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Conversation with Aspergerhuman blogger Bo Moore, on alexithymia, emotion and language, autism and Asperger’s as imports from other symptomologies, studying animal behaviors to understand humans, emotions as reaction to environment, freeze response, society as a predatory environment, early Homo Sapiens and socialization via agriculture, juvenilization of humans, wild humans, neoteny and domestication, differential development, growing up without judgment, permanent adolescence and the violence of pop culture, taming females, the difference between autism and Asperger’s, schizophrenia as diagnostic waste basket, language as environment, lack of concreteness in NT use of language, language-as-consensus, the question of empathy, the neotenous period, varying environmental factors, engineered netoeny, going back to the Pyramids, pre-natal indoctrination, Philip K. Dick and Blade Runner, the paradox-parable of empathy, the rules of psychology, prescription in lieu of description, militarization of psychology, religion and money, defining science, imagination and knowledge, quantum mechanics and the supernatural, the powerlessness of words, the uncertainty principal and quantum superimposition, visual thinking, disappearing into nature, Asperger’s and atheism, the cusp of language, co-opting the spiritual, the animal connection, the internalized pyramid, man groups, depletion and fragmentation due to over-crowding, the benefits of isolation, seeking status within the Status Quo, questioning hierarchy, capitalist parenting and labels, being outnumbered, the option of walking away, autistic ambassadors, the neoteny spectrum, homo erectus and varying temporal zones, legacy brains, species bifurcation and genocide, taking away Native Americans’ connection to the land as soul murder, what growing up really means, Maslow’s developmental stages, the danger that adults might revolt, being divorced from experience, Aristotle’s advice to the confused, children of the desert.
Companion blog (the visual side: photographs of Wyoming).
Songs: “El Mariachi” and “Monkey Said” by The Freak Fandango Orchestra; “Heart of Stone,” by The Raveonettes; “Unexplainable Stories,” by Cloud Cult.
Bo Moore is very interesting to listen to! Can’t say as i find some of his arguments about human development over the last few hundred thousand years all that compelling, though.
just re: “tame females’ being more neotonous, thus males in agricultural societies selecting females who can have babies at younger ages.
There’s been a lot of study on conditions at menarche – generally it is tied to body fat/weight. As in human females start their periods when they reach a certain weight – not height, age, etc. This holds true across time, culture, geography, etc.
So, basically girls reach menarche earlier today largely because they’re getting fatter earlier. There may also be a relation of early menarche to increased exposure to environmental estrogens, but i believe this has not been studied as thoroughly (and as it happens fat cells produce estrogen).
http://tinyurl.com/pb6bejr
you can search ‘menarche and body weight’ to get started. steph
“His arguments”? Is that a typo?
no, it is not a typo.
So – you’re policing my use of language? This is interesting.
Huh? I was pointing out that you got the gender of my co-host wrong!
We were discussing the necessary juvenalization of Homo sapiens, due to changing population density over the previous 10-15 k years. The population has radically increased (literally off the chart0 since the advent of fossil fuels / industrial revolution: more adjustments in our species are being made and will be made (if we don’t exterminate ourselves first.) I wish people would listen to what is being said instead of only listening for something they can “gripe about” –
I don’t necessarily have a point to make with this comment, other than it might provide insight into thinking in language vs thinking in pictures or imagery. For the first 20 years of my life, I thought in words. This abruptly changed when I tested my mortality by ingesting a lethal dosage of the dissociative, psychoactive Dextromethorphan. What resulted, according to my friends who were present, was a grand mal seizure. I do not remember the seizure; what I do remember is a near death/out of body experience where I traveled on what I can only describe as “luminous parabolas” across multiple identities and maybe even lifetimes, until I returned to my body. After I regained waking consciousness, I realized I had conscious access to an ever-morphing stream of images in my mind that has not ceased since (a decade later). By the way, this is much different than merely conjuring an image from my imagination; I can actually “see” a vivid, ever-changing stream of imagery that presents itself to me of its own accord. Rather than feeling like a new ability, it seemed intimately familiar. It is as if the images were always going on just beneath the surface of my conscious mind, only through this rather traumatic experience, I made the unconscious conscious. Although the pictures change of their own accord, the act of consciously viewing the images changes them, or rather, I can change them if I want to; I can choose to take authorship over what imagery I see, or I can let the stream produce images on its own. This radically changed my thinking process, and now , ten years later, I predominately think in pictures, although of course, I still can think in words as well, or I can do both simultaneously. The interesting part is that this arose from a traumatic experience, perhaps even physically traumatic to my neurology. I still do not fully understand it, but I am grateful that it happened. After this occurred, I started painting and became an artist, and needless to say, the ability to have conscious access to this part of my consciousness has served me well creatively.
