wikipedia.org Article for Naoki Higashida

This is one of a number of articles I intend to re-blog opposing Wikipedia editorial policy that promotes “the complete erasure of living, breathing, autistic human beings and their experiences from the world’s largest encyclopedia”.

The Wikipedia.org article for Naoki Higashida was removed. In protest, The Aspergian is publishing it on our site.

Source: wikipedia.org Article for Naoki Higashida (3 minute read)

Teaching religion

It’s been a while since I touched on topics of a religious nature, so here’s one that’s been on the back burner for a while.

I believe the teaching of religion is important. Not because it teaches what is right or wrong, good or bad, but because it teaches us a lot about the evolution of human thought and morality.

It can help us understand that good and evil, are concepts that change over time. It can help us understand why we value some ideas today that had little value in the past and why we have devalued some ideas that were regarded as sacred in earlier periods. Whether we like it or not, religion has played a significant role in how we have come to understand the world.

To a great many anti-theists and non-theists, bringing these two words, “teaching religion” is like a red rag to a bull. You can almost see their nostrils flare on hearing those words. But does it need to be that way?

For myself, religion is a means by which I can understand what I experience. It nourishes me in a way that other experiences of being human do not. I acknowledge that this is my experience, and what I experience is unique to me. If you wish to call it something else other than religion, that’s fine by me. 

The following video, and the transcript below describe what teaching religion means from a Quaker perspective. Whether or not you agree with the teaching of religion at all, it is not “indoctrinating people in the ‘correct’ way to think in terms of the cosmology or the meta-narratives of religious philosophy”.  Your feedback after watching the video or reading the transcription is very welcome.

Transcript

I am very clear in a public context that I never say, “I teach religion,” because I have learned in my life that that’s a conversation stopper. For most people that I encounter in the United States of America, they hear that as, “I participate in indoctrinating people in the correct way to think in terms of the cosmology or the metanarratives of religious philosophy.”

It couldn’t be further from the truth at a Friends school. That is not what we do. In fact, when I say to people, “I teach religions,” they say, “Oh wow, that sounds cool!” I’ve heard people say when I say I teach world religions, they say, “Oh that was my favorite subject in college, I loved that,” and it’s a conversation opener. And that’s what we’re doing at Friends schools, we’re opening the conversation, we’re not closing it.

For me as a teacher, my goal is to create an energized, safe space for students to get in touch with their own ideas but to encounter the ideas of other people in the room and other people from other times and other spaces, either through a text or through the internet or some other device that I share and I want them to be alive in the present with what’s real for them. 

Quaker Ethos

Quakerism is a wonderful container to have conversations around the edges. I often say that Quakerism is a great religion for people who are entering religion for the first time, or for people who are leaving religion. So we have a lot of people who are excited about Quakerism because they’ve thought of themselves as agnostics or atheists and then they encounter this tradition that permits that possibility but also invites exploration of the mysterious and doesn’t block out experiences of transformational or paranormal possibilities.

And then there are other people who have come from very doctrinal or creedal religions and they have felt oppressed or controlled by those traditions and Quakerism gives them freedom. Great, welcome!

So we have a tremendous mix within our community, and that’s a mix that we also have in our classrooms because at Friends schools, the majority of people in the room are not Quaker, and there is no expectation that they should be—and more often than not, the teacher is not Quaker either. So what we’re doing is we’re having a conversation that is possible because of the Quaker ethos of acceptance, tolerance, universality, and openness to the unknown.

Creating Safe Discursive Space

This is not a situation where there’s a catechism or a planned method of instruction so that you get the right answers or the right information. It’s quite opposite, actually. What we are doing at a Friends school is we are creating safe, discursive space for people to ask into the sublime, into the mystical, into the beautiful, into the mysterious. And it turns out that everyone has had that experience.

We’ve all had dreams. Are dreams real? Are dreams religious? Are some dreams religious? Are no dreams religious? In fact, what does it mean to be a person who is in touch with a dimension of reality that we can’t measure or see? It means to be fully alive, so let’s talk about that.

