autism, buddhism, and ego
i would rather force-quit an app and find anything else to do with my time than click through a pop-up
i’m 47 years old as i write this, and i’ve been autistic for all of them
there wasn’t a word for it back when i was a kid
i’m so high-masking, the tests they gave 3rd graders to detect diverse minds mostly missed me. but my 4th grade teacher met me, and two weeks later an “extra slot” opened in a special-needs class for “gifted children” on the other side of town. i was scared, but i met my best childhood friend ever there, so it worked out
language
i’m obsessed with language. not all autistics are, but it’s a common phenotype
often, my approach to understanding a complex topic is to write an essay, such as this. if i can begin with one idea and tell a sensible story all the way through to another, i accept i have a working understanding of my own viewpoint
there’s a theory that each of the main human neurodiversities can be explained as “something” a normal brain should be doing automatically, but our brain does not. for autistic people, that “something” is social interaction
in some autistic people, the frontal and pre-frontal cortices of our mind — our conscious parts — learn how to compensate for that which the autonomous parts of our brain can’t do. in other words, we brute-force think our way through the kinds of social interactions a non-autistic person can do without any thought at all
we are called the high-masking autistic people
this is because personality is a mask we put on so we can interact with others. left quiet on our own, we take the mask off and sit doing nothing, inhaling weed, endlessly lost in our own thoughts. or sometimes, when we’re really not observed, we cycle through masks. we try out emotional reactions, playing out-loud different ways of handling an upcoming conversation, until we find what best fits
non-verbals
language is a primary vehicle for social connection, thus many of us become obsessed with it. so much so, many autistic people develop some skill at speaking with non-humans too. after a life of trying to understand human body language, animal body talk is not that complex
here’s one example, a simple phrase anyone can learn in the language of dogs: “all is well on this front.“ or by context, it also means, “no challenge intended here.“ in both cases, it’s said the same: •yawn•
i mean that literally. when someone is walking their dog and approaching, and i see the animal go soft alert, pricking its attention toward me, i look their way and make a silent yawn. almost always they’ll partially turn their attention, lowering their alert to me by one small notch
this also works on dogs left guarding vehicles in parking lots
i learned this behavior from observing my own dog pack, back when i lived in one
it works on deer too, but the mouth action is moving my jaw in a broad circle, as if chewing grass. again, it seems to mean “no threat here”. last weekend, two buck deer let my sister’s 9 year old son come into his grandma’s back yard and oggle them up close, in part because i, a complete stranger to them, said this motion to each, and the larger of the two bucks duly said it back to me
speaking deer is something i’ve practiced with the does at my off-grid cabin. must admit, this was the first time i’d tried interacting with bucks, but it seemed to work the same. my nephew is fine
in old days, we’d call it “being a witch” when someone learned ways to communicate with the natural world. i’m glad we don’t pillory witches anymore
truly, animals make more sense than humans do. human speech is full of lies
most allistics – people with non-autistic minds – don’t intend to mislead. they just use language different than we do. allistic language is much less about the words being said and more about the pattern of in-groups recognizing in-groups
i call it bird-chirp. allistic people use language like birds use chirping. one bird over here goes •chirp•chirp•chirp• and another bird over there goes •chirp•chirp• and what it means is “i’m in the in-group, are you in the in-group too? yes, i’m in-group too.“ then another bird in some other direction goes •caw• and the •chirp• birds •chirp• even more about the •caw• bird being in the social out-group
many years into autistic burnout, most human language sounds like bird-chirp to me. it’s all in-groups validating their own superiority. i fake the words pretty well, but i don’t do it automatically, and people always sense it. i’m always just a little bit strange, out of step, just a bit in the out-group
but that’s all before my morals kick-in and i have to turn a conversation sideways. after i’ve segued into some fine point of what it means to be an ethically good person, seeing me as an outsider seems to become so much easier
morality
many, many autistic hangups boil down to morals
for example, a second autistic phenotype i express is PDA, or Pathologic Demand Avoidance
the absolute fastest way to talk me out of doing something is to order me to do it
