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Anoushka made a book:
I made a book about #autism for Spike (aka “Jpike”). We haven’t hidden his autism from him (as if we could!), but we tend to talk descriptively about his strengths and weaknesses. I wanted to make sure that he could connect positively with the word “autism”, too. He LOVED it! pic.twitter.com/FFtpwcguBc
— Anoushka (@Spittingyarn) April 16, 2020
Pressed Duck, Racism and Family Traditions
Growing up in London, I pretty much don’t recall a single event of racism against me. I appreciate that I’m likely not a typically Londoner. Except, I was born in London, went to school in London, now live in walking distance from where my primary school is in London, work within walking distance of my secondary school and live walking distance from where my parents ran a travel agency for many years, near Portobello Road. I’ve lived almost my whole life in London apart from university. In that sense, I am very London.
The only racist incident I recall was when I was about 8 years old in summer camp (in London). The racist taunt skimmed me by. I was unbothered. The other boy was a sore loser at something and it was all he had left. However, the group of children around us rallied towards me and gave this other boy such a hard time and ostracized him to such a large extent that I felt I had to step in later and tell them I forgave him and we shouldn’t ruin his life. Unwittingly, I think my star burned even brighter for that, even though I think my impulse came through embarrassment.
Partly because of my childhood and where I’m from, I sit sometimes in quiet horror about what we are doing to each other in some of these cultural identity wars. Still I see identity continuing to be an even more fraught battle ground in the coming years (cf. Philosopher, Appiah)
One incident I do recall was in Paris, when I was 17. I didn’t even think of it as racist ts the time, but more of being an outsider, not let in (until I broke door). However, my father (who had experienced more racism in the 1960s and 1970s) noted it as racism.
The story has roots from a very long time ago.
When my father was 18 and had been accepted into Cambridge University, my grandfather took him to one of his favorite restaurants in Paris. My father had not been to Paris. They dined at the Tour d’Argent. My father would for many years after talk about the pressed duck he ate there.
When I was 17, I was accepted into Cambridge University. I had been on scholarships most of my life. We ate out but rarely at the starry restaurants that the rich can take for granted.
My father thought we should mark this occasion by echoing history and en famille we travelled to Paris to eat at the Tour d’Argent.
There are highlights I remember. Everyone was French. We were the only non-French. The menu didn’t have any prices on it. Only my father’s menu had prices. I remember the shock of seeing the prices.
The pressed duck - in deed – was amazing or, at least, my recall of it was it was amazing.
The service was precise, but cold. And here I should have picked up why the service was so cold to us. With hind sight I think, it was because the waiter could not place us as belonging to this place of old and rich French.
My father asked for a copy of the menu. The waiter denied the request. My father somewhat fumed at this. I’m not sure I made too much of it, but I thought it would have been a pleasant souvenir to have.
The owner of the Tour D’Argent, Claude Terrail, regularly are at his own restaurant. He would meet and greet his clientele.
When we were eating, he made his way to our table. He proffered a polite greeting in French and asked us about our experience.
Up to this point, we had been conversing in English. Quite a proper queen’s type of English.
When he asked his question, I turned to him and immediately blathered on in French.
The in the English school boy French accent, which one French girl had called unbearable cute years ago.
However, accent aside, my French at the time was pretty OK.
I, then proceeded to tell him the story of why we were here, of the time my grandfather took my father to eat here, and how lovely the duck was. My grandfather’s story included ships (as that was how travel often was then) and a meeting with Andre Terrail (as Claude’s father) and how astonishing a neat symmetry that all was. Only quell dommage, what a pity I couldn’t have a menu.
And as if by magic, not long after a menu all tied up with a lovely ribbon appeared.
Given to us by the waiter who seemed a different person.
Of course, it helped that Claude seemed quite overwhelmed by our story and launched into a story himself about Andre, which I’m unsure I fully comprehended at the time and it was all amazingly jolly.
I hardly let myself be too perturbed. I practice the art of falling upwards. I recall the experience as a great one.
My father was very pleased that the snooty waiter had arrived at a mild comeuppance. He was overly proud of his son being able to tell a story in French.
But I had broken down a door and that was worth something to my father, who had experienced racism.
I didn’t view it as such at the time. But now I wonder if it was. Or was it a case of being star shaped in a square hole.
