Autism isn't Real???

Autism is a fraud. And even more, its a harmful and dangerous fraud. Its my belief that autism, and most other mental illnesses, are completely made up labels that we designate people with for maligned reasons. The modern concept of autism was only invented in 1943 by a Doctor Leo Kenner. Before it was invented, no child had ever been diagnosed with autism, but now, around 1 in 50 children are diagnosed with it in the US, and they're worse of for it. Simply coming up with the term is making up a problem that was never really there. My argument will be to explain how I don't believe that these types of “illnesses” are illnesses at all, and the use of them as labels is a humanitarian atrocity. [Just as a disclaimer, I use autism as a blanket term for a spectrum of mental disease labels in this post, so pipe down.]

Everybody designated as autistic are completely normal human beings. But not quite. The way that their brains are wired to deal with certain situations is different from the norm, whatever that may be. While the average person acts in one way to a certain situation, an autistic person acts in a different way. This is all there is to it. No underlying physical difference is present between the two people, just the way that their brains are wired. To “fix” autism, all you have to do is rewire the brain to the brain of a normal person. “Impossible!” I hear you sperg, “it can never be done!” Wrong. Rewiring our brains is an activity we all partake in all the time, everyday. Everything single you think of builds up new relations and connections in our minds and thus, the way we think is changed. When I think about a new idea, then that idea has become part of me. Every decision I make from now on will be influenced, if only negligibly, by this new idea; this is what it means to learn.

The way we react to social situations is no different from the way we think, in fact its the same thing. The way I react to a social situation is based solely on the connections present within my mind, and so can be influenced with the learning of new ideas. This is obvious if you think about it, as we grow up we learn the way that we should act by copying those around us, and so our entire personality is molded. Even as an adult it is very possible to change the way you think. Personalities constantly change, evolve and mold themselves around the ideas around us.

Now take this principle and use it with autism, or any other mental disease. Having one of these so called diseases is just the same as thinking in a different way, because of the way your brain is wired. If you act weird then other people are sure to tell you. Once you know this all you have to do is mimic the way other people around you act to situations. Eventually you will be great at pretending to be normal. This is a thing that happens already. “Coping with autism” is just learning to act as a normal person so well that you are indistinguishable. My argument is that this is problem solved. Once you act normal on the outside you ARE normal. The concept of being normal is based purely on outside appearances. Once you act normal, you are normal. You just cured your autism. In fact, it never existed. You just had a different way of acting, a different personality: nothing more. And as we all know, personalities are not permanent.

There is one major problem with this though. And its the way society acts to these people who have grown up with a slightly different mind. We notice patterns in the way some people are different and categorise them and label them, its just human nature. But by labelling a person with one of these labels we say that is who they are defined as, and there isn't anything they can do about it. If you do something strange and have autism then they just say: “Oh don't worry. You can't help it, you're autistic.” Oh good. I don't have to change. Its OK to be autistic and there is nothing I can do about it. My autism will never be cured.

My method of autism eradication would involve purely of the eradication of the term “autism”. People who act odd are just that, odd. If enough people tell them that then they will be like: “Oh, I don't want to be odd. I think I'll try to act like other people.” Autistic people aren't idiots, they can do this. Don't dehumanise them by saying they can't help it. And as explained above, just pretending to be normal makes you normal. I can draw a parallel to labelling somebody as a “racist”. You wouldn't be like: “Oh don't worry. You can't help it, you're a racist.” That's dumb. No, you'd tell them they're an idiot and the way they think is wrong and they need to change it. This is the same as my argument against mental illnesses. The labelling of small children as different or somehow broken is a horrific practise that has to stop. Once they've put you on the autism register they'll never remove you. Anything you achieve will always be “despite your autism.” You will never be accepted into society, and they have the gall to think they're helping you. The systematic segregation of people from birth into categories has to stop. Special privileges should never be given to entire groups and the sooner we see that this doesn't work the better. Let people decide who they want to be for themselves and you might just find that potential autists decide to just be what they are, humans.