the reason for this is ordering me changes what would be a simple task into a power relation. someone is putting themself in a position to give me orders, and that is not something i can accept. i must reject, or stall, or in some way re-establish that we do not have a power dynamic
maybe it’s because autistics have to figure out the hard way how to be a person that so many of us land really strong moral codes
hells, i self-identify as demonkind these days because, in a single sentence: “i highly believe in virtue, but i don’t believe in god.“
it feels to me as if most people run around without ever questioning their own goodness. i guess they believe they got boopped with goodness at the time of birth, and as long as they exist, everything they do is naturally good
to me this is pure ego. the ego module of our brain lives in our left-prefrontal cortex, directly adjacent to the module that makes language. the purpose of our ego is to justify to ourself why we have decided to do what we’re doing
said another way, that “voice of reason” we’re taught to try to use to limit our behavior? that voice of reason isn’t deciding anything, it’s whole purpose is to tell us stories that enforce our own sense of rationality. our decisions and our behavior originate from all the rest of our brain, most of which has no capacity for language
let me rephrase what i wrote a few lines up: most of us are chasing our own egos as justification for why we’re morally good people
that’s as cyclic as ouroboros
our culture encourages us to maximize our egos. we are taught from cradle to grave the only path to a successful life is to maximize our impact in this world, and only people who strive forever to do so deserve to get rewarded with mana
… or money, or follows, or likes, or influence, or promotions, or salvation, or whatever word you, my dear friend, prefer. i like the word mana
sadly, the option to live a quiet life of sufficiency, bolstering the emotional needs of our companions the best we can, this is not a life that our society rewards with mana
this is sad to me because it’s the path i seek. it’s the path my neighbors on either side of me have sought as well, in the little trailer park i live in. i feel we’re forgotten here, like people who don’t count for much in a larger capitalistic world
instead we’re told to put on masks. we’re supposed to use the problem-solving part of our brain to dominate a noisy world that’s hell-bent on selling us our own basic survival. our culture makes us become sellers and merchants of shit that we ourselves find morally repugnant, just in order to eat
we’re supposed to claw or sleep our way up some social hierarchy in order to matter, and that hierarchy seems to exactly correlate with ego
an allistic mind can stomach this forever i guess?
i don’t know, i really don’t
most autistics can’t. at some point, we burn out and kind of stop functioning
burnout
i burned out on my computer programming career when i realized the AI apocalypse was coming and i didn’t want to lose my whole life to my job before we got to it. i’d rather study art to learn what matters in life than help corporations optimize how efficiently they can transfer money from poor people to rich people
years later, computer programmers are the very first employment sector being flattened by the rise of AI. that’s some well-earned karma on all of us
what social capacity that remained burned out when my tendency to adopt companions landed me a true narcissist, all meth-addled and violent. i poured literal years of my life into trying to redeem this man, all as some proof to myself that i was morally better than he. in this, i believe i failed. that is, he changed me a lot more than i seemed to change him
my ego justifies the whole experience by how much i learned. i tell myself that when my beliefs couldn’t stand up to my abuser’s knock-downs, i found stronger beliefs that could
contrariwise, i hold my value to him was that i was pretty much willing to argue about any topic he ever wanted an argument on. see, he could only communicate about important things in life by arguing, and as i’m prone to trying to communicating with someone in their own way…
(it’s fine; he only beat the shit out of me a few times)
i’m so delicate these days. i have my emotional comfort jacket, and my emotional comfort hat, and my fidget toy. with these together, plus continuous intake of weed, i’m able to function socially for a few days at a time. then i totally crash out for the whole next week
there’s a lot of days when even my mate in the next room quietly watching youtube is more noise than i can handle
yet somehow i still say i’m better now than i was back when trying to win games of patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism. i legitimately tell myself i’d rather end it all than ever go back to sucking corporate dick for economic clout
in part i guess because i can’t see any difference anymore between fluffing the narcissist’s ego with my right hand or my left
whether it’s my ex berating me for not caring for him properly, or my boss berating me because he thinks that’s part of his job definition, i just can’t see any difference. they both want to use me as a tool to boost their own sense of emotional superiority, and how can i accept that?