Some notes and a video about a trip to Tour d’Argent:
According to wiki: “Duck, especially the pressed duck, is the specialty (Canard à la presse, Caneton à la presse, Caneton Tour d'Argent). The restaurant raises its ducks on its own farm. Diners who order the duck receive a postcard with the bird's serial number, now well over 1 million.[9] (Serial number #112,151 went to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, #203,728 went to Marlene Dietrich, and #253,652 went to Charlie Chaplin).[10]
The restaurant's wine cellar, guarded around the clock, contains more than 450,000 bottles whose value was estimated in 2009 at 25 million euros (£22.5 million). Some 15,000 wines are offered to diners on a four-hundred page list.[11][12] The dining room has an excellent view of the river Seine and Notre Dame.”
Sam is a barista who has autism, and to help him focus, he dances his way through the workday. After a video of his dance moves went viral, Ellen had to meet this inspirational individual and his incredible boss in person.
And (I think) the orginal video below.
(via) The Lindy effect is a concept that the future life expectancy of some items or concepts such as technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy. My idea of Lindy comes from reading Nassim Taleb, who expands upon the writings of Beniot Mandlebrot who described an effect of a deli
Lindy is a deli in New York, now a tourist trap, that proudly claims to be famous for its cheesecake, but in fact has been known for the fifty or so years of interpretation by physicists and mathematicians of the heuristic that developed there. Actors who hung out there gossiping about other actors discovered that Broadway shows that lasted, say one hundred days, had a future life expectancy of a hundred more. For those that lasted two hundred days, two hundred more. The heuristic became known as the Lindy Effect.
Perhaps, it can be best thought of via example eg that butter is more Lindy than margarine and that olive oil is a very lindy cooking oil of our times.
Lindy is not really meant to be applied to perishable items. Nonperishable are Lindy. Ideas, technologies and institutions.
So… I think autistic thinking has been Lindy over the ages. Why might this be the case?
Autistic thinking tends not to follow the dominant social consensus thinking of the time, I also argue, autistic thinking can importantly lead to radical breakthrough where you have leaps of understanding that perhaps typical thinking would not demonstrate.
Rates of ASD diagnosis in the US are around 1 in 65, with New Jersey as high as 1 in 45 and between 1 in 50 to 1 in 100 a likely typical range in Level 4 countries.
If you look back 70,000 years there’s evidence that early man, Neanderthal man looked after his disabled siblings into old age..
Anecdote suggests that autism and autistic thought has been present in human society for hundreds of years, while both environment and genetic factors both plays roles I find it noteworthy that nature and its Darwinian forces seemingly have conserved autism and that autistic thinking might be Lindy.
If there is some aspect of autism that is Lindy why might it be so? I might be entirely wrong but let’s go a storytelling...
Why might that be…?
Autistic thought tends not to follow the crowd of “herd” thinking or social pressure or social learning.
These traits can be incredibly useful.
Think about any paradigm shift in thought which requires ideas outside of normal. A non-autist has social pressures and social learning that an autism might not.
An ice age has set in. On the one hand, you need tools and weapons to hunt. You need social communication to co-ordinate large groups of people. You need leaders of those groups.
But, you need inventors to create tools which are different to the status quo. If everyone hunts the mammoth in only one way and that way stops working, you need someone who can think differently and sees a solution not because “we’ve always done it this way” but because there’s a way that makes sense to autistic thought that non-autistic thought can’t reach easily.
The rest of the human society, maybe the leader of those small ape-like human groups, can see the value in these different autistic thinkers who have ways of seeing and answers to problems the “herd” can not solve.
Maybe I go too far to suggest that this different thinking is treasured.
But if the autistic way has been treasured for tens of thousands of years, perhaps that’s one explanation for why is survives in humans today.
And with estimated rates of 1 in 100 (and rising) with close to 1 in 45 in New Jersey being diagnosed on the spectrum, is this an argument for autistic thought being Lindy - and for why we should still treasure our autists and their way of being.
Life is messy. Yet what unites and binds humans is greater than what divides us.
For all the noise in the media, there are still spaces for people to meet.
More than spaces.
While in our daily lives we may have to be defined as left - right - up - down - multi - coloured - plain
Daughter - mother - spouse - blonde girl with glasses -
When we meet we know we defy labels - we delabel.
But we have to meet. We have to constructively clash so our ideas can be born in the fire of debate.
.... music, dance, food, drink - art - poetry - conversation - these core pieces of humanity - these are the fuels...
When we humans meet in these activities they are the concentrated renewable energy that fuel our discussions - our debates - our loves - our passions - our fights - our peaces.
