Why Are People Listening to a Child with Asperger Syndrome?

Why are people listening to a child with Asperger Syndrome? This is indeed a question!

In April 2019 a child with Asperger Syndrome visited the UK and told people that climate change is an emergency and that it is an existential crisis. The child with Asperger Syndrome also told the BBC in an interview, that Asperger’s had helped her in life, saying “It makes me different, and being different is a gift, I would say. It also makes me see things from outside the box. I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things. If I would’ve been like everyone else, I wouldn’t have started this school strike, for instance.”

Listen to the scientists she says.

So we now revise our question to: Why are people listening to a child with Asperger Syndrome who thinks that because she is different she thinks she sees things from outside the box? Or put another way: Why are people listening to a child with Asperger Syndrome who thinks she’s special?

One might also ask: Where does the child with Asperger Syndrome who thinks she’s special get her information from? Does she read the latest scientific papers in peer reviewed scientific journals, or perhaps she gets it from that most reliable of sources called the internet – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, and web sites? Places where often people can be found reasoning towards the conclusions that they are motivated to reach and engaging in the social construction of reality. That’s another form of science if you are not aware. Yes, you should indeed most definitely listen to scientists! But which ones should you listen to?

Answer all the above according to your beliefs!

Being interested in flawed decision making, and the social and psychological elements involved in such, it is best to follow the advice of scientists who warn against the fast intuitive thought undertaken by the mind’s System 1, as it often leads to systematic errors, and instead allow the mind’s System 2 to take control and to make the effort to think slowly and rationally and to analyse the situation. Which we did by checking on Asperger Syndrome and what it implies. This is what we found:

People suffering from Asperger Syndrome acquire language but use it in an atypical way: abnormalities include literal interpretations and miscomprehension of nuance. They tend to have difficulty understanding figurative language and tend to use language literally. Their conversational style often includes monologues about topics that bore the listener, fail to provide context for comments, or fail to suppress internal thoughts. Individuals with Asperger Syndrome may fail to detect whether the listener is interested or engaged in the conversation. The speaker’s conclusion or point may never be made, and attempts by the listener to elaborate on the speech’s content or logic, or to shift to related topics, are often unsuccessful. People with Asperger Syndrome can also be gullible.

So should people be listening to a child with Asperger Syndrome, who thinks she is special, and who may have an obsession with one narrow subject, who may engage in restricted patterns of behaviour and who may also have a very literal understanding of language, struggle with the natural ambiguities of language, and think people always mean exactly what they say?

We do, it seems, live in a truly post-modern world where people (often with the help of social networks) create their own reality and through these networks participate in the social construction of reality with others who want to share in that reality. What danger does this pose for the future of humanity?

In times past this is what the child with Asperger Syndrome who thinks she’s special would have said: repent your sins for the end is nigh! Instead of wandering the streets wearing an A-board, occasionally encountering a sympathetic soul, these people now wander the world of the internet, where, naturally, they encounter a larger number of sympathetic souls who share their doomsday beliefs. Perhaps the only difference is that the nature of the Abrahamic religion has changed to a secular one!

Ah yes, the Enchanted World of Enlightenment! 

This is not an Asperger Syndrome friendly article! If you understand what we mean by this ambiguous term! As with all texts, several interpretations are possible.