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When the plot of X3 has a decent chance of actually becoming your life, the world has definitely started down the slippery bloody slope.
My mother had a chat with me today. She was looking up developments in research on autism and aspergers, which is fair enough, since she has two Aspie daughters and an Aspie husband. She has reasons for wanting to know these things. Actually, I should probably want to know these things too, but I'm not so good at that unless me being an Aspie is currently being a direct problem with whatever I'm trying to do (which it might be yet, I suppose, I've only known for just over a year or so). So. Anyway.
Apparently, thanks to some genetic research or something on one of the more visible types of autism, there is some tentative scientific research about a potential hormone dosage that might ... I'm not sure how to phrase this ... might correct the developement of the brain in a growing child with the genetic 'flaw' that allows this type of autism. Not yet, of course, because for a start the drug at present would probably kill any child it was given to stone dead, but. There is research, and apparently it is moving in that direction.
And my mom asked, though not seriously, what basically translates to 'would you like a cure for your mutation'?
Now, my mother herself actually strongly objects to this kind of thing. Which, you know, I'm incredibly thankful for. But she was also a teacher, and a parent, and she also had to watch me grow up being, ah, well, being bullied a lot (though from what I see, that's probably going to happen regardless of the specific nature of your weirdness, because kids are shitty like that), and perhaps more to the point she's seen me go though two incredibly debilitating nervous breakdowns that engendered sustained fear for my life for months on end, mostly because I'm not so good at this whole 'dealing with the world' thing, and, well ... She said she could see the temptation. For a parent. To try and make sure that your child won't have to go through that. And all.
And, okay ... can kinda see the point, there. I can. Really, I can. I was there (er, sort of, anyway, in the bits I can remember). I can see why you'd not want to see that happen to someone you care about. I can also see ... why it would be ... I mean, I'm hard for her to understand, and some of the things that are raw fundamentals of my thought-processes are also flat-out repulsive to her (ideologically, we do not see eye-to-eye). I can see why you might hope that your kid might not be like that. You know. I can see it.
But. But. Essentially, what the research proposes is to, without consulting the kid in question, chemically redesign their brain to better make them fit outside society. Um. Um. No. Okay? No. That is ... That is wrong. So fucking wrong.
I'm not ... It's not a defect. I mean, it is, but it isn't. This thing, this way of seeing, my fucking brain ... would I be me, if I didn't have that? Would I be able to see what I see? All the layers of the world, the cat's cradle of force? What if I couldn't? What if someone rewrote my brain, and I couldn't see? What if I wasn't me? And I wouldn't even know. Maybe I wouldn't know. I could grow up, and be a 'normal' kid or whatever, and I wouldn't ever know what it was I might have seen. What I might have been.
And Mam asked me ... I mean, as an adult, she asked me if I thought it was worth it. Everything I went through as a kid because of what I am, everything I keep going through. Is it really worth it, to be so different, to ... to be always so close to breaking, to not know how to fit. Is it worth it to be an Aspie. If this research had been real and viable back when I was a kid, and she'd chosen to take it ...
... I would probably never have forgiven her. Except ... Except maybe I would, because what-I-might-have-been mightn't have meant anything, in that world, because I mightn't have known, and that? That is a fucking scary thought. Imagine growing up, all nice and happy, and finding out one day that your parents redesigned your brain when you were growing up, to keep you from being a 'freak' or something. And imagine not caring. I really, really HOPE I wouldn't have forgiven her.
Um. Which, when you look at it, probably answers her question. Which I think she's probably glad about, maybe. Is everything I've gone through in my life worth it, worth being me? FUCK YES. Would I want someone to 'cure' me of what I am, without my consent, while I'm a child? NEVER IN A MILLION FUCKING YEARS.
And, um. That's sort of what scares me about this line of research. Not the idea of a 'cure', as such, though I'm not at all fond of that thought. But I get that, like Rogue in X3, there are people for whom it hasn't been worth it. But. But. It's not aimed at them. The way this is going. They won't get a choice. Because this is when you're a kid, younger, this is from the ground up, and you don't get a choice. Your parents do. Your parents get to decide who you're going to be. Your parents get to decide that they want/need you to fit in, get to willfully redesign your brain to make that happen. And you don't get a choice.
Maybe that's the wrong way of looking at it. Maybe I'm supposed to be thinking instead that it's a disease, a genetic flaw, and I should be happy about this whole 'cure' idea. But. But.
I'm not a disease. I'm really, really not. I am ... spectacularly ill-suited for a lot of this world, and that is a disadvantage, believe me, it so is, and the costs ... But. See. This thing that I am brought me back, too. Because the things I see, the way the world feels to me because I am the way I am ... that was worth coming back for. That was worth staying here for. It was worth it. And if I had a choice, if someone walked up to me in the morning and offered me a chance to be 'normal' or whatever that means, I would say NO. Because I'm not a disease. And I wouldn't surrender the things I see, the things I feel, for any amount of 'normality' in the world.