It may seem we are in a divisive age. But I’d like to suggest we continue to be also in an age of hope. Many matters of humanity (cf Hans Rosling) are improving. We live longer, we read more, we are healthier than we’ve ever been - our challenges are still great and terrible - but to meet them -
Concerned - passionate people are still meeting.
And when we meet we listen and exchange - and we will stand for each other -
And so it will be when a synagogue is in danger - we will have connected and we will stand -
When a mosque is in danger - - we will have connected and we will stand - when a church is in danger - - we will have connected and we will stand - when humanity is in danger - we will stand -
We will argue over freedoms - but will stand with freedom
We will argue over humanity - but we will stand with humanity
We will argue over rights - but we will stand with rights
We will argue over people - but we will stand with the people
Does this happen only with the so-called elites? De-label. No. It is everywhere.
Where we meet - we still exchange and leave all the better for it - drained and replenished
It’s messy. Answers are missing only some times found. Lines are crossed. Redrawn. fudged. Drawn again. It’s gloriously messy and absolutely worth saving - perhaps that’s what I found in what it is to be human in the months travels.
Read about lessons from Autism or the power of small connections.
Take a look at the idea behind crossing silo thinking and a social anthropological lens.
Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn below.
A city of contradictions. SF is a beautiful city on a bluesky day. It’s one the first places I travelled to by myself when I was 14. I took the Cal train in from Palo Alto about 25 years ago and wandered. I only have impressions of the vibe from so long ago, but it remains similar.
Glorious feats of engineering from bridges, sky scrapers and now rooftop floating parks. You’d be lucky to be born here. It’s not without obvious problems. Homelessness is rife.
Two images: a homeless person napping in the midday sun with Bose headphones and Nike trainers.
A suited man stepping round a homeless person coming out of an Uber.
When I first came to SF, the company Salesforce had not even been created. It now has over $8 billion in revenue and has created one of the tallest buildings on the west coast of the US.
As part of this building, salesforce has created a public park. It seems to me part of how some see the American way. Open markets, creative entrepreneurs creating enormous wealth, and as part of that creation giving back to the place and community that helped create them.
In SalesForce Park, SF (C) B Yeoh
I wonder how strong this type of social contract still is - or ever was. The tower rises like a glimmering shard, the park all new bursting with plants, toddler areas, free art and reading. Is this enough to hold the fabric of America?
Willfully turning away from the beggars, the vibrant, diverse life is still present. Boys and boys, girls and girls, boys and girls. A smattering of colour. Old fashioned cable cars trundle alongside electric low emission buses. The waiters are mainly white and cute. The bussing folk are mainly coloured and invisible along with the maids and other worker bees.
You can get free wifi almost everywhere.
I’m here too fleetingly to see much else of the city, but note an awkward clash between some environmental awareness and still a huge amount of waste, plastic and limited nudging of individual choice.
Here’s one partial critique of the Responsible Investing gathering. In attending this conference, I skipped two (and there were many more) mainstream investment conference focused on healthcare.
The two health conferences had a few hundred companies, and a couple of thousand investment and corporate professionals between them.
There was a flagship Asian and Emerging market conference also running and many more.
Every company at the healthcare conference could easily claim alignment with several SDGs particularly the health one - SDG 7 and hundreds of investors are trying to allocate billions of capital to good ideas and good companies.
The PRI conference had a bare handful of portfolio manager risk takers. Critics could argue was a silo echo chamber for sustainability people to tell each other how right they are.
I wonder if sustainability could cross the divide, break the silo and go and present at one of the other conferences and make the case. Here continue some reflections more sustainability based.
In SF, there are two intersectional conferences on climate change and the PRI responsible investing conference. Some more personal fragmentary observations.
Physical climate risk is reaching up the agenda. We are starting to see it and feel it.
Much of the “mainstream” is not really here. Lots of policy, engagement, stewardship and ESG (environment social governance) teams. Very few portfolio managers, the risk takes who buy or sell billions in assets of stocks and debt and direct assets. Arguably, this is not hopeful.
Those I observe in SF are committed and passionate. They are bringing people along in a journey. Arguably this is hopeful.
But I recall two comments, Paul Polman (CEO, Unilever, retiring soon) - “I’m an asset creator” and Nassim Taleb - I paraphrase, if you want to change the world, don’t join an NGO, but go create a business.
The committed folk hope to mobilise and nudge capital, but I wonder more and more of late of the demand side of the equation.
The majority of large asset managers can now a credible narrative around ESG (Environment Social Governance). But, see also above “the mainstream is not here”.
