The Different and the Ill-fitting versus the Different and the Ill-fitting
One of the many misfortunes that autistic people suffer in a society geared around 'normal' Neurotypical oafs is that they are consigned to the margins by people who, although perfectly adapted and conformed to said 'society,' constantly proclaim how 'different' they are. They defiantly boast that they 'don't fit in,' and 'will never fit in,' oblivious to the fact that they are perfectly fitted. They imagine themselves to be rebels, but are really the perfect conformists, do as they please, unconstrained by wider communal or moral constraints or considerations. I note well how often such people take aim at organised religion, as if we were living in a theocracy, and they are making bold stands at risk of being burned at the stake. To damn religion is as easy as falling off a log in this culture, and it comes with the advantage of making people look like rebels when they are not. They make big stands on little issues that make them look good whilst costing them nothing by way of risk, sacrifice, and commitment. They like cultural accessories and accoutrements, then, morals as handbags.
I should make it clear before I go any further that I reserve my criticism here for neurotypical oafs, and not neurotypical people as such. Most of my best friends are neurotypicals (or should I say friend?). My target are the oafs of this oafish culture. I should also make it clear that those autistic people who make a fetish of being different and deviant, whilst also pandering to fashionable nonsense and noise, are no less oafish.
So this is not an issue that pits the autistic and the neurotypical against one another, a division that works to the detriment of both, most especially autistic people, who are in need of connection and support, but also wider society through being deprived of the unique insights and talents that lie within the autistic community.
That said, and at risk of being somewhat oafish oneself, there is a particularly annoying trait among particular neurotypicals of celebrating deviancy, difference, and rebelliousness from the safety of their confines within Weber's 'iron cage' of modernity. I should pay it no regard, and usually do, but it is so ubiquitous as to be impossible to ignore. These people are triggering. They goad you with their pretence to be something that you are, and they are not, enjoying the benefits of social connection that are denied to you. The annoying part is that in being truly 'different,' you serve the time and pay the price, and yet are still denied a 'different voice,' finding it appropriated by those safely confined and well-rewarded within the gilded cage. Such people are somewhat annoying, frankly.
Max Weber described the age as a 'mechanised petrification embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance.' He noted that this 'iron cage' of economic and organisational imperatives determines the lives of modern men and women with 'irresistible force.' The 'individuals' in other words are not the self-determining and self-authoring rebels they loudly and repeatedly proclaim themselves to be but are bought and paid for servants of 'the Machine.' They don't like to hear that, so they fill the world with an empty noise that declares otherwise. The noise alters nothing, the blunt truth remain the same: you are slaves to the system, a system that knows how to enslave people to their desires.
Confinement within an 'iron cage' of 'irresistible' determinism is cause enough for rebellion, one would have thought, particularly on the part of those who praise themselves so publicly as being true individuals who are 'different' and 'ill-fitted.' But, no. They are nowhere to be found when it comes to mounting a challenge to 'the system.' In my experience, such people, in styling themselves to be rebellious, reject politics as much as they do religion, thinking that such rejection constitutes rebellion, rather than the complicitous evasion it is. They are part of the system they claim to be against, fitted and conformed to the nth degree, their claims contrariwise a mere exercise in self-delusion. Ironically, a number of these people make a point of emphasising 'deeds, not words,' repeatedly resorting to empty words to claim to be other than they are. Their deeds do indeed speak volumes, contradicting their words in every respect – they
are not different and not rebellious, no matter what they say and how often they say it. I get the impression they use words in an attempt to convince themselves.
Autistic people learn very early in life not to take people at face-value: the image they like to project of themselves often stands in inverse relation to reality. Imagine, if you can, what it is like being an autistic person, often isolated and at the margins of society, rejected in all manner of things on account of being a little – or a lot – different, scorned and ridiculed for not doing things the 'right' way, for not being 'normal,' for being a little eccentric and not playing by the rules. Autistic people are the archetypal square pegs, never quite fitting the various holes of the 'normal' world. They are the people who were once denigrated as 'misfits,' in the days before 'not fitting in' became a celebrated virtue of the perfectly conformed and adapted. But, of course, if you are indeed perfectly fitted to a deviant and perverted society, then there is indeed a case for accepting such people are as 'different' as they claim to be: as inauthentic as the society they mirror and reproduce so well. But I don't quite think that's what these characters have in mind when they claim to be different.
It is, indeed, the age of a 'convulsive self-importance' that is loudly and repeatedly proclaimed and celebrated from within the confines of the social cage. Like I said, imagine, if you can, being an autistic person within this society without really being a part of it. The convulsively self-important who make such a big thing of being different will tend to be employed, married, own their own house, have a car or two, have a family, have a wide circle of friends, have 'bucket lists' that they enjoy ticking off, letting the world know as they go, flitting from one pleasurable activity to another, taking photos and constantly posting on what great larger-than-life characters they are. And all the time letting us know how 'different' they are. As an autistic person on the margins, I see them as all the same, doing and saying the same things, and so boringly predictable and surface level obvious. To point it out to them risks being identified as rude and cast to the margins, again. So I don't comment. I think you are supposed to join in the applause and cheering and say 'well done.'
