A Real Call to Action: How a Certain Summit Address Should Have Gone

         In November of 2013 Autism Speaks cofounder with her husband Bob, Suzanne Wright, the grandmother of a child with autism (where's baby girl in all this?) made a speech at a policy meeting at George Washington University where she spoke of autism as an irredeemable burden that must at all costs be eliminated if families and communities are to heal. This isn’t the first time this organization has done something of this nature. Years back, Autism Speaks executive Alison Tepper Singer made a statement in The Oprah Winfrey Show where she said that when she found out her daughter had autism, in the presence of the same daughter, she contemplated driving her car with her autistic daughter into the lake but decided against it because her neurotypical daughter was waiting for her at home. Singer, along with all other Autism Speaks executives, was paid a salary over $200,000 dollars a year, despite the laws applicable in the United States to be considered a non-profit organization. Meanwhile Autism Speaks produced another video from none other than the director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, whose son is autistic, called I Am Autism, with narration saying, “I am autism…I work faster than cancer, AIDS, and diabetes combined, I will make sure your marriage fails, that you never hold done a job, that you never attend a church or temple.”

Naturally Suzy’s little accident caused hoards of former Autism Speaks members to leave the organization and withdraw all their funding for it. Most prominent among them were Autism Speaks only openly autistic member John Elder Robison, author of the bestselling book Don’t Look Me in the Eye, and the father of a college student with Asperger syndrome, who lives on a campus apartment with his girlfriend, who also has Asperger syndrome, and a mother of an autistic girl, who Miss Suzy hugged at the summit despite the girl’s objections, and author of the popular autism blogA Diary of a Mom, describing her liferaising two daughters, the youngest of whom is autistic. Both of these parents spent years trying to reform the organization from within and the pageant girl’s book report was simply the last straw.

                A Diary of a Mom has dealt with numerous critics, perhaps people asking, “What was little Suzy supposed to have said?  She wanted to raise awareness.” Well Jess, the blog’s author, has recently coined a phrase (not so new really) to apply to the world of autism, “Love, not fear.” A whole post, where Jess, who admits to worrying that her daughter would never live on her own, had what I, a flag-waving autistic pride believer, call extreme autism acceptance. That can be understood though, as her blog goes clearly into all the way her daughter Brooke has enriched her life, the view of love, as opposed to autistics as threats who must be neutralized, ol’ Suzanna’s view of fear. If she had spoken with love, rather than fear (two things that Bible says are mutually exclusive, maybe her speech would have sounded more like this:

                If one in eighty-eight people [not children] were missing, we would have a national crisis. Well we do: autism discrimination. Maybe they are the people are the people we raised from diapers.  Maybe they are the people who raised you from diapers. This is autism. Maybe they are the person who stared in our production, modeled our products, saved our sick pet, treated our depression, worked with our child with special needs. Maybe they are the person we teared up next to as we said vows at the altar, who held our hand at movies, who held us when we suffered tragic losses of friends or family, who we began a family with. Maybe they are the people we saved from addiction as we believed in them so uncompromisingly that they could heal. Maybe they are the people we knew from diapers, roommate in college, godparent to our children. This is autism. We are facing a national social injustice. Hundreds of thousands will soon grow up without access to jobs, education, or housing. This is a call for action.

End of speech.

                Clearly Mrs. Wright has somewhat of an adorable 1940’s view on disability. Rather than simply children (moreover children who burden you economically), autistics are workers, teachers, counselors, doctors, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends-with-benefits, fathers, mothers, coreligionists, authors. Basically autistic people are human beings! The fact that autism is associated with financial stress by even comfortably middle class people is not doubted. The fact that for every person to see their loved one discriminated is not doubted either. It’s torturous! No human should have to suffer that. But the fact that autistics, as Suzanne is saying, are merely objects of parent’s (usually/always moms) distress is completely wrong and dangerous. Yet so many people say, “But, Ben, Autism Speaks has raised so much money (that they’ve raised money-can’t argue with it-what they’ve done with the money) and they have so many celebrities who endorse them.” Well videotape my swimsuit areas and call me a Scientologist! I believe in them!

                Now let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you are a hardcore fanatical fan of Autism Speaks, who admits they have flaws while exhibiting redeeming qualities: you ask me Is there something to fear? Yes! I fear for you! Any organization that spreads stigma works against the best interest and the needs of autistics and the people who love them. Whether you know it or not, Autism Speaks’ corrosiveness affects you as it does your loved ones and time is running out for many people with autism to adjust to the world so they don’t have to live in such great comfort. When you’re done playing dollhouse with miss ballerina and ready to start a vocation though I’ll be happy to hear from you.

