Ayn Rand, in all likelihood, knew nothing about the autism spectrum. But she could draw from her own life and experiences. The creator of Howard Roark worked obsessively, evening after evening. She rarely went out. Ayn Rand was extremely nervous before public functions, but there was a violent intensity about her. She observed, rightly, that boredom preserves the precarious dignity of people who love small talk. Her sensitivity to cruelty and injustice has largely escaped her readers. All her life, she collected things, and kept them in separate file folders. Her grandmother gifted her a chest of drawers to store her collections, and her mother complained about all the rubbish she collected. She loved ordering and categorizing things, something very fundamental to the autistic cognitive style. Ayn Rand ticks way too many boxes.
I speculate similarly ten years ago.
Everyone is sensitive to cruelty against his own kind, and defines same as injustice. When I read Ayn Rand I often run across cutting remarks against people of lesser mental ability. And I have experiences the hatred those of lesser ability feel toward the gifted. Empathy has limits, in everyone. The further a person is removed from one’s own type, the less consideration we feel for him.
There’s no point debating whether it should be this way. It is this way. We can’t change human nature, we can only accurately assess it.
So she , except to collect a large number of colored stones. Do clumsy and socially awkward people on the spectrum enjoy long walks? If she collected shells instead of stones, could we conclude anything other than the amount of time spent walking along the shore?
Who knew that architecture school was correlated with mathematical genius as described in the linked psychiatric paper.
May I suggest that we refrain from making psychological diagnosis of people based on their published fiction and public personas.
RAD, 1) Autistics tend to enjoy long walks. 2) I didn’t say autism is correlated with success at architecture school. But autistics tend to like Math and technical topics. If you get past the posthumous diagnosis of autism, it’s a deep, extremely thoughtful essay on the autistic cognitive style.
Shanu, you link to the paper titled “Asperger’s Disorder and Mathematicians of Genius” in your line about architecture school. Beyond the basic geometry required to make technical drawings (like a draftsman?) I don’t think of architecture as “technical” unless you conflate structural engineering with architecture.
And what cognitive style does this kind of self-aggrandizement imply? I did get past the posthumous diagnosis and my admittedly subjective assessment of your “extremely thoughtful essay” is not as glowing as your own.
My shot at pop psychology…If you think of the “spectrum” including people like Temple Grandin, and considering the skills she was considered good at, may be some architecture also qualifies. In other words, not the “calculating” part of genius, but the “visualizing”.
I am very flattered that good and excellent Dr. Kling should take note of my dyspeptic babblingon August 24th and that so many would take the time to thoughtfully comment. I am back now in my home south of the equator and have consequently shed the rancor that may have been present in that comment, so I will take the liberty to respond here since comments to that post are now closed.
Some apologetics for the apostasy: I will argue for the primacy of means over ends.
I came to libertarianism enthusiastically after a year or two in a nearly 40 year career in DC, donated hundreds over the years (not that enthusiastic) to the LP and to Gary Johnson, participated in campaign events, etc. Although I’d never pass a steel test, I can say I have read Nozick, Locke, Thoreau, Spooner, Kropotkin, Stirner, Proudhon, et al. However, it always seemed as if though libertarians lacked a well-conceived sense of practical governance.
Therefore, I was greatly pleased to engage with the excellent Randy Barnett’s great book The Structure of Liberty, Justice, and the Rule of Law which is probably the best visualization of how a libertarian governance would operate in the USA. To grossly simplify, it embraces the US Constitution and sees the way forward as one in which the essential means and methods are left intact but the actions are tightly circumscribed to the few generally accepted libertarian functions of government (well explained and justified) and all to be enforced by well-meaning and honest judges. And this will all happen in some distant future. Apologies if this is inaccurate.
I’ve met Barnett and he seemed like an entirely loveable person to whom I am inferior in all aspects. His books are great and highly recommended if not personally persuasive.
Here, we have a legislature that is elected by proportional representation. Some 15 parties hold seats. Consequentially libertarians hold office at all levels of government and are busily engage in incrementally advancing the libertarian agenda. The big news here is a move to eliminate subsidies for cooking gas. Some success moving pensions reform. The governor of my state is libertarian but thus far in his brief time in office not particularly successful. So be it. Bad mistakes were made by previous office holders, lessons are learned, work and perseverance are necessary. But pragmatism is always relevant and libertarians are represented in government. As are many other ideologies, all competing in the market of ideas. Nobody is shut out.
