“It’s a Social Thing”

This blog was originally created to give people a bit more insight into what someone with autism is like. But somehow, I started mixing in religion and politics into it. I think I should go back to form and start talking about autism again. And I think I will start by sharing a story about how I came to truly love my three most favorite topics: religion (including politics, which is theology by another name), philosophy, and history.

See, I really like other people. They are such an interesting bunch to study! It’s a fascination that I share with my father, though I don’t know whether I inherited it or whether it was taught. We love learning about people’s motivations, beliefs, and desires. We love listening to people talk about themselves and learning from them.

However, my interest in humanity took a different turn than his. My father was a salesperson, so his interest in people was directed towards helping them (aka procuring a sale). By doing what he loved (getting people to talk about what motivated them), he’d get small business owners to talk about their industry and their desires, and then, tailor a sales plan for them. Elegant, no?

My interests were more purely academic, in large part because of my autism. I long ago found out that reading books was a more effective way for me to learn about people than actually talking to people in question. So began my interest in the humanities. The stories and philosophical texts I would read were amazing. There were so many ideas that I never before had come across. And reading about what people in previous time periods believed was also very interesting, allowing me to gain a new perspective on things.

The thing I learned the most was something called “metapolitics.” Metapolitics is, in a word, talking about discussions surrounding politics. When politicians, reporters, and academics talk about the politics, they are usually talking about left versus right, Republican versus Democrat. They are talking about policy prescription, the procedures of government, and even the underlying philosophies of each side of the argument. Metapolitics examines this back-and-forth from a bird’s eye view.

Examples of a metapolitical questions include:

• If both sides are arguing over health care, what does that say about the political dialogue?
• Is there a pendulum that swings back and forth between each side? If so, how does it work?
• What’s the role of the media in political conversations?

Another thing I examined was the nature of customs and traditions. I became very much aware of how traditions help define an individual as a member of a particular culture group and increases the bond between the members of that group. And this helped me rationally understand why it was important to have good manners.

My whole life, I’ve been prone to odd behaviors. Looking back now, I can see that they were pretty embarrassing, but at the time, I was completely oblivious. And not only was I oblivious, I didn’t care.

My mother would often scold me. “Brent,” she’d say, “don’t do that!”

“Why not?” I’d ask.

“It’s a social thing,” she would reply.

Then I would roll my eyes. A “social thing,” yes. One of those irrational, illogical rules human beings adopt at random to control other people’s behavior. To my mind, none of it made sense if you thought about it for five minutes. So, I ignored them. I didn’t feel like it was necessary to follow something I thought was silly, and nobody could tell why it was even like that at all.

Well, I think I understand now. Those types of customs, traditions, and manners help make us who we are and help us get along with each other. They help make us comfortable with each other. There’s not really any sort of logic to these things that can be seen from the outside looking in, but they serve a purpose for those that follow the tradition

And because the traditions themselves are arbitrary, they can gradually change over time according to whatever trendsetters desire. We can see this most clearly in the different styles of dress that have come about and died over the years, but it also applies to manners and language. I talked about this a bit earlier, when my mother complained about how so many things are considered offensive now that weren’t considered offensive when she was my age.

She asked “Why is it that so many people get offended now by this?”

I told her “it’s a social thing.” 

Autism is a developmental disorder, yes, but in a way, it also helped me discover something about the human experience: that a lot of the things we take to be “common sense” behaviors are actually weird, arbitrary, and a product of our time. And for that reason, we shouldn’t take them for granted.