Words for Two Fellow Schoolmates

            I would like to give this post to honor two University of Central Missouri students, Jennifer Reeder and Erin Hook, who were killed in a car wreck near Clinton, Missouri on March 1, 2014. Hook was 20-years old, and Reeder was 19, four and five years younger than I am. I just thought I’d share the feelings that have been embedded in me for what seems like too long, and then wrap it up to why I’m doing this post so everyone please be patient with me. 

It just deeply saddens me and I got no sleep last night as I heard about it. I did not know these girls personally, but the thought of the discovery of those dead bodies on just a seemingly normal day for their friends, family, parents, and the like, and knowing that will stick to them for the rest of their lives simply left me tear stricken. Lying awake in bed, googling the names, feeling frustrated when a video of the deaths would not come up and saying, Just come on, feeling bad as my roommate woke to ask if I was ok. I know many good, true, kind-hearted people who I love to the end of my life and lives beyond who are affected by this tragedy, and wished simply that I could of hugged or held some in my arms, and learned that some more of my closest friends knew these girls, and I have spoken to one and gotten to do some of today, and agreed with him to go to a vigil for them with him, hosted by their sorority Alpha Sigma Alpha. I can only imagine their own parents running into friends not seen for so long, and not being able to catch up without such a profound tragedy being relevant to the talk. Anyway, I want all people reading this if they have any connection to the deep tragedy to know that you are in my thoughts, and everything I do from waking up, and it is the people I love who are the reason I do anything I think worthwhile. So if I can give a hand, an ear, an arm, or anything at anything to anyone I will and ask no one to feel any reservations of asking. Please do not worry about me. I am much more at ease helping anyone I can with this, and thinking of them and the girls in all I do, and I have much to do, but I cannot speak for everyone in the people affected so please know if this helps even in the slightest that I think of all of you, who I know and not. 

At this point I personally give much gratitude to the Buddha as usual, as I owe many of my own beliefs to him, such as the belief that love is what makes our time together worthwhile and possible, and creates the strong connection from compassion that is the greatest source of healing one’s being. Hopefully, just hopefully, all can find their source of strength as I talk about finding mine in all my writings hoping to move others to do the same. 

Three Things Autism Cure Culture Does to Individuals and Families

Today’s world is bombarded by ‘autistic people’ and parents who claim they have been ‘cured’ or ‘recovered’ by diets, sauna therapies, and other home grown remedies created by parents with little or no training on autism. Late thirties Raun Kaufman claims his parents home-grown play-based therapy helped cure him of his autism and has made a fortune on his group Autism Therapy Association while some doctor’s question whether or not Raun was ever autistic at all. Jenny McCarthy, using her credentials gained from her being a Playboy centerfold, claims her son was cured after she gave him a chelatin diet. Her claims that vaccines cause autism has caused thousands of parents to endanger and lose their children who subsequently were not vaccinated. Anti-vaccine activists have ‘edited’ MRI vaccine inventor Paul A. Offit’s Wikipedia page to say he studied at a pig farm in Toad Suck, Arkansas when in fact he has a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University and an M.D. from the University of Maryland (Jenny meanwhile proudly claims she has her degree from the University of Google). Offit’s opponents have subsequently sent him death threats over the phone and envelopes filled with anthrax. When I check my e-mails I will sometimes see e-mails titled Autism Lawsuits in my spam folder, against doctor’s who administer vaccines in America’s already crumbling health care system. Cannabis magazine featured on it's front page an article called Autism and Cannabis: How Prohibition Makes it Tough on Parents. Maybe the thousands of autistic people who have ended up on drugs have developed better social skills. 

Today many parents of autistic people feel guilt when their own child doesn’t develop as he/she should and struggle financially and emotionally to get their children the therapies necessary to do so.

                When put under a magnifying glass, maybe we should ask what these stories of ‘amazing recoveries’ really do? For starters, here’s a few things you may have overlooked:

1)      Autistic people are maimed, injured, and even killed by applied ‘cures.’ An eight-year old autistic boy, Terrence Cottel Jr. was put under a blanket while a minister performed an exorcism to vanquish the demon supposedly causing his autism. What this accomplished was Terrence suffocated under the blanket and subsequently died. Despite widespread outrage over what the exorcism caused, the minister was given a slap on the wrist.

2)      Increased guilt among parents of autistic children. When parents see these ‘cures’ shown in the media, the wonder Why can’t I do the same? This guilt, already out of control by their children’s struggles, can make it hard for parents to give their autistic and non-autistic children the love and support they need to grow and develop.

3)      Increased financial stress. Autism services, not provided by health insurance or schools, are expensive and difficult for parents to acquire. Yet many gullible and unsuspecting parents, many with little education or income, will pay heavy for ‘therapies’ that supposedly cure their children’s autism.