I am only here because of a woman, of course, and I would have moved to North Korea for her. Hopefully I would not now be spouting Ju Che ideology.
I would argue that multi-party representation affects life all the way down to the personal level. Here there does not seem to be the intense identitarian fanaticism that rules the US. I have not idea whether my wife is black or pardo, it has just never been a topic of conversation. You can actually go more than 10 minutes here in a conversation without race issues being hurled about and this can largely be attributed to the fact of multi-party representation: people identify with ideas. If my wife were forced to provide an identity label I suspect she would opt for “student of philosophy.” She has taught me much about philosophy.
Perhaps the most important lesson she has imparted is summarized in the words of Auguste Comte: “Love as a principle and order as the basis; Progress as the goal.” Yes, libertarianism is what I consider the best ideological embodiment of this motto, but I would argue that in the US “love” needs to encompass inclusion through proportional representation as well as affording others the dignity inherent to the principle of subsidiarity.
Love, order, and progress, now and always.
The hardest aspect for me to appreciate Ayn Rand Protagonist each one seems completely resentful the world does not make them complete Lord and Master. They basically across like Donald Trump who is obsessed with political popularity. There is no humbleness about them and they can act any which way they want. And I do find the greatest contradiction of her life is the my her main human contact towards the end of life was a social worker.
I wonder why her work seemed to lose impact after WW2, I suspect it was:
1) Conservatives were led by William Buckley who really did feel religion and community was essential to the conservative movement.
2) The best politician to purse conservative goals was Ronald Reagan whose personality was completely the opposite of Rand Protagonist. (Yes there was a lot work done to make this image.)
3) The Post WW2 years was an unique period that they US still proud a big national war victory and had to with the realities of the Cold War.
4) The film Fountainhead was poorly made and her interference made it worse. It was so bad it made Gary Cooper(!) an unlikable lead. (Compare Fountainhead to Sargent York which was made by conservative filmmaker Howard Hawks.)
I think progressives find it easy to mock Ayn Rand and her fans as Paul Krugman does with the following joke:
I didn’t read “Atlas Shrugged” until long after I self-identified as libertarian in my adulthood. I was surprised by it. I both hated it and loved it much more than I expected. I hated the economics; Galt’s Gulch seems to be a contradiction of Adam Smith’s idea that the degree of specialization is limited by the reach of the market.
I loved the caricature of socialists. This, for me, makes it worth reading. It is the antagonists that give the novel depth and color. I’ve never read anything before or since that so effectively eviscerates collectivist rhetoric.
In most Super Hero comics, it’s the quality of the villains that make or break the story.
Everyone always misses the real story. http://the-toast.net/2014/11/07/outfits-coveted-atlas-shrugged/
Lately a lot of people seem to be confusing obsessive behavior with autism. Not all obsessive behavior is autistic. But lately, the aspergery folks are eager to get everything obsessive under their umbrella. It’s quite tedious. You don’t see OCD folks grabbing everything and saying “THIS IS US!” but by golly, the asperger/autistics want it all.
That entire article is utterly ludicrous, written by someone who thinks autism will be cooler, somehow, if Ayn Rand has it. And anyone who thinks obsessive collections are a sign of autism hasn’t spent much time around obsessives.
Interesting. I know a very difficult child who was diagnosed as autistic, and my amateur instinct was that this diagnosis was somewhere between implausible and inadequate. So I find it plausible that being “on the spectrum” has acquired faddish status, sort of like being gluten-intolerant.
Yes, it totally is. Part of it is because its definition got expanded and now people are confusing a few of the characteristics as the *cause* of autism. Anyone who has met genuinely autistic people , even highly functioning ones, would realize that obsessive behavior isn’t even remotely sufficient for a diagnosis.
Here’s a complete list of possible characteristics (not causes) of autism:
–Lack of or delay in spoken language
–Repetitive use of language and/or motor mannerisms (e.g., hand-flapping, twirling objects)
–Little or no eye contact
–Lack of interest in peer relationships
–Lack of spontaneous or make-believe play
–Persistent fixation on parts of objects
Autism is a problem with brain development. It should not be confused with obsessive behavior, mild or extreme, which is often a mask for depression and anxiety. Particularly not in otherwise high-functioning adults.
All that seems right to me, and fits in with my experiences of acquaintances and close family members.