Posting John Lennon's 'Imagine' is as far as they get to making a reasoned argument. They imagine that rejecting all the big questions of life makes them great free thinkers. Imagine if there was nothing to argue over … then all problems would be solved. Yes, indeed, and how do you propose we get there? It's the invitation to stop thinking they find most appealing about this My Little Pony of philosophical statements. 'Imagine no religion,' they state repeatedly, before going off on foreign holidays and visiting every church and cathedral they can find and taking photos. Imagination is the very thing they lack. It's culture at the click of a button. They like the show and the spectacle but lack what it takes to actually sustain the culture and the ethic that went into making such beautiful buildings in the first place. They lack content.
I know that to point it out puts me at risk of being perceived to be rude. So I shall limit myself to saying I am 'different' whereas they are all very predictably the same – they do the same things, say the same things, go the same places, and through it all think themselves unique individuals boldly going where no one has ever gone before. Present them with difference, be different, and you have to revive them with smelling salts. I know, I've presented my very different self to them, and had them recoil in horror. They find difference discomforting and disquieting.
Autistic people – and I'll speak for myself here – are often on the margins, disconnected from society, without employment, with few friends, isolated, remote even from family, and are so on account of actually being 'different,' of doing things differently, and in having a different take on the world. They know what it is not to fit-in and they know how hard life is when consigned to the margins grace of actually being different. Only those who are comfortably off, have income, employment, and social connection to fall back on, can afford to make a fetish of being 'different;' only those who are fitted-in, safe, and secure can boast regularly of not fitting-in. I see such people daily and shake my head and say: 'you people haven't got a clue.' And probably never will.
I know them, I've had dealings with them – they are impenetrable. You try to tell them about the autistic experience and they talk all over you. Because they think they know better. 'There are alternate ways of doing things,' one told me. Well I never! You know, I'd never thought of that! I remained silent and accepted the lesson, since it was offered in good faith. But it shows how far autistic understanding has to go. Autistic people have spent their entire lives doing things in alternate ways, because they have had do. Autistic people are innovators, finding new ways of doing things that come easily to others. 'You get all the right results by all the wrong means,' an old school friend once told me. I'm nothing special: that's what autistic people do. We don't need to be told that there are alternate ways of doing things, we have invented and practised most of them. The best part of the oafish explanation came with examples of these alternate ways, all of which involved the willing cooperation of others. Where are these others, I asked in response. The presumption that there are 'others' available to autistic people revealed ignorance. The problem is that 'society' is not always cooperative with regards to the needs of autistic people. Try asking for the 'reasonable adjustments' that are demanded at the back of your AS Report and see how far you get. Authorities, institutions, employers do nothing; frankly, the adjustments recommended are so 'reasonable' as to make no difference. They require nothing of others. Which is handy. Because nothing is precisely what is offered by 'society.'
As I wrote above, autistic people can tend to be isolated. They can be disconnected from family (families tend to congregate around the 'married with children' members), they can find it hard to meet people and make friends, they often lack employment and the social contact and networking that comes with employment. In fine, when they come to call for volunteers when it comes to alternate ways of doing things, autistic people lack the necessary support. So they have to go it alone.
Andhere comes the punchline. Explain this to the celebrants of 'difference' among the oafish community, and they conclude that you are alone and isolated because of being awkward, difficult, and rude, saying or doing things that upset people and drive people away. It's all your own fault, then. They are legitimately 'different' and 'ill-fitted' and hence are surrounded by friends and helpers to help them on their way; you are ill-tempered and therefore alone, the author of your own misfortune. That's the view of the safely conformed. And it is false from top to bottom, as are they. They style themselves as 'different,' but are unable to cope with the real thing whenever they meet it. They distance themselves from the different, flock together with the same, and marginalise the non-conformed and non-compliant, the truly different. It might not be easy being on the outside; but at least you get to call out the fake and the inauthentic when you see it.
To make it clear I am not pitting autists and neurotypicals against one another, I should follow this up with a piece on those in the 'neurodivergent community' who make a fetish of being different, even deviant. This is fashionable nonsense, as conformist and mediocre as everything above. In fact, if I was forced to make a choice, I'd choose the conformists of the former type, because at least they turn up and put a shift in and keep society going, which is no small achievement. As mundane as it may be, someone has to do it if we are to have a society at all. The deviants and fetishists of the latter type I don't care for at all, unless they are authentically deviant, being themselves and not conforming to the latest fad or identity. I once did a psychometric test which purported to show what percent Hippie you are. I came out as 0% Hippie. Which makes perfect sense. Autistic people like routine and regularity and familiarity; they don't like change and experimentation. So I'm wondering where all the celebration of deviation in the neurodivergent community comes from. And one final point – there is no 'neurodivergent community.' Being somewhat different, and contrarian, I am against enforced team identity and compelled speech. But I won't join the convulsively self-important and say I 'don't fit and never will.' Just be.