Clearly it is questionable whether the cure autism culture has any real merit. Moreover, Jenny McCarthy and Raun Kaufman clearly ignore the facts that autistic people are fully human with strengths, feelings, and talents like anyone else. For more information on the subject, you can check out Paul Offit’s book Autism’s False Prophets, which unlike Jenny McCarthy’s and Raun Kaufman’s writings, is based off extensive research and training and does not rely on sex appeal, Wikipedia abuse, or death threats to doctors.

Will Autism Services Really Cost Us More?

…Freedom is much cheaper than oppression.

                                                -Desmond Tutu

                You may have heard of the idea of autism being covered by health insurance and them all being guaranteed the right supports in school. You will undoubtedly have heard one thing involved in it: costs! 

                The notion that providing for or granting equality to certain groups of people has been used against every disenfranchised group whether gays, blacks, women, Filipinos-just about everyone you can think of. With that, here’s a radical idea I could suggest: maybe it would be more expensive to NOT provide autistic people with equal access to society.

               

                It’s no secret that autistic people suffer from a wide range of social and cultural problems: depression, drug abuse, alcoholism, crime, unemployment, and underemployment. Over the long term what all these can cost our society can amount to having to pay more than it would cost to pay for inclusion that could prevent so many of these things. Unemployment and underemployment lower our per capita gain. Autistic people too often possess all the professional skills necessary for many jobs, which grow businesses creating jobs, yet lack the social skills which autism therapies could rectify. Furthermore, when people abuse drugs and alcohol, it costs our government a lot to prosecute, imprison, and convict them. 

The biggest myth ever proposed by politicians is that autism insurance coverage would cost insurance companies. Yet the fact is the very things they can provide would actually prevent health problems among autistics that arise from lack of social development among autistics such as lack of independence leading to poorer hygiene and lack of good diet that often leads to diabetes and other health complications. Stress and lack of toilet training resulting from unaddressed autism can lead to bladder problems and urinary infections. Drug and alcohol abuse arise as a result of low self-esteem due to lack of friends due to lack of social development. To be fair, being against autism exclusion is not being against budget cuts. It’s merely against budget cuts that don’t include them. Providing for anyone is costly but a question that has to be asked is Why are some people paid for while others are not. Another question that deserves to be answered or at least be food for thought, is Would we rather pay more to keep a person out, or less to give them access to society. It seems that the government doesn’t want to pay dues to the autistic rights movement it’s spent years opposing, not money. 

The Dharma of Waverly Place: Selena Gomez Character Shows Buddhist Psychology

Since I’ve had Tyler as a roommate, I’ve grown used to watching Wizards of Waverly Place but when a commercial was playing on Disney about an episode where one of the main characters, a sarcastic teenage girl named Alex (played by Selena Gomez) casts a spell on herself that makes all the parts people don’t like about her put into a cell where they are trapped and it later comes back to get her, something started to seem familiar.  Like the way Buddhism teaches energy cannot be destroyed, even though Alex’s less likeable traits don’t show up in her, they still exist. Also, doesn’t Alex’s behavior seem sort of familiar to what we do every day (most of us at least) at least unconsciously? Haven’t we all been told, by school, parents, religion, work, etc., that certain things about ourselves are not acceptable and put them into a little box where they can be contained so that they won’t show up when they’re not wanted? And then they just seem to come out at us when we least expect it, causing embarrassment in our personal and professional lives.

                According to a documentary The Shadow Effect (which is not Buddhist, by the way, but has teachings in it that are similar to Buddhism) we all repress some part of ourselves that we are told is inappropriate and then later they come back at us and embarrass us in our lives. In Britain, a social worker finally snapped from the pressures of his job and restrained a twenty-year old woman with learning difficulties. Other examples of this can be seen in politicians, celebrities, and clergymen. Alex in Wizards of Waverly Place puts her unwanted characteristics in a mirror just as we put them in a pit in our gut and never let them out and likewise, Alex’s alter ego comes out to get her. But what do we do about this “shadow side?”

                In meditation, we look at ourselves without judging or condemning. Even though a voice in our head may say something about who are at that point, we realize those thoughts are not who we are and we let them come and go without holding onto them. Our “negative sides” are merely traumas we are reliving every day in our heads but meditation helps people to transform those traumas into wisdom. These “traumas” are energy and energy cannot be destroyed, according to both Buddhism and science. But through meditation, our traumas need not remain what they are because energy does not stay in one state forever, and neither do our traumas.

Zen Huna: Enlightenment Lessons of Sharkboy and Lavagirl

True, I don’t normally watch a movie like Sharkboy and Lavagirl, but like Spy Kids, things about it caught my attention for their Buddhist significance as my roommate watched it in our dorm. The movie revolves around a boy named Max who invents a dream world which he records in his dream journal. One day, after a particularly bad day of school, people from his dream world, Sharkboy and Lavagirl, find him at school and take him his dream world.

