“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
― George Orwell
I have had some interesting conversations in the last few weeks that explain why I am getting overloaded and struggling to take on tasks I would in the past have found unproblematic. A “diagnosis” of something like Asperger’s requires there to be an impairment. Whilst I have always experienced being different, I have never needed to medicalise or pathologize this — so I never bothered to get “treatment”. Yet it seems to fit what I observe in my life right now.
I would like to share with you some of what I have learned, and put it into the broader context of information warfare — and an ongoing Marxist/Bolshevik style insurgency in the West, being executed via medical tyranny. Specifically, I would like to link my personal physical experience to the related cultural phenomenon of “autists”, who are a critical (but misunderstood) sub-community in this undeclared conflict.
To make this connection real from outset, the Israeli army has a special unit for those with gifted perception but who do not fit into the usual recruitment model. As The Atlantic notes: “Many autistic soldiers who would otherwise be exempt from military service have found a place in Unit 9900, a selective intelligence squad where their heightened perceptual skills are an asset.”
The modern hybrid warfare battlefield has many “digital soldiers” of a conceptually different nature to the past, and I find myself a warrior in the midst an intense conflict of meaning. This is not an abstract human experience, and comes with psychological pain that I believe rivals that of traditional and bloody kinetic warfare.
WW3 is a bio-information war
We are in an information war where a psychopathic system is attempting to draw the majority into a “hive mind” (communism is one label), whereby the group is elevated over the individual. This suits psychopaths who see themselves as “keeps of the hive”, with no concern for the individuals or their autonomy. They are seeking to impose their own moral relativism via the corruption of science, media, politics, industry, and religion.
“Autists” (like me) are the mirror of psychopaths. We are highly intelligent, with strong “affective empathy” (i.e. pure hearted), but lacking the malignant narcissism or manipulative intent of psychopaths: “In the spectrum of the social, sociopaths, psychopaths, and malignant narcissists are SAME BRAIN as autists, but in the empathy and moral opposite.” So an autist is an evil genius — without the evil bit.
Note that “autism” (the medical condition) is a vast grab-bag of attributes, from the genetic to the behavioural. The movie representation of savants in films like Rain Man can be a very long way from the lived experience of most people with such conditions. This tweet by @dspoonage captures it well for me: “I now work with somebody who has recently completed his PhD in Autism. I had an interesting conversation. He dislikes the phrase ‘on the spectrum’. His take was we are all the human spectrum, autistic and Asperger’s is just at the higher end of the human spectrum! Beautiful.”
So to summarise thus far, “autists” are a culturally defined group of people highly adept at systematising information who overlap significantly with “autism”, but these are not the same thing. Some with autism have extreme gifts and few social impairments; others are the converse. I am a (cultural) autist; whether I have (medical) autism is not a matter I care much about, since it is not sufficiently well defined or relevant to me.
The power of hyper perception
The “beautiful minds” of the “autists” are the absolute forefront of a conflict to “reconstruct reality”, since collective perception of what is real has been deliberately subverted over a long period of time. Autists have the easiest perception of what is truly happening, and are the least susceptible to propaganda and emotional appeals. We are the most resistant to being “hived off”.
This is rooted in how we process information, as described in “When the world becomes ‘too real’: a Bayesian explanation of autistic perception” by Elizabeth Pellicano and David Burr: “We suggest specifically that attenuated Bayesian priors – ‘hypo-priors’ – may be responsible for the unique perceptual experience of autistic people, leading to a tendency to perceive the world more accurately rather than modulated by prior experience.”
The idea of a “hypo-prior” is that you only have a weak attachment to existing beliefs when filtering incoming data. I will explore this in more detail below. Philosophers like Jiddu Krishnamurti have referred to this sense of “suspending evaluation” (to see things how they really are) as the “freedom from the known”. It is both an innate capability, and a skill that can be developed.
Note that intelligence has many facets, and that there is nothing innately superior or inferior to having (or lacking) this specific perceptual bias. It comes with costs as well as benefits. My own sense is that non-autists are more adept at working “within paradigm” (filtering things fast that do not fit the expected reality), whereas autists seem better at going “cross paradigm” (deferring choices of relevance).