Exploring our Identities

And at the same time, I am very happy bringing in the language of scientific cosmology and what some people call atheism because that belongs in the room as well. So when I tell them that when I was young, I identified as both Quaker and atheist, I see their eyes get wide, like, “Oh that’s a thing? Like, I’m allowed to be that?” Sure! What are you, what’s your truth?

And then suddenly I hear a polyphony of different identities around the room and suddenly now we’re talking, because, “Well I’m Jewish and Christian?” Well, theologically speaking, how can you be both? Well it doesn’t matter, let’s not interrogate that question. Let’s honor that that’s your truth and let’s talk about what that means to you. Which stories speak to you? Which parts of those traditions have meaning for you personally, and why is it important that you honor both of those traditions when you were asked what religion are you? And let’s welcome all of that and stumble forward.

I want students to leave my class saying “That was fun!,” because it is fun actually. It’s fun to realize that you are having some dimension of reality that you know is true validated by somebody else and then you find out that there are rich traditions that offer different narratives, different names, different colors, different stories, different energies to exactly the stories that you personally have had. Wow, that’s cool!

Now turn to the person next to you and talk about your experience and listen to their experience and notice if there are similarities or differences. And now let’s come back to what we were talking about. Maybe we have a text from the Bhagavad Gita that says something really profound from a couple thousand years ago, and now let’s look at the Gospel of John, or the Gospel of Thomas even! Or maybe we’ll look at something from Deuteronomy and say, “How does this compare to your dream? What do you love?”

 

Quiet Shopping – the verdict.

The wife and I arrived at Countdown a few minutes after 2:30, and the difference was noticeable immediately. You enter the store through the fruit and vegetable section and there all the ceiling lights were off and the only illumination was that that came through the front windows and lights from the chiller cabinets around the perimeter of the section. Immediately, I was aware that there was no background music, and the checkouts were silent – no beeps at all. The chillers were still noisy and the noise of the refrigeration units in the nearby deli ahd specialty foods could still be clearly heard, but over all it wasn’t unpleasant.

Throughout the rest of the store, the strip lighting down the centre of each aisle had each alternate fluorescent tube switched off. It was still a little on the bright side for myself, but the wife found it most pleasant. One aisle had all the strip lighting turned off and the only illumination was from the adjacent aisles. This was perfect for me, but perhaps inadequate for some.

Unfortunately the warm pink/red illumination over the meat chillers seemed even more prominent with the lower level of lighting and it meant that I had to be extra careful where I directed my gaze when heading in their direction. As the meats take up half the rear of the store, if I was by myself, I would need to traverse the store in a series of loops instead of a simple up one aisle, down the next. Something like up aisle 6, down aisle 1, up aisle 7 down aisle 2, up aisle 8, down aisle 3 etc. However, I realise that in all probability, I’m the only person that’s affected by this type of lighting, and can’t expect Countdown to be aware of this condition.

On the whole I enjoyed the experience, and will make it a habit of shopping there at that time. I’m not sure if the checkout operators enjoyed it so much. The scanner beeps were so quiet, that they often had to check the till screen to be sure that an item had been scanned. The volume could have been turned up just a tad to make their work a little easier.

Congratulations Countdown. Your effort is most appreciated by this reviewer. You are now my favourite supermarket in Feilding!

wikipedia.org Article on Amy Sequenzia

This is one of a number of articles I intend to re-blog opposing Wikipedia editorial policy that promotes “the complete erasure of living, breathing, autistic human beings and their experiences from the world’s largest encyclopedia”.

When non-speaking autistics are given tools and choices for ways to communicate, to express themselves, they are empowered to become the authors of their own narratives.  In doing so, the power to own someone else’s story and control the autonomy of non-speakers is removed from institutions, systems, and individuals.  Because of this, corporations, “charities,” and…

Source: wikipedia.org Article on Amy Sequenzia (5 minute read)

Wikipedia.org Article on Lucy Blackman

This is one of a number of articles I intend to re-blog opposing Wikipedia editorial policy that promotes “the complete erasure of living, breathing, autistic human beings and their experiences from the world’s largest encyclopedia”.

