Guest Post - "Dr. James McPartland is a Dick (and more)"

I received an email from a friend whose a member of an Autistic Issues student group called SWANSA that made some very valid points about not only autism, but "civilized" society in general, that I felt my readers would very much benefit from taking a gander at. The friends name is Walt Guthrie (he never told me whether or not he was related to Woody and Arlo):

I caught the James McPartland talk at Emory November 8.
Off the bat, three things you need to know about him.
One: he's the Assistant Professor in the Child Study Center.
Two: He's the Associate Director of Developmental Electrophysiology Lab
Three: he's a dick.
He's actually more than that. But we'll get to that.
First, the dick:

In the course of his "research," McPartland makes use of a computer program called "Cyberball," which is a sort of "video game". Now, I have put quote marks around the words "video game" because it is the most primitive-looking thing you can possibly imagine. We are not talking "Gears of War" here. From the brief demonstration, given during the talk, it appeared to be something that might have come out in 1975 just prior to the introduction of "Pong." But what do I know? For all I know it might have just popped out of the MIT Media lab last month. In any case, I cannot emphasize enough how boring this game is.
It is a simulated game of catch between three players. Each player can choose to throw the ball to the person on his left or the person on his right. That's it. That's the game. It doesn't appear that you can miss or that the other person can fail to catch the ball. There is no skill and no chance whatsoever involved. For all intents and purposes, assuming the demonstration of this game was representative of actual "play," the "game" is the equivalent of nothing more than three people with one person calling out the name of one of the two others, and then that person being able to do the same and so on and so on.
Of course no human being would ever willingly choose to waste their time playing such a "game," but McPartland has apparently made countless kids waste irretrievable hours of their childhood at no discernible benefit for themselves "playing" this simulation that simulates nothing.
But this is not what makes McPartland a dick.
This is:
What is the purpose of Cyberball? Well, it turns out it does have a one. According to McPartland, Cyberball is designed to make a player feel excluded and outcast. You see, the other two "players" of Cyberball don't exist. They are just part of the program and what they do is ignore the player and just toss the ball back and forth to each other. Now, McPartland claims that the children he works with are, by the nature of their autism, already shunned and socially mistreated by their peers. So what does he do with them? He experiments on them by making them play games designed to increase their sense of isolation and social ostracism. And these are experiments solely for his benefit since McPartland made no claim during the course of his talk that these sessions would provide any benefit whatsoever for the children playing them.
McPartland tricks ostracized children into performing activities designed solely to further their own sense of ostracism.
Where I come from this sort of person is also technically known as a douchebag.
Oh, and did I mention that he was excited about the prospect of a computer program that might test for empathy.
Let the irony of THAT sink in.

The bulk of his talk is old territory that I've addressed before. More laser-pointer-on-the-head sort of nonsense. This time we learn that autistics take 200 milliseconds or so to process faces. Regular folk take, on average, 180. Noting that that might not seem like a big deal, McPartland admitted as much and then went on to claim that it actually was, without offering the slightest bit of evidence except to note that those 20 milliseconds add up over time (Yeah, he's right Those two percents of a second add up. Work those face recognitions, kids. You only have 86,400,000 milliseconds in a day to work with!) During it all he performed the verbal sleight-of-hand of telling us that some of this was hard science, some was unpublished and some was just speculation. It was almost like a psychic doing a "cold reading" to the room, leaving himself plenty of wiggle room should anyone call him him on any of his claims (The main one being that autistics maybe just aren't properly motivated to have the desire to be social. Or something. As someone who understands the spectrum from living it, listening to McPartland's meandering theory of autism was like listening to my great aunt and her circle describe what goes on in Grand Theft Auto). There was more talk about perceiving upright faces vs inverted faces. If you believe this is relevant to anything on Earth then God love. I won't be dragged into another discussion on it.

Afterwards, in the reception following McPartland's talk, I asked him directly whether or not autism was empirically or definitionally a "disorder." He responded that it was definitional and that ALL people on the autistic spectrum are, by definition, "disordered." Then, having admitted this, he jumped to the it's-only-a-word defense. If I found the word "offensive" (a word I never employed in the course of the discussion) then that was on me. Because who could find any objection to being labeled "disordered?"
I told him what the word "disordered" actually means.
It means "nigger."
It means "faggot." It means "kike."
It performs the same societal function and is derived in PRECISELY the same manner. It is a derogatory classification whose purpose is to dehumanize one arbitrarily grouped and categorized set of humanity. And like the white racist, who feels that he can designate, by his own criteria, any one that he chooses to include into or exclude from the inferior class of "nigger," James McPartland and his intellectually low-functioning behaviorist brood think they are entitled to arbitrarily classify an entire subset of humanity as definitionally "disordered" and then have full power to say who is and who is not in that set. Neither James McPartland nor the typical hardcore white racist feel any need to empirically justify their respective words. Why should he? Just as the word "nigger" empowered and elevated the white power structure, the word 'disorder' gives the behaviorists their power, income, and justification for their very existence.
James Mcpartland is a grinning clown, the moral equivalent of a racist, who experiments on vulnerable socially outcast children to make them feel worse about themselves, all so he can grind out a steady stream of lazy speculation disguised as science.
Fuck him.