The intersectionality problems are complex, often opaque. A Marriott staff employee spoke about how declining housekeeping makes her unemployed. It’s not only automation that takes away jobs. But is less housekeeping, and less washing, better for the environment, and profit margin? But not the humans.
I observe. Most waiters and waitresses are white with Gap Ad looks. The bus folk, those who clear the dishes. They are almost all coloured. Not allowed to take orders, barely likely to hold your eye - smiles are not at them.
Where mainstream PMs and analysts meet material ESG world, they do convert but I wonder about the silos.
I hear little on the demand side of the equation. The Global Climate Action Summit is also taking place. It comes across as disorganised and diffuse. But seemingly more focus on the “real economy”, Green tech entrepreneurs are about, although I don’t find them.
Still, parsing through, I sense managing food waste and sustainabilty could be a major unlock. Any ideas here, do shout.
The demand side could be a huge unlock. But, I’m unsure if I’m hearing ideas here. The single-use, the consumption it’s again and again - so hard to imagine it declining away. I’m hoping clever peeps are working on it. This to me will need cross silo thinking.
But, if I had to be - and I do - we are going to go through 2 deg warming. We will need to account for the cost of physical infrastructure loss and forced migration.
We, humans, weigh near term convenience so heavily, it seems to me we are unlikely to reach critical mass for changing behaviour until we are in crisis.
Although talking about crisis, given we’ve not changed significantly since the last financial crisis, I’m uncertain how it plays out.
But, humans have continually come out of crisis in better shape - and many other trends are in positive land. I try not to forget that.
I hold a lift for a man scurrying. That man turns out to be Paul Polman (Unilever, CEO, retiring soon). Maybe it’s the little things and connections that will save us.
Selfie with Paul Polman, (C) B Yeoh
A poem reflecting on my conversation with a SF Modern Art staff - all coloured vs the visitors mainly all white.
A look at what some of the art in SF MOMA is saying to me.
At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art most of the staff
Are people of colour
Few of the visitors show such a display of colour
On show in staff or in the Gideon Richter
I smile.
A smile back.
Where are you from? An indication at my hair.
I’m from London but my father was from Malaysia and my mother from Singapore.
I’m from the Philippines. My friend is in London.
Do you like it here? A pause.
There are jobs. I’ve been here 4 years.
I’m -
I’m Ben.
A gesture. A thankful gesture. Her hand swirls around taking in the gallery and the people.
Thank you for talking with me.
(shall we take a selfie?) (art on art on art on art)
Pablo hands me my bag with exquisite courtesy.
And the viewers come and go, come and go.
How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.
A reflection on some art in the SF MOMA.
Another poem, about an artist losing her memory, and the mum of a dear friend.
What do I typically see when on a bus? I don't think I uses to SEE or observe much with any intensity or thought.
S observes certain detail intensely. A chime or rhythm slightly misplaced is logged as wierd, funny, wrong or amazing.
With easy portal photography, he can train that eye and snapshot it. The captured images give you a sense of the world through his lens.
It's a perspective so very different from mine. So very different from many "typicals" that it astonishes.
Every bus and train ride has 10 to 20 captured snapshots if S has his way.
Below are a sample from the last few.
Note the capture of signs, lettering and logos. People are incidental.
Patterns, colour and shapes.
What I take as granted as everyday is elevated to the most important.
Speed and size of immigration has real world social integration impacts in Sweden. A story I was told: after one refugee crisis, some refugees ended up in Sweden, some in Minneapolis, US.
(From chatting to a handful of Swedes)
The narrative I heard was that the refugees in Minneapolis (on average) have integrated better (in a shorter time) as more of them had to seek jobs and employment helps social integration (although given time, integration and jobs can be achieved in Sweden). Whereas the refugees in Sweden didn't find / weren't forced to seek jobs under the same type of pressure - This recalls to me psycho-social studies that show working together in increases harmony (esp re: race) - a whole set of studies and questions found here at the Oxford Centre for Intergroup Conflict.
It is also anecdotal evidence in support of a job guarantee policy idea as suggested in a paper by James Montier (see GMO site) and by the left libertarian mmt economist Bill Mitchell (see Bill’s blog, with comprehensive left libertarian economic thinking, an advocate of Modern Monetary Theory).
This idea is potentially stronger than universal basic income because a job gives you skills (both intangible, and measurable) and experiences plus can promote social harmony. Still, there did seem to be broad hope that given time, the new Swedish immigrants will also integrate. The newly arrived need to learn the skills, language etc. to help them find jobs - there are seemingly many who arrive unable to read/write well and that’s a problem.