Wikipedia editors have gotten many autistic nonspeaker’s pages removed from the site. We are republishing the pages in protest.

Source: Wikipedia.org Article on Lucy Blackman (3 minute read)

Quiet shopping

Sweet as! [Kiwi expression for “awesome!”]

Well, at least I hope so. Visiting the supermarket has seldom been pleasant for me. At worst it can be a migraine inducing and/or dissociative identity (autistic shutdown?) inducing experience that I would not wish on anyone.

In this town of Feilding, there are two supermarkets, and until recently New World was my Supermarket of choice. I avoided Countdown whenever possible, and it would take the considerable charms and persuasion, and occasional threats from the wife to get me to accompany her there. I never entered by myself.

However the world moves one whether one likes it or not.

New World moved to new bigger, brighter, but for me, most definitely not better premises. The acoustics are appalling, the lighting way too bright, and they’ve laid out the store in a similar manner to their opposition with the meat section along one wall at right angles to the isles.

I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, but here, most supermarkets use warm red tone illumination to make meat products look more appealing. Unfortunately that lighting does trigger migraine attacks for me. And as it’s at the end of half the aisles in the store, I have to be very careful where I direct my view as I move along an aisle towards the rear of the store where the meat shelving is.

Why the “Sweet as!” at the beginning of this piece? Well, Countdown has just announced that as from this week all their supermarkets will have a quiet period each week specifically for folk with sensory issues: reduced lighting, reduced air conditioning, no background music, no public announcements (except in case of emergencies), the volume of the “beeps” generated by checkout scanners and registers will be reduced, no restocking of shelves unless absolutely necessary.

It’s only going to be for an hour each Wednesday between 2:30 PM and 3:30 PM but you can sure that I’ll be there. In fact I’m quite looking forward to it. I might even have some time to browse instead of the usual mad rush in and out.

wikipedia.org Article on Tito Mukhopadhyay

This is one of a number of articles I intend to re-blog opposing Wikipedia editorial policy that promotes “the complete erasure of living, breathing, autistic human beings and their experiences from the world’s largest encyclopedia”.

Tito Mukhopadhyay is a non-speaking autistic author and poet. His page was removed by Wikipedia vandals. In protest, The Aspergian is publishing them here.

Source: wikipedia.org Article on Tito Mukhopadhyay

The “Severe Autism” Concept is Behaviourism’s Final Stand

Neuroscience threatens the foundational theories of behaviorism, and the ABA lobby has tried hard to suppress the fact that behavior is abuse for apraxia.

Source: The “Severe Autism” Concept is Behaviourism’s Final Stand (5 minute read)

wikipedia.org Article on Sue Rubin

This is one of a number of articles I am linking to in opposition to Wikipedia editorial policy that promotes “the complete erasure of living, breathing, autistic human beings and their experiences from the world’s largest encyclopedia”.

Sue Rubin’s page on Wikipedia was removed due to discrimination and vandalism. In protest, The Aspergian is reposting and editing the pages of nonspeakers.

Source: wikipedia.org Article on Sue Rubin

FC, RPM, and How Wikipedia Became Complicit in Silencing Non-speaking Autistics

This is one of a number of articles I am linking to in opposition to Wikipedia editorial policy that promotes “the complete erasure of living, breathing, autistic human beings and their experiences from the world’s largest encyclopedia”.

Over the past few months, I was involved in an editing dispute on Wikipedia involving the efficacy of facilitated communication (FC) and Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). What began with one contentious edit has now resulted in the deletion of the following biographical articles of autistic people from Wikipedia: Amy Sequenzia, a prominent non-speaking self-advocate who…

Source: FC, RPM, and How Wikipedia Became Complicit in Silencing Non-speaking Autistics