So, spent a chunk of the morning rehashing the history of autism: its etymology, study, all that...
So far, I understand that autism, as we know it, was first touched-upon by an Austrian researcher, Dr. Paul Eugen Bleuler, who also concocted the word "autism", from the Greek auto ("self") and -ism ("of the")...which could be seen as classic introversion. Now, that, in itself, could be misconstrued, by virtue of base-word definition, as "selfishness", which I suppose some people with autism could be seen as by the Muggle world, but it runs deeper: if any selfishness is indeed detected or perceived, it's only a symptom of the underlying condition now widely known as autism. Indeed, people with autism can be seen as selfish, inasmuch as the solitude our condition provides us...but back to the etymology. These were the two best words Bleuler could conjure as a descriptive of the psychiatric condition he was studying, well before another Austrian named Asperger touched upon it, with his own historically-tragic footprint. Both Asperger & Bleuler were also eugenists...Bleuler far-less-fatally so.
But out of this all, today, we have autism. Never before has so much attention been paid to it, with novelty, triviality and social hot-potato-ing keeping the curtain ever lower to the stage to hinder a full, realistic view to those piqued by it. Psychiatric convention still trifles with and tosses it about like a Rubik's Cube in 1980 (or a primate before a monolith); much of common society flippantly, arrogantly toys with it, in equally-ignorant talk to make themselves sound 'educated' or 'worldly', like a toddler playing with Daddy's newfound gun; Hollywood stilts and stereotypes it for ratings and cash; the rest of us laboriously wade through the swamp of it all to try and understand it.
More often than not, popular culture harms more than it helps. Another axiom of history.
We are a people who prefer solitude in a world of constant collision of souls...and the occasional conflict such collision results in. The price of peace is not always vigilance. And on that note, we as 'auties' forge on, finding our own unique places and paths in a world which came with no instruction book. In the end, all is the same; all goes to its fate the same. Until then...we struggle in our own way.