The anecdotes I heard were not studies. I found a study here and an in depth reporting here on the issues, the two pieces did seem to align broadly with what I heard, suggesting some Swedes at least are abreast of the issues.
If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Ursula K Le Guin on literature as an operating manual for life; Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting.
Cross fertilise. On investing try a thought on stock valuations. Or Ray Dalio on populism and risk. You can also click on the Carbon tag below.
There’s a point in the life of most parents of special needs children today that someone sends them, or they come across, the “Welcome to Holland” poem/story, by Emily Perl Kingsley (a sesame street writer, and mother of a Down Syndrome person). It’s a poignant / twee analogy comparing welcoming a disabled little line to a trip to Holland where you were attempting to go to Italy (see end for the piece).
It often divides SEN parents from those who find it on point, to those who... don’t. And those who flip-flop between. (I don't have a strong view, although if you've come here for thoughts on difference, my recommended reading is Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon)
I suppose we all have expectations for our children. Hopes and dreams. Great expectations, perhaps.
Then the little person comes along. Has not read any of the manuals. Life is reset.
At some point, I think I would have thought it unlikely I would see S on stage, performing actions somewhat enjoying himself. Shouting out some lines.
Yet, this week, that's what I did see.
There is a line of thought suggesting that grief can not be shared. It is too personal, too unique. Yet, the desire to share grief, the want to connect, the ability to be present for someone - that desire to share grief, that can be shared.
There is no universal play about autism, as an ASD person is too unique. Yet, there are plays about the human condition, and all ASD people are human.
Life swings backwards and forwards, circles back, jumps forward; jigeddy-jag.
I don't think I could have easily forseen S on that stage, the flows of life are too complex. I think that's a reason to be hopeful - the wished for happy endings that Annie Proulx speaks about - and a good thought to be thankful for.
Sheryl Sandberg on grief and gratitude. Anoushka on gratitude. Lessons autism has taught me.
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
Elegant, flowing, beautiful hands. Chatting with Jonathan Meth, I was struck by how eloquent his hands were.
Social decorum crimped me and I felt I couldn’t interject to say - wow your hands wonderfully mesmerize me. Social media strips decorum, so I can say that now.
My writing threads go back to when Jonathan ran writernet which harks back almost 20 years ago now. Now, I’m stepping back into a writing practice or perhaps a playwright as a multi-disciplinary arts-investing person, a some time mingler - which I’m told is a form of covening. It’s amazing to re-connect and hear how artists’ work have developed.
Jonathan has kept an international network of artists through Fence, which seems to me an evolution from the dramaturgical work of writernet (I will split the post and write about Fence in another section). He has also developed a practice in disability arts - and our shared interest in autism crosses over here. There’s a lot to Jonathan’s practice.
Across time and space, we end up on a warm New York autumn evening drinking a bar tender’s choice of drink, 10 over years since we last met.
The disability practice is described in this 2015 Guardian article and on his own site here. What I took away is that there is a strong disability arts practice in various countries, often forging on with limited support, but creating a long history or astonishing art. Three of them are partnered in Crossing the Line (not to be confused with the project that Gideon Lester and others are involved with): Crossing The Line (EU) is a project of the co-operative partnership of 3 European theatre companies: all leaders in the field of working with learning disabled artists. The partners are Moomsteatern in Malmo, Sweden; Compagnie de L’Oiseau Mouche in Roubaix, France and Mind The Gap in Bradford, UK. Jonathan is project dramaturg, and is hoping to expand the partnership to many more countries.
We also intersect on Ambitious about Autism. This is an ABA led group in the UK on ASD special education needs; but Ambitious acknowledges that the tent is larger than ABA and so pushes forward across a range of ASD advocacy; as child-centric and child-led practise informs much of good SEN (and typical) practice today, whatever techniques you find that work (and research is still relatively poor).
Drawing this part together, it was apparent to me that Jonathan speaks many languages. The language of art in its many dialects, the language of SEN, the language of policy makers and funders.
It dawned on me, I speak several of these languages too, and that we need more of us in today’s word. More than ever.
