Born Free

We all, at sometime in our life will find someone or something to commit to. Too often that commitment is not much more than one of dependence on what we need to survive. It's even worse when that dependence is on something that doesn't have to be a necessity but it becomes one.

A relationship based solely on dependence will rob both party's of their liberty and freedom. Without commiting to our responsibility in a relationship we loose the benefits that come with that.

Responsibility is too often seen as an obligation when really, commiting to our responsibility in relationships is what provides us with the opertunities to obtain all of the wonderful things in life.

I hear socital views that claim that so many people are not willing to accept responsibility and too often:

1) Our leaders set really bad examples of how to be truly responsible by the way they behave in all aspects of their life.

2) I hear these leaders complaining about how others are unwilling to be responsible and yet they continue to not provide the people they claim are being this way with real opportunity for change. This instead show the leaders irresponsibility and their neglect at nourishing a responsible relationship with the public they are supposed to be leading.

What is the public's responsibility? Well, we need to teach our parent's (so to speak). To those of you who are younger than I am, I apologize. We who are a part of previous generations haven't been very responsible in providing you with the leadership you needed. You deserve to be able to depend on your leaders and I don't see how you can at this point. Now we have to ask you to help us create something better for us all and the next generation as well.

One place we can all start is:
If your job and your environment teaches you a value system that will create the dillusion that what you perform determines your worth, you are likely to look at your friends, family, and kids in this way and then they are likely to reflect that to others as well.

Personhood is a right. However, being treated this way often must be asked of others or demanded of them if necessary (and as difficult as it sometimes is) we have to remind ourselves that we own it.

How do you think that the mental heath industry got so screwed up. Do you think that aliens came in and took over their bodies. Those people who work there are ours weather we like it or not. Our values aided in them to being able to cause such extreme chaos and harm.

I wish the angry bullies who spread false information was the biggest threat to autistic people, but I can't give anyone or any group of people that much credit or perceived power. Our views and values have set up alot of ignorance.

Mercury isn't the outside force that creates autism any more than bullies are the outside force that is causing all the problems for autistics. Some bullies are autistics themselves who are acting very badly. I agree some are acting terribly....Very terribly. And no, being autistic doesn't make anyone less responsible. We can't allow or afford to think that way.

However, society continuing to seperate itself from people (even bullies and leaders who are sometimes one and the same) and blaming them is what excludes people from ever being allowed to show up in places where their integration with others can provide them an opertunity to educate themselves and have them educate us as well (as crazy as this may sound).

We as an autistic culture, like any other subculture, must teach the rest of society who we are and what the best ways we learn are, rather than relinqishing that power to irresponsible societal leaders . That's been part of the problem all along. We haven't done that.

Why can't we get poorly behaved people punished for their outrageous criminal acts? Partly because we are trying to make nice with too many agencies and companies that we claim are only doing "a little bit wrong". Our irresponsible relationship with these people (by not holding them responsible for their inappropriate behavior) is punishing us all.

Political back scratching, being the good autistics, instead of just being people who are hurt and angry as ANYONE would be if they were mistreated, is, in many ways, sending the wrong message.

We are not saints and describing ourselves this way, only allows us to be seen in ways that promotes the pendulum to swing the other way so that we are being seen as worse than typical. This often happens when we reliquish our power to others by claiming we are better than them in the same way as they have done this to us. Instead we need to just be honest and show people that we are just different. We are people with good and bad in all of us. Trying to present ourselves as anything else only hurts us when the truth is learned.

Our personhood is a free gift that can't be taken away. Earning the right to be treated as free (even when fair treatment has been stolen from us), requires consistent and persistent effort from all of us.