Truth-seeking is an autistic trait of modern society

The Big Plus of the Outsider Society: truth challenges lies!

Truth-seeking is an autistic trait of modern society:

A feature of Asperger's syndrome that can be advantageous to society is a concern with social justice and discrimination against minority groups. This can sometimes be strikingly developed in Asperger's cases, often because of their characteristic impatience with conventional hypocrisy and publicly-accepted double standards (not to mention the fact that they sometimes feel the victims of discrimination themselves). Modern societies have canonized such concerns in law and public attitudes, and a number of famous campaigners for equal rights and social justice have been posthumously proposed as Asperger's cases. Among these are John Howard (c.1726-1790), the social reformer and founder of the Howard League for Penal Reform; and Simone Weil (1901-43), who has been described as having "an almost pathological receptiveness to the sufferings of others." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third President of the USA, 1801-9, and author of A Summary View of the Rights of America (1774) is another case.

Interesting!

Modern authorities on autism have described autistics as "truth-tellers" and, thanks to their bottom-up, devil-in-the-detail style of cognition, are often the first to see that the emperor has no clothes or that the great idol has feet of clay. Furthermore, thanks to their deficits where mentalism is concerned, they are also likely to be the ones to blurt out the truth, and draw attention to the inconvenient fact, irrespective of what others may think.

Here too, modern societies bear a striking comparison with such Asperger's cases because it is with the Enlightenment and age of science that a new objectivity and detachment emerged among intellectuals, politicians, and writers that encouraged public criticism, whistle-blowing, and open debate of issues that previously would either have been totally taboo (like the existence of the deity) or actively suppressed (like criticism of the ruling elite or questioning of social conventions). With modern industrial societies, however, such "autistic" honesty and objective criticism have become institutionalized in two-party, adversarial political and legal systems, in journalism and the media, and in philosophy and the social sciences. The result is that whistle-blowers, truth-tellers, and critics of all kinds are routinely applauded and rewarded as often as they are castigated and punished—and sometimes experience both fates simultaneously!

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I liked this article. It makes me wonder just how many autistics are here on ATS. I'd be willing to make an uneducated guess that it's much higher than the statistical norm. I have been thought of as having high-functioning autism. If someone is lying to me, I get incredibly upset. I'm constantly seeing the hypocrisy in both society at large, and individuals I interact with. It drives me to the point of madness, but I usually just retreat into seclusion and get to my work of truth-seeking!

[edit on 13-6-2010 by unityemissions]

Cool find - I'm not too keen on the excessive labeling that goes on in modern psychiatric science and practice - as I believe that alot of these kind of "disorders" are just different manifestations of the same thought spectrum.

I myself have a schizoid-personality (disorder?) - and I would say more of us on ATS would fit in that category - rather than autistic sensibilities. Though to some degree I think they are connected.

wiki: Schizoid Personality (SCROLL DOWN TO THE TABLE)

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reply to post by ghostsoldier


Ah, that leads me into my next discussion. I was hoping someone would make such a point. They're usually pretty mutually exclusive, the autistic spectrum and psychotic disorders, but it seems that geniuses tend to have a splash of both.

Price was a diametric genius: autistic and psychotic by turns