For a Friend

Aerial view of Mercer Island, public domain by Derrick Coetzee

I would like to thank a blogger I know from Pretoria for bringing to mind the events of many years ago. This is a story I believe everyone needs to hear.

To protect my friends privacy, I will call him Seth. He was someone I wish I had gotten to know better, and earlier, and someone whose story would enlighten all of us today about the most important side of morality: love.

Seth is gay. And no, this story does not end with him being killed by armed KKK brutes, nor does it end with him taking his own life, he is far more resilient then that. It ends with something more common, and for most of us, more true. Yet without the story, the ending means nothing anyways.

Seth was bright, intelligent, healthy, and in no way or manner effeminate. There is nothing about Seth that would seem less of a man, that would make him any less male than I or any man that you know. He was civilized, and never rude, and always spoke softly and carefully, every word that came out of his mouth, something he learned from his own life, and yet he still had a sense of humor. He is one of those rare people who can keep himself totally disciplined and still be open to everyone and everything around him at the same time. He was strong-willed and frank, saying exactly what he means and doing exactly what he intends. He had a strong work ethic and a sense of responsibility for himself that too many people are missing today. Seth was a talented actor and singer.

He had grown up on an island of 13 square miles with 19,000 people (since then the population has grown to 22,000), two miles from Seattle. You could ride a horse along a short section of the main drag of town. There were many beautiful cliffsides and views from out across the lake, and he lived on a one-lane road that wound up the hill with no guard rails and a 300 foot cliff on one side, from which you could see the tops of the trees. He was the only son of his wealthy father, a careless, neglectful single father who would rather spend his time with 15 egotistical mistresses who all thought they were the only one then take care of his only child.

Seth was called many names at school, and ridiculed, even though he was hardly a homosexual stereotype, and even in the place, the Drama Department, that one would least think such abuse would occur. The actors in the Drama Department were a very dog-eat-dog bunch, never caring for their own, always set on themselves, and when abuse occurred, they would not stand against it, lest they anger someone. The only person who seemed to care at all was the teacher, and since most people knew this, they simply waited until she was away, then recommenced their behavior.

I don't remember entirely what happened, but somehow one day I told Seth a joke I really shouldn't have, something very offensive towards gays. Realizing what I had done, I quickly apologized for it. What happened next I don't believe I will ever forget. He looked me straight in the eye and said "do you honestly think that would offend me? I've heard so much worse then that." He paused, sighed and then concluded: "What you would think if you heard what I've heard."

I spoke to Seth many more times, and before the school year was over, he told me he was consulting his boyfriend about moving to Houston, Texas. We were out among the fallen chestnuts, speaking after school, him alone waiting for over an hour to be picked up before I found him after Track practice. He seemed very at peace, but also very anxious to get off of our island. He was only a junior, had not graduated from high school yet, but when I met a friend of Seth's next year, and asked him why I had not seen Seth, he told me he had moved to Maryland - while his father was still here on the island. I doubt very much that he completed high school there.

Regardless of what you think about homosexuality morally, no one, in their right mind, will say that my friend Seth, my kind, civilized, open, disciplined, honorable, thoughtful, and honest Seth, was treated justly.

Helping the Elderly and Eliminating the Home

WWII Morale poster, source: Northwestern University Poster Library (via wikimedia), public domain.

Nursing homes weren't as common in the past. The elderly used to be an important part of communities, and you can still see this in many books written from a previous time.

My Grandma has told me about the people in her neighborhood who fix things around the house, make her meals, drive her places she needs to go, especially at night, and are available if she's in trouble. Her church is always there for her, providing her a tight web of connections from which she can draw every form of support, and in exchange, she uses here substantial finances to take good care of the church as well, and can lend her support and aid of every sort that she is able to the people around her. She's 86, has been in a major car accident, and has very limited energy. But she's kept her house.

She still lives there, just as she did when she was young, and people still visit her from around the neighborhood. It's a friendly neighborhood, upper-class, in a large city where most people know a decent neighbor of their neighbors. She's lived there almost her entire life.

She has told me many times that the biggest reason she has been able to stay in her house is because people help her.

Now to business. A society that utilizes people for 40 years and then discards them when they are no longer of use to it will, in the end, lose it's humanity, it's individuality, it's respectfulness and lawfulness, it's spirit and cultural soul, it's inner strength, and it's touch with any deeper emotional connection among human beings. A society that does not value those who have worked for it, lived for it, loved for it, and in some cases, fought in wars for it, even sustaining injuries, will, in the end, value no one. If we burn whatever is of no use, we will be left with ashes, no loyalty, and no dignity. These people provided what you have, why do you deny them a small portion of it?