The price of attachment to objective reality
The autist gifts of hyper focus and hyper perception come with a VERY painful side effect in our present cultural and geopolitical situation: you are often isolated from the mainstream, and are forced to watch everyone else being psychologically abused by those in power, which itself is traumatising. Furthermore, the deliberate corruption of meaning by the media, religion, education turns an already difficult task of “fitting in” for high-functioning autists much harder, since the “baseline” social consensus has been moved so far away from any objective reality.
I have accidentally become a prominent and very public “Q philosopher”, and am holding an exceptional level of dissonance between the false narrative of the corrupt offical media (“right wing extremist anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and maybe violent”) — which is then reflected in mainstream opinion — and the actual reality of the covert war ongoing. Every single day is a slog waiting this “reality perception gap” to close, knowing that Q is a military intelligence operation planned years in advance to achieve this goal.
The enemy is conducting a form of attrition warfare on the information battlefield, and the press gaslighting, mask wearing, TV propaganda, etc is designed to break down their opposition. Whilst those of the light are winning against the darkness, it comes at a huge price: “Autists have a proverbial burnout from too much data, too much empathy, too much knowing the darkest things and many times, when we rest from that, we get the anxiety and the sorrow of losing the calming hyperfocus this journey provides. Too much stimulation and too much vicarious pain.”
Battle fatigue for autists during information war
The nature of being an “autist” is poorly understood not just by the mainstream, but by those “on the spectrum” themselves. Luckily I have encountered an autist whose obsession is to describe and define her own condition, to the benefit of us all. Here I share what I have learned from her.
Caetextic
“Autists” are “context blind”, and struggle to deal with multiple contexts and changes of context, especially in the social. So for me dealing with lots of consulting clients and customers at once is very hard work. Once something is in my head, I cannot stop thinking about it and trying to solve the client’s problem. Compartmentalisation of context is hard and everything is connected across contexts.
OCD for information congruence
Because of the struggle to manage ambiguity, conflicting data, and multiple variables and contexts, there is a basic need for “autists” to model the world in order to be able to make choices and function. Without this conceptual “scaffolding”, normal life becomes impossible. This can be seen in my essays; it is me trying to reconcile the data for my own sake, so I can proceed “logically” without inner chaos. As a collateral benefit, other people find the “maps” and “models” I make extremely useful. I am an accomplished systematiser because I have no alternative.
Inertia and monotropism
We find it hard to get into a task, but once in it are absolutely focused on it (monotropism), but then find it hard to move on. So I can’t just sit down and decide to write an essay; I will freeze with anxiety. I have to wait until I feel calm and ready, then I can blast out all my thoughts in flow. Sometimes I can be very productive, but a simple task like tax admin can take me all day as the inner resistance is so high, and I will procrastinate endlessly.
Divergent preference for inputs
The “genius” aspect of high-functioning Aspie types comes from a wild associative memory and hyper perception of everything. This is because the usual filters that make people delay sense-making of most inputs are missing. My photography reflects this, as I notice tiny details other people would not perceive. Everything sparks off a train of thought, and there is no off switch. It is quite exhausting.
Inside/outside cognitive focus
We autists struggle to integrate the inner and outer worlds, but can consciously switch between the two. I noticed this around 2008, when my then partner (who was a business school professor) noted how I could disassociate at will when most could not. The downside is that this imposes a lot of draining cognitive cost to choose where to focus.
Super-empath
The lack of sensemaking filters also applies in the emotional. We are “sponges” for the feelings of others. It can seem like being a little remote or cold at times, as there is a need to distance oneself from the distress of others for self-protection. I cannot watch horror movies, for example, as there’s no way for me to tell myself it is “only acting”.
Window of tolerance
Autists have a “window” between “hyper stimulation” and “hypo stimulation” where we can function. This window can widen or narrow depending on circumstances. (My present circumstances with endless deplatforming are narrowing it.) If we go “hyper” we risk a “crash” and end up semi-catatonic. The resulting “duvet days” that are like depression, but from neurological overload.
