Autism Acceptance

Insights, Disclosures, and Warnings from the Strange Frontiers

This website is dedicated to promoting and supporting autism awareness, understanding, and acceptance.

We have become accustomed to people advocating for “Autism Awareness” for many years now. It is now time to make it clear that awareness is not enough. Raising others’ awareness of autism is not the same as increasing and deepening their understanding. In creating this website I am hoping to play a role in advancing Autism Acceptance across the world. I have spent considerable time and energy since my referral and diagnosis attempting to give others some idea of what autism entails as a different way of thinking, acting, and being. It’s not necessarily better, nor worse, just a different way of processing information. People smile and nod as I explain, but don’t see - as I see - that they are merely feigning understanding when simply expressing sympathy. The fact that they exhibit next to no change in behaviour as a result indicates that they have understood nothing. Learning entails a change in behaviour; such people have learned nothing. Autism awareness is one thing, autism acceptance another thing that lies further down the line, the next step to be taken. These days it is autism acceptance that we need. Awareness merely means knowing and acknowledging that something exists, it doesn’t necessarily imply a modification of behaviour on their part in light of that recognition. Autism Acceptance is precisely what is needed to make the transition from knowing that autism exists and sympathising to understanding what autism is and changing one’s behaviour. People with autism require understanding, not sympathy, a genuine and deep appreciation on the part of others of their struggles, their unique qualities, and their intrinsic value. And a chance to play an active, creative, and valued role in society. When barely 20% of people with autism in the UK are in paid employment of any kind, acceptance is imperative. Figures like these are a national scandal behind which are buried countless personal tragedies.

I would describe this site as an 'autistobiolog' which consists of a number of personal sketches and observations drawn from a lifetime of struggle and suffering grace of an undiagnosed Autism Spectrum Condition. The texts overlap and, here and there, cover the same ground. I like repetition of truths and pieties. I call it writing in the prophetic voice. I have chosen to publish these texts as written in order to capture the spontaneity of my response to reading on and finally being diagnosed with AS. I intend to return to these texts and write in a more controlled and considered fashion in the future, publishing for a wider audience. For all of that, there is value in exploring the untameable and unnameable being within. Read on. In the words that fellow lost traveller Ludwig Wittgenstein borrowed from King Lear: “I will teach you differences.” I will teach also of the world between and beyond dream, deed, and desire.

“Humane storytelling is the way to advance society’s understanding of Autism as it has the potential to change people’s hearts and minds.”

Tom Clements

Humane storytelling is precisely what I attempt on this site, however odd, quirky, and idiosyncratic I may come to appear in the process. I stress the importance of narrativity when it comes to relating the fields of theoretical reason (our knowledge of the world) and practical reason (what we do with that knowledge). Human beings are story-telling creatures; stories are key to educating and inciting the inner motives that lead to actions for the human betterment, for the better of the unique each as well as the common all. I like what Roger Scruton writes here:

'Philosophy is the pursuit of truth, and this has been, for me, a source of
consolation in a difficult life. But in real emergencies truth is not
enough: we stand in need of examples, and of stories that make
suffering bearable, by showing that without it there is no
redemption.'

I will occasionally go out on a limb on these pages, and much that I will say may well strike people as cantankerous, odd, and eccentric. But it's the kind of truth that that is revealed only in honesty. What you will find on these pages is a report back from the wild frontiers, where lies the strange beauty of autism as the land of innocence and experience. It is a unique world. But I will bet that if you read long enough and deeply enough, whether you are autistic or neurotypical (I don't oppose one to the other, in the hope we will one day all get along nicely), you will find something of yourself in here. Autism reveals something that is profoundly and uniquely human about us all. In the words of Schopenhauer, 'extremes magnify the truth.'

The texts I post on this site are not polished and not written to make life easy for readers. They are dialogues with myself, jottings and remembrances as they come to me, and are, accordingly, published as written. The "Analects for an Autistobiography" page exists as a place in which I can talk freely and openly about myself, to myself, in hope of striking a universal chord. If the writing here comes over as raw and ragged, then such is my normal condition. If I don't give anything like the whole unvarnished truth, still there are curious revelations, obsessions, and repetitions. I see this site as a place where I can engage in free-form writing with a view to unearthing some deeply buried truths. Whilst the approach I take can at times make for barely readable (or lengthy) texts, there is a 'method to the madness.' I am really trying to recover and record as much material about my past as I can with a view to selecting the most pertinent and the most insightful for a future autistobiography. It is really about unearthing a buried life. And that is something that every autistic person will find very relatable. But if I argue for reflection, I caution against retrospection and introspection. Redemption lies in the future. Making peace with the past comes with the understanding that the opportunities and possibilities for flourishing well lost to an unalterable past may well be all around you in the living present. It's down to you to change the register and open a gateway to the future. It's never too late to become the person you always wanted to be.

The writings here may well be touched by the spirit of William Blake’s 'lost Traveller's Dream under the Hill.' I may be often lost in the world around us, but I am not a lost soul. And neither are others who are autistic. Somehow, in someway, there will always be a homecoming.

'I had wandered to a position not very far from the phrase of my Puritan grandfather, when he said that he would thank God for His Creation [even] if he were a lost soul. I hung on .. by one thin thread of thanks ... At the back of our brains ... there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man might suddenly understand that he was alive, and be happy.'

This website is dedicated to promoting and supporting autism awareness, understanding, and acceptance.

“Humane storytelling is the way to advance society’s understanding of Autism as it has the potential to change people’s hearts and minds.”

Tom Clements

'Philosophy is the pursuit of truth, and this has been, for me, a source ofconsolation in a difficult life. But in real emergencies truth is notenough: we stand in need of examples, and of stories that makesuffering bearable, by showing that without it there is noredemption.'

The writings here may well be touched by the spirit of William Blake’s 'lost Traveller's Dream under the Hill.' I may be often lost in the world around us, but I am not a lost soul. And neither are others who are autistic. Somehow, in someway, there will always be a homecoming.

~ G.K. Chesterton

'Philosophy is the pursuit of truth, and this has been, for me, a source of
consolation in a difficult life. But in real emergencies truth is not
enough: we stand in need of examples, and of stories that make
suffering bearable, by showing that without it there is no
redemption.'

The Myth of a Little Bit

THE MYTH OF A LITTLE BIT AUTISTIC

To say that 'everyone's a little bit autistic' is like someone who is sad saying that 'everyone is a little bit depressed' or someone who is drunk saying 'everyone is a little bit alcoholic.'There is no 'little bit' of autism.

To say that 'everyone's a little bit autistic' is like someone who is sad saying that 'everyone is a little bit depressed' or someone who is drunk saying 'everyone is a little bit alcoholic.'

There is no 'little bit' of autism.