What do they do in nursing homes? They make food, they clean, and they check on people. Nothing they do in a nursing home has to be done in a nursing home, and very little of what they do in most nursing homes requires a paid professional. Now, I understand the burden of boarding your grandmother in your own house (though I also see the beauty of it, having three generations of a family in one place together, the young benefiting from the wisdom and care of the old, and the young taking care of the old) but as a community, each and every one of us by ourselves, we can take care of just a little bit of what each and every one of these beautiful, valuable citizens and people need to stay independent, healthy, and in a way, productive, while enriching our own lives through true community and relationships that can last forever. Even something as simple as helping an old man who has trouble up a staircase can, even, save a life, a limb, or the health of a man with osteoporosis or serious disorders of that sort. Merely feeling like they're able to ask for help can keep these people out of homes with disrespectful employees, low standards of living, and isolation from a real, balanced, diverse community, and destroying the finances of a family that must pay for care that, honestly, it usually doesn't need.

I'm not saying that every single person can be kept out of a nursing home, but these people have given their lives, their labor, their love, for a lifetime to all of us around them, and continue to give even today, and just helping them occasionally when they need it will make them feel like they can ask for help. And our society as a whole will benefit not only from their presence, and their lives, among us, but from the better attitude created by actually taking care of people. With that attitude comes respect, reverence, dignity, honor, all the things that you see none of in our human-hating modern world.

Sweet Intoxication - The Debate

cc 2.0 Share Alike, lucianvenutian (below) & Zelfgemaakt (above)

One of the great debates of the modern world is what makes life worth living. Today I'd like to talk about pleasure, and the joy of slowly destroying yourself for a smile.

During the 1920's, Whiskey like that pictured above was illegal, and some elements on the far left wish to make donuts illegal as well. Proponents of such policies will pinpoint to the delinquency, sleaziness and poor behavior that such pleasure seeking encourages, along with the costs to the public health (and America's health bill), and the ideals of a higher morality. Opponents take two stripes: the kind that don't believe this is any of your (or the governments) business, and the kind that actually think this is a good way to lead your life. The second discussion is the more meaningful.

Pleasure has always been a part of life, and always will be, and has always been a part of what wakes people up in the morning. Yet it also gives birth to cynical folk sayings like "everything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening." Often in comes down to the central conflicts of long-term good vs. short-term good, and personal-good vs. collective good. But there is also the crisis of dignity.

See, when your whole life is lived for a cheap smile, it may be easy to wake up in the morning, but what worth, what purpose do you have to point to? Yet, perhaps too much dignity (or attempt at...) can lead to pride. There is also something to be said for truly being open, and allowing the world to seep in to you and you in to it, letting dust be dust. But still, one must have something of substance, and to avoid this is to taint one's own nature to the point where you start to lose contact with reality.

Cynicism is self-deceiving. By way of "accepting" the bad in the world it persuades its proponent that he understands everything, as if being slightly better then someone else makes you all-knowing. Please cast aside your high-brows; there is a deeper pleasure, a deeper fulfillment, then simple dope. Orgasmic blasts of pleasure certainly have their place, but of and by themselves they do make for a fulfilling life as dignity is a part of you as well. And purpose brings with it a sense of who you are and why you are here.

And often the instant gratification is best when coupled with the deep and true, as in the cases of true love and deep relationships created by shared pleasure and experiences. Joy by itself is waning, but when coupled with a human being, a real, live human being with experiences, aspirations, and conscience, who you understand, it takes on a meaning that will outlive your days on this earth and can come to make your life more pleasant for the future as supposed to just today.

Table Manners

Yet another break from my break:

At a dinner table, you are not supposed to let your elbows touch the table. At the bar, on the other hand, it is considered wise and appropriate. This may actually have to do with the now dying or dead custom of bringing your gun in to a saloon, and keeping your elbows on the table implies that you are not carrying such aggressively.

You are not supposed to open your mouth when chewing food, and are only supposed to use your hands when eating finger food. We Americans/Mainline Anglo-Europeans use forks and knives, although in some country's they will actually use tortilla like breads to grasp their food instead, especially Ethiopia. It was never much of a custom in Anglosphere nations to use a flattened bread, whereas fried foods that can be easily picked up (potato chips, chicken fingers...) filled the void of foods by hand, and cooking beef in larger pieces is also more common in English-speaking countries. Metalworking was also more common in these nations.

What conversation is allowable at the dinner table is regulated in the US to varying degrees dependent on region. This is unfortunate, as dinner is one of the main social gatherings of the day and restricted conversation lends easilly to superficiality. It softens people in mind, body, and soul. Makes them at ease as they dissolve in to the chair they are sitting in, slowly disappearing before their own decadence.

Of course, on the flip side, that only happens if you take it too far. Restriction in moderation makes for ease of relationship. And insisting on too much "real" may make new relationships more difficult to attain, crippling and restricting your life.

Maybe the best approach is to start easy and slowly remove the bounds. Build up. Give people their space at first and slowly approach. On the way, it's steady. Once you're there, it's fulfilling and enriching. Really, you can only make so many rules, relationships are an art. One basic rule though: It's about the other person.