It seem clear to me that there is of course something to the concept of “high functioning” by which people are able to use extra strength in one area to compensate for natural weakness in another. However, the danger is that it gets overused as an irrefutable way to wave away any inconsistencies. Discussions of famous people almost always involve someone who is significantly above-average in some respect, and so, if one is allowed to dismiss these objections, they are facially plausible candidates to be a “high functioning-Xs” almost by definition.
I’d also note that ‘obsessiveness’ tends to have a negative connotation of troubling excess, but even at high levels is still simply a classical and common trait of young children, probably of both genders, but one we tend to associate more with boys as they apply it to their own more variable collections, activities, interests, and so forth, and my impression is that they were even normally socially encouraged in this in pursuit of certain hobbies and diversions, whether ‘nerdy’ or ‘geeky’ or otherwise.
In young children we find such fixations amusing or quaint or even endearing, and in adults it seems people used to find them perhaps mildly quirky or eccentric at worst, but common and natural enough (at least in certain cultures and ethnic groups – there is apparently high diversity in propensity to hobby) that it would in no way indicate any kind of mental abnormality or syndrome.
With Ayn Rand, one gets the impression of the plotline from Big, in which we could ask what would happen if we suddenly took a young boy (especially a gifted one) and gave him the independent means and wherewithal to pursue his interests and impulses without even 1% of the normal constraints. I don’t find it implausible at all that the shoebox or two baseball cards or seashells could expand to hundreds of boxes.
So we might ask what happens to these normal boyish interests in most people. What causes them to put away the childish things when they become men (1 Corint. 13:11)? I don’t think ‘maturity’ or natural development is the explanation, and instead, I’m guessing it’s mostly cultural / social influence and pressure to fit in generally, and also to meet expectations and roles for adults. In my experience plenty of grown men still enjoy their childhood ‘obsessions’, but feel pressured to deny or suppress these preferences since we are acculturate to judge it odd when grown men still want to play with toys for kids.
It’s a self-validating truth in a way, because anyone who doesn’t give it up has some kind of defect or weakness in the normal psychological sensitivity and instinct to conform to social and cultural expectations.
That causes an immediate, visceral and subconcious reaction in most people, along the lines of, “That’s different, not what I would normally predict, and thus weird. Why is this person like this? What kind of person is this? What other possible unpredictable things might they think or do? Can they be trusted to behave as socially required in other circumstances?”
My impression is that most important and intellectually influential contrarians are indeed “on the spectrum”, but not of Autism or Asperger’s, but of some other “inadequate sensitivity to social influence” tendency that tends to impede the quick, easy, and spontaneous adjustment to and conformity with cultural expectations which is nearly automatic and effortless for most normal, well-adjusted people.
In many aspects of life, such a tendency or trait would very clearly manifest as an important and even debilitating defect. But some people will be “high functioning” regardless, and their low-sensitivity to the social pressure will manifest in their stubborn attachments to heterodox notions.
I have a case of that.
I don’t know much about Ayn Rand, but I think it’s fairly common for people to associate characteristics with autism that aren’t really good predictors of it, e.g., disagreeableness, anti-social disposition, elitism, etc. I’m reminded of an episode of House where Dr. House treats an autistic child and we’re led to believe by some of the characters that perhaps House has Asperger’s syndrome, which was preposterous on its face; the character, as presented, is basically the diametrical opposite of someone with Asperger’s; he’s very socially and emotionally intelligent, is constantly sarcastically mocking every person he interacts with and is extraordinarily adept at manipulating them. I think it is sometimes forgotten that one can easily be extraordinarily socially adept while still being elitist, anti-social, or just a jerk.
I strongly suspect that DSM-V’s expansive definition of autism sweeps together several different “disorders”–with different causes and, ideally, different treatments. Like diagnosing someone with “fever disorder” or “headache disorder”.
From Handle’s comment above:
“It seem clear to me that there is of course something to the concept of “high functioning” by which people are able to use extra strength in one area to compensate for natural weakness in another.”
No, high functioning simply means they can function as an adult despite their disability. Some higher IQ autistics can be trained to function, others just arrive at it felicitously due to the combination. It’s not purely a matter of IQ; while no low IQ autistics are high functioning, some very high IQ autistics are not high functioning.
“I’d also note that ‘obsessiveness’ tends to have a negative connotation of troubling excess”
The word “obsessiveness” used clinically has nothing to do with prejudice against boys.