No, not really. I thought it would make a great attention grabber to use those words for this post’s title. Since I was unable to sleep last night, I spent part of the pre-dawn hours watching my DVD of Napoleon Dynamite. One of my favorite scenes is where Napoleon’s grandmother is four-wheeling on the sand dunes — wearing a blue T-shirt that says, “My husband and I divorced for religious reasons. He thought he was GOD.”
Anyhow, the message on her shirt reminded me of how neuroscience researchers, like Mirella Dapretto and Marco Iacoboni (and many others like them), think they are god. After reading more on studies being done by neurotypicals who are trying to link autism to a mirror neuron ‘dysfunction’, since I wrote my post Mirror, Mirror, in the Lab, I cannot tolerate anymore of their ignorance, aggressive arrogance, and neurological bigotry!
Here’s the portion I moved from that post I created one year ago on April 16th, 2009 and brought here:
Researchers may have found a single cause for social blindness in aspies and autistics.
The question I have is: “Does the same mirror neuron system allow NTs to automatically and intuitively understand the emotions, actions, and intentions of Asperger’s syndrome people merely by observing what that Aspie does?”
I think not. If it was possible for NTs to do so, then they wouldn’t be in such confusion over understanding how an Aspie mind thinks differently. I’m thought of as being enigmatic, but yet the behavior of others is easily predictable for me.
It’s good that most of the population has an active mirror-neuron section, but it’s equally good there are some who don’t. My mirror-neuron theory of neurotypicalism¹ is that because this mirror neuron system is not ‘broken’, (generally speaking) it cripples the ability for a person to think in a non-conformist pattern (i.e., truly independent and objective) and increases the monkey-see, monkey-do syndrome. An inactive mirror neuron section will decrease the ability for a person to be ’sheepled’,² because of the mirroring needed to enable replication.³ Mirrors are sometimes useful, but sometimes they are a distraction. Since NTs don’t turn off their active “duplication” neurons in their mirror neuron system, how can they be as objective as those on the autism spectrum when they’re always under its influence?
Proof of what I’m talking about is with the words: problems, broken, dysfunctional, and deficits, NTs use when describing the differences between those on the autism spectrum versus NTs in regard to social behavior and the conditions of mirror neuron systems. As an Aspie, I have no ‘problem’ with how NTs socialize among their own pack, I don’t say they have a social ‘deficit’ because they can’t understand people like me, and I would not say that their mirror neuron system is ‘broken’ or ‘dysfunctional’ because theirs does not match how mine works. All of those terms are subjective (relative); not objective (absolute). Anyone who can’t see that probably has hyper-activity in the mirror neuron section of his brain.
What’s the bottom line? If I allow someone to claim my mirror neuron system is ‘broken’, then I would be a cognitivological doormat if I were to go along with the foolish notion that it needs to be ’fixed’. I say don’t waste time and money trying to fix what isn’t broken!
¹What if I were as serious as the neuroscience researchers and had their power?… how would NTs like that?
²The term sheeple is believed to be inspired by the 1945 George Orwell novel Animal Farm, where the sheep of the farm blindly followed and defended the farm’s pig leadership. George Orwell, a creative genius, showed Asperger traits. He was successful mainly because he was more focused and persistent, didn’t get distracted, and wasn’t interested in outside society.
³‘Meds’ might reverse this and increase the ability to influence a neuro-A-typical person, because then maybe he could be under the humanly designed ‘effects’ of what the pharmaceutical lab is marketing.
There is a lot more I could add to what I’ve said and include detailed examples of what I’m talking about, but I don’t want to stay ‘married’ to such nonsense. “My fellow neuroscience researchers and I divorced for religious reasons. They thought they were GOD.”
P.S. — Evidently empathy is lacking when one can’t see that those of us on the autism spectrum have more empathy than what others typically have. Proof of this is seen by the arrogant wording researchers use. In their article Asperger’s theory does about-face, they say, “Rather than ignoring others, researchers think spectrum sufferers care too much.” They fail to see that it’s their bigoted attitudes that are the cause of suffering whenever it does exist. Bigoted means ‘obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of one’s own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions’ and that describes those kinds of researchers quite accurately. There is no excuse for their lack of respect when they could have instead said, “Rather than ignoring others, researchers think people on the spectrum care more than those not on the spectrum.”