now that i’ve become aware of it, i can’t
they say burnout does not become easier with age, it becomes harder. the more we become aware of how toxic our culture is, the less motivated we are to engage
i have no more status and fortunes. what i carried away from my career has mostly been spent, or sometimes given away to companions, helping each in their own goals. this i do pride myself on. i feel i’ve directly aided enough people in this world to hold ground in any “holier than thou” argument i ever find myself in
damage
what makes me sad is i’ve been largely unable to get back much help from my companions on my own goals over the years
maybe it’s because i’m too esoteric? my goals are too big? “imma learn all of art,“ for instance, is maybe too nebulous
i know i can work with others. teams with me on them were quite successful back in both work and school. but in both those contexts, the goals we worked toward were external, imposed on us by hierarchy
it’s when we’re just being friends, working towards friendly goals, i don’t know how
a few times when a friend has joined my projects for a while, i’ve ended up working so hard and obsessively as to scare them off again anyway
but the norm is i spend time with my companions, we talk about their arts, and i’m helping with traction in any direction they indicate they want to grow. but if our talk turns instead to my own arts and endeavors, i get back the tolerant smile of a passive audience
they love me, i’m sure. they all have. they just don’t engage
this is one context where i have honestly never figured out how to person
i study language so deeply, i think, because i keep trying to explain myself to my friends, in hopes that someday this leads to my own emotional needs being seen and met
hasn’t really worked yet
faith
the problem with solving life through language is that we’re raised to believe the highest use of language is not continuous self-observation, but rather doctrine
to someone who has faith, the highest morality is knowing that faith’s doctrine. actions, no matter how harmful, can be justified if someone is good enough at quoting doctrine
but if we assume god is dead and it’s on us individually to figure out rights from wrongs, then doctrine doesn’t work. doctrine is just old answers to old problems. doctrine might be worth considering, as all information may be worth considering, but it’s not necessarily an answer to any new context
i really want to respect religion for the social aid that religion provides
but the big problem i have with religion is patriarchy
i honestly and truly believe there is no path to enlightenment through patriarchy. yet all three abrahamic religions — judaism, christianity, and islam — are patriarchal to the core
even belief systems i do like – buddhism and taoism – had strongly patriarchal phases in their history, which also correlate with a lot of violence
no, the part of buddhism i do appreciate is not the doctrine. there is no official buddhist doctrine. there’s teachers, who teach what we understand of the concepts inside buddhism, and everybody, including teachers, as we all try to understand these concepts. there’s not one book on buddhism, there’s millions of them, as millions of buddhists have tried to explain what each one has come to understand, in the best way they individually could
buddhism
what i take most from buddhism is the concept of the eightfold path
the eightfold path is so central to buddhism it’s why the symbol for the belief on wikipedia is an eight-spoked wheel. the eightfold path is the steering wheel for life
best i can say it:
it’s this idea that we are not naturally good people, we’re just people. we have to work at it if we want to be good people. we have to work every moment of being alive to polish ourself, one tiny little opportunity at a time, into being better people than we were before. also, we can’t do this by focusing on one axis of improvement at a time. rather, to make any meaningful progress, we have to walk all possible roads toward self-improvement all at the same time
what i take from taoism is recognizing we can’t do this in pure isolation. indeed, we are part of the world and that world throws chaos at us. we should remember what’s important in life, but try to steer ourself inside the general flow of world events, not waste energy fighting against the current
i like to say when daddy buddha and momma tao got together, they named their child zen
to be clear, zen is not floating above our bodies in some detached bubble of pure rational thought. •shudder• no. strong no. floating above our body in some detached bubble of rationality sounds to me like a runaway ego trip
real people have feelings
feelings
feelings are the soft parts of our brain that don’t know language, trying to communicate
modern psychology says the goal of life is becoming “self-actualized.“ in business school’s leadership class, we spent a day discussing what this means. my takeaway was all the words my classmates used to describe self-actualization sounded like a buddhist describing enlightenment
it was mostly ‘learning to be okay with ourself’ if i might rephrase the entire discussion in short
