck*ng cool.
I also like cats. I'm good with cats. Especially when people are like - oh yeah, I have a cat, but he won't come say 'hey' to visitors. I'm good at getting those cats to come say hey to me. All the cat wants is an invitation and not an intrusion. It just wants to know that you are the kind of person who can take no for an answer. The cat wants teh opportunity to approach you at their own pace and piss off again when they have had enough. They need to know you won't grab them or pick them up or whatever - not at this stage of the relationship anyways. Adn most human beings... Are incapable of that. Most human beings are like overly friendly puppies.
Maybe austistic spectrum is curently being overdiagnosed. Really... The worrying thing is this increase in low level, perhaps currently considered sub-clinical William's syndrome. I think that is more of a problem. Honestly. I wonder if there is an inverse relationship between intelligence (or perhaps responsivity to reason) and sociality (or perhaps responsivity to all things non-reason).
But this idea of different empathy. I think there is something to this. I also think that yes, there is something qualitatively to the point of quantitatively different between an infant who never engages in shared attention, has seroiusly delayed language acquisition, and movement stereotypies and me.
I feel bad they are extending the class so broadly as to include individuals like myself. I think the idea is to do this to decrease stigma. Get the high functioning individuals to poster child in understanding for us all... A bridge to the more serious cases. One worry is that people like me getting assistance... Takes assistance away from those more serious cases... But perhaps it is more that publicity for the phenomenon results in better assistance across teh baord?
I think it is a scary one for people because a-sociality... Well... There is a fear of this. Society pulls people back to the middle... To the masses... The most powerful individuals are expected to use their power to huddle safely in the middle.
Only: Wake up peple! Homo Sapiens won the apex predator war! The most dangerous thing for people: Is people!
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1052545
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20130914/msgs/1052545.html