Another interesting part about this, that would take too long to explain here, is that there seems to be a quantum aspect to the images ie. the things I painted years prior, reflect the concepts I learn about and think about now. For example, there were intricate occult concepts that symbolically appeared in the imagery of my previous work that I would not learn about until years later. Anyway, I don’t know if this adds anything to the topic or not, I just thought I’d share it : )
It certainly does. Is it something you have talked abut publicly? What sort of changes did it bring about in your moods and behaviors, if any? Has it made you less reactive, for example. Did it change your relationship to your body and your feelings about death? (Lots of questions surfacing – Maybe we should do a podcast about it.)
Those closest to me in my immediate life are aware of it, although I don’t think they fully understand. I also wrote a small article about it a few years back, but to be honest, I cringe when I think about it because my mindset at the time was largely couched in an overly spiritual outlook (what you might call the “spiritual second matrix”), so I’m a bit embarrassed about the piece. But yeah, it radically altered my life (my intellect/personality/behavior/view of death etc.)- not all of the changes were beneficial either. There’s actually a lot to go into. I’m definitely game to do a podcast, I’d like that very much. If you want just send me an email : )
Dextromethorphan, the dextro isomer of the codeine analog of levorphanol, is a cough suppressant ingredient first marketed as a prescription antitussive in the early 1950s; it became an over-the-counter drug in 1956. The maximum recommended daily dosage is approximately 120 mg/day. There have been anecdotal reports of cough syrup abuse since this time. It is now included in more than 75 nonprescription preparations and is available in concentrations of 5 to 15 mg/5 mL in various sizes. The “extra strength” cough syrups, which contain up to 3 mg dextromethorphan per mL, appear to present a special hazard.
Dextromethorphan is a N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, which is actively being studied for use in treating neuropathic pain. Like PCP and ketamine, however, it can produce dissociative effects in higher doses (>240 mg).1 Users describe a set of distinct dose-dependent “plateaus” ranging from a mild stimulant effect with distorted visual perceptions at low doses (around 120 mg) to a sense of complete dissociation from one’s body at doses of 10 oz or more. The effects typically last for 6 hours. Recent literature suggests that heavy dextromethorphan use may produce phencyclidine (PCP)-like effects from the metabolic conversion of dextromethorphan to its immediate metabolite, dextrorthan, which acts like an NMDA receptor antagonist. These include bizarre and hyperactive behavior, nystagmus, ataxia, hallucinations, CNS depression, and a false-positive urine test for PCP.2 Dosages of 4 to 20 oz daily are required to produce the desired state of inebriation.
Sounds like you induced psychosis – bad idea.
OOps! Hit submit. I doubt the drug itself caused you to suddenly think in pictures – traumatic experiences like psychosis-hallucination produce strange images that are not “perceived” by the eye-visual system but are caused by disturbance in the brain. Visual thinkers perceive the world visually and THINK in pictures. It’s not “spooky, spiritual, supernatural or magic”. All humans have visual awareness, but it has been strongly suppressed by “word culture.” The experience may have had a psychological effect in which you became aware of “being visual” which you didn’t pay attention to before. more than you did before.
Interesting about the predators/prey thing. I’m autistic and I’ve pretty much never known anything other than the ‘Edward Scissorhands’ scenario, playing out in endless repeats, it took me a long time to be able to get myself into a semi-recluse situation where I now no longer have to live thru endless repeats of the same scenario.
I haven’t taken much interest in autism these last 10 years or so, just got on with finding a way to keep people at a distance, lest they prey on me. I also live in a rural area, I just can’t take the noise of high density life, I always had to use earplugs to sleep when I lived in cities.
So…I enjoyed your talk, I spose I should look up more blogs, but I’m sorta ‘over’ having autism or reading about it. I was intensely interested in it when I got dx’ed at about 40, but now, 19 years later, unh.
thanks for checking in… I think “autism” (the idea) is a lens for looking through, rather than a thing to look at….