partly this means having feelings, not suppressing them. to be clear, this also means developing emotional complexity, not being at the mercy of runaway feelings that we never figure out how to handle
patriarchies always seem to think feelings other than lust and rage are emasculating, and thus we’re supposed to suppress them. lust and rage though, we’re supposed to lean into, and let our animalistic side take over, for the most ego-maximizing game we can score. yeah, no. again, there is no path to enlightenment through patriarchy
another part of being okay is recognizing we don’t always agree with ourself
modern neuroscience absolutely swears we’re two half-brains inside the same head
many brain functions are duplicated on both sides of our head, but not all. we’ve already mentioned our language production center is on our left side, adjacent to our ego. our right brain doesn’t use words when it communicates, so much as it sends feelings, hints, impressions, and suggestions
if our right brain does one day learn to record the sound of words, and push them across the veil at our left brain, they’re highly metaphorical words, and our left brain sometimes even freaks out from the experience
our ego really wants to believe it’s the only part of us that is us. words and ideas coming from the other side of the mind can be a bit challenging to that perspective
the best name i’ve found for accepting our inner parts, even the parts that freak us out, is “shadow work.“ this owes all the way back to Jungian psychology where our “shadow” was considered our subconscious mind, with our conscious mind somehow riding on top
Jung’s goal was we should become conscious of everything. this is not totally right, but the name “shadow work” has persisted anyway, and been picked up by a lot of people as we try to recognize our own inside parts
demonkind
for me the path to inside harmony began by just trying to cooperate. in the exact way i used to cooperate with teammates to accomplish goals at work or school, i came to understand that the egoistic “i” who imagines itself as “me” is just one small aspect of me. navigating “our” life succeeds so much better if “we” do it as a team
then a large step happened when my autistic-ass-self began manifesting a whole new personality; i mean, mask
i couldn’t list all the masks i wore as a child. but as a 20-something adult i called myself “dragon,“ because i was finding furry culture around then, by way of a group of friends who all named themself dragons. closer to being 30, i manifested “tiger” and more people seemed to like me as tiger than as dragon, so dragon went to sleep and stayed asleep for a very long time
to be clear, tiger was personified ego. i’ve said many times over the years: i love furry because we all self-categorize by our own neurodiversities. here i’ll say it plain: tigers are autistics who found ego. (wolves are autistics who didn’t.)
then about half a decade back, covid hit. in isolation and despair, while trying to understand my own mind as a team effort, “demon” began as a container for all the dark parts of myself i was finding but didn’t yet comprehend
see, in my story universe — of which four novels have been written — my tiger main character ended up pair-bonding with a demon. i never intended the demon to even be a major character. they just grew into it. thus in the real world, when understanding my own dark inner voice that definitely didn’t see things the same way “i” did, demonkind was just the right kind to be
we tried letting demon be the face our family saw, and it didn’t go terrible. then one specific day, in depression, and under the effects of a mild dissociative, tiger expressed totally giving up. demon queried about taking over. tiger agreed and… it was the strangest sensation of being swallowed and being the one doing the swallowing all at the same time
in buddhism we’re taught to starve the ego, as a way to seek ego death. to me, it felt like being eaten
i honestly and legitimately believed i flopped over which side of my brain was in charge
(i also developed some ADHD-like tendencies at the same time, and i’m a lot more ambidextrous than i used to be)
over time, tiger-style thoughts came back. we’re all here now. but what’s fascinating is we just don’t care anymore where a thought comes from. for 42 years i was obsessed with categorizing thoughts: whether a thought was a tiger-side, dragon-side, fire-side, water-side, engineer, hunter, or any of the other mechanisms i used to sort myself by. i just don’t care anymore. we’re all me. all of our thoughts need considered
we argue things out with ourself, and yield back and forth relatively freely
it’s so much easier to not hate ourself when most of our decisions are made as a group
can our ego still run away with us? yes. but not as often, not as easy, and not usually as far
the core of buddhism is improving ourself one tiny kitten-step at a time. we watch ourself always, looking for opportunities where we did a thing a little less ideal than we might like. we recognize our error, forgive ourself for our error, and vow to do better next time. we don’t make large jumps to fix our character, we make ten-thousand tiny steps to cover the same distance