“Life is but a dream.”

               Buddhists have sayings, “Life is a dream,” “Reality is an illusion.” This is often taken to mean that whatever’s going on isn’t real. We’ve just created it with our minds and not being able to get out of it is a sign of weakness. This is not true. On the contrary, Buddhist really believe something more like this, “A dream is reality. The problem is the differences between Western and Buddhist languages, such as Pali, Chinese, or Tibetan. When I took Exploring World Religions, Eastern Civilization, and Religions of the East at Johnson County Community College all with the same teacher summed up the worldview of the Chinese, “Experience vs. Order.” The way these languages work I guess is that the category something belongs in doesn’t precede the thing itself. For example, saying, “I am tall,” is basically the same thing as saying, “Tall is me.”

Buddhists don’t believe reality is an illusion. Rather something starts as an illusion and becomes reality. A Buddhist saying states that, “With our minds, we create the world.” Take a child who’s been told for years that he will misbehave by his parents and he later does. Children learn from elders. 

Another example would be the process of creative visualization made popular in the West by writer Shakti Gawain. One simply visualizes something happening for it to take place. The theory being is that it trains people to do the things that cause these things to happen. Celebrities such as Tiger Woods, Will Smith, and Jim Carrey stated they have all used visualization to help them achieve their goals. Will Smith imagined no longer living in poverty and that became a reality with his film and television successes. Jim Carrey stated once that in 1994, he wrote a check to himself for “services in acting.” In 1995, he received that amount of money he wrote to himself for starring in the movie Dumb and Dumber.

The world we inhabit is more or less a product of our minds. Saying this, it should be noted that it does not mean it is the product we intended. But what goes on in the world is more or less a product of what our mind has believed. When we fear the results of our tests, they may turn out to be unsatisfactory. We may think we’re going to find love, but really we’re only doing it because we think if we don’t, we’ll be miserable, and often times we are. An Eastern axiom states that the world is a projection. Take a social worker whose performance is called unsatisfactory and the social worker believes him and she takes it to be a remark about her personally. She may not be the one who called herself that in the first place, but in believing so, she considers her critic to be making her feel unhappy with her performance, when really the only one making her feel so unhappy with herself is her. Maybe she reacted that way because she is unhappy with herself. Be defining herself as a social worker, her feelings of how other’s perceive her are based on how they see her doing her job. Without this view of herself that she has created, no coworkers comment could be able to hurt her so much inside.

Spy Satori

Spy Kids isn’t normally the kind of movie I would watch. But as I heard the actions and the dialogue as my roommate, Tyler watched it in our dorm, there were some things that caught my attention in it, apart from the brilliant performances of Mike Judge. God, he is great.

                What eventually struck me as significant about this movie is the premise where a menace wrecks chaos by trying and failing to go back in time. At the end of the movie it is said by one of the children that the menace cannot go back in time, merely create different versions of himself that exist in a similar scenario as the past. It’s true. You can’t travel back in time, or forward. The only time that exists is now.

Innocence of Children

             At one point in the movie, the stepmother of the kids tells them that the Spy Kids program was created by the government because adults dawdle in taking action since they over think things. According to Buddhism, unhappiness is created when we don’t participate in this moment. Experiences we have make it much harder to take part in the now as we get older because they shape our views so much. After they occur, we feel like reliving them again when similar things happen. And when different types of situations occur, we reflect on how things used to be. Of course, we can’t just be naïve for the rest of our lives. We have to grow and mature. Present awareness is hard work but once our present situation is lived at this moment, we no longer have to view it with the same feeling we learned from doing it before. Christ, interestingly enough, said to his followers, “You must become children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Celtic people had a concept of “the Wise Child.” Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki said that, “Zen minds are like beginner’s minds.” They are very fresh. What’s best is we don’t have to forget all are experiences or start things completely anew to be like “Zen minds.” We simply have to stop lumping old experiences with new ones and transcend the conceptual mind. This is not to say we must stop having names for things, but we need to understand the Buddhist principle of Sunyatta, or emptiness. Look at a picture of a pear and see how you describe it. One might describe it as red and round, but then take a red bouncy ball. You may notice that it is also red and round, and yet you don’t lump a bouncy ball and a pear in the same category. It may be because you don’t define it as “red and round” but that is true of it, as are a number of other things you could notice about it (rubbery, shiny, etc.). Similarly, though we may encounter experiences similar to our old ones, we respect that no two experiences, like snowflakes, are exactly the same, and we no longer have to apply the lessons of old experiences where they can hold us back in life.