This is an incredibly Aspie thing to say, I'm told. Sour grapes, maybe, that it's only because I don't have something that I can reject it so easily. But. SOD SOCIETY ANYWAY. The aim of the game, ladies and gents, should NOT be to chemically redesign your kids to fit the society of the time. The aim should be to redesign the society as much as possible to fit THEM.
You know why? Because society is a construct. It's not real. It needs to change as times and people change. This is, believe me, this is incredibly important. Because if it doesn't, if the people inside it aren't different, aren't 'abnormal', then ... Well. If medieval Christian society, for example, had the technology to chemically design its people to fit its mould, we might still be having fucking Crusades (which, actually, maybe we kinda are in a sense, but you get my point. Hopefully. Possibly. Anyway).
And yes, yes. A tentative hormone therapy for one specific brand of autism is not the beginnings of a fascist, eugenicist society, I get that. Trust me. I do. But.
But they're still talking about redesigning my brain. Without either my knowledge or consent. While I'm a baby. Because the way I see the world is a disease that needs curing. So that I could fit in better.
This is, you'll forgive me for saying, a FUCKING HORRIBLE THOUGHT.
So. Yeah. When the plot of X3 might shortly become people's lives, I ... am having trouble feeling all that good about it. Okay? I love science. I grew up on sci-fi, am still madly and utterly in love with it. That still doesn't mean I want it to be my life. For fuck's sake, haven't these people ever read the dystopias? This kind of thing? This is what you're supposed to AVOID. Trust me. It never goes anywhere good.
*snarls incoherantly, and tries not to be too nervous about this* See, this? This is why I don't like looking up research on who I am. Because it's so nice to run into people who want to erase my life and rewrite me from the ground up so I can be more like them. It's so nice to be a disease that needs curing.
And it's so terribly, terribly reassuring to be reminded that we're now developing the technology to physically force people to be whatever the society of the time wants them to be, and a truly alarming amount of people do not see a problem with this.
See, see? Humans are lazy. Humans like nice, quick fixes that can be enacted on a person-by-person basis and don't involve changing the overall system all that much, because large-scale change is terrifying, and really, it's so much easier and nicer for the big wide world if we can just quietly change that pieces that don't fit so well, and not distress people too much.
And YES, I am a paranoid, anti-social little bitch, why do you ask? Oi vey!
My mother had a chat with me today. She was looking up developments in research on autism and aspergers, which is fair enough, since she has two Aspie daughters and an Aspie husband. She has reasons for wanting to know these things. Actually, I should probably want to know these things too, but I'm not so good at that unless me being an Aspie is currently being a direct problem with whatever I'm trying to do (which it might be yet, I suppose, I've only known for just over a year or so). So. Anyway.
Apparently, thanks to some genetic research or something on one of the more visible types of autism, there is some tentative scientific research about a potential hormone dosage that might ... I'm not sure how to phrase this ... might correct the developement of the brain in a growing child with the genetic 'flaw' that allows this type of autism. Not yet, of course, because for a start the drug at present would probably kill any child it was given to stone dead, but. There is research, and apparently it is moving in that direction.
And my mom asked, though not seriously, what basically translates to 'would you like a cure for your mutation'?
Now, my mother herself actually strongly objects to this kind of thing. Which, you know, I'm incredibly thankful for. But she was also a teacher, and a parent, and she also had to watch me grow up being, ah, well, being bullied a lot (though from what I see, that's probably going to happen regardless of the specific nature of your weirdness, because kids are shitty like that), and perhaps more to the point she's seen me go though two incredibly debilitating nervous breakdowns that engendered sustained fear for my life for months on end, mostly because I'm not so good at this whole 'dealing with the world' thing, and, well ... She said she could see the temptation. For a parent. To try and make sure that your child won't have to go through that. And all.
And, okay ... can kinda see the point, there. I can. Really, I can. I was there (er, sort of, anyway, in the bits I can remember). I can see why you'd not want to see that happen to someone you care about. I can also see ... why it would be ... I mean, I'm hard for her to understand, and some of the things that are raw fundamentals of my thought-processes are also flat-out repulsive to her (ideologically, we do not see eye-to-eye). I can see why you might hope that your kid might not be like that. You know. I can see it.
But. But. Essentially, what the research proposes is to, without consulting the kid in question, chemically redesign their brain to better make them fit outside society. Um. Um. No. Okay? No. That is ... That is wrong. So fucking wrong.
I'm not ... It's not a defect. I mean, it is, but it isn't. This thing, this way of seeing, my fucking brain ... would I be me, if I didn't have that? Would I be able to see what I see? All the layers of the world, the cat's cradle of force? What if I couldn't? What if someone rewrote my brain, and I couldn't see? What if I wasn't me? And I wouldn't even know. Maybe I wouldn't know. I could grow up, and be a 'normal' kid or whatever, and I wouldn't ever know what it was I might have seen. What I might have been.