Stimming and soothing
To maintain focus we “self-stimulate”; I wore out the left shift key and aluminium casing of my old laptop from the repeated tapping and rubbing. I am a visual self-stimulator more than physical, so I do photography walks as a mental health activity. This is also a form of self-soothing of my overstimulated nervous system. It is not just because I fancy doing “art”; it is basic and necessary self care.
Demand avoidance
Part of the condition is a wish to drive activity from inner self, and not from the outer world. So the torrent of correspondence I am receiving from being a public figure is particularly exhausting. Scheduled events are demands, too. The corporate world is hell for the autist, since it is demand-driven, which is why I’ve probably switched to being an artist. I like to have my days free from time constraints and specific commitments. I still work hard, just it has to be driven by interest to be “affordable” neurologically.
Masking
Autists have to put an unconscious effort into pretending to fit into the normal social world and how most people relate. This is called “masking”, and takes yet more energy. I was good at it in my 20s and 30s, and am getting less good with time… which brings us to…
Ageing
As “autists” age we get “more autistic”. I used to be able to go to movies, but now it is totally overwhelming for my senses, for example. I am 50 next year, and I’m finding it harder to “mask”. I get better and better at the few things I am brilliant at, and less and less good at those aspects of life I rarely practise now. Don’t ask me to do DIY jobs, it will take forever to complete.
Sensory overload and torture
The bottom line of all this is that sensory overload becomes frequent. This is kind of torment — literally experienced as torture. Too many demands, contexts, inputs, distractions, incongruencies… leading to meltdown. It is exactly what they do in dungeons of “black site” prisons to break people. This is particularly excruciating in a world where you can perceive the perception failures of other people, due to having extended cognition they lack.
Lifelong trauma
There is a strong correlation between being an “autist” and PSTD. We are all super-sensitive people traumatised by our society, and forced into a variety of often unhelpful and unhealthy coping strategies. One medical study tried to recruit untraumatized autistic people, and they couldn’t find any.
My experience as an ‘autist’
A friend summarised how she experiences my world better than I can do it myself:
“A latte may be nice, but I think it sounds absolutely imperative for an autist to be able to live within an ordered environment of his or her own creation. One that makes sense. For Martin the photographer, as well as Martin the philosopher, each limited character tweet or limited scene within a frame gives you a moment’s respite from the chaos. Bringing order, or at least an interpretation, to just one single moment can be very beneficial to your health. Showing it to others then gives them a reflection point.
However, as you say, you aren’t in this out of a need to rescue humanity, per se. You are simply, constitutionally compelled to point out that the world has been deceptively ordered, and offer the information publicly to try to move it back towards its right-side up. I imagine it’s a bit like having the winning bingo card every round and not being able to get anyone’s attention, no matter how loudly you shout.
And I can imagine that sometimes an autist becomes so weary of the effort to help reconstruct a legible order of things that they may find themselves exhausted and, possibly, on the verge of giving up and joining into the madness.”
I constitutionally and physiologically cannot join the hive mind madness, so I have no choice but to invite others to abandon their insanity — so I may have more company. The reason why I am deplatformed so consistently and the victim of economic warfare is because I am able to “join the dots” that the hive mind requires stay unjoined. Pointing out the logical disconnects helps others to shift paradigm from the “hive” mindset back to the “autonomous individual” one — which is the opposite of what those historically in power seek.
Autists are saving the world by examining a poisoned and polluted Reality™ narrative offered to us by those in power, and using our exceptional perceptual gifts to distil out the underlying objective reality. We have been weaponised fully and knowingly by the military, and are active combatants in a vicious global information war that still lies beyond the perception of the masses.
Speaking personally, it is a delight to be able to share the product of my autist capabilities for the benefit of humanity. I frequently get notes of thanks for the clarity I have brought to other people. Yet you probably wouldn’t be keen on the curses that come with these gifts.
I suggest that you don’t feel any envy: whilst to err is human, to so easily perceive it is excruciating.
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
My thanks to Paz Puente Greene, Tara Wegner, and Sebastian Stevčevski for their contributions to this article.
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