Beyond Autistic Identity

As my 72nd birthday approaches,I stand on a figurative mountaintop.The view is vertiginous and I am so high above the common herd that people in the market squares register like gaily costumed ants Though I am acutely short sighted ,from my “dragon s eyrie “ I can clearly see beyond the present day to events after I am dead which if people persist in their habits,will lead to the collapse of our civilisation.

PLATO had classified people into the GOLD caste (the ruling caste ) the SILVER caste (the merchant caste ) and the BRONZE caste (everyone else ) in The Republic Down the ages there have been ways of classifying personality types by such eminent psychologists as H J Eysenck which are in use for example to weed out conscriptees unfit to carry guns A Raymond Cattell from America perfected his 16-Personality-Factor Scale which seems to be a far more reliable way of assessing personalities than any other system .

Mendeleev discovered the Periodic Table of chemical elements Alan Moelwyn Wright is supposed to have set out a Periodic Table of personality types which is compatible with Cattell s classification He declared that unlike chemical elements that CANNOT be transmuted it should be possible for people of any personality type to TRANSMUTE THEMSELVES to “higher types of person” by dint of STERN WILLPOWER and PERSISTENCE at demanding activities of any kind So Alan s Moelwyn Pedagogy is directed at the cultivation of Virtues in all in his care

I am NOT the boy who set sail for Dieppe in September 1960 and about a week later was enormously enriched for my stay in Dieppe unaccompanied by my parents I trust that on my life s journey though I have made many mistakes (and on several occasions been a split second from a fatal accident ) I have transmuted myself through dint of my willpower to become a Short Sighted Dragon of Alan s own mental and moral stature

Since diagnosis with AS I am as conscious of my Asperger differentness as I am of my amputated leg – for most of my waking existence unaware of it just as right now wearing Gripperbreeks I can feel the library floor with my right foot Or indeed be aware that I am wearing glasses I AM VERY AWARE how I differ from the common herd whenever I am in a supermarket or suffer the ubiquitous RACKET imposed on me even in banks .

My Asperger differentness is therefore a total alienation from contemporary “culture “ I had received a brochure advertising the “delights “ in the new county of Falkirkshire all pitched at a mental age of no higher than 14 Is there anything happening in Falkirkshire other than the monthly Toy Fair at Graeme High School where I used to buy up bits for my model trains (and bought NOTHING on my last visit?) Or perhaps a stroll along the Union Canal towpath yes there is! A well preserved reach of the Antonine Wall !

I may be looking at my past through rose tinted glasses but it seems to me as Paul Kingsnorth the environmental writer declares “there has been a scouring out of social value “ In the name of Profit everywhere resembles everywhere else but for a few historic buildings which mark out each town along ancient highways whereas when I hitch hiked along the Great Lands End Road as a young man every market town was excitingly different Oh the magic of discovering monuments like the Monks Lavatorium in Sherborne which had hitherto been merely a smudge of rooftops seen from a passing train ! Then in 1962 I was footloose and free in North Devon my birthplaceland to discover how little had changed in Bideford where I had lived till age five and a half

I observed youths with the tiny music-players like hearing aids plugged into their ears on a bus and questioned a young mechanic about these devices They were entirely lost to the world,these youths and on that journey would not have spotted landmarks in time for them to alight from that ,the last bus from Glasgow to Dunfermline I recalled a SF story of my boyhood about a world where most people had deliberately lost touch with reality by “dream-tanks “ where in trances they acted out being beautiful and famous ( Is this the plot of Huxley s Brave New World ?) Last Sunday I went for a stroll to the former shale bing I call Lupin Hill just 15 minutes walk through Townhill Woods and dense undergrowth where a century ago there was a coal mine and fantasised how someone from 1913 might have felt as he stepped through time to find this amazing wilderness where once there was deafening racket and belching smoke The afterglow lingered and I felt supremely grateful that I am an Englishman and I have the faculty to appreciate such simple joys as that afterglow

In my other essay CULTIVATION OF HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS I expound the idea that the destiny for absolutely everybody is to grow into a Hand of God by the exercise of STERN WILLPOWER I write about the Evolution of Higher Consciousness and Darwin s role as indeed a Messenger of God equal to Socrates and Christ by his formulation of the idea of evolution I now declare that we on the autistic spectrum MAY HAVE BEEN CREATED THE WAY WE ARE expressly to work as a synergy to disseminate a Counter-Culture or Moral revolution which would galvanise NT people into developing all their latent abilities in order to adapt and survive in a world where inevitable catastrophes would bring about a severe population crash Perhaps even render huge areas effectively uninhabitable for foreseeable centuries

I ask if it is entirely presumptuous of me ,David Seagrave a quite undistinguished Englishman to have expounded through Alan Wright s voice ,a path to transmutation of every soul into the state I call Dragonhood (see my essay : Tadpoles ,Frogs and Dragons ) The lucky endowment of AS ,being moulded by Red Hill School s self motivated learning and the paradoxes of the “Hither Green Row “ and the accident near Stafford all synerge to give rise to the present moment where I on my figurative mountaintop stand supremely grateful and ready to throw a mental ladder down to the marketsquares so people can climb to my dizzy height and in doing so grow into Dragonhood Who will lend me a light omnibus and driver ? Who in the market squares wants to accompany me up a lofty mountain on a bright Sunday to discover the presence of God within themselves ?

In my self-created Dragonhood do I soar far beyond autistic identity ?
David Seagrave Dunfermline Library 16 – 8-2013