Aspergian light

Tony Attwood, Carol Gray, and me at the Asperger Association conference yesterday.

What is genius if not intelligence focused to a sharp point, a point that reaches beyond the rest of society? Isn’t that also a definition of some Aspergians?

Not all Aspergians have the overall mind power to meet that definition, but some certainly do. And that realization set me wondering . . . is there a genius who’s not Aspergian? Or do the two go hand in hand? Some of the greatest inventions the world has ever known have come from people who are otherwise so eccentric they could barely function in society. And yet they gave that society – a society that often mocked and ridiculed them - great things.

Yesterday, at the Asperger’s Association of New England conference in Boston, Tony Attwood said,

Asperger’s is like fire.

The world needs fire . . . for light, for heat, for cooking. Fire shines for millions and makes their lives better. But it also burns those who are too close.
Asperger’s is the same. The world needs Aspergians, for our creative talents. Without us, the world would be flat, dull, and slower moving. Our light shines over the whole world, with our music, our writing, our art, and our technical achievements.

It’s the fruit of Aspergian thought that makes the modern world possible. Without Aspergians . . . there would be no Einstein; no Newton . . . we’d still be riding horse drawn wagons to market. If that. Maybe we’d still be in caves.

But those Aspergians who do the creating; who do the thinking . . . we are often tormented. As are those around us. Burned by our light, as it were. Friends can protect us, but some will always be too smart and too driven to achieve contentment, whatever else they may attain.

Try as we might, we don’t always fit in. We can’t. Yet the world needs us more than they know. A world without Aspergian genius would be a world tranquilized on Valium, plodding from task to task. It would be the world portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984, come to life, but without the technology, because there would be no Aspergians to create it.

What drives us to be this way? In many ways, it would be easier to be tranquilized. The other night, at my Brookline reading, a young man with a tormented expression asked me, “If you could take a pill to make the Asperger’s go away . . .would you do it?”

No, I would not, I answered. With a pill, I’d be dull and lifeless. With a pill, there would be no spark. There would be no book, no creativity, and I would not even be here. How could I want that?

Later he came over and thanked me. He didn’t want a pill, either, but he wondered if he’d made the right choice.

Upon reflection, I wondered too. Because it’s easier to give up. As we make our light brighter, it shines over many more people, and brings the world greater and greater gifts. But do we ourselves benefit, or do we just burn brighter until we burn up?

Are we genetically programmed to do this? What drives Aspergians to create, if not a deep-seated need to shine this light for others on a dark road. Creativity is a surprisingly selfless act. Think about it. Did Einstein personally benefit from the theory of relativity, beyond the mental satisfaction of thinking up something new? And yet his thoughts changed the world, and touched million if not billions of people.