02-22-2017, 02:53 AM
(02-22-2017, 01:49 AM)Craig Wrote: [quote pid='21636' dateline='1487655086']
Quote:pbrower2a
I have Asperger's. Nobody told me when I could have made adjustments and gotten to enjoy a reasonably-happy and productive adulthood. I had poor eye contact, little sense of humor, and rigidity in my way of thought. Potential employers thought that because of my poor eye contact I was shifty and dishonest. (Never mind that I tell anyone, dishonesty is for schmucks). Comedy and fiction had to be really good for me to appreciate them. Not until I was 60 was I diagnosed with it. People that I have known for years agreed with the diagnosis. I had to live a lie almost my entire adult life... and I am not a good liar.
A therapist who dealt with me after I said some regrettable things -- suggesting that I wish I had never been born, that I didn't get to live to that point, and even suggesting how I might put an end to my life -- figured that it was Asperger's in thirty minutes.
Maybe I could write a novel titled My Other Life , telling how different my life would be had I gotten a diagnosis of Asperger's and gotten to act accordingly. Asperger's can have physical manifestations such as poor hand-eye coordination, little upper-body strength, and monotonous speech. Getting away with it? That's the ticket.
Oh. I never would've guessed. I guess it wasn't evident to me because I can't see other people on this forum in person.
Would your special interest be all that high art and culture you keep saying Heroes have produced so little of? I can sort of see your rigid, one-perspective view of high culture when you discuss that stuff. -Craig
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There are exceptions -- spectacular exceptions. Shakespeare the playwright, Goethe the profound novelist, Mozart and Shostakovich the composers... I'm guessing that the Civic type does not usually get the chance to do much introspective inquiry while waging apocalyptic war while a young adult. I can't imagine any of those men who stormed the beaches at Normandy coming back to write poetry. There's nothing subtle about being a soldier.
It is telling that Howe and Strauss find a paucity of creative people in the Republican generation. "GI poetry" is practically an oxymoron.
If I had stormed Omaha Beach, Anzio, or Guadalcanal I would certainly think very differently. I came of age in the 1970s just as the pop culture quit pretending to serve any high purpose. It became unabashedly commercial and formulaic. So I could become a cultural snob. But at least I can express what some artists, writers, and composers suggest. People like me who know the beaches more for the calls of sea gulls than for hearing the deafening sound of artillery can see the world in a very different way from those who have been in combat. Does that make me better? Not in the least.
I can fully understand why GIs came to accept the insipid 'elevator music' that used to have the letters "EZ" within the call letters. Take a pop tune, arrange it for orchestra with a gimmicky instrumentation (there might be a full string orchestra except for lacking violas, which gives an etherial effect that tires me fast)... and no musical complexity.
Were GIs stupid and unsophisticated? Not really. If they (the ones born before about 1915) got solid eighth-trade educations they were wholly literate, which is more than I can say of many high-school graduate. If they wanted entertainment and they didn't get to go to the movies at night, they had to read. I know of some Boomers and X who never opened a book -- not even a pornographic novel, a trashy romance, or an adventure story -- once they graduated from high school. So who was more sophisticated -- my grandfather born in 1912 who always had books or magazines around even if he never went beyond 8th grade or his grandson (1968-2016) who never cracked a book after leaving school?
My grandfather did go for a GED when he was in his 60s. He was proud of his achievement. So was I. His intellectually-lazy grandson? He never could get hold a conversation.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.