this eightfold path can only be walked if we stay open to all of our own inside feels and metaphorical judgements as we travel
enlightenment
the story of the buddha during the actual moment of enlightenment goes like this:
the man who would be buddha was attempting to meditate. he had been born a prince, into pure ego-maximizing luxury, but had rejected that. he then lived as an ascetic monk to seek ego-death trough the abuse of his own body, and this too had gotten him nowhere. older now, attempting a middle road of simple sufficiency, he sat this one day under a bodhi tree, attempting to meditate, but not being very successful at it
the man’s name was Siddhartha, and on this day, a demon named Mara circled him, interfering with his meditation
yes, this story has a demon in it, that’s part of why i like it
Siddhartha had his eyes closed but he couldn’t close his ears. he focused best he could on his breathing, but Mara kept whispering terrible things at him, distracting him
Mara replayed Siddhartha’s failures, and reminded the man how much of a disappointment he was to his family. Siddhartha despaired, and tried to block it out, and failed. Mara only grew louder
Mara summoned visions, showing temptations of the flesh that Siddhartha had once enjoyed, then recast them in terrible re-interpretations, each worse than the last. Siddhartha despaired more, and Mara grew bolder yet
realizing he’s getting nowhere, the man who would become buddha changes his approach. he begins to listen, and to simply acknowledge
Mara screams Siddhartha’s own fears and doubts at him, and the man simply replies “i hear you Mara.“
Mara, stunned, takes a moment, then tries again, a little of their edge having been lost. Mara plays visions of the future, and all the future failings the man will still have. again, the mortal simply replies, “i hear you Mara, and thank you for your input.“
again and again, they have this exchange. with each time Siddhartha acknowledges Mara, the demon’s ire becomes less. no future is reshaped, and no past undone. but with each time Mara is simply heard, and accepted, they lose intensity
in time, by hearing and accepting his own inner thoughts, the man finds harmony. in that moment, it’s said he achieved enlightenment and became the first buddha
any of us can become a buddha. we simply need to find harmony. not peace maybe, but harmony. the world is not peaceful. chaos comes at us, and we have to flow with that. reacting with our feelings is part of being alive. to suppress our feelings is pure ego; that is, maximizing to an inner hierarchy, and not an inner harmony.
feeling feelings and learning over time enough emotional depth to live with our feelings is just being human
at the end of our days, we’re supposed to come to find we’ve become the best person we can evolve ourself into. we’ve become a positive piece of our companions’ own life experiences. conversely, we’ve stepped away from people with whom we can’t form cooperative groups
it’s easy to say in words how to break the cycle of samsara: at the moment of death, we hold zero regrets, and simply have no need to try doing life all over again
buddhists believe in reincarnation, see? we all live as many lives as we need to, until we get it right
anchorpoints
but i’m not buddhist. i’m demonkind
i’m what happens when someone autistic, with a modern understanding of neuropsychology, designs and names their own personalities after furry fantasy characters from the books they’ve written for themself as tools to understanding human behavior
i don’t believe in reincarnation, to be clear. i hold when we die all our energies dissipate back into the general noise of the universe
but in my stories, my tiger character and my demon character argue out why people do what people do. in our real world, the language-producing, ego-maximizing “i” part of my collective mind argues with the other parts of my own brain in the same way
are all the strange impressions and half-words i get truly from the other half of my mind? could my own ego be pretending? now-and-then i’m sure yes, my ego is pretending to be some of my other parts. but it really doesn’t matter, because being open to all thoughts from all the parts of me is the whole point
to me, demonkind is a triangle: somewhere inside the three anchors of autism, buddhism, and ego, i find me
i’m not any one thing, i strive to be all of it, all at once
you, my dear friend, can be demonkind too, if you want
… or a boddhisattva, a buddha-in-training, or whatever word you like for the idea. i like the word demon
calling myself demonkind puts into one single introduction about as much of what i think is wrong with this world as what i think is right. it sets me up against organized hierarchical religion, and those who just want to hold the way things have been. it sets me dead against outsider-ism. then it bends positively into furry communities, and self-categorizing ourselves by our own neurodiversity
plus, it keeps away people who are afraid of discussing morality
morality is just about the only thing worth talking about, to my autistic mind
