Being autistic myself, I am on the other side of that spectrum. I have in a sense too much sanity because some important and useful skills were unable to develop. Shall I go into that as it relates to today’s topic on fear of self? As a contrast to insanity?

The sensitivity is there. The intense world hypothesis is winning out in experimental exploration, testing, and I’m happy it is. It has taken a ridiculous amount of time, but for me the sensory input overwrote those faculties that would allow me to bond appropriately with others socially, or form the more ambiguous but common patterns of thought. Many of the observations and conclusions people take for granted, and form a necessary part of the social consensus, are largely unintelligible to me. My brain formed too quickly as a child, and for example, my visual intelligence takes up part of the function of my frontal lobe.

I can simulate an experience in graphic detail, and well, my personal sense of ethics tends to be Kantian. I explore systems of rules and their logical implications, and operate from categorical imperatives. I can’t have a desire to wear the skin of pretty victims as in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs“, because the personal investment and social sensitivity isn’t there. Is it clear how that contrasts with regular insanity?

Social sensitivity seems a two-edged sword…

You identify yourself not as the body. I don’t identify myself as a social being.

In fact, the theory that the social centre in the brain is compromised hasn’t born experimental fruit. In the case of autism, it tends to be over developed. From my own experience I will share that I have learned to track a sort of social biorhythm. I have a sense of people and animals and life in general as a collective entity.

Can you be a fun person? Not consciously, no I can’t. I can sense what gets a rise out of living beings, what triggers defensive responses, what serves to attract or repel, but I understand these things like you would understand the weather or your own mood.

So your pattern association is narrower then an insane person (doesn’t extend to the social)? Indeed. This is why they use the term autism. It means self absorbed. It could also maybe mean self contained, either way it has it’s problems. But is the contrast clear now?

Then Hollywood is autistic. Actually, that’s just narcissism which has a dependency on public recognition and approval.

Do you like to be touched? I can selectively learn to enjoy touch, but mostly no I don’t.

Your fear responses don’t extend to the social? My fear responses are flooded. They even use this in therapy to de-condition phobic reactions. I have only an abstract sense of disgust, so I tend to misinterpret peoples reactions to things I say. I have learned to go with the worst case assumption. This saves time, confusion and further error in general.

You are always ‘facing your fear.’ Yes, nature programmed me to always face my fear. So the thing that I have that falls outside of that is social interaction, that domain of experience that I don’t have the internal dictionary to interpret.

As a child, you felt like a an outsider? As a child I could not identify myself as outsider. I came to understand myself to be an outsider as I began to understand the consistent social reactions I got.

Do you remember past lives? I remember a whole ream of potential lives, vast spectrum of them.

So have we covered insanity as it relates to fear adequately?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~