Jonathan spoke of Isaiah Berlin’s Fox (after Greek poet Archilochus) who ‘know many little things’. As Jonathan writes: “They react to challenge by drawing on a pattern of general, pragmatic understanding, often making mistakes but seldom committing themselves to a potentially catastrophic grand strategy.” As opposed to the hedgehog, which knows one big thing. It reminded me of this Nassim Taleb conversation with philosopher Constantine Sandis - Taleb argues a cousin piece of thinking:
“I do not consider myself a hedgehog, but a fox: I warn against focusing (‘anchoring’) on a single possible rare event. Rather, be prepared for the fact that the next large surprise, technological or historical, will not resemble what you have in mind (big surprises are what some people call ‘unknown unknowns’). In other words, learn to be abstract, and think in second order effects rather than being anecdotal – which I show to be against human nature. And crucially, rare events in Extremistan are more consequential by their very nature: the once-every-hundred-year flood is more damaging than the 10 year one, and less frequent.”
Being open minded, being open to possibilities when they happen, intertwining chance - taking those chances - those challenges are absorbing them to make you stronger (anti-fragile, even more than resilient)
Looping back to Spike, that chimes with some of what I hope for him, that we can expose him to enough small and varied challenges and opportunities that he find enough to think, and be, and to find purpose. It’s hard for Spike to do that within an institution. We will find a way.
This last few days in New York has felt a little like that - throwing out the the threads - listening - thinking - being - meeting: from the chance meetings (triggered by the Empty Space), the semi-chance meetings like Jonathan; the near misses (Gideon, I’m still hoping); the re-connections;
Mixed in with the latest in pharmaceutical, medical technology and consumer genetic thinking.
And, I am thankful for that. Part two of conversation here.
Time for more? Here’s a short post on 5 things autism has taught me. Here is JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.
From the nib.com and chartlikecharts.tumblr.com, made back in 2015, still funny by Scott Bateman
If you'd like to feel inspired by life lessons try: Ursula K Le Guin on literature as an operating manual for life; Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting.
The cow was as black as the sky.
The cow was as white as paper.
The cow was as soft as sofas.
The cow was as fluffy as toys.
The cow moos as armadillos.
Autists have a remarkable ability to put the unexpected together and create images, words and ideas that are fresh and new.
These ideas stimulate us to places we would not find otherwise.
...quiet as a dark sky
shy as a train leaving...
If I could pursue more of this I would, if I could be half as inventive.
Some thoughts on what we can learn from autism, ASD, written in the self-help leadership style.
What unites humanity is vast and wonderful.
In the tapestry that is being human, you will always find someone who will seem odd to you. Likewise, you will always be peculiar to someone else. That is no reason for fear or hatred.
In finding out how oddball you are to some people, you can grow a wider appreciation of your own biases.
We all have them. We are all human.
A quick decision particularly over questions of limited materiality (a Jeff Besos type 2 decision) is efficient. However, I have found I have won out in many situations by exhibiting patience. More patience than my competitors. I can out-wait most. Some psychologist have called this "grit". Economists talk about taking time horizon risk. I call it what you learn by losing going toe to toe with an autist.
Patience is a winning strategy
Autists reveal what are social norms because they often flout them (I won't go in to theories of why, just the empirical observation that they do). This in turn reveals that much more of the world is built upon social norms than I had thought.
We do things because other do things. Lemmings. Herd mentality. All well documented. Yet it goes deeper to matters you would not question until an autist throws it, into stark relief.
Why do boys wear blue and girls pink? They did not 80 years a go. It's a social norm created by marketeers. Why do we shake hands ? (In fact, in many cultures, we do not). Why don't we speak truth to power ? Most autists I observe do not lie. If a person is fat, why not say they are fat ? Is it more harmful to turn from the truth (of course, white lies have their place in typical society, but what effect does that have?) Question if something is right, do not rely on the fact that everyone else does it.
Autists often obsess. People on the autistic spectrum also seem to create break throughs or invent non-standard thinking more regularly than typicals. Gladwell has written about the 10,000 hours plus it takes to reach a 'genius' level.
You are unlikely to have a novel breakthrough just ploughing the same furrow. Neither will you master anything unless you keep at, perhaps long after others have fallen by the way side (cf. Patience as a strategy).
Autists will sail steadfastly obsessively on beyond where I thought I could tread. That inspires me to more, even if I have no comprehension of what that obsession might be. Prime numbers, Disney cartoons, the cracks in the street, the music in the air, train couplers....
Sure, if you like, go fail conventionally.
That is not the way of the autist.
Post an interview, some CEOs and managers will ask how the candidate treated the support staff along the way to the interview. I've heard many repeat the adage of how someone treats a waiter or receptionist reveals a true character.
This is heightened when facing difference. While we can be trained to be polite to waiters and receptionists, there's a routine we can follow. Throw in unexpected difference, an autist, a different culture, a deaf person, a conflict...
We can all learn that, and be better people for it.