First of all let me thank Marty for his never ending support and his way of pointing out where I’m wrong about stuff, I love that!
And to respond to your question Marty:
In my own words what I think autism really is, this is going to be a tough one. Because Autism appears in many different ways in different people, so I’ll just stick with trying to explain what Autism is in my own personal case, though a lot of Aspies (people with Aspergers) share the same traits.
The way I see it Aspergers is mostly a range of personality traits, ups and downs different fields, In my case I have often observed that I am able remain focused and concentrate on doing something I enjoy for a lot longer than NT’s (Neurotypical) can. I’m highly skilled in all subjects I find fascinating and/or interesting, but find myself lacking quite a bit in subjects I don’t. Often these subject are of no value to the modern world either. I can’t put food on the table by knowing the difference between a comet and an asteroid, or by explaining solar mass to someone who has no interest in astronomy. Nor will I be able feed anyone by knowing the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
A bad thing about me is my tolerance for stress for example. If I work in a stressful environment I very quickly exhaust myself to the point where I will be unable to continue working. Tight deadlines are my number one enemy, and I would most likely fail. Though if I’m given the same goal in an environment where I’m free from stress or a deadline I would finish the same task faster. And I believe that’s true for all Aspies.
Autism is with my limited vocabulary a very hard thing to define though, because there are so many variations of Autism and way too many theories for any one to be right.
Does this mean that I’m right? No, definitely not. You should not take my words as the “truth” since I can only describe what it’s been like for me.
And my current conclusion is that it’s more a kind of personality disorder than anything else. And by “disorder” what I really mean is simply “not like everyone else”. A person with a different way of looking at things, that at the same time has a hard getting into someone else’s shoes, or viewing things from a perspective we did not choose to view it from.
Some “experts” define this as “living in a private world”, but they are absolutely wrong. We only have one world (Earth), and we all choose our own reality, it’s just my reality is that my personality is incompatible with the majority, and therefore I’m labelled as such.
(Did you know Einstein is suspected to have had Aspergers?)
