Author: Robert Moran

The Advocate – Opinion
The column for which I won second place for best personal experience story from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.

THE ADVOCATE: Rational insanity – Opinion

I guess i never thought of mentioning this before before, but being autistic I am just naturally rigid and inflexible. Autistics live in a world of predictability, repetition, and order when it comes to their behavior
I am still learning how to be more flexible.

If I was to look back on my life and look at all the mistakes I have made I would not do anything over again. For the first time I am happy and have no regrets.

I wrote in an earlier blog that people make no effort to understand my condition.
I realize that was wrong. Its not other peoples responsibility to ask. It is the responsibility of people like me to tell people what it is like even if they don't ask.
It seems that we have been lax in that area for quite some time…until now. Now it seems as if all that silence has given way to shouting.

One of the ironies of autism is that many autistics are non-verbal but through facilitated typing they are able to communicate
Just because a person does not say anything to say does not mean they do not have anything to say. Give someone the means to communicate and they will tell you what they think.
As a collective all autistics capable of communication are, to quote Howard Beale from the movie Network, shouting we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore!

I think it is time that we had a journalism associated for the disabled. I would call it the ADJA the Americans with Disabilities Journalism Association. I however do not want to be president there are more qualified people for that.
I just have to ask if anyone would support me on this?
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

I am tired of people calling me weird. Here’s a fact I am autistic and think you are weird too. Its not so much that I pay attention to how people treat me because I don’t anything less from humanity’s myopic vision. As much as people want diversity the less they can accept it. To me the rest of the world is a strange place full of strange people due to the very nature of autism. What I consider to be normal behavior you consider to be abnormal. I can learn what you consider to be appropriate behavior but it is like a second language to me, which has to practice and utilized with deliberateness because it is not natural to me. I had a friend of mine call me fucking weird one night in the pub in the TSU. All it did was remind me that no matter how much I make an effort to learn about your world there is little or no effort on your part to learn about mine. Why should you? You might ask. I am here and I exist. I am as human as you are I expect of you what you expect of me: understanding that as weird as I am to you, you equally as weird to me.

I have to wonder what this thing called truth is. Is it as objective as people say or is it as subjective as some want it to be? I honestly have no answer. In a world where lies masquerade as truth and truth wears the mask of deception, the answer to such a question can itself seem like a lie. But how do we know what is truth? Is it found in a book? Or is it found in the commandment I am the Lord of your God. Thou shalt have no God but me. If that is true, truth is subjective. It is how we define our relationship with God and what we think his message to be. But if it is not subjective, it is the objective truth that God is Love. Still the question remains, if truth is God and God is Love, what is truth? Is truth Love? If so, what is Love? And how can be the truth be objective if Love is not? It can be both. This may sound like a dues ex machina resolution to the question and thus not answer but it is the only one that circular logic can come up with especially when the question is the answer.

A true Democrat takes the ability to say what he thinks very seriously.
A true Republican takes the ability not think about what he says very seriously.