AN AUTISTIC URBAN HERMIT
(you may not understand if you are not autistic)
@actuallyautistic
For many years, I've been a very curious person. I've learned many things and done many things that I found interesting: science, art, computer science. Like a voracious animal, my mind has consumed all kinds of information, eager to understand everything around me and everything I experienced. Soldier, doctor, monk, musician, hacker, etc. Until one day, staring at the ceiling in the bed of a psychiatric hospital where I was hospitalized, I asked myself: "How did I get here, to this?" And that night, 17 years ago, another part of my life began. I began to die and be reborn, to discover how and why I had gotten to that situation. I discovered that I have high abilities, that I am bipolar and autistic. But for every limitation I discovered, I also discovered the limitations of the world and the human society in which I live.
Today I know that nothing has meaning and that life doesn't need to have it; that what many see as progress and evolution, I see as barbarism and brutality, and that humanity is the stupidest species on the planet, not the best. I don't have goals anymore, I don't need them. But I do have a compass, a kind of direction without needing to get anywhere. To live as peacefully as possible and need very little, being aware and critical of everything. A peaceful dwelling isn't just my house tucked away in the middle of the city, but also a peaceful inner life, without the noise and clamor of the lives of "normal people," without socializing more than the bare minimum necessary for survival. And this isn't because of autism; it's because of a kind of purge, a psycho-spiritual hygiene. The forced social being I often was is dying. Until a few years ago, there wasn't so much exposure and socialization; it wasn't mandatory or essential to living and working in this world. With all the technology and supposed progress, there is increasing misery, hunger, war, and violence everywhere, which makes me think that it's more of a trigger than a solution.
Being overly intelligent and being autistic is a fatal combination that guarantees the death of the social being and the development of the inner hermit that every gifted autistic person potentially is. I'm slowly retreating from the world to my quiet inner abode, where a very narrow door filters who enters and who doesn't. Just my small family group and a minimum of kindness toward a few people is more than enough.
I thought a lot about sharing what I'd learned, about helping, but I realized that idealism and the romanticization of compassion are useless when the sufferer doesn't understand the root of their problems and isn't willing to do their part. Human nature is to be a soulless son of a bitch, held back only by fear of punishment, whether from human law itself or some imagined deity. It's better to live in full awareness of the suchness of things. I myself can be a compassionate genius and in the next moment break your head for being rude and treating me badly.
We live in the worst of all possible worlds, and with that, we are warned that the worst can always happen. Knowing that, any good thing that comes or appears is a gift, a bonus track.
I don't give unsolicited advice, but if you want some, it's this: "Step away from the world as it is and watch it burn from a distance."
(An autistic person becoming an urban hermit.)
New Advance article at HPLA: Joerg Alejandro Tellkamp, Francisco de Vitoria on Knowing the Just Causes for War
**Written in Mathematics: Descartes’ Physics**
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