Autistic Personal Philosophy: On the Subject of Violence
It will not let up until its root causes are properly addressed.
I have been unable to stop ruminating on this for quite some time now, largely because of the ongoing media coverage of mass shootings and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, recollections of the January 6th capitol insurrection, the assassination attempt on the former president and what I know is being done to members of the autism community for which I proudly self-advocate. It has been a struggle for me to cope with all of the violence, largely because I see no realistic resolution to it.
To be a neurodiversity community self-advocate is to be a social justice and human rights advocate as well. As such, I want to see an end to violence in all of its forms because it is as egregious a human rights violation as any. In my view of a rightly ordered world, violence does not exist, though the world is anything but rightly ordered.
Innocent members of stigmatized segments of society are unjustly targeted, including many in my community. How autistic individuals behave and interact with the world around us are often at odds with societal expectations, rendering us especially vulnerable. I was violently bullied in 5th Grade, having blacked out and, upon regaining awareness, found myself with my back on the ground, surrounded by onlookers, simply for being different than most of my peers.
In 2012, an act of violence had fatal consequences when Stephon Watts, a 15-year-old black autistic boy, was shot and killed in Calumet City, IL during a confrontation with police which his father argued could have been de-escalated but was not. Today, in America, and for decades now, autistic, intellectually, and developmentally disabled students at a school two towns over from where I live are tortured with electric shock interventions for exhibiting behaviors the school considers unacceptable.
The fallout from war makes it easy to long for a violence-free world. All of the death, destruction, human suffering, hostage-taking, trauma, and “us vs. them” tribalism, whether on the battlefield, between protesters and counter-protesters, or in the public discourse, more than justify my sentiment. The hardship autistic and other disabled individuals living in war zones must be experiencing weighs on me, and yet, is unimaginable to me. In this respect, I feel uncomfortably privileged and a degree of guilt that I can safely and securely go about my life while others aren’t as fortunate.
But on this issue of violence, I admittedly feel stuck in the sense that I carry conflicting views on the matter. As much as I want to condemn all forms of it, I am accepting of the use of violence as a means of self-defense. It is both a primal instinct and a fundamental right for us to respond to dangerous situations for self-preservation. I know that I can’t have it both ways and yet, I feel a need to do so.
The autistic brain craves logicality, clarity, and consistency such that when these are absent, emotional unease often sets in. In a world full of complexities, ambiguities, and illogic, there is no escape. Not every idea or phenomenon can fit neatly into the box in which I would prefer that it reside. My paradoxical opinion on violence is a distressingly valid case in point.
I recall my father, who grew up in part during World War 2, telling me about the presence of Nazi U-boats off the beaches of Belmar, NJ not far from where he lived at the time, and that Hitler’s aggression had to be stopped. That story resonated very strongly with me. I wholeheartedly agreed with him back then, just as I do now.
I was supportive of us waging war in Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 terror attacks on self-defense grounds. Just the same concerning Ukraine defending itself against Russia, and I could go on and on. I passionately support our nation’s military, in which my father served as a Navy doctor, understanding that threats to our national security are real and that the U.S. Constitution must be defensible against all enemies foreign and domestic.
Knowing that self-defensive violence cannot exist in a violence-free world, all that I have to cling to for some degree of moral clarity and tranquility is what I view as an unattainable, arguably utopian vision of how violence may be kept from happening in the first place. This vision entails addressing and ultimately replacing its root causes with healthier mindsets, policies, and courses of action, along the lines of the following:
⦁ Out with us vs. them tribalism and in with peaceful coexistence and the universal recognition of the fact that we need to be taking better care of each other
⦁ Out with harmful lies, stereotypes, and disinformation and in with the truth
⦁ With greater prioritization of mental health and personal wellbeing
⦁ With greater knowledge of neurodivergence, disability, and of other disproportionately vulnerable segments of society
⦁ Out with escalation of potentially explosive situations and in with de-escalation
⦁ Out with greed and in with the equitable distribution of land, wealth, and resources
⦁ Out with power grabs and in with power-sharing
⦁ Out with hostile dissent and in with open-minded, civil dissent
⦁ Less fear and more understanding, because we tend to fear what we do not understand
⦁ Out with apathy and in with empathy
⦁ Out with oppression and in with self-determination
⦁ Out with discrimination, stigma, and marginalization and in with greater inclusivity, acceptance, and belonging
⦁ Out with all forms of hate and in with more decency, respect, kindness, and love
I lament that these principles are utterly unrealistic in practice, considering history, the current state of affairs, and the darker side of human nature. Therein lies the problem we are all up against, and the consequences have been immeasurable. But maybe each of us, in our own way, can at least move society closer to this kind of reality, and in so doing, make our world a more peaceful, less violent place.