And Mam asked me ... I mean, as an adult, she asked me if I thought it was worth it. Everything I went through as a kid because of what I am, everything I keep going through. Is it really worth it, to be so different, to ... to be always so close to breaking, to not know how to fit. Is it worth it to be an Aspie. If this research had been real and viable back when I was a kid, and she'd chosen to take it ...
... I would probably never have forgiven her. Except ... Except maybe I would, because what-I-might-have-been mightn't have meant anything, in that world, because I mightn't have known, and that? That is a fucking scary thought. Imagine growing up, all nice and happy, and finding out one day that your parents redesigned your brain when you were growing up, to keep you from being a 'freak' or something. And imagine not caring. I really, really HOPE I wouldn't have forgiven her.
Um. Which, when you look at it, probably answers her question. Which I think she's probably glad about, maybe. Is everything I've gone through in my life worth it, worth being me? FUCK YES. Would I want someone to 'cure' me of what I am, without my consent, while I'm a child? NEVER IN A MILLION FUCKING YEARS.
And, um. That's sort of what scares me about this line of research. Not the idea of a 'cure', as such, though I'm not at all fond of that thought. But I get that, like Rogue in X3, there are people for whom it hasn't been worth it. But. But. It's not aimed at them. The way this is going. They won't get a choice. Because this is when you're a kid, younger, this is from the ground up, and you don't get a choice. Your parents do. Your parents get to decide who you're going to be. Your parents get to decide that they want/need you to fit in, get to willfully redesign your brain to make that happen. And you don't get a choice.
Maybe that's the wrong way of looking at it. Maybe I'm supposed to be thinking instead that it's a disease, a genetic flaw, and I should be happy about this whole 'cure' idea. But. But.
I'm not a disease. I'm really, really not. I am ... spectacularly ill-suited for a lot of this world, and that is a disadvantage, believe me, it so is, and the costs ... But. See. This thing that I am brought me back, too. Because the things I see, the way the world feels to me because I am the way I am ... that was worth coming back for. That was worth staying here for. It was worth it. And if I had a choice, if someone walked up to me in the morning and offered me a chance to be 'normal' or whatever that means, I would say NO. Because I'm not a disease. And I wouldn't surrender the things I see, the things I feel, for any amount of 'normality' in the world.
This is an incredibly Aspie thing to say, I'm told. Sour grapes, maybe, that it's only because I don't have something that I can reject it so easily. But. SOD SOCIETY ANYWAY. The aim of the game, ladies and gents, should NOT be to chemically redesign your kids to fit the society of the time. The aim should be to redesign the society as much as possible to fit THEM.
You know why? Because society is a construct. It's not real. It needs to change as times and people change. This is, believe me, this is incredibly important. Because if it doesn't, if the people inside it aren't different, aren't 'abnormal', then ... Well. If medieval Christian society, for example, had the technology to chemically design its people to fit its mould, we might still be having fucking Crusades (which, actually, maybe we kinda are in a sense, but you get my point. Hopefully. Possibly. Anyway).
And yes, yes. A tentative hormone therapy for one specific brand of autism is not the beginnings of a fascist, eugenicist society, I get that. Trust me. I do. But.
But they're still talking about redesigning my brain. Without either my knowledge or consent. While I'm a baby. Because the way I see the world is a disease that needs curing. So that I could fit in better.
This is, you'll forgive me for saying, a FUCKING HORRIBLE THOUGHT.
So. Yeah. When the plot of X3 might shortly become people's lives, I ... am having trouble feeling all that good about it. Okay? I love science. I grew up on sci-fi, am still madly and utterly in love with it. That still doesn't mean I want it to be my life. For fuck's sake, haven't these people ever read the dystopias? This kind of thing? This is what you're supposed to AVOID. Trust me. It never goes anywhere good.
*snarls incoherantly, and tries not to be too nervous about this* See, this? This is why I don't like looking up research on who I am. Because it's so nice to run into people who want to erase my life and rewrite me from the ground up so I can be more like them. It's so nice to be a disease that needs curing.
And it's so terribly, terribly reassuring to be reminded that we're now developing the technology to physically force people to be whatever the society of the time wants them to be, and a truly alarming amount of people do not see a problem with this.
See, see? Humans are lazy. Humans like nice, quick fixes that can be enacted on a person-by-person basis and don't involve changing the overall system all that much, because large-scale change is terrifying, and really, it's so much easier and nicer for the big wide world if we can just quietly change that pieces that don't fit so well, and not distress people too much.
And YES, I am a paranoid, anti-social little bitch, why do you ask? Oi vey!
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