Greetings all!

I am ... an aspie. A proud aspie. It's official. It's in my medical records. And let me tell you, I wouldn't have it any other way.

You see, it's an integral part of who I am. Being an aspie is not like having the flu or any other disease that a person catches. You don't "recover" from it. You don't "get well." It is forever. It is a difference in the structure of my nervous system. My brain is actually wired differently from yours. Some of the wiring that helps you in social situations is diverted, in my brain, to be part of my general intelligence. So I'm smart. Except in social situations, where I have trouble.

In practical terms, this difference in the wiring of my brain means that I often see things in the world that other people miss. things that allow me to see solutions to problems that the rest of you just don't think of. It also allows me to focus on an extremely specialized subject, master that subject, and become very creative within that subject.

Aspies are often described as being loyal friends, as lacking in social diplomacy to the point of being brusque or nasty, and of being unusually honest people. Don't misunderstand. That doesn't mean I can't lie. But most lies are done for social reasons that I don't really understand. I see no advantage to most lies, but I do see the drama they cause.

My lack of social skills has an unexpected benefit. My emotions don't own me the way yours do you. I'm not their slave. But you are.

You see, your emotions have you in a vice-like grip. They do this by making you feel good every time you do what they tell you to do. So you obey. And you will obey again, and again, and again so you can keep feeling good.

But there's a problem. Your emotions also tell you what to believe. No matter how false, how irrational, how self-destructive a belief can be, your emotions can give it the feel of truthiness. And when a wrong belief feels as if it should be true, to you, it IS true.

In this way, emotions lie.

From where I stand, you all act like marionettes. Your emotions pull a string and you jump. It's like I'm watching The Puppet Masters. No, not the horror movie series from back in the 1980s, the 1951 novel by Robert Heinlein. In the story, government agents battle mind-controlling parasitic slug-like creatures from outer space that attach themselves to people's backs and take control of their victims' nervous systems, manipulating them like puppets.

Thankfully, that doesn't work on me. An idea or a belief is not true to me just because it feels good to believe that it's true. And it's not false to me just because it feels good to believe it's false. Believing what my emotions tell me is true - or not believing them - doesn't feel good or bad to me. Emotions are just emotions. Facts, are just facts.

So, whatever facts tell me, I accept as true.

When I explain this to people, I can tell that they don't always get it. At least not at first. Then again, I really don't expect them to. You have to experience it to understand it. Or you have to live with an aspie long enough to see it in action to actually comprehend how different we are. So, I've had to get used to people thinking that I'm rude, or that I'm deliberately pissing them off, or that I just don't understand how wonderful THEIR beliefs are. That's just the way of it. That's the price I have to pay.

The truth is that I don't quite know how to play all those little social games that people seem to continually play with each other. Nor do I want to. I have no intention of manipulating anybody, even if I knew how to do it. By the same token, if you expect me to act as other people - including you - do in social situations, you are mistaken. I don't. I can't.

That doesn't mean I don't have emotions. Without emotions people have no reason to do anything; they really do motivate us. But that's where mine stop, while yours go over the top. To use the marionette example, I can feel when my emotions pull a string, but the tug isn't strong enough to force me to actually do anything.

Personally, I don't think I could live my life being the puppet of irrational emotions like the ones that force so many of the rest of you to do stupid, even self-destructive, things just because it feels good at the moment, and to believe the most absurd, easily disprovable ideas just because it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside to believe that bullshit. And yes, I do know this happens because I see it repeated every day.

The thing is, even if by some miracle my brain could be re-wired to be like yours, I would fight tooth and nail to prevent it. For me, being an aspie is a gift - a blessing. I don't want to participate in all those little social games by which people try to take advantage of each other, or hurt each other simply to make themselves feel better. Or delude themselves. From outside looking in, it's more destructive than it is beneficial. It's the source of so many unnecessary problems in life. And I'd rather not participate in that.

So, it should come as no surprise that I loved science when I was growing up. Or at least the idea of what science should be. In college, I was trained as a scientist, which brought into clear focus the reality of science, which turned out to fall quite short of my ideal picture of what it should be. In the process, however, I did get my doctorate in Anthropology.

When it comes to religion, I'm an agnostic. I'm an agnostic because there is no evidence for or against religion. I'm a Militant Agnostic because, as our slogan states, "I don't know. And neither do you!" That started out as a joke a friend came up with back in college, but I have since made it my own. It should also come as no surprise that when it comes to politics, I'm a pragmatist. "What works, works, and what doesn't, doesn't." I don't give a damn about your political narratives because all of them are false. Every political or economic "ism" is essentially nothing but some person's idea of how the world SHOULD work, not how it DOES work. I'm a pragmatist because pragmatism is the only "ism" that takes human nature into account.

All of this means that I have a unique perspective on just about everything. What I see is how much politics here in the US is religion. No, I'm not saying it's LIKE religion, I'm saying it IS religion. The two major parties are cults, each of which has their own theology (there's no other word that fits so well) based on beliefs that are NOT based on fact, but which are accepted on faith, because accepting them feel good emotionally. And that is the definition of religion.

Seeing politics as the religion it is explains the depth of hate each side has for the other - and for anyone else who doesn't agree with them. Both the Democrats and Republicans come across to me as being from the same mold as the Westboro Baptist Church. "We know the truth. We don't need no stinking facts. And if you disagree with us you must be stupid, insane, or just plain evil!" So when I see one of the apologists for the Dems or Reps on the telly, I can't help but think of Mermaid Man (from SpongeBob) shouting "EE-VIL!!"

I was listening to a couple of friends talk the other day when a chance remark made me wonder if being an aspie might have an evolutionary advantage. Many of us are, after all, quite good with technology. Lots of geeks and nerds appear to be aspies, and while I have no facts or figures to back up any of this speculation, it does make sense to me. After all, every one of us - every human being - is a unique experiment. That's how evolution works. And it's conceivable that being good with technology might have a distinct evolutionary advantage.

What this means to me is that all the attempts to "cure" being an aspie might actually work against the evolutionary advancement of the human species. In particular, the development of a test to identify aspies in the womb and use selective abortion to "cure the problem" might actually be a form of self-destructive genocide. Not a happy thought.

This is speculation, of course, but at a time when we are playing with DNA and making judgments about what is beneficial and what is detrimental within the human genome, we could easily be doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

I'll just leave everyone with the thought that we know a hell of a lot less than we think we do, and we're playing with fire.