Autism

[Rev. Rye]

For me, eye contact doesn't really come naturally, and for many on the spectrum, it's stressful, and for me specifically (at least partly due to a hostile grade school environment) it's taken on the connotation of an expression of power. You ever went to the zoo and got told to not look the monkeys straight in the eye because it can make them crazy? They'll treat is as a challenge. Take this video:





To quote the video description: "I was mesmerized by this animal. The eyes and face are so haunting, I couldn't help but stare. Instead of looking down at my camera, I did look directly at its face and eyes, and whether as a humorous stunt or as a challenge for dominace or both, it sprang up and made it very clear who was keeping an eye on who." From what primatology tells me, General Ursus here is more likely to have done what he did as a legitimate challenge than just a stunt.

The instinct can be seen to a lesser extent in humans, as one of many relics from our common ancestry with the less intelligent apes (goose pimples are a somewhat related one), but it seems that, for whatever reason, the feeling got more pronounced in those of us on the spectrum. Whether or not there's some sort of survival advantage to it or if it's just some genes drawing the short straw, I don't know, but it's the best explanation I can give.

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One point that is not covered in this article, probably because it is highly subjective, is the desire for our schools to be run like prisons.  Anyone who slips outside of the desired norms gets branded.  In minority schools, they call the cops.  In white schools, they call doctors to give them a pill.

And then, by a strange irony, they latch onto one of the childhood mental disorders